Catalyze

Latest Episodes:

SEVEN Talk, by Tai Huynh ’20: “80 Days Around the Mustache” Dec 07, 2023

Show notes

Today’s episode is a recording of a SEVEN Talk from the 2022 Alumni Forum. This talk, given by Tai Huynh ’20, is entitled, “80 Days Around the Mustache.” Tai is a Chapel Hill Town Council Member and the co-founder and CEO of Acta Solutions LLC.
You can watch all of the SEVEN Talks on our YouTube channel.
More about Tai
Tai Huynh ’20 is a co-founder at Acta Solutions and a sitting member of the Chapel Hill Town Council. Born to Vietnamese refugees, Tai was a real estate agent before attending UNC Chapel-Hill as a first-generation college student. At UNC, he graduated with a bachelor’s in computer science with minors in anthropology and business administration, was a founding member of the UNC Institute of Politics, and was a collegiate boxer. Tai became the first Vietnamese-American elected to public office in North Carolina at 22. As a policymaker, he works to increase access to housing and economic opportunities for underserved families. His GovTech startup powers better customer service in government, and they currently serve over 1.5 million constituents across four states. Tai loves to fish and is still working towards catching a fish in North Carolina.

How to listen

On your mobile device, you can listen and subscribe to Catalyze on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. For any other podcast app, you can find the show using our RSS feed.

Catalyze is hosted and produced by Sarah O’Carroll for the Morehead-Cain Foundation, home of the first merit scholarship program in the United States and located at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can let us know what you thought of the episode by finding us on Twitter or Instagram at @moreheadcain or you can email us at communications@moreheadcain.org.

A friendship forged in the wilderness: David von Storch ’80 Nov 13, 2023

Show notes

Today we have a story from Morehead-Cain Ambassador David von Storch ’80 about how he met his classmate, Andy Spencer ’80. It’s one of resilience, connection, and gratitude.

It begins in the wilderness.

The Morehead-Cain Day of Giving is this Friday, November 17. Support the Program by the end of the Day to help us reach our goal of 50 percent alumni giving participation.

Thank you for supporting the next generation of scholars!

About Morehead-Cain Ambassadors

Morehead-Cain Class Ambassadors engage in outreach to their peers on behalf of the Foundation. The group comprises alumni with members representing each graduating class. On the Day of Giving, held every November, alumni remind their classmates to give. As a direct result of ambassadors, around 55 percent of alumni consistently participate.

Music credits

The episode’s intro song is by scholar Scott Hallyburton ’22, guitarist of the band South of the Soul.

How to listen

On your mobile device, you can listen and subscribe to Catalyze on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. For any other podcast app, you can find the show using our RSS feed.

SEVEN Talk, by Frank Bruni ’86: “We Are Starfish” Nov 07, 2023

Show notes

Today’s episode is a recording of a SEVEN Talk from the 2022 Alumni Forum. This talk, given by Frank Bruni ’86, is entitled, “We Are Starfish.” Frank is a Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. The alumnus is also author of four New York Times best sellers, including his new memoir The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found.
You can watch all of the SEVEN Talks on our YouTube channel.

More about Frank

Frank Bruni ’86 has been a prominent journalist for more than three decades, including more than twenty-five years at The New York Times, the last ten of them as a nationally renowned op-ed columnist who appeared frequently as a television commentator. (His archive of columns, starting with the most recent, can be found here.) He was also a White House correspondent for the Times, its Rome bureau chief and, for five years, its chief restaurant critic.

Frank is the author of four New York Times bestsellers, including The Beauty of Dusk, which reached #5 on both the hardcover nonfiction and the combined print and e-book nonfiction lists. In July 2021, he became a professor at Duke University, teaching media-oriented classes in the Sanford School of Public Policy. He continues to write his popular weekly newsletter for the Times (you can sign up here) and to produce occasional essays as one of the newspaper’s Contributing Opinion Writers. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

How to listen

On your mobile device, you can listen and subscribe to Catalyze on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. For any other podcast app, you can find the show using our RSS feed.

Ray Sawyer ’13 on re-thinking time management: ‘How do I think about where to invest my energy in the places of maximum impact?’ Nov 07, 2023

Show notes

Ray Sawyer ’13 is the director of community health partnerships at Well, a health tech and services company co-founded by Dave Werry ’06.

On this episode of Catalyze, Ray shares about his path from a small, rural North Carolina town to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He touches on his public service project in Uganda as a Morehead-Cain Scholar and the “happy accident” that led him to South Korea on a Fulbright fellowship. The self-designed curriculum he built in South Korea turned the English block into an exploration of dialogue on poetry and pronunciation, sports and segregation, education, and expression. Using these experiences of innovation, he began working at Google and stayed with the company for more than seven years.

