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Don MacKinnon Nov 17, 2020

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Ep.52 — A 15-year old develops a passion for making music mixtapes and revolutionizes the way you listen to music, and now he’s doing it for podcasts / Don MacKinnon, CEO & Founder, Hark. Don MacKinnon will never forget how he first began experimenting with music mixtapes back when he was a high school student. “I remember sitting on the floor of my room with the records spread out, organizing them, and making notes about the order I wanted to have the songs appear in. As you recorded it, you dropped the needle on the song and it's recording it in real-time on to the tape,” McKinnon reminisces. “While you're doing that, you're writing liner notes because the beauty of a mixtape is you end up with an artifact. A physical thing you can give to someone.” His passion for mixtapes led MacKinnon on a lifelong journey to help people around the world serendipitously discover, listen to, share, curate, and build a community around music, videos, and other content. MacKinnon’s goal has always been to free up music — and any inspiring content for that matter — from the confines of their origins, format, and surroundings, so that the world can appreciate them in all their wonders. And that idea has led to music curation platforms that we take so much for granted today, such as Spotify. “What is Spotify, but some giant mixtape?” says MacKinnon. “But there was a time when we walked to school in the snow. There was a time when songs were trapped on vinyl. There were albums were on vinyl. That's where the songs lived. There were radio DJs who mixed it up and play different songs from different albums on shows. But the ability to sit down, and liberate those songs from their albums, and create something new was fascinating to me.” Since his early discovery of mixtapes, McKinnon has pretty much used that formula over and over again with huge wins as a music producer including the Triple Platinum Grammy Award-winning Ray Charles compilation, Genius Loves Company, Rolling Stones Rarities 1971 to 2003, and Bob Dylan's iconic first recordings of Live at the Gaslight. Now, MacKinnon is about to transform how you discover, curate, and build community through podcasts using the same concept he pioneered in music — with what else, but mixtapes? Tomorrow, he's unveiling his new stealth podcast curation platform called Hark. “The idea for Hark at its simplest is to go and find those great moments within podcast episodes. You talking to Nina Totenberg about how as a young girl, she loves Nancy Drew, and how that inspired her to become Nina Totenberg,” says MacKinnon. “There are tons of examples of like, when we find ourselves telling people, all of you podcast listeners, ‘I have that moment where I want you to listen to the whole episode. But you got to hear this one moment.’ That one moment is the genius thing that will be their way in. The idea of Hark is, what if we could create an entire immersive listening experience out of the best moments from great podcast episodes, where we organize those moments into, yes, mixtapes, because what else would it be after listening to me for an hour?” This is an episode filled with great storytelling. You definitely don’t want to miss MacKinnon’s memories of how, on his 35th birthday, he got to interview every single member of the Rolling Stones. What it was like to interview his idol, Tom Waits, and the irascible Lou Reed. What was his first conversation with Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz? What it was like to work with U2’s Bono on Product Red. And what it was like to listen to Ray Charles and Elton John recording their hit duet, Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word for Charles’s triple-platinum, Grammy award-winning album, Genius Loves Company, the last album Charles recorded before he died, and it was produced by none other than MacKinnon. You’re going to love this interview with the amazing Don MacKinnon. I know I did. Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Legendary music producer Don MacKinnon was just 15 years old when he developed what would become a lifelong fascination with making music mixtapes. Little did MacKinnon know it, but that's simple idea of creating mixtapes to share his passion for music and curation would lead him to revolutionize the music industry and how you discover, listen, share, and build your community around music today. That's whether you're browsing through iTunes or standing at your local Starbucks shazaming some unknown artist as you wait for your iced caramel latte. Chitra Ragavan: Hello, everyone. I'm Chitra Ragavan. Welcome to the 52nd and final episode of season two of When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups with brand positioning and narrative. Chitra Ragavan: Joining me today to talk about the mixtape of his life and career is Don MacKinnon. He's the former founder and CEO of Hear Music, an innovative music retailer featuring the first CD-based listening stations, which he sold to Starbucks and developed that company's strategic music platform, releasing more than 300 eclectic CD compilations. Don also created the Hear Music label, which released the Triple Platinum Grammy Award winning Ray Charles compilation, Genius Loves Company, Rolling Stones Rarities 1971 to 2003, and Bob Dylan's iconic first recordings of Live at the Gaslight. Chitra Ragavan: MacKinnon also was instrumental, so to speak, in building one of the most famous global corporate social responsibility platforms for Product RED. That's the organization that Bono and Bobby Shriver created to help fight AIDS in Africa. MacKinnon brought in artists including Coldplay, Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Usher, and dozens more to the platform. Now MacKinnon is about to transform how you discover, curate, and build community through podcasts using the same concept he pioneered in music. What else, but mixtapes? Tomorrow, he's unveiling his new stealth podcast curation platform called Hark. Here to tell us more about his life and times and about Hark is Don MacKinnon. Chitra Ragavan: Don, welcome to the podcast. Don MacKinnon: Thanks, Chitra. It's great to be here. I'm the season finale. This is amazing. But thanks for that intro. That's great. Chitra Ragavan: Do you remember how the idea of mixtapes came up when you were in high school? Don MacKinnon: I think it must be that every generation thinks they're at a magic. They're at a pivotal moment in the history of technology evolution. But I do remember loving. I just remember making them and I remember the act of making them and it sound ... and for many younger listeners, it may seem crazy to talk about it, because we can just drag and drop songs wherever we want in Spotify. What is Spotify? But some giant mixtape. But there was a time when we walked to school in the snow. There was a time when songs were trapped on vinyl. There were albums were on vinyl. That's where the songs lived. There were radio DJs who mixed it up and play different songs from different albums on shows. Don MacKinnon: But the ability to sit down, and liberate those songs from their albums, and create something new was fascinating to me. It took time. Again, for folks who even like not quite as young listeners who remember making mixed CDs were, again, you could drop a digital file. It happened in real time. You had to plan it out. I remember sitting on the floor of my room with the records spread out, organizing them, and making notes about the order I wanted to have the songs appear in. As you recorded it, you dropped the needle on the song and it's recording it in real time on to the tape. While you're doing that, you're writing liner notes, which are ... because you're making ... the beauty of a mixtape is you end up with an artifact. A physical thing you can give to someone. Don MacKinnon: The beauty of a mixtape is you're helping them discover something new, and you're giving them a lens through which to approach it. Part one is you need to name your mixtape. It needs to have a clever title. That's a theme. Whether it's breakup songs, or driving music, or whatever, you have a concept for it and you need to come up with a clever name. Then for each song, you're writing that little couple of notes on this little cardboard folded Maxell insert for the cassette that for each song tells the person you're giving it to why you chose that song and how to listen to it. I just absolutely loved making them. They were, in many ways, that activity I think has informed my approach to helping people discover music and now podcasts. Chitra Ragavan: Where was this? Tell me a little bit about where you were born and where you went to school and geographically where was all this happening? Don MacKinnon: I was born in New Jersey. I grew up in Short Hills, New Jersey. I went away to high school. I went to boarding school in Connecticut at a school called Choate, and Choate Rosemary Hall. I found myself with a bunch of other friends who I was learning about music from, much the way all high school students learn about music. But we really loved adopting this ability to construct something that would be something you could hold in your hand and listen to as an experience. Chitra Ragavan: Tell us a little bit about the music that you included in those mixtapes, your early music interests, were they always eclectic? Don MacKinnon: They certainly got more eclectic as I got through college. I would say I started as a big R.E.M. fan. This is the early to mid-'80s. But I loved Laurie Anderson, and Lou Reed, who, to me, were different artists, but who ended up marrying each other. I would see them walking their dog in the West Village later in my life. I was obsessed with Tom Waits, of all the artists I went on to interview when I did Hear Music, the Rolling Stones, et cetera.,...

