The Courageous Podcast with Ryan Berman

AT&T, Ad Age, Xerox, NBC Universal. These are just a few of the companies that Josh Golden, Chief Marketing Officer at Quad, has had a hand in making courageous changes at. With a diverse career spanning over two decades, Josh’s wife accurately describes him as the Marco Polo of industry professions. Josh has earned a reputation as a catalyst to drive change within organizations.  In 2017, he led...

Do the scary thing.  These are the words that our guest Miranda Prins lives by, and she has the track record to prove it.  Miranda currently sits as General Manager of Continental Europe at Kellogg company, a role that spans 10 markets, 30 nationalities, and is made up of a team of roughly 600 people who speak 6 different languages. Managing this incredibly diverse team is part of the reason why M...

Cheerios. Lucky Charms. Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Susan Pitt is a serial cerealist and seasoned Brand Experience Director who has spent just under a decade at General Mills believing none of the decisions we make as consumers are all that rational. As she puts it, “we’re all wired for story”. Susan dedicates her days to helping craft some of the world’s most iconic brands known in our culture. On thi...

There are creative gypsies among us. One of them is Romanian creative talent Mihnea Gheorghiu (Pronounced: Mee-na Gee-orge-ee-yew) who recently returned to Milan from Cannes as a fairly happy man thanks to his teams coveted work on Diesel. On this episode of the podcast, Mihnea, the Chief Creative Officer of Publicis Italia, shares his nomadic journey from Romania to the USA to Italy. We talked ab...

Ever wonder why your best ideas show up in mid shower? Or how you refreshingly feel different after spending the day next to an ocean on the beach? Today, we dive head first into the healing powers of water. We’re joined by the masterful J Nichols who was nicknamed “Keeper Of The Sea” by GQ Magazine. J has spent a career researching the benefits and impact water have on all of us. He is a marine b...

"Don't just look at the world differently. Do the world differently.” This week’s guest is a profound talent who does both. IN-Q is an award-winning poet, multi-platinum songwriter, and the best-selling author of Inquire Within. His ability to deconstruct society and bend those observations into words landed him on Oprah's SuperSoul 100 list of the world's most influential thought leaders. He was...

A birth. A death. An anniversary. A circled date on the calendar. A special occasion where sending flowers or chocolates can bring loved ones together; even when they're physically thousands of miles apart. Now, imagine if this memory-making moment doesn’t show up on time. This is the anxiety that comes with being Charlie Cole, the Chief Executive Officer of FTD, the modern florist collective. In...

Will Cady is many things. A conscious creator. An Emmy award-winning composer. A member of the 2020 AdWeek Top 50 for Tech, Media and Marketing. Like many, Will thoughtfully resides at Reddit's intersection of content, news, social media and trusted, vouched forum. On this episode, Will reveals what he believes is at the core of Reddit’s success. He expounds the importance of turning curiosity int...

South African Marc Sidelsky believes in the power of storytelling, finding your voice and following it. Marc, an award-winning commercials director, tends to create scripts that disrupt and flourish in the market including his recent brave accomplishment of going straight to a CEO with an idea (Stussy X Nike) that one year later won honors at all major advertising festivals including the Clios, On...

Lauren Verrusio is the Head of Creators, Culture & Content Partnership Communications at YouTube. Jennifer Zudonyi is a Senior Director of Brand & Consumer Marketing at Warner Bros Discovery, leading efforts around its NHL partnership. On this episode of the podcast, we hear the story of how two power women turn themselves into a power couple. Each shares their version of what it was like meeting...

Think Postpartum depression only happens with women? Think again. For our Father’s Day edition of The Courageous Podcast, we sit down for a brave conversation with pediatrician Dr. David Levine. David graduated with highest honors from NYU Medical School while completing his residency at Yale Children’s Hospital. Even with all his wisdom and accolades, life changed fast — and not all for the best...

Aron Ezra is a thinker, innovator and serial entrepreneur with two major exits under his belt. While his wife might wish he’d take a break, Aron is currently in the thick of his third mega business as Chairman of Plan A Technologies; an award-winning software development firm serving startups to the Fortune 500 with offices in the US, Europe, Africa and Latin America. On this episode of The Courag...

Todd is the SVP, Digital Innovation & Fan Experience for the Seattle Kraken. A former hockey player turned entrepreneur, Todd is charged with redefining how Seattle fans experience the game in a city with deep hockey history, but one that hasn’t had an NHL team in almost one hundred years. On this episode, we discuss life just before the launching of the Kraken brand. We learn how it all started a...