Today, he serves as a coach and consultant for Project Be Better, a startup he founded. Ray describes what kinds of problems he coaches college students through, and shares about re-thinking the concept of time management and what it means to live out holistic wellness.

As a member of Morehead-Cain’s Black Alumni Working Group (BAWG) and alumni board, Ray shares his aspirations for proactive relationship building among the scholar and alumni communities. The alumnus spoke with co-hosts Stella Smolowitz ’26 and Allyson Horst ’27 of the Scholar Media Team after a coffee chat event with scholars on October 14.

Music credits

The episode’s intro song is by scholar Scott Hallyburton ’22, guitarist of the band South of the Soul.

How to listen

On your mobile device, you can listen and subscribe to Catalyze on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. For any other podcast app, you can find the show using our RSS feed.

Leadership lessons from five Morehead-Cain Young Alumni Oct 17, 2023

Show notes

A group of Morehead-Cain Young Alumni, all of whom graduated from UNC–Chapel Hill within the last five years, spoke with Catalyze co-host Stella Smolowitz ’26 about leadership lessons gained at Carolina.
Today’s guests include André Ceccotti ’18, Malik Jabati ’19, Sarah Mackenzie ’20, Ashton Martin ’20, and Andrew Buchanan ’23.
The alumni have pursued careers in investing (Malik), entrepreneurship (Andrew), and law (André, Sarah, Ashton). In addition to sharing reflections from their leadership positions as Morehead-Cain Scholars, the guests discuss their most impactful mentors at the University and Summer Enrichment Program experiences through the Program.
Along with Sean Nguyen ’21 and Melanie Godinez-Cedillo ’22, the alumni served on a panel at the Foundation on September 16 about leadership, from managing imposter syndrome to deciding on a career path.
Music credits

The episode’s intro song is by scholar Scott Hallyburton ’22, guitarist of the band South of the Soul.

How to listen

On your mobile device, you can listen and subscribe to Catalyze on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. For any other podcast app, you can find the show using our RSS feed.

SEVEN Talk, by Bex Frucht ’05: “Free Your Tumbleweed Queen” Oct 07, 2023

Show notes

Today’s episode is a recording of a SEVEN Talk from the 2022 Alumni Forum. This talk, given by Bex Frucht ’05, is entitled, “Free Your Tumbleweed Queen.” Bex is the program manager for The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation.
You can watch all of the SEVEN Talks on our YouTube channel.
More about Bex
Bex Frucht ’05 is a self-ascribed “Tumbleweed Queen” whose eclectic personal and professional journey has taken her from the red carpet to the Rocky Mountains. After a decade of big-city adventures in media, communications, sustainability, freelance writing, and finally anchoring a daily cable TV show and weekly web series—she blew up her urbanite existence to live and work on an 87,000-acre cattle ranch, and has been exploring the intersection of open range and open minds ever since. If it wasn't for that formative backcountry experience with Outward Bound, she might still be stuck in LA traffic.
Bex loves telling stories almost as much as living them—she's shared escapades onstage for NPR’s “The Moth,” launched a storytelling series to destigmatize and advocate for reproductive justice, and enjoys helping organizations and individuals wrangle their narratives. As a program manager for the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation’s Montana-based philanthropy, she supports innovative nonprofit programming hosted at West Creek Ranch. Bex also moonlights as an environmental educator, amateur cowgirl, karaoke professional, rainbow influencer, and unicorn believer.
At UNC, she served as senior class vice president and Freshman Camp (now Carolina Kickoff) counselor, and taught a seminar on “The MTV Generation.” She's lucky to call the funky river town of Livingston, Montana, home, where she floats the Yellowstone with her “Mantana” Kyle Joe, chases their muppet dog Zucca and spoons their kitties—Aldo Meowpold and Ralph Waldo Emerpuss the Catservationists.

How to listen

On your mobile device, you can listen and subscribe to Catalyze on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. For any other podcast app, you can find the show using our RSS feed.

Skip Griffin, senior associate at Dialogos, on productive discourse: ‘We are much more golden than we’ve been taught to believe’ Oct 03, 2023

Show notes

Today’s guest is Skip Griffin, a senior associate at Dialogos and an expert on engaging in productive discourse.
Griffin was a plaintiff in Virginia’s 1964 school desegregation lawsuit; led Harvard’s Black students through the tumult of the late 1960s; and later worked in a range of community leadership roles in public schools, at Northeastern University, and
at the Boston Globe.
Griffin received his bachelor’s in government from Harvard and a master’s of education in organizational and social policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Dialogos is a management consulting and leadership development firm that seeks to catalyze organizational transformations.
Griffin served as the first Food for Thought speaker of the fall semester. He spoke with Catalyze co-hosts Stella Smolowitz ’26 and Sarah O’Carroll, Morehead-Cain’s content manager, after his talk at the Foundation.
Modeled after the City Club of Cleveland, Food for Thought provides a central meeting place for members of diverse beliefs and opinions to participate in free and open discussions. The breakfast and conversation series is an initiative of Team Cleveland members from the 2022 Morehead-Cain Civic Collaboration program.