Madeline Mann Jul 06, 2020

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Ep. 51 — A young employee gets a mediocre performance rating in her first job and transforms herself into an influential human resources leader and career strategist / Madeline Mann, Founder, Self Made Millennial. Three months into her first corporate job as a market research analyst, Madeline Mann got her performance review and it was a nasty wakeup call. Always an academic high achiever, Mann was stunned to see her mediocre work scores. “And it really was a moment of me realizing, ‘Wait, I do need to work harder. I do need to find more ways to contribute,’ says Mann. ‘I wasn't in those meetings jotting down a bunch of notes of, how am I going to look up these terms later and ask a bunch of questions.’ I was just kind of clueless and aimless.” Mann realized she just wasn't motivated by her job and through some serious soul-searching, discovered that her true passion actually lay in human capital management, i.e. people. Today, Mann is thriving as a human resources leader and career strategist. She’s known for her rapid-fire career advice videos on her popular channel "Self Made Millennial." Mann’s work has been featured on Business Insider, Newsweek, and more. She was named a Top 50 person to follow on LinkedIn, and a Top 10 YouTube channel for job seekers. Mann currently also serves as Talent Development Manager at Inspire. Her HR focus could not be more perfect given the coronavirus. According to Pew Research Center, the U.S. unemployment rose higher in three months of COVID-19 than it did in two years of the Great Recession. Today it’s at a record 11.1%, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Mann says she's helped hundreds of people find jobs despite these grim trends. [Hear Excerpt Below] “The number one question I'm asked is, ‘Is there even a point in applying right now?’ Or, ‘When should I start pursuing opportunities?’ And those questions break my heart because the answer is yesterday, right? You should still be pursuing opportunities,” says Mann, “But the thing is, a lot of people, it's a different landscape, things are shaken up, they don't know if the company had layoffs or not. They don't know if they're still hiring. They're posting job descriptions, but does that mean, was that just automatic? And, ‘Oh, I had an interview, but then I haven't heard back. But is it okay to even follow up with anyone during these conditions?’… I want you to move from a planning mindset to an experimentation mindset. Just try things, keep moving during this time, don't freeze, don't be in this constant getting ready stage, because while you're doing that, other people are getting these jobs.” Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Madeline Mann began her first job as a market research analyst as she was wrapping up her master's degree. But the super driven academic had a disastrous six months on the job. Humbled by the experience, Madeline went into her second job searching for what truly motivated her to perform and to succeed in the workplace. Hello everyone, I'm Chitra Ragavan, and this is When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. Chitra Ragavan: Joining me now is Madeline Mann, a human resources leader and career strategist. Madeline is known for her rapid fire career advice videos on her channel, Self Made Millennial, which has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers across all the major social media platforms. Madeline transformed her own experience as an HR and recruiting leader into advice on how to empower ambitious professionals to fast track their careers. Madeline's work has been featured on Business Insider, Newsweek, Thrive Global and more. She was named a Top 50 person to follow on LinkedIn and a Top 10 YouTube channel for job seekers. Madeline currently also serves as talent development manager at Inspire in Los Angeles. Madeline, welcome to the podcast. Madeline Mann: I am so glad to be here, Chitra. Thank you. Chitra Ragavan: It's interesting that your whole career revolves around inspiring others to interview better for jobs and to perform better at jobs, but your own career got off to what I would say was an incredibly shaky start. Tell us about your first job and what happened. Madeline Mann: Yes. So my first major corporate job, I was in a market research role because I had a background in psychology and I thought that would be an interesting path to try out. And I did my job every day. I came in, I had my cubicle and I was in charge of really looking through all the data and making sure everything, all the I's were dotted, all the T's were crossed. A lot of very detailed-oriented work. And I would come to the meetings that the team had and I would sit there and have no idea what anyone was talking about, but I tried my best and I would... But by the time it would hit 5:00 PM at that job, I was exhausted, essentially because the job just didn't play to my strengths at all. And so when you're not playing to your strengths, you just get tired. Madeline Mann: And so I got to my three month performance review and my boss, she pulls out the scores that I got for different aspects, right? Maybe my communication skills, my work product, whatever those key metrics were. And she walks through my scores. And at this point I had never really gotten a B before in my life. I'd always gotten all A's. I always found school as this fun challenge to try to always maximize my score and I was always in competition with myself. And she shows me my scores and out of five, out of a span of five points, I consistently got threes and twos across everything, which was completely mind blowing to me. And it was this moment of me being like, "What? What did I do wrong? I hit all of the things that they asked me to do." And I remember talking to my boyfriend at the time, who is now my husband Henry. I said, "I am so nice and I do everything they tell me to do. Why am I getting these mediocre and even below mediocre scores?" Madeline Mann: And he said, "You know, Madeline, if I ran my own company, I wouldn't want someone who was just doing the bare minimum and was just simply nice. I would want someone who was passionate about their job, who found ways to contribute, who went above and beyond." And that's when it clicked for me that life and the working world is not like school. There's not a rubric where you simply check off things and then you call it a day. And that was a huge wake-up call to me. Chitra Ragavan: I mean, we worked together at Gem for a couple of years and I know what an incredibly high achiever you are. That must have been quite a moment for you when you saw those performance grades. Madeline Mann: Absolutely. It really was. It was this moment and I felt a little bit betrayed of, "What else do you want from me?" And it really was a moment of me realizing, "Wait, I do need to work harder. I do need to find more ways to contribute. I wasn't in those meetings jotting down a bunch of notes of, how am I going to look up these terms later and ask a bunch of questions." I was just kind of clueless and aimless. And the other thing I discovered is that I'm not actually motivated to do a lot better in this job, which was also something weird. You knowing me and knowing that I am a very motivated person, but I'm motivated for certain types of jobs. And that was a wake-up moment to say, "This is not the career for me." Chitra Ragavan: I guess it was also a lesson. I've also been a manager. A lesson that people are watching you always and measuring your performance, even when you think they're not, and especially these days, right, you just have to go above and beyond. Madeline Mann: Right. And I also think of that quote of, "If you're gardening, sometimes it's not necessarily about fixing the flower, but fixing the soil and the environment," right? So someone might be really bad at one job, but if you can fix the conditions for them, maybe put them in a different job, they can flourish. And so while that was definitely a hit to my morale and my self-identity, it was really empowering to see that, "Okay, I can, I can move on. I can find something that fits me better." Chitra Ragavan: It wasn't the first time you learned a hard lesson about actions having consequences, was it? Madeline Mann: Oh, no, no, it wasn't. Chitra Ragavan: Tell me. Madeline Mann: So one of the really defining moments was I, as a child, I was very... I was just, anything you told me to do, that didn't really matter what you told me to do or what the rules were, I would just go for it. You know, "Madeline, don't go over there." "Well, I feel like going over there, I'm doing it." "Madeline, it's time to be quiet." "Well, I have something to say, so I'm going to say it." I wasn't a mean child, but I just saw no boundaries. And my parents all year long when I was a four-year-old said, "You know, Madeline, Santa's watching. He's watching you. He's watching your every move." And I said, "Yeah, yeah, sure." And so it gets to Christmas, and I have an older brother, he's a year older. And we run out and see all the gifts. And at this point he's five, I'm four, so we don't really read. So there's stars and hearts on our gifts to determine... He was a star and I was a heart. So that's how we knew whose gift was whose. Madeline Mann: And it was just a pile of, "Okay, I found another star gift to hand it to him. Okay, here's another star gift." And it was just star gift after star gift and there was no hearts anywhere, except for a letter that was from Santa Claus and my dad helped me read it. And it said that, "Santa's been watching and you're not going to get any gifts this year." And I sat and I listened patiently. I was like, "Okay, yep. That makes sense. I was warned about this....

