From Problems to Possibilities: Entrepreneurial Leadership in Action

What happens when the life you planned for yourself disappears in a single moment? A devastating hockey injury left Jake Thibeault ’26 paralyzed, and presented him with a challenge every founder eventually encounters: Surrender to circumstances or rebuild from a completely different reality. In this episode, we bring you Thibeault’s inspiring student address at Babson College’s undergraduate Comme...

What happens when the same relentless drive that fuels success begins to quietly unravel the person behind it? Emmy-and Grammy-winning film editor Sammy Dane ’15 reveals how entrepreneurial leadership isn’t just about building a career, it’s about navigating obsession, burnout, and the courage to reset. From walking 5 miles home in tears at dawn to trusting his instincts over security, Dane’s stor...

What if the single most important reform in American health care has nothing to do with policy, technology, or funding and everything to do with how we train leaders to think like entrepreneurs? Dr. Errol Norwitz, executive director of the Kerry Murphy Healy Center for Health Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Babson College, makes a bold and urgent case that the people who understand health care'...

When the market ignores customers, what does it take for an entrepreneurial leader to fill the void? Babson College student Jolie Wyatt ’26 was tired of being overlooked and is now on a mission to change footwear for millions of women. In this episode, Wyatt shares how she launched If The Shoe Fits, a tech-driven startup designing custom footwear addressing the lack of options for women’s sizes, s...

Student well-being has moved from the margins to the center of higher education, and for good reason. Today’s students are feeling the squeeze of unprecedented pressure, heightened security concerns, and the nonstop anxiety of our times. In this episode, we unpack how colleges are adapting, with two innovative national leaders on campus well-being: Ryan Travia, Ed. D., Associate Vice President for...

What happens when passion becomes both the greatest gift and the biggest risk for an entrepreneurial leader? For Jamie Siminoff ’99, H’21, the founder of Ring, his passion was undeniable as he pursued his dream. But after failing to secure an investor on Shark Tank, Siminoff faced rejection and self-doubt and then a moment of self-reflection. In this episode, we revisit his journey, from Babson Co...

What if ending hunger took the same entrepreneurial leadership as launching a startup? That’s exactly how Jeni Wheeler MBA’05 tackled food insecurity. Drawing on her Babson-trained mindset and personal hardship, Wheeler founded the Family Table Collaborative—now feeding thousands across Cape Cod. In this episode, hear how she used business modeling and social entrepreneurship to turn crisis into o...

What if talent isn’t enough to win? And what if entrepreneurial leadership is the key—by asking, how can we align individual strengths to create a team that truly performs together? In this episode, Babson College hockey coach Jamie Rice '90 fosters a culture of ownership that mirrors the entrepreneurial mindset. Hockey offers a unique lens on entrepreneurial leadership, showing that success comes...

What if the foster care system wasn’t broken beyond repair, but simply waiting for entrepreneurial leadership to reimagine it? In this episode, Sandra Bravo MBA’87, an associate professor of practice at Babson College, shares her bold 440K Project, designed to bring the number of children in foster care from 440,000 down to zero. Host Kara Baskin explores how Bravo’s approach breaks a massive chal...

If you watched the Paris Olympics in 2024, it was hard to miss the coverage on sports and mental health. Specifically, the amazing comeback story of Simone Biles, who became the most decorated Olympic gymnast of all time after withdrawing from the Tokyo Games due to mental health issues in 2020. The narrative around sports and mental health requires nuance, and the specific situations smatter grea...

If you live in the U.S., chances are you have a lot of stuff. Or at least you want to have a lot of stuff. As the MIT Press Reader notes in their brief history of consumer culture 'consumption is now frequently seen as our principal role in the world.' We've been trained in a way to want more stuff, and that stuff takes a lot of resources to make, to ship, and then at the end of its life, to dispo...

Even though the advertising and entertainment industries have made strides in trying to be more inclusive and speak more directly to different consumer groups, work remains to be done. Research done by the Geena Davis Institute shows that representation for women, LGBTQIA+ race, disability, age and body size was actually shrinking for some audiences in recent years. So why does representation in m...

The way leaders are problem solving in the world we live in today is changing.   The World Economic Forum has been touting the practice of systems thinking for years, which you can loosely define as a way of viewing problems and the path to their solutions in a multi-dimensional approach, as opposed to a linear path.   Similarly, the concept of biomimicry, or analyzing a problem and evaluating sol...

According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s 2023/24 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report, startup activity among women has risen steadily over the past 25 years, even as they face headwinds related to cultural perceptions of women in business and limited access to capital. One of the effects of this activity is women entrepreneurs who are taking problems affecting women in healthcare and creatin...

What is entrepreneurial leadership? And how can entrepreneurial leaders solve the problems that have perplexed so many others? New research from Babson College faculty proposes that entrepreneurial leadership is a paradigm-shifting model that could have a long-term impacts for businesses and organizations of all kinds. To outline how entrepreneurial leadership actually works, we’ve got two of Babs...

The world is evolving. The problems we’re facing are too big to be solved by any organization alone. A lot is uncertain, but one thing is for sure: change is coming. And the people driving it are entrepreneurial leaders. Welcome to From Problems to Possibilities: Entrepreneurial Leadership in Action, presented by Babson College. On this podcast we’ll meet the entrepreneurial leaders in the Babson...