Ecosystems For Change

In today's episode, I want to introduce you to my longtime friend and OG ecosystem builder, Larkin Garbee. Larkin has put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into jumpstarting entrepreneurial support initiatives, both in Richmond, Virginia, as well as nationally. In this conversation, we talk about handing initiatives over to people who can carry them forward, and the upside of spending over a decade...

In today’s episode, we’re making our way to Fargo, North Dakota to talk to Annie Wood. I first met Annie through Startup Champions Network and was fortunate enough to visit her community during our Fall Summit in 2018. Shortly thereafter, Annie left the host organization and started a new chapter of her life. Today, she shares what was going on behind the scenes at the time, how she regrouped afte...

Today, I want you to meet Julia Firestone. Julia is a transformational leadership and career coach who serves experienced social impact professionals to help them unleash their biggest positive impact in the world while living their most fulfilling life. Julia has worked in corporate innovation and strategy, global NGOs, scrappy startups, and corporate social impact. Bringing all of these experien...

When Joe Maruschak left his home ecosystem of Eugene, Oregon, it sent ripples through our community of ecosystem builders. In the public farewell letter that he wrote in July 2021, he voiced what so many of us had been struggling with and discussing behind closed doors.  A year and a half after this letter, I invited Joe onto the show to share his journey and talk to us about what life is like aft...

In this season of Ecosystems for Change, I’m talking to my guests about their experience with quitting. As much as I dislike quitting–I really do–I understand it is part of life. We evolve and so do the circumstances, organizations and people around us. As we uncovered in season two, ecosystems are complex, adaptive systems; they are constantly shifting and changing and as a result, people move in...

As I was wrapping up the first year of the show, I found myself wondering what had come of all those great plans and even greater unknowns that many of my guests had shared with me when they were on the show. And selfishly I wanted to catch up with some of my previous guests to hear what they are working on these days. So I invited a handful of them to come back and let us know how their world has...

Before we kick off the next season, I have a very special episode for you today.  At the end of 2022, I found out that there are several federal funding opportunities for entrepreneurial ecosystem builders here in the US. The US government is starting to see the effectiveness of an ecosystem approach and has started recruiting some of their programs accordingly, which is a great opportunity for gr...

Welcome to my fifth logbook, an in-between-seasons update on what’s happening in the field of entrepreneurial ecosystem building, what’s going on behind the scenes of the show, and what is happening in my day job as Director of Ecosystem Building at the Shenandoah Community Capital Fund. In this quarterly format, I love sharing with you what I’ve learned over the previous months and what I have pl...

Throughout this season, we really traveled through the lowest valleys and highest mountaintops of ecosystem building. My guests shared some of their hardest experiences of facing and trying to navigate conflict.  We heard some pretty hairy tales about naysayers and saboteurs and how even seasoned ecosystem builders struggle to keep their call and move their communities forward regardless. But then...

For our last interview of the season, we’re headed to Portland, Oregon, to chat with Rick Turoczy. As Silicon Florist and co-founder and general manager of the Portland Incubator Experiment, or PIE, Rick has been supporting founders in the Portland startup community for fifteen years.  We talked about how you might plan for succession as a keystone in your community, how you transfer social capita...

For today’s episode, we make our way to Indianapolis, Indiana, to talk to Julie Heath, Vice President of Entrepreneurial Ecosystems at the Indiana Economic Development Corporation. Julie was the first employee at a startup, then executive director at Indiana’s first collaborative workspace, the Speak Easy, and now serves as a statewide ecosystem builder under the Secretary of Commerce of Indiana....

If you listened to the very first episode of this show, the name Todd Nuckols and part of the following story might sound familiar. When I first moved to the US eight years ago, Todd was one of the very first people I met. We met up at a coworking space called 804 RVA and I asked him how to get involved in Richmond’s entrepreneurship scene. Without hesitation, he pulled out his metaphorical Rolode...

For today’s episode, we’re headed to Anchorage, Alaska to sit down with Margo Fliss. Margo is a lifelong and proud Alaskan; when she’s not building the entrepreneurial ecosystem for the state of Alaska, you can find her fishing salmon in the Kenai river during the summer and raising her newborn daughter. In this conversation, Margo talks about an ecosystem convening that went terribly sideways and...