Leigh Steinberg Jun 29, 2020

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Ep. 50 – A legendary sports agent reflects on an extraordinary career and overcoming seemingly insurmountable personal challenges / Leigh Steinberg, CEO, Steinberg Sports & Entertainment. Early in his career, legendary sports agent Leigh Steinberg had a crisis of conscience. His clients were suffering from multiple concussions and doctors didn't fully understand the long-term impact of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). There was one particular moment that was a turning point for Steinberg. "When we would go to doctors back in that period, no doctor could really tell us how many hits were too many and what the longterm consequences were." So Steinberg decided to make annual brain health seminars a mandatory part of his core practice. He’s had 16 to date, focused on awareness, prevention, and cure. Steinberg has asked himself whether he’s an enabler of this problem, given his continued representation of athletes, but he believes he is bringing value by working to solve this problem. Educating his players about the dangers of concussion is just one way Steinberg has mentored 300+ athletes during a 46-year+ career as CEO of Steinberg Sports & Entertainment. He’s represented some of the biggest names in football, baseball, basketball, boxing and Olympic sports securing more than $3 billion for his pro athletes and directing more than $750 million to charities around the world. Steinberg also requires all of his athletes to create structured plans to consistently give back to their communities as a way of life. Steinberg's blue chip clients include the number one overall pick in the NFL draft for an unprecedented eight times in conjunction with 64 total first round picks. He has represented notable athletes, such as Troy Aikman, Steve Young, Patrick Mahomes, Oscar De La Hoya, and Lennox Lewis, as well as multiple Olympians and professional teams. Steinberg also helps his clients identify their post-retirement second careers and requires them to give back to their communities. The inspiration for Tom Cruise in the Cameron Crowe written and directed movie Jerry Maguire (co-starring Cuba Gooding Jr., in an iconic Oscar-winning supporting actor role), Steinberg has overcome tremendous personal adversity including bankruptcy, a decade-long bout of alcoholism, and run-ins with the law. He says he has since recovered from his financial and emotional crises, been sober for more than ten years, and speaks openly of his alcoholism as a way to help others. “Look, to confront the cravings that come with addiction, it really is necessary in most people's lives to hit bottom, whatever you perceive that bottom is,” says Steinberg. “Your life is so unacceptable that you cannot continue like that.” Steinberg is focused on helping athletes engage in the Black Lives Matter conversations and adapting to COVID-19, especially coming to terms with the prospect of playing and winning in empty stadiums. “In football, for example, we had a draft that cut off the scouting process at a certain point. So it required adaptation and using Zoom to interact with teams, or in the case of a client, we had Tua Tagovailoa taping a workout in a pro passing day that would normally have been done in-person. And the first key and priority is safety, obviously. And none of us really know how the pandemic will play out over time, so we're trying to be sensitive to that,” Steinberg says. “And so for the first time, we're going to have baseball and basketball and hockey with no fans. So that will be different. First of all, it has an economic impact because gate is a large part of the gross revenue. And second of all, we don't know, since performance seems to be tied into home field advantage and stadia filled with screaming fans, we don't know what effect it'll have on the quality of the play.” Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Leigh Steinberg was about a decade into his career as a sports agent when he had a crisis of conscience after watching his clients suffer from multiple concussions. Steinberg decided one day that he was going to make brain health seminars for his athletes a mandatory part of his core practice. Hello everyone, I'm Chitra Ragavan. Welcome to this very special 50th episode of When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory farm helping technology startups find their narrative. Chitra Ragavan: Educating his players about the damaging effects of football is just one way in which Steinberg has served as a player coach to his 300+ athletes during his 46 year+ career. Steinberg has an unrivaled history of record setting contracts in football, baseball, basketball, boxing, and Olympic sports. He has secured more than $3 billion for his pro athletes and has directed more than $750 million to various charities around the world. Steinberg also requires all of his athletes to give back to their communities. Chitra Ragavan: I'm joined now by the legendary Leigh Steinberg, CEO of Steinberg Sports & Entertainment. Steinberg's blue chip clients include the number one overall pick in the NFL Draft for an unprecedented eight times in conjunction with 64 total first round picks. He has represented notable athletes, such as Troy Aikman, Steve Young, Patrick Mahomes, Oscar De La Hoya, and Lennox Lewis, as well as multiple Olympians and professional teams. Steinberg is often credited as the inspiration for the film, Jerry Maguire, starring Tom Cruise and Oscar-award winner, Cuba Gooding Jr.. Leigh, welcome to the podcast. Leigh Steinberg: Thank you so much. Chitra Ragavan: Was there a particular moment of clarity or an incident or episode when you realized that the physical trauma of brain concussion from football was something you had to address? Leigh Steinberg: I was watching Troy Aikman, the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys, play in his first season in Arizona, and he got knocked out. And he was laying flat on his back and not moving. And at that point, time attenuated and every second seemed like a minute and every minute seemed like an hour. And when we would go to doctors back in that period, no doctor could really tell us how many hits were too many and what the longterm consequences were. So, as you mentioned, I had a crisis of conscience and I said, "We need to explore the reality of TBI and concussions and understand what the dangers are." And so that led to a series of conferences, which we've probably done about 16 now, and we do one every year in which we explore what the awareness prevention cure. Leigh Steinberg: And the difficult thing is athletes tend to be in a state of denial when it comes to their physical state. They grow up playing Pop Warner and Little League, and they accept norms of injury that are abnormal to the rest of us. And so it becomes very difficult to get them to confront this because there's athletic denial, which all athletes share with other athletes. They could have a very serious injury and they will tell you nothing's wrong. And then there's young people's denial where the future seems like an impossibility to even visualize. Leigh Steinberg: And what I've found out is that every time an offensive lineman hits a defensive lineman at the inception of a play in football, it produces a low level sub-concussive event, a little bit of brain change. And so an offensive lineman could walk out of football with 10,000 sub-concussive hits, none of which have been diagnosed and none of which he's aware of, but the aggregate one will certainly do the predilection towards Alzheimer's, ALS, premature senility, chronic traumatic encephalopathy and depression, that getting knocked out three times will. And so this is a ticking time bomb and an undiagnosed health epidemic we need to urgently address. Chitra Ragavan: And on top of all of those issues you discussed, you're seeing evidence I think, doctors are seeing evidence of potential suicides on the part of some of these players as well related to the depression I imagine. Leigh Steinberg: So that is one of the bad byproducts of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. And there's a syndrome that seems to take place when someone is too far advanced in it, where they become deeply depressed, it ruins their marriage, they stop being able to work, they have periods of time where they're very angry, and in a number of cases, have committed suicide at the end of it. So again, I love football. I think it... And any sport that has collision in it is apt to have this problem. Soccer young girls who head the ball in some cases show lower test scores. So it's a universal issue for collision sports. And so what I've tried to do is figure out if there are methods in prevention, prophylactically protecting the brain prior to it getting hit, if there's protective equipment, if there's a helmet that uses coil and compression to attenuate the energy field and dissipate it, are there nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals that can heal the brain or protect the brain? Leigh Steinberg: This is all a brave new world because the brain is the last frontier of medical research. But the good news is there's a profit motive now because the same product that would protect a football player would protect someone who has a motorcycle accident or falls off a horse or is in another collision sports. So, hopefully, we'll see breakthroughs and advances here because this injury's different than anything else. We know that players because in a sport like football will break down all the joints in their body and may be difficult when they turn 50 to pick up their child. It's another thing not to be able to identify that child. The brain is the center of consciousness and judgment and memory and what it means to be a sentient being as opposed to this desk here. Chitra Ragavan: Having learned as much as you did about brain concussion,...

William Marler Jun 22, 2020

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Ep. 49 — A teenage runaway tries his hand at migrant work and becomes one of the most powerful food safety lawyers in the world / William Marler, Owner & Managing Partner, Marler Clark, LLP. When Bill Marler was 16 years old, he ran away from home and became a migrant worker for a while, living in squalid cabins, sleeping outdoors, and hitchhiking rides to farms to pick crops. The low point of Marler’s life came when he lost a gig and completely ran out of money. For a week, he lived on just a five-pound sack of pancake flour. “And it has changed my perspective on pancakes I have to admit,” admits Marler, ruefully. “Anytime pancakes come up as something for breakfast, my children have had to hear my pancake story. I think they now avoid making pancakes because they don't want to hear my story again.” Marler’s brief stint as a farmhand also gave him a lifelong empathy for migrant workers and a deep connectivity to food and food safety issues. More than anything, it also made him realize the importance of a college education and he went on to become a lawyer. By sheer happenstance, one day, Marler got a referral for an E. coli case tied to the Jack In The Box hamburger chain. What started as one case turned into a multi-million dollar class action settlement, putting Marler and his law firm, Marler Clark, LLP., forever on the map on food safety lawsuits and advocacy. Marler has frequently testified before Congress, resulting in stronger food safety laws and regulations and is a globally sought after public speaker on these issues. As growing numbers of migrant workers and meatpackers fall victim to #Covid-19, Marler says there are profound ramifications to not protecting these frontline workers from the coronavirus. Ramifications that not only devastate these communities but the entire economy and American consumers as a whole. “We've already seen the impact of companies not paying attention to the needs of their workers, because we're seeing beef prices go up, we're seeing meat be less available, certain kinds of meats being less available. So you pay for it now by protecting the workers, who also with COVID, go out into your communities and spread the disease throughout the community,” says Marler. “And so it's not just to protect the worker, which I think is the moral thing to do, but it's also to frankly protect yourself. And sometimes profits are the focus and we become so shortsighted about the long term costs to the people, long term costs to the community.” Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: When William Marler was 16 years old, he ran away from home and became a migrant worker in Washington State. Living in squalid cabins, sleeping outdoors, and hitchhiking rides to farms to pick crops was difficult and dangerous. The low point of Marler's life came when he lost a gig and ran out of money. His stint as a migrant worker gave Marler lifelong connectivity to migrant workers, to food, and most importantly, to food safety issues. Chitra Ragavan: Hello everyone, I'm Chitra Ragavan. And this is When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm, helping technology startups find their narrative. I'm joined now by William Marler, managing partner at Marler Clark Attorneys At Law. A national expert in food safety, Marler has become the most prominent foodborne illness lawyer in America, and a major force in food policy in the US and around the world. Marler is a frequent speaker on food safety issues at global events. He has testified before U.S. Congressional committees and his work has led to laws and regulations being passed to make food safer. Bill, welcome to the podcast. William Marler: Thank you, Chitra. Chitra Ragavan: Why did you run away from home? William Marler: Well, it was more like I was out to seek adventures and something different than spending another summer working on the family hobby farm. And I told my parents, I was going to go to Eastern Washington and work in the fields. They were not very excited or supportive of that. And one day when they were away from home, I packed a duffle bag and walked down to the road and finally got a ride. And about 18 hours later, I was in a little town on the Columbia river, almost dead square in the middle of the state. Chitra Ragavan: Was it scary? What did you do next? How did you find work? What crops did you pick? William Marler: Yeah, so I had some vague idea about where to look for work. I eventually found a job thinning suckers out of apple trees and thinning apples. That was my first job. And it was very hard work and a lot of tree climbing and ladder climbing. And over the course of the next three, three and a half months, I worked throughout Eastern Oregon, Eastern Washington and into Canada, following the crops. William Marler: There was peaches, apples, cherries, and various odd other farm jobs, including, a period of time, spraying, God knows what chemicals on plants without a shirt on, without a respirator without anything. So it was a very interesting, very interesting experience and one that I think about more frequently than I probably should. Chitra Ragavan: What was the most difficult point of that experience would you say? William Marler: Well, the work was really hard generally and this was in the early 70s and at that point in time, the migrant farm workers were essentially for the most part, poor whites. It had not really changed to a Hispanic culture of workers. And I always knew that I could hit the highway and go home. My parents would have welcomed me home, but I was a pretty proud kid. And I think probably the low point was I... There was a period of time where I lost some work. There was not anything to do. I still had a place to somewhat live, but I didn't have any money. And my food was, I had a five-pound sack of pancake flour, and that's what I lived on for about a week until I got a new job. And it has changed my perspective on pancakes I have to admit. Chitra Ragavan: Do you even eat them today? William Marler: Anytime pancakes come up as something for breakfast, my children have had to hear my pancake story. I think they now avoid making pancakes because they don't want to hear my story again. Chitra Ragavan: None of the Father's day breakfast in bed pancakes for you. William Marler: No, afraid not, afraid not. But still in all, it was a really interesting experience for a 16-year old. There were most moments in time where it was really super hard work, but it's given me a perspective on farm labor that has stayed with me, and labor generally, has stayed with me for my entire life. Chitra Ragavan: And what was the central takeaway do you think? William Marler: Well, it's interesting, I've thought a lot more about it here during this recent COVID episode that we're all living through and just how important, so many people that we don't really think about as essential workers. We tend to think of police officers, firemen as essential, but I think COVID has given us a sense of how the frontline people are nurses and doctors, ambulance drivers, and then people who work in grocery stores and people who work in factories, farms and out there too are, there are really the frontline workers picking our fruits and vegetables and working in our slaughter plants. William Marler: So, I think it's given me a perspective from a white middle class kid's perspective that has grown into white, upper class, 63-year-old guy's perspective. But nonetheless, I think it's helped shape my view of hard work and the value of labor. Chitra Ragavan: And I guess it also taught you the importance of education and college. William Marler: Certainly did. I feel very blessed to have been able to go to college and make it through and then into graduate school law school. But yeah, it's certainly, very tough work working on a farm and working on farms and living by your body and I definitely wanted to come back and make a living by using what gray matter I had between my ears. Chitra Ragavan: And then in college, you also learned the power of political activism. How did that come about? William Marler: I was somewhat politically active in the 70s. I think even though I never had to register for the draft because the Vietnam War was over by the time I turned 18. I lived in a Naval town, Bremerton, which is, there were not a lot of kids that were going to college there to avoid the draft. William Marler: A lot of kids were going into college. Not to get into the war and being drafted. And so I viewed that that's what was going to happen. And it certainly focused one's attention on politics. But when I did go to college, I wound up being one of a handful of students that decided to run for the Pullman Washington, which is where Washington State University is. The Pullman Washington City Council. And what happened was that the four of us filed for four separate open seats, the seats were already filled with the incumbent and then another town's person had filed in three of those four. William Marler: So the students had to face a primary election where they got bounced out because the town's people voted for one or the other of the town's person. The person I ran against didn't have a primary opponent and so I got a pass through the primary. The students came back a week after the primary, which one would argue that that's probably why they had the primary when they had it, but we were able to register students to vote. And I won by 53 votes out of 5,000 cast and became the youngest person and first student ever elected to the city council, and for a short period of time at age 19, I was one of the youngest, if not the youngest people ever elected to a city wide or any sort of office, because we had just gotten the right to vote. ...