Ever show up to a party with a 6-pack of water? If you have, you most likely haven’t been invited back. Unless that sixer was comprised of stone-cold tallboys from Liquid Death Mountain Water. In just three short years, LDMW is “murdering thirst” by disrupting a boring-than-still-water commodity category. At the center of it all is Greg Fass; recently named by Forbes as one of 50 most Entrepreneur...

Some would say it’s hard to lose yourself if you had yet to truly find yourself. This is the story of how one man went from city-to-city searching for his purpose while stumbling through a divorce and a soul-crushing bankruptcy only to come out the other side building a multi 7-figure empire. On this episode of The Courageous Podcast, we meet Ryan Weeden who had lost everything — not just money; b...

On this episode of The Courageous Podcast, we sit down with Bjorn Trowery who joined Meta’s Communications/PR team near the beginning of the pandemic and the tail end of the brand formerly known as Facebook. We discuss what it’s like for Bjorn to establish credibility with a new team handcuffed away from his “personal superpower”; his ability to be live, collaborating and in-person.

What does an asthmatic, a Rower, the co-founder of The Perfect Pushup and a Navy SEAL-turned-Platoon Commander have in common? All of them were my guest on this weeks episode of The Courageous Podcast. Alden Mills is one of a kind. He’s on a mission to help 100 million people be unstoppable. He strives to achieve this feat by being a keynote speaker, an executive coach and the epitome of courage....

Rhett Power is a Best-Selling Author, Executive Coach, Columnist at Forbes, and a Season 1 Cast Member of The Social Movement (TV Series). Rhett is also the Co-founder of Accountability Inc. and is host of Power Lunch Live; one of the first and most popular interview shows on LinkedIn. On this episode, we flip the script on Rhett as he’s usually the one asking thought leaders, authors, and busines...

Approximately 13 million adopted pets have found their way into homes over the course of the pandemic. While we’ve taken in our lovable new fur babies over the last two years, many of us are heading back into the working world leaving our pets behind (and alone) for the very first time. In dog years, that’s over a decade and a half of their life! Mental health isn’t simply something humans are dea...

Rihanna. Neymar. Dua Lipa. Usain Bolt. Lewis Hamilton. These are a few of our iconic favorites who set the tone across the globe in style and culture. Collaborating with these originals is one of the world’s leading brands in sports today. On this episode of The Courageous Podcast, CEO and President of PUMA North America Bob Philion shares what it’s like to steer the “Big Cat” under the “forever f...

Peyton Manning. Drew Brees. Eli Manning. Each of these Super Bowl winning quarterbacks relied on Bennie Fowler to run routes, block or catch passes over the course of his 8-year NFL career. But as Bennie will tell you, each of the above drew him to his current passion of helping executives and organizations maximize their performance. Today, Bennie is an entrepreneur, the creator of MVP leadership...

“I don’t know, but I’ll figure it out”. 20 years ago, these were the words murmured by an unfilled-at-the-time Sam Zien to his wife after he quit his job as a biotech operator. It was then that he realized that something in his life didn’t feel right. One morning, now unemployed, Sam recalls watching “one of the worst cooking segments” on a local San Diego channel when the idea came to him; launch...

There are presently 171,476 words making up our English Dictionary. And with all those choices, you can see how many leaders fumble their way through picking the very right words to help motivate their people, navigate hard conversations, or galvanize a consumer base. Enter Molly Tschang who is a problem solver extraordinaire, lexicon rock star, and the Host of the radio show Say It Skillfully®. M...

In the 90th minute on a beautiful California day, in front of 25,000 raving fans, the day got instantaneously more sunny for today’s guest when Javier Hernandez (“Chicharito”) went on to score the lone goal in a 1-0 opening day LA Galaxy win against MLS champions NYCFC. On this episode of The Courageous Podcast, we are joined by the President of the LA Galaxy Chris Klein. As the leader of a club w...

Emily Musil Church, Ph. D. specializes in tech for good, entrepreneurship, and prize competitions. She spent a half dozen years at the XPRIZE Foundation and served as Executive Director of the human equity domain. Today, she continues her good work running world-changing, “crowdsourced" prize competitions at Milken Institute. On this episode of The Courageous Podcast, we discuss where her philanth...