Today, I want you to meet Cecilia Wessinger, who I’ve known for several years through her work as a community activator with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and her role at Startup Champions Network. Cecilia shares what types of conflict she has encountered in helping convene an ecosystem of ecosystem builders. Cecilia also talks about how she approaches trust building among diverse parties....

Today’s conversation did not take me far from home because my guest, Jess Edwards, is in the midst of wrapping up a project in Danville, VA. Jess is a project-based ecosystem builder who has done this work in her hometown of Buffalo, NY, in Dubai as well as in Alaska and - most recently - in the South of Virginia. Jess spilled the beans on how she builds and leverages her social capital when she p...

My first guest this season is Fay Horwitt who joined me from the Forward Cities headquarters in Durham, NC. Since 2014, Forward Cities has worked in more than 50 communities around the US and has a deep organizational well of knowledge that they share generously. I invited Fay on the show to share some of her hardest-won lessons when it comes to managing conflict in ecosystems and to tell us more...

Earlier this year, I was chatting with a fellow ecosystem builder who had just been hired to convene an entrepreneurial ecosystem. From the outside, it looked pretty mature. They had the right institutions, programs, a digital map, co-working spaces, an active angel network, and an active entrepreneurial community. But when he got there, it quickly became clear that while the stakeholders wanted t...

Welcome to my fourth logbook, an in-between season update on all things ecosystem building. I share with you what is going on in the field of ecosystem building here in the US, give you an insight into what I’m working on in my day job as Director of Ecosystem Building at the Shenandoah Community Capital Fund, and share some behind the scenes details of the show. Listen to the full episode to hear...

Welcome to the last Summer Skill Session of 2022. I hope that you’ve gotten a fair amount of vitamin D and you were able to take some time off this summer to relax. And, of course, I hope that you found this series helpful. Summer is winding down and we’re getting in those last ice creams, popsicles, and cold drinks, squeezing out the last of the sunscreen from the bottle, and starting to put away...

I came to storytelling from a love of local business and their owners in Richmond, Virginia.  First, I loved their products, from biscuits to T-shirts to local moonshine. And once I got to know these businesses and their owners, I wanted to shout their stories from the rooftops. I wanted the whole world, or at least the people in my city, to know about them and spend their dollars there. These sta...

Welcome to our second Summer Skill Session.  I hope you’re kicking it by the pool, popsicle in hand, your headphones on, eager to add another skill to your toolbox as an ecosystem builder. Today, we’re talking about entrepreneurial outreach. Tell me if this sounds familiar: We're launching a support program for entrepreneurs, but how do we make them aware of it? Hey, I'm hosting this workshop conf...

I don’t know about you, but every time I go on social media, I see people vacationing in the Greek isles or somewhere on Bermuda, and while I’m stuck here in my lovely home office in my new hometown of Stanton, Virginia, I feel like summer as well. So instead of a fully produced season that is a chapter in our playbook of ecosystem building, I am bringing you the Summer Skill Sessions. I imagine y...

Welcome, friends, to my third logbook, the in-between seasons update where I share what’s going on behind the scenes of the show in my day job as an ecosystem builder in the Shenandoah Valley, in the field of ecosystem building in general, and in my personal life. I will also give you a little sneak peek of what lies ahead and how you can get involved. Listen to the full episode to hear: We bought...

I set out on this season assuming that we all want to lead happier and healthier lives in which we don’t fall victim to burnout, stress and overwhelm. And this, by the way, does not just concern ecosystem builders and do-gooders. Most of us look for purpose in our lives, for work that fulfills us, for time and resources to spend on things we enjoy. Don’t we all dream of having meaningful, trusting...

In today’s episode, you’ll meet Shelly Rose, a natural foods chef and one of my favorite people on this Earth! In my humble opinion, Shelly is a gift to humanity because she is deeply invested in helping others–irrespective of age, background and current lifestyle–lead a healthy life. In this conversation, we talk about sleep, nutrition, staying hydrated, taking good care of your nervous system -...