Linda Souza Jun 15, 2020

Show notes

Ep. 48 — A close encounter with a Mack Truck on an icy freeway convinces a New York native to move to warmer climes and pursue a career in marketing / Linda Souza, Senior Vice President of Marketing, CareerArc. Driving home from her martial arts class in the middle of a January snowstorm in Pittsburgh, Linda Souza lost control of her pickup truck on the icy freeway and skidded straight onto the path of a Mack Truck. Fueled by adrenalin, Souza accelerated into a grassy ditch, narrowly avoiding serious injury even as the Mack Truck slammed into the back of her of pickup, substantially damaging both vehicles. The close encounter taught Souza a life lesson to trust her instincts in dicey and unpredictable situations. Needless to say, that was Souza's last winter on the east coast. She moved to Los Angeles where she's now Senior Vice President of Marketing at CareerArc. The company offers technology-based social recruiting and outplacement solutions to help Human Resources leaders recruit and transition employees. Souza says the unprecedented shutdown and slow resurgence of the U.S. economy because of Covid-19 raises many challenges for HR leaders, including work-from-home policies and pay scales. “I don't think it will be everybody will permanently work from home at all companies, but I think there's going to be a bigger appetite for that and a bigger demand for that,” says Linda. “And then that opens up things like, "Okay, well does that mean, for example, if I'm in a place where it's very expensive to live and so salaries are elevated, does that open me up to talent in different parts of the country if I don't need someone to physically come in every single day? And that also entails, "Well, now we have to rethink the compensation structure. Do I pay less if I'm hiring in Kansas versus Los Angeles?" But Souza is seeing one positive trend behind all these murky questions — and that trend is that companies are slowly but surely starting to hire again. Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Linda Souza was driving home from her martial arts class one afternoon in the middle of a January snow storm in Pittsburgh. As she merged onto the icy freeway, Souza lost control of her Dodge Dakota pickup truck. The Mack Truck could not avoid hitting the back of Souza's pickup, but she was able to accelerate into a grassy ditch, narrowly avoiding serious injury. Hello everyone, I'm Chitra Ragavan. And this is When it Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Good Story, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. Chitra Ragavan: Needless to say that was Souza's last winter on the east coast. She moved to Los Angeles where she's now Senior Vice President of Marketing at CareerArc, which offers technology based social recruiting and outplacement solutions to help HR leaders recruit and transition employees. Souza is a 7 x tech startup marketer with more than 20 years of experience helping lead early stage and growth stage startups to successful exits. Prior to CareerArc, Linda served as Vice President of Marketing for cryptocurrency and blockchain startup Gem, where she was my colleague. Souza also served as Vice President of Marketing for Deep Six AI, an award-winning artificial intelligence company. Linda, welcome to the podcast. Linda Souza: Thank you Chitra, I'm excited to be here. Chitra Ragavan: Tell us about that potentially fatal highway accident that January day. Linda Souza: So I was training at a martial arts workshop actually. This is back when I was living in Pittsburgh in the early two thousands, and it had started snowing while I was in the class because it was in January. And by the time I got out and had to hit the road to get home, which was a good 30 or 40 minute drive home, it was full on snowstorm. And I was driving a pickup truck at the time, which unfortunately does not have great traction all the time in the snow. And as I was trying to merge onto the highway, which had not been plowed or otherwise treated, I just started to spin out of control. And basically I just lost control of steering and started to slide sideways across the lanes of traffic. Linda Souza: And as I looked to my right, I could see this Mack Truck coming at me in my lane. And it was kind of like that one micro moment where I had to figure out what do I do because he's coming right at my driver's side. And I thought to myself, "This is how people die." So within that split second, I just jammed my foot on the gas and accelerated as quickly as I could and managed to make it into the ditch that separated the two sides of the highway. And while he still hit the back end of my truck fortunately, it was enough that it didn't do serious damage to me, it did a lot of damage both to my truck and to his truck, but no one was hurt. So you know, if I had been even a split second sooner, if I had frozen or if that instinct to just take action hadn't kicked in, we might not be talking today. Chitra Ragavan: How did you regain control of the situation, and what did that teach you about yourself? Linda Souza: What it taught me about myself is we never know in a moment of emergency like that when something's going to happen, what our reaction is going to be. I mean, we'd all like to think that we're going to take the right action, we'll be a hero and whatever, but you really don't know until you're in a scenario like that, whether your reaction will be fight or flight or freeze. Right? And so for me, fortunately, what it showed me is that in that split second, in that moment, my instinct is to be very clear minded, to focus, not to panic, but just to focus on what do I need to do to get myself out of this and to take quick action. Chitra Ragavan: So that almost fatal, the brush with the Mac truck was in a way the culmination of a kind of a difficult childhood and early adulthood wasn't it? Tell us a little bit about that. Linda Souza: So I actually grew up on a dairy farm in upstate New York until I was about 17 and actually moved my senior year of high school, which also is not an easy thing. But yeah, it was for anybody who has ever done any type of farming, for me it was a dairy farm, farmers are incredibly hardworking people really because you have no choice. It's 24/7, 365. And for us, that was certainly the case. I know in my parents' case, they felt like by the time we were my sister and I were seven years old, that was old enough to have chores and to be responsible as contributors on keeping up the farm and so forth. So at that point, that that sort of began, I guess you could say my working life. From the point I was seven on, I always was on the hook for working and contributing and if there were holidays or vacations or summer holidays or whatever, or weekends, that meant that we were available to work more. Linda Souza: So, while during the school year on school days, I would come home and go directly out to the barn and spend a couple hours working. If it was a weekend or vacation, I would do chores in the morning as well as in the evening. And each time of year had additional chores as well. So in the summers, it was haying season, spending time in a hot hayloft all day, wearing long pants and gloves and long sleeves and working, in addition to my normal chores. And in the winters, it meant going out into the woods with my dad and he would chop the firewood and my sister and I would help throw it into the truck and then throw it into our cellar and then carry it up the cellar stairs for the wood fireplace, the stove that we had to keep the house. Linda Souza: So definitely my childhood, I would say is characterized by a lot of work. With a type of environment like that with kind of the pressure and the stress that farmers are under, both the amount of work that they're doing ongoing, which never stops. And then also the financial distress of that as well, because unless you're a very big commercial farm, a lot of these small family farms, you barely make enough to get by. It wasn't unusual for example, we'd wear our boots literally until there were many holes in them and we couldn't wear them anymore. Our idea of waterproofing so to speak, would be to put our feet in Wonderbread bags, empty bread bags, and then put our feet in the boots. And that was kind of the waterproofing. So even if the boots got holes, we could still wear them until they were at the point where you just couldn't wear them anymore. And kind of- Chitra Ragavan: That's amazing. That's incredibly, I mean, I'm exhausted just hearing about it. And you were wearing hand-me-downs too, and long sleeves, you mentioned long sleeves and they almost got you in a whole bunch of trouble one day, didn't they? Linda Souza: Yes, actually I was wearing a hand-me-down winter coat from my grandfather, and obviously it was way too big for me. And I was in the milk room, which is where all the milk gets stored in this big metal tank. And it has an agitator that keeps the milk stirred, it basically just continually rotates with a big paddle. And I got my coat caught on a piece of the machinery because it was too big for me. And it basically pulled it into the machine. Chitra Ragavan: And what happened? Linda Souza: I ended up with a compound fracture. Basically the bones poked through my wrist. My forearm was kind of in an S shape, almost like having an extra hinge in the middle of my forearm. Chitra Ragavan: Oh my gosh. That sounds terrible. And so did you go to the hospital? What happened next? Linda Souza: Yeah, so they had to cut me out of the machine. I was fortunate actually that my sister, because we were in the middle of doing chores, walked into the milk room when she did and ran to get my parents. But they cut me out of the machine, out of the coat. And then I had to walk the long driveway between the barn