Music credits

The episode’s intro song is by scholar Scott Hallyburton ’22, guitarist of the band South of the Soul.

How to listen

On your mobile device, you can listen and subscribe to Catalyze on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. For any other podcast app, you can find the show using our RSS feed.
Catalyze is hosted and produced by Sarah O’Carroll for the Morehead-Cain Foundation, home of the first merit scholarship program in the United States and located at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can let us know what you thought of the episode by finding us on Twitter or Instagram at @moreheadcain or you can email us at communications@moreheadcain.org.

The Catalyze podcast: Ashton Martin ’20 of the USET Sovereignty Protection Fund on championing rights for Tribal Nations Sep 19, 2023

Show notes

Today’s guest is Ashton Martin ’20, a health policy analyst for United South and Eastern Tribes Sovereignty Protection Fund in Washington, D.C. The nonprofit is an intertribal organization that advocates on behalf of thirty-three federally recognized Tribal Nations, from the Northeastern Woodlands to the Everglades and across the Gulf of Mexico.
On this episode, Ashton shares about their social justice work as student body president at Carolina (and reflections from the 2023 reunion of former student body presidents at the Morehead-Cain Foundation), their path to working in public policy for Tribal Nations as a recent graduate, and the complexities of working in tribal law and policy. Ashton also gives guidance in using respectful language when referring to Tribal Nations.
Prior to joining the fund, Ashton worked as the Rodney B. Lewis Fellow in American Indian Law and Policy at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. During their time at Carolina, Ashton worked as a strategy and fundraising intern at Feedback Labs in Washington, D.C., a company co-founded by Dennis Whittle ’83. They previously worked as a summer investigations intern at the Cook County Public Defender in Chicago law officeand as chief of staff for Daymaker, a charitable giving platform led by CEO Brent Macon ’12.
Ashton spoke with Morehead-Cain at a café in Dupont Circle before the 2023 D.C. Regional Event for alumni and scholars.

Music credits

The episode’s intro song is by scholar Scott Hallyburton ’22, guitarist of the band South of the Soul.

How to listen

On your mobile device, you can listen and subscribe to Catalyze on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. For any other podcast app, you can find the show using our RSS feed.

SEVEN Talk, by Ricky Hurtado ’11: “Roses in the Concrete” Sep 07, 2023

Show notes

Today’s episode is a recording of a SEVEN Talk from the 2022 Alumni Forum. This talk, given by Ricky Hurtado ’11, is entitled, “Roses in the Concrete.” Ricky is the state representative for the North Carolina House of Representatives. He is the first Latino Democrat to serve in the N.C. House.
You can watch all of the SEVEN Talks on our YouTube channel.
More about Ricky
Ricky Hurtado ’11 is a member of the North Carolina House of Representatives, representing the state’s sixty-third district. As a first-generation college student, Ricky found his passion for public service while at Carolina, mentoring students who grew up in similar circumstances and were working hard to make their dreams come true. Ricky studied business administration at Carolina, later attending graduate school at Princeton University, where he focused on how to create effective public policy to fight poverty and inequality and build strong, vibrant communities.

How to listen

On your mobile device, you can listen and subscribe to Catalyze on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. For any other podcast app, you can find the show using our RSS feed.

From Capitol Hill: A sit-down with Aaron Hiller ’03, chief counsel and Democratic deputy staff director for the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary Sep 05, 2023

Show notes

Today’s guest is Aaron Hiller ’03, chief counsel and Democratic deputy staff director for the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary.
On this episode, Aaron reflects on the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and what it was like to work on the ensuing two impeachments of former president Donald Trump. The alumnus also shares his thoughts on having a free and fair presidential election this November, his legal heroes, and why he thinks college students should consider working in politics.
Aaron spoke with Morehead-Cain from his office on the Hill before the 2023 D.C. Regional Event for alumni and scholars.
The alumnus received his bachelor’s in biology and philosophy from Carolina. He earned his JD and master’s in public policy from Georgetown University in 2007.

The episode’s intro song is by scholar Scott Hallyburton ’22, guitarist of the band South of the Soul.

How to listen

On your mobile device, you can listen and subscribe to Catalyze on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. For any other podcast app, you can find the show using our RSS feed.

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