Anne Speckhard Jun 08, 2020

Show notes

Ep. 47 – A diplomat’s travel forces his psychologist wife to reinvent her career which she does by talking to terrorists / Anne Speckhard, Director, International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism. When her husband was named US ambassador to Belarus, Anne Speckhard was forced to give up her thriving private counseling practice in Virginia and reinvent her life and work. Some security-related projects led her to begin talking to terrorists and it led to a most unique second career researching terrorists. “When I went into Palestine was the first time I went in and just announced myself. I was very honest about what I wanted. And people told me would be suicide, terrorists are never going to talk to you,” says Speckhard. But they did. To date, Speckhard has interviewed and debriefed nearly 800 terrorists and their family members and supporters — including in Western Europe, the Balkans, Central Asia, the Former Soviet Union, and the Middle East. “And I was always looking for literally what makes a suicide bomber tick? Why do they get into it? How do they get on the terrorist trajectory?” says Speckhard, “And since I'm a psychologist, I wanted to know, could it have been prevented or can we take them back off of it?” Speckhard has founded and directs the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism. She and her team have converted ISIS terrorist interviews into counter-narrative videos that have been used to deter terrorist recruiting through more than 125 Facebook anti-terrorism campaigns globally. With the advent of Covid-19, Speckhard says there's been chatter from some terrorist leaders urging their followers to protect themselves from the coronavirus but also exhorting those who become infected to spread the disease to their enemies. Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Anne Speckhard was thriving in her private counseling and research practice in the Washington D.C. area, when her husband was named US ambassador to Belarus. It threw a curve ball into her clinical work and career trajectory. Speckhard got involved in a variety of security related research projects, and she suddenly found herself in the unusual position of talking to terrorists. Chitra Ragavan: Hello everyone, I'm Chitra Ragavan, and this is When it Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. Chitra Ragavan: I'm joined now by Anne Speckhard, Director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism or ICSVE. Speckhard is one of the few American national security scholars with substantive access to terrorist groups. She has interviewed and debriefed more than 700 terrorists and their family members and supporters, including in Western Europe, the Balkans, Central Asia, the former Soviet Union, and the Middle East. Chitra Ragavan: Speckhard has used many of those interviews to build the Breaking the ISIS Brand Counter Narrative Project. This unique project consists of counter narrative videos that have been used in more than 125 Facebook antiterrorism campaigns globally, with the goal of deterring terrorist recruiting. Chitra Ragavan: Anne, welcome to the podcast. Anne Speckhard: Thank you, Chitra. Glad to be here. Chitra Ragavan: What was it like to uproot yourself from your practice and to go off to Belarus with your husband, Dan, as he launched his diplomatic career? Anne Speckhard: Well, Daniel and I decided to see it as an adventure, but it was very disorienting because I'm someone that puts my roots down deeply and we had three kids. So I had to close my practice and become entirely dependent upon him and that was not something I'd ever done before. Chitra Ragavan: You're fiercely independent, so that must have been even more difficult. Anne Speckhard: It was difficult. And also we were moving on the other side of what I thought of as the Iron Curtain. I'm old enough that I remember the Iron Curtain. And it was strange to think, when we had the Cold War, we had all these targets and Minsk was one of them. Well, we were going to live in a city that would be targeted by our missiles if there ever was an outbreak of nuclear war. Which actually came back to haunt me when 9/11 happened. Because when I saw the Twin Towers being attacked, I thought that's exactly what was happening. Chitra Ragavan: And you know, most people don't accompany their husbands on diplomatic missions and end up talking to terrorists. Tell me how that first began to evolve in Belarus. Anne Speckhard: Well, it didn't happen in Belarus. In Belarus I was doing research, so I talked to Chernobyl liquidators about the trauma and post-traumatic stress that they had, which was an interesting variant because it was an invisible stressor, a lot like Coronavirus is now, and I also worked with Holocaust survivors. So I was building myself much more as a researcher than a therapist, but then we moved to Brussels and that's when I became involved in talking to terrorists. Because I was asked by NATO if I would look at the intersection between religion and terrorism. And this is pre 9/11. So at that time you could read all the books and articles about religion and terrorism. It was a very small body of literature. Chitra Ragavan: And so, how did that evolve into talking to terrorists, that work that you were doing on religion and terrorism? Anne Speckhard: Well, first, 9/11 happened and at first the embassy told all of us to stay home and then they militarized all the workplaces. And Al-Qaeda named NATO as its next target. They even said it would happen in October, which was only a month away. So a lot of the diplomats were having stress reactions and the expats were having stress reactions. So the embassy asked me if I would run stress debriefings, which I did. And then I studied the reactions of people and how they did in response to the stress debriefings. Anne Speckhard: So when a year later Nord-Ost happened in Russia, I contacted my colleague, a Russian speaker who was the top person on post-traumatic stress and volunteered to help her as well. So I ended up going to Moscow. And that started this whole thing of, we ended up looking at the suicide bombers' families, the bombers that had gone into the theatre, and talking to the hostages who had sat right next to them and talk to them while they were in an activated state. Anne Speckhard: And think about it, no other researcher has ever studied a terrorist that's wearing a bomb belt. You know, sat down and asked him research questions. But these hostages had spent three days side by side with them and asked them all kinds of questions. So we captured secondary interviews from that. And it took off from there. Chitra Ragavan: For people who don't remember the Moscow theatre hostage crisis, tell us just a little bit about that and who these terrorists were and who the hostages were. Anne Speckhard: They were 800 theatregoers. They were families. Because in Russia, theatre is often attended by parents and children. And the hostage-takers were from the Chechen rebel terrorists. And they took over the theatre and they threatened to kill everyone. And they put bombs all around. They had guns. But what ultimately happened was the Russians pumped gas into the theatre and they didn't tell the authorities, the health authorities, what the gas was, so most of the hostages died from the rescue, which was really sad. Anne Speckhard: But anyway, that kicked off my talking to terrorists. Because we got a Chechen colleague involved. She went back to Chechnya and talked to the family members. I talked to the hostages. And then when I went back to Brussels, I was teaching at the university and I have a student who admitted to the whole class that he had been in Jerusalem when the bombing of Hebrew U happened. Anne Speckhard: He was there for lunch and had a nice lunch, argued with an Israeli soldier, agreed to disagree, walked out, and the place exploded. And he processed this the whole semester in class. I offered to see him privately, but he didn't want to. And then he ended up talking me into going into Palestine to talk to Palestinians. And it just kept growing and growing. And at this point I've talked to about 800 terrorists. Chitra Ragavan: Wow! And so, you ended up taking a bunch of trips to the West Bank and Gaza. Anne Speckhard: I went all through the West Bank. I talked to people that were sending suicide bombers, people that wanted to be sent to suicide bombers, family members of people who had bombed themselves, terrorist leaders. It was amazing. And I also went in Gaza just once, but all through Gaza, and did the same thing. Anne Speckhard: The Israelis finally made it quite clear to me that they didn't want me to continue this research, but I continued in other places. I went into the Casablanca slums and talked to the friends of the suicide bombers there about... And I was always looking for literally what makes a suicide bomber tick? Why do they get into it? How do they get on the terrorist trajectory? And since I'm a psychologist, I wanted to know, could it have been prevented or can we take them back off of it? Chitra Ragavan: And what's it like to... You make it sound almost casual or like, "Oh, I went to Casablanca, I went to the West Bank, I went to Gaza, while the Israeli said, 'Stop your research.'" But were you ever in danger? What's it like to actually just wander around and talk to people that most people can't imagine talking to? How do you do it? Anne Speckhard: It is kind of strange. When I went into Palestine was the first time I went in and just announced myself. I was very honest about what I wanted. And people told me would be suicide, terrorists are never going to talk to you....

Julie Schafer Jun 01, 2020

Show notes

Ep. 46 — A chance encounter and an impulse decision takes a public health expert on a wild ride into the world of dangerous pandemics / Julie Schafer, Chief Technology Officer, The Flu Lab. Julie Schafer was sitting in her tiny office in a big office building in Washington D.C. having second thoughts about how the Presidential Management Fellowship that she had just begun fit in with her career goals. Then, a chance introduction to Bruce Gellin, then the head of the National Vaccine Program Office and now the President, Global Immunizations, at Sabin Vaccine Institute became the inflection point of her career. Since that day 15 years ago, Schafer has held numerous leadership roles including Director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) the federal agency tasked with funding to prevent pandemic influenza and emerging infectious diseases. She also served as Director for Medical and Biodefense Preparedness Policy in the National Security Council (NSC) under President Barack Obama. Currently the Chief Technology Officer at FluLab, Schafer is consulting with the federal government on strategies and vaccines to stop Covid-19 in its tracks. She fears that the fall flu season could be a real wakeup call in the already tough fight against coronavirus. “Something that I think a lot about that doesn't make me the hit at any virtual cocktail party. But there's nothing about this pandemic, this COVID-19 pandemic that in any way lessens the risk of having an influenza pandemic. So we could have the severity of whatever influenza strains that we are presented with next,” Schafer says. “This current pandemic has no bearing on it. So maybe we'll have a mild influenza year or maybe we'll have a really hard one or maybe an influenza pandemic will emerge at the same time. I think that really is very daunting and makes me very worried and hopeful that influenza will cut us some slack this year.” Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Julie Schafer was pursuing what she thought was her dream career in public health, when a chance meeting at an impulse decision settle on a wild ride deep into the world of dangerous pandemics. Schafer's expertise could not be more timely given the COVID-19 pandemic. She works to apply new technologies and approaches to an old foe – influenza – and is applying that knowledge fighting this pandemic. Hello everyone, I'm Chitra Ragavan and this is When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Good Story an advisory firm helping technology start-ups find their narrative. I'm joined now by Julie Schafer, the chief technology officer for the organization flu lab, where she seeks to stretch the boundaries of how technology is used to defeat influenza. Chitra Ragavan: Julie has held a number of leadership positions in the US government, including Chief of Staff and later Director of strategy for the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority or BARDA at the US department of health and human services. BARDA is the key agency tasked with funding efforts to prevent both naturally emerging and intentional threats. Schafer has served as the director for medical and biodefense preparedness policy in the White House National Security Council under President Barack Obama, where her portfolio included preparedness and response to emerging diseases, such as Zika, efforts to combat antibiotic resistant bacteria and medical countermeasures preparedness. Julie, welcome to the podcast. Julie Schafer: Oh, it's such a pleasure to be with you. Chitra Ragavan: Tell us a little bit about your background, what you were doing and what was this chance encounter that changed the course of your life and turned you into a lifelong flu and pandemic chaser? Julie Schafer: Oh, for sure. I'd love to. Well, so I grew up in Upstate New York. My mom had a bit of a wanderlust and my dad was always game. So I had an opportunity to travel a lot as a child. I was just one of those people that always had to do things my own way. When it was time to go to college, I gravitated toward a school that allowed for students to kind of create their own educational experience. So therefore of course I had a self-designed major and two self-designed minors and none of them were in pandemics. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. I kind of gravitated to what I think I thought of as international development. While I was an undergrad, I did two studies abroad, one in Vietnam, right before the US re-established diplomatic relations. Julie Schafer: Then later one in South Africa, not too long after the end of apartheid. When I finished my time in South Africa, I was completely disillusioned as only you can be when you're 21 years old with international development, and just led me to the end of my undergrad with absolutely no idea what I wanted to do. So I was so fortunate that I had family, friends who said, "Hey, come to DC and get a job and figure it out." That's kind of what I did. Once I was settled in DC and had a job, and had a place to ... friends to live with and had kind of developing building my adult life. I had my first stumble into my vocation by volunteering. Julie Schafer: I was volunteering at an HIV testing site. At the time before you got a HIV test, you'd have to receive counseling either anonymously or confidentially, depending on your choice. Just really clicked for me. It was one of the first things that I was doing that I just felt like I was really good at. I was good at it being in that counseling situation about being with the intensity of the one-on-one conversation about really intense things. I really loved the testing aspect. I loved that there were that that testing provided such important information to the individual, but then also that fueled that important information to a community. Chitra Ragavan: So what happened next? Julie Schafer: So then I thought, well, I've got it. I figured out what my path was. Handled. I went to grad school for two degrees, one in public health and concurrently one in social work. That made complete sense for the career I was planning in reproductive and sexual health and that kind of community work. The one thing I knew, as I finished those studies which were wonderful, is that I did not want to feel like I felt like at the end of undergrad when I didn't know what I was going to do and sitting at a graduation ceremony, just quaking in my boots because I didn't know what I wanted to do next. So I made sure that I wanted to have a job squared away before graduation. Chitra Ragavan: What was the job? Julie Schafer: I went through a bunch of different options. One of the options that I was looking at was a Presidential Management Fellowship with the federal government. Out of all the options I was looking at this made the least amount of sense for what I wanted to do. Working in kind of policy level and the federal government. I kind of thought I would be working on a community level of kind of doing the kind of things I was doing when I was doing HIV testing and counseling. But I just kept making it through the various application stages and somehow found myself the finalist. For reasons that I could not explain to you, except that it just kind of felt right, I took a position through the fellowship and the immediate office of the Secretary for Health and Human Services in Washington DC. Chitra Ragavan: Wow. So be careful what you wish for, right? Julie Schafer: Well, yeah. Be careful on how you, those kinds of instincts, your gut feelings, right? Chitra Ragavan: Yeah, exactly. Julie Schafer: So my gut feeling had told me to go take this job, this Presidential Management Fellowship. Then next thing I knew I was sitting in a little office in a big building wondering what in heaven's name I was thinking in making this decision. Chitra Ragavan: Then what happened? Julie Schafer: I'm very fortunate because just as I was about to head into an existential, or maybe a quarter-life crisis. My supervisor came by and she had someone with her and said, "Here, this guy needs your help." It was Bruce Gellin, who was then the head of the National Vaccine Program Office. That inconsequential meeting kind of wound up being the inflection point of my career. Chitra Ragavan: Wow. What was the meeting about? What was that conversation and what did you think of it? Julie Schafer: Sure. What he needed help for was if he had this draft pandemic influenza preparedness and response plan. It was long overdue to be put out for public comment. The document itself was really long, really, really long. You really kind of full of panic. I mean, it just identified nearly endless needs. In the US at the time, we didn't have nearly enough capacity to make vaccines if we needed them, pandemic vaccine and we really only had, there was very limited global supply of a drug to treat influenza. Most importantly, there's just not a lot of state and local plans or resources. It was a plan that identified a lot of problems and didn't have a lot of solutions. Chitra Ragavan: But it wasn't going anywhere, was it? Julie Schafer: It wasn't going anywhere. We briefly soldiered on with a plan. We got it cleaned up and put it out for public comment, got a lot of public comment. But really that plan itself, it wasn't really going anywhere. While all of this is happening the context around us was changing. Chitra Ragavan: What was that context? Julie Schafer: Well, a few things were happening. First of all there was a really concerning outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza that started in Asia and in Southeast Asia. This was what's called a highly pathogenic influenza virus. Meaning that it killed those creatures including humans that were infected with it and had a very high mortality rate when it infected people....

Justin Richmond May 25, 2020

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Ep. 45 — A U.S. Army Special Operations team leader is haunted by the death of two comrades and devotes his career to data-driven decision-making / Justin Richmond, Founder, and Executive Director, impl. project. The twist in the road for Justin Richmond surfaced on September 29, 2009, at Camp Bautista — a key Filipino military base in the Southern Philippines — when two of his colleagues were killed in an IED attack. Richmond was deployed as a U.S. Army Special Operations team leader helping the Filipino army with stabilization, counterinsurgency, and information operations. His superiors had decided to support what would prove to be a disastrous Filipino military mission. A Sergeant at the time and the lowest ranking task force member in the room, Richmond expressed his qualms but lacked the authority to be heard. The casualties of the task force’s decision were Jack Martin and Chris Shaw. “On the 29th of September, Jack and Chris hopped their Humvee and went to do a water resupply and in the middle of that road was a really big bomb and they drove over it and killed Jack instantly and Chris held on for a little while. He got medivacked over to us, myself, and one of his former teammates were on his Aid and Litter team, got them off the helo and prepared him for the forward surgical team, but the injuries were too significant and he didn't make it after that,” Richmond recalls. “And I look back and I think about the people that were involved in this decision and there wasn't maliciousness, there wasn't guile. It really boiled down to a lot of complacency and hubris.” Richmond’s inability to convince his superiors to abort the ill-thought-out mission forced him to confront how critical decisions are often made in the U.S. military in the absence of clear actionable data. The crisis of faith led Richmond to first join USAID, then Palantir, and then to set up a non-profit called impl. project to use data to drive community outcomes in some of the most dangerous parts of the world. Abruptly grounded in his global mission by Covid-19, Richmond turned his sights to the U.S. and is using data to identify and address the socio-economic impact of the pandemic, in particular, the skyrocketing rise in domestic violence. “The quarantines have forced families into situations that they wouldn't have gone into otherwise if there wasn't COVID and there wasn't quarantines. And I'm a huge believer in the quarantines, I think they should have happened faster and I think they should stay longer because it's the only way we're going to save lives. Having said that, this puts people that are already in vulnerable relationships, really in the cross-hairs of their abusers, and requires them to essentially shelter in place with people that don't have their best interests in mind,” Richmond says. “So domestic violence hotlines across the country are just exploding. I know in Virginia, we're seeing 75% more calls than we did at this time last year . . . and we realized that this is something, a need that a lot of women have.” Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Justin Richmond's twist in the road surfaced on September 29, 2009 at Camp Bautista, a Filipino military base in the Southern Philippines. Richmond was deployed there as a US army special operations team leader, helping the Filipino army with stabilization, counterinsurgency and information operations. Richmond's inability to convince his superiors to abort the ill-fated mission, forced him to confront the dissonance between America's promises and America's actions. Chitra Ragavan: Hello everyone, I'm Chitra Ragavan, and this is When it Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory and advisory firm, helping technology startups find their narrative. Joining me now is Justin Richmond, founder and executive director of impl. project, a scrappy little nonprofit with a global vision and mission to use data to drive community outcomes. Richmond is an alumni of Duke University, five wars, USAID and Silicon Valley, where he served as a forward deployed engineer at Palantir Technologies. Justin, it's nice to have a former Palantir colleague on the podcast. Welcome. Justin Richmond: Good morning, Chitra. Thanks for having me. Chitra Ragavan: It's great to have you here. What were the events that led to that twist in the road for you at Camp Bautista on September 29, 2009? Justin Richmond: Well, when I first arrived at the task force in April of 2009, we were coming into an already dynamic situation, where three international committee of the Red Cross aid workers had been kidnapped on that island by the Abu Sayyaf group. And while the Filipina had been released very early on, the two Europeans had been held for, I think, around three months and carted through the jungles with the Filipino military chasing them and trying to get after the militants that kidnapped them. And this was a really big embarrassment for the Filipino military because they couldn't track down these bad guys and find the hostages. And so eventually the European governments paid ransoms to the terrorist group and the Europeans were released. But in the process of trying to rescue those hostages, the Filipinos probably lost about a dozen men over probably the course of those three months. And so when I came into the task force, they were really looking to get some revenge and find the guys that did this. Chitra Ragavan: So what happened? Justin Richmond: Well, all I know is I walked into the task force targeting meeting one morning and somebody brought this up like, "Hey, the guys that did this ICRC kidnapping are going to be at this place on the feast of Eid and the Filipinos want to go after him." To which, I laughed and said, on the feast of Eid, you can't do that. You don't do major combat operations on holidays." And with the narrative that the Filipinos, that's mostly Christian, already hate the Muslims, which are 99% of the island's population, there's no way this operation works. I thought people were joking. I legitimately thought people were joking when they brought it up, but they weren't. And very quickly, I got concerned that I wouldn't have the clout to influence this decision. Justin Richmond: I was just a Sergeant at the time and I was the lowest ranking guy in the room and that's just the way it goes. But it's something that haunts me to this day. And while I don't think any one person is to blame for the tragedy that happened on the 29th of September, 2009, which is when my colleagues were killed. I don't think there's anyone to blame for it, there was no malice there and there wasn't incompetence, it was hubris. And it looks like, man that is a lesson that America is learning over and over again. But that's why we went to data. Data was the solution. Chitra Ragavan: So tell me what happened. Justin Richmond: They decided to go ahead with the operation and support the Filipinos. And let's remember, in our capacity there, we're advisors and we're trainers, and we're what's called enablers, we're supposed to help our partner nations, but not get involved in direct combat, which is largely true. The morning of the 20th, which was Eid al-Fitr in Sulu. The sun came up, the prayers went out over the loud speakers and you could hear the entire island bringing Ramadan to a close. And then the bombers started coming from Zamboanga city, flying right over our base and right over the population center of the island. The Filipino forces has went forward with the operation, with our support in terms of capacity and advising them and sitting right next to them. And it's something that we should quite honestly have advised them not to do. That was our job, sometimes your job is to sit next to somebody and be like, "That is a horrible idea and you shouldn't do that and this is why." Justin Richmond: But I think if you look at the totality of the American wars since 2001, we can always say that there was an over emphasis on killing bad guys and not actually securing communities and helping to stabilize areas. And that's because we're really good at military stuff and not really good at other stuff. So on the 20th of September, the operation kicked off right as the Muslims and Sulu we're bringing Ramadan to a close. And the bombers were coming overhead, they were dropping 500 pound bombs out on the jungle. The Filipino forces were about two to three hours behind those bombers because they had gotten bogged down and it was just an unmitigated disaster. The bad guys weren't caught, the bad guys weren't killed, but what they did manage to do was reinforce the narrative that the Christian Filipino military is out to get the local Muslim population, which is a narrative that has gone on for the past really 50 years of fighting, since the early 70s. Justin Richmond: And when I saw that, and when I saw the disbelief and utter disappointment of the population with our action and our support of the Philippine military's actions, that really made me, and then nine days later seeing the two colleagues get killed because of just, I think, incautious action, it really made me start thinking that there must be a better way to do this and I must not be the only person out there struggling to get my superiors to see the right dynamics and to do the right thing. And that's why I started looking for more options in data. Chitra Ragavan: So this was on September 20th. And then what happened that led to your two colleagues getting killed on the 29th? Justin Richmond: The operation on Eid ignited pretty much all sectors of the population that were anti-Philippine government, like national government, anti-Philippine military, and certainly anti American. And I mean, the island essentially erupted. So we had about 70 to 96 hours where there was a threat of being overrun. And since we were the main base,...

Karen A. Clark May 18, 2020

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Ep. 44 — A mentee takes up her mentor's mantle and devotes her career to diversity and inclusion in banking / Karen A. Clark, Senior VP and Multicultural Strategies Manager, City National Bank. When Karen A. Clark got her first management assignment as a young banker at Bank of America in Los Angeles, she was blown away when a senior executive and Chinese immigrant named Regina “Reggie” Chun flew in from San Francisco to take her to lunch. Chun told Clark that she had a unique opportunity to help other minorities rise in corporate America and she reminded Clark that if a person in her position didn't help them, then who would? Clark took Chun's rhetorical question to heart and devoted her career to fostering diversity and inclusion in the traditionally white and male-dominated banking industry and financial services sectors. Today Clark is a Senior Vice-President and Multicultural Strategies Manager at City National Bank in Los Angeles. She and her team are working in overdrive to help minority-owned small businesses get fair access to the federal COVID-19 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). Clark says the government's flawed rollout of the program has failed to help businesses. [Hear Excerpt Below] Clark finds her work both rewarding and exhausting but also vital given the rising anti-immigrant sentiment and coronavirus-fueled racism against minorities particularly in the Asian communities and the unequal access to banking services and federal stimulus funds. "The lack of access for small businesses, through this PPP process, has been horrendous. It's been horrendous. Every day, you can read... We have two people at City National Bank, who capture all of the media stories around PPP and put them out there for us, every day. And there are very, very few good stories,” Clark says. "I think it could have been a little better thought out by the federal government to ensure that there was a tranche and an opportunity and a procedure for these small businesses, those who needed funds. Even under a $100,000, $50,000, $40,000, it should have been a process to ensure that those people have the opportunity to apply. And there wasn’t." Clark says she owes her success to her parents, especially her father who she says, taught her and trained her to “swim with sharks” from an early age, which positioned her for success both in banking and corporate boardrooms and in the highly male-dominated commercial lending division for the construction industry. Throughout her banking career, Clark has made time for her other passion, singing, writing, and producing through her entertainment company, The Karen A. Clark Project. Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: When Karen A. Clark got her first management assignment as a young banker at Bank of America in Los Angeles, she was blown away when a senior executive and Chinese immigrant named Regina Chun flew in from San Francisco just to take her to lunch. Clark never forgot Chun's advice. Indeed, she has devoted her entire career to fostering inclusion and diversity in the banking industry. Hello everyone, I'm Chitra Ragavan, and this is When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. Joining me now is Karen A. Clark. She's senior vice president and multicultural strategies manager at City National Bank in Los Angeles. Clark is currently working to ensure that minority owned companies in and around Los Angeles get fair access to COVID-19 federal stimulus funds. In her free time, Clark also is a singer, songwriter and producer of her entertainment company, The Karen A. Clark Project. Karen, welcome to the podcast. Karen A. Clark: Chitra, thank you so much for having me. Chitra Ragavan: You were an Air Force brat. You traveled all over the world with your parents and it was quite a formative experience for you. Tell us about your parents and what that childhood did for you. Karen A. Clark: I did travel all over the world with my parents. Both of my parents were from teeny, small towns here in the United States, my mother, Pennsylvania, and my father, Oklahoma. And they both joined the Air Force at age 18. For my mother, that was 1950, and she met my father in the service and they got married. They have four kids. And they fulfilled their dream of traveling the world and having adventures, and they took us right along with them. And I had a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful childhood. I think traveling, especially from a young age, just opens up your eyes to what the possibilities are in the world. And it helps you to understand that, though we face boundaries and obstacles in our life, the world is a huge place. And with some curiosity and a little bit of gumption, you can learn and travel and do so much. And it just makes you ready to be able to meet anyone, to be able to interface with anyone. It makes you comfortable in a multicultural world. Chitra Ragavan: Now, it was quite an extraordinary experience, I think, particularly given that your parents weren't extremely wealthy or anything like that. And yet, they gave you kind of the riches of wealth of knowledge and travel. Karen A. Clark: They did. They did. So, my mom, she couldn't be active duty with children. So, of course, she stepped down from active duty. She became a reservist, but my father stayed in the service for 20 years and then civil service after that. And he never reached more than the rank of maybe a staff sergeant, which was an enlisted man. So, they didn't have a lot of money. And my mother did not go back to work until I was in junior high school, but they always saved money so that we had a proper summer vacation. We've not flying around on planes, all six of us, but in a car. We'd jump in a car and my father would take us across the country and we'd see relatives and we'd see states in between. And we always stopped in time enough to swim in the motel swimming pool and get take out food from a Big Boy Restaurant or some hamburger stand. Karen A. Clark: And it was always so extremely special. My parents always made us feel like we had such a rich, wonderful life, even though we didn't have a whole lot. And I just loved my life growing up and being exposed to so many experiences. I mean, my dad took us skiing in Germany. He took me to see my first jazz concert at the Frankfurt opera house. He took me to see my first musical in San Francisco. He thought it was important that his teenage daughter saw this production of Colored Girls, by the late great Ntozake Shange. I mean, my dad, he just thought it was important for us to have cultural experiences. Even on Sunday afternoon, we would, after dinner, go get scoop of ice cream and ride around in the car and just look at people's yards and look at their lawns. He was just an immersive kind of a father. And my mother, with her free spirit, it was right along with him and they just opened up the world to us. Chitra Ragavan: How did that help you when you ended up in the banking industry, especially the lessons that your father taught you? Karen A. Clark: Yeah, yeah. So, I did, I ended up in the banking industry. I went to college, I had to struggle my way through college, hustle my way through college. And what I really wanted to be was an entertainer. I had grown up singing and dancing in talent shows and all of that kind of stuff. Got to college, took all of the theater arts. And I just did history of theater and acting and dancing, and yeah, I was all about it. And then, when I graduated from college, and I ended up in Los Angeles with my husband, with my late husband and two babies, I mean, my kids were two and three years old, because we had our kids in college. We got married and had our kids in college. Karen A. Clark: And so, when I came out, I didn't have the luxury of trying to find a creative job. We came to LA and I did a few auditions, but after two or three weeks, I said, "I'm going to go to a headhunter and get a real job," because my husband also was a creative type. He was working for an independent film company, making no money. And so, we were really struggling. So, I went to a headhunter and that's how I ended up in banking, but I never gave up the art. Chitra Ragavan: And what was that like being a young African American woman, and what, probably, was an incredibly white male-dominated industry at the time? Karen A. Clark: Yeah, it really was. And what happened is I have a degree in economics. I went to the head hunter, dropped off my degree and I got a call. And she said, "I have an interview for you at Wells Fargo Bank." And I said, "Oh, no, no, no, I don't want to be a teller." That's all I knew about banking. And I had a few friends in college who had been tellers and none of them had been successful at it. Couldn't balance, and just didn't enjoy the job. And I said, "No, thank you. I don't want to be a teller." And she said, "No, this is in commercial real estate." And I said, "Really? What do banks do with commercial real estate?" I mean, I just had no idea. And so, I went to work for Wells Fargo Bank in commercial real estate construction lending, and yes, what it was, and it still is very white male dominated. Karen A. Clark: And I was working on 20 to a hundred million dollar participation loans. We have huge construction projects on a global basis. And so, you'd be in conference rooms with credit officers and loan officers and attorneys from both sides and mostly all white males. And here's this little girl, 27, 28-year-old black girl sitting at the table. And what I realized, very quickly, is that I was comfortable. I was comfortable sitting in these conference rooms at these tables with these men who were, in most cases, much older than me, looked much different than me, were in a position of authority and power, a lot of them,...

Courtney Bowman May 11, 2020

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Ep. 43 –– A physics major pursues a grounding in philosophy and finds his niche in Silicon Valley / Courtney Bowman, Director, Privacy and Civil Liberties Engineering Team, Palantir. Courtney Bowman thought he was destined for a career in physics until he took a philosophy class. It triggered a deep skepticism of the ability of hard sciences to solve mankind's biggest problems. When Bowman told his academic mentor and family about the desire to pursue philosophy, they were alarmed and tried to dissuade him, fearing a dead end to his career. But Bowman went with his gut and ignored conventional wisdom and it paid off strangely enough in Silicon Valley where Bowman found his niche in a one-of-a-kind Privacy and Civil Liberties Engineering team that he leads at Palantir, the big-data analytics platform deployed by the U.S. government and other governments around the world to contain the spread of #coronavirus. #COVID-19 raises unprecedented legal, ethical, moral, even existential questions around the use of mobility tracking, contact tracing, immunity passports, and other powerful big data tools. "We're talking about contact tracing applications that rely on mobile phones and specific applications on mobile phones. But not everyone carries a mobile phone. Not everyone has a mobile phone, or is technologically savvy and use of their mobile phones. So then you raise all sorts of issues about the 'digital divide.' Does this mean that the people who maybe are most advantaged and most privileged because they have access to technology, are going to get a disproportionate advantage in the use of that technology?” asks Bowman. "Meaning that some of the most vulnerable communities that are less technology savvy are not receiving the public health benefits of something like contact tracing. And those are real concerns, particularly when you have kind of disproportionate spread of a disease and disproportionate accessibility and availability of public health resources. So there's real, kind of, broader cultural and sociological, and environmental concerns that come into play when you're talking about applying this type of technology to the real world." That's where Bowman's unique philosophical grounding and non-traditional perspectives come in handy as nations around the world ponder these weighty questions over how to put the lid on the pandemic. Note: I was a senior advisor at Palantir Technologies from 2007-2015 and own equity in the startup. Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Courtney Bowman thought he was destined for a career in physics until he took a philosophy class that triggered a deep skepticism of the hard sciences and the ability of science alone to address the issues raised by technological advances. Chitra Ragavan: Bowman decided to pursue his quest for a philosophical underpinning for his life and work, which unexpectedly gave him the tools to address some of the most challenging and salient technology questions of the day. Chitra Ragavan: Hello everyone. I'm Chitra Ragavan, and this is When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. I'm joined now by Courtney Bowman, a former colleague and Director of Privacy and Civil Liberties engineering at Palantir Technologies. Bowman's work addresses complex issues at the intersection of policy, law, technology, ethics, and social norms. Bowman is working closely with the U.S. government and governments around the world to address the issues around the collection and analysis of massive amounts of data from the COVID-19 pandemic. Courtney, welcome to the podcast. Courtney Bowman: Chitra, thank you so much. It's an honor to be invited to your podcast and I really appreciate it. Chitra Ragavan: So what were you doing in life when you first began to understand the need for philosophy as an underpinning for your life and work? Courtney Bowman: Yeah, so it's an interesting question that I've been reflecting on quite a bit lately. As now I've been sheltering in place where I grew up in New Mexico a little bit outside of Albuquerque. And one of the reflections and recollections I had was as a high school student and a college student where I had the opportunity and the privilege to be able to intern in a physics laboratory at Sandia National Labs. So in those early days, I was really quite passionate about physics and pursuing a career in physics. And was really trending in that direction when I went to university. My initial thinking was really directed at how can I learn from the hard sciences, physics in particular and what might be the course and trajectory for a career moving in that direction. But things changed as I started to take more courses and explore more of the humanities as an undergraduate at Stanford. Chitra Ragavan: So was there a particular issue or a problem that you were trying to solve via physics when you kind of had this existential change of thinking? Courtney Bowman: Yeah, so at the time I was taking kind of core coursework in physics as an undergraduate. And during my summers, I would come back to New Mexico and was doing internships at the labs, mostly focused on optical physics. Courtney Bowman: But when I started to take classes in philosophy, one of the things that I discovered is that the hard sciences prepare you for answering a certain set of questions and give you a certain set of tools for dealing with problems in the world. But they don't always address the richness of the things that we encounter. And as I started to take more philosophy courses and became interested in what I guess would now be considered a more obscure aspect of 20th century philosophy, one of the realizations I had is that there's a richness to understanding and exploring the world that you don't necessarily get from the toolkit that's provided by the hard sciences and physics in particular. Chitra Ragavan: So what did you do then? Did you break away from physics, and how were your teachers and mentors responding to your change of heart? Courtney Bowman: So I had a couple of kind of distinct conversations. I think this was one summer when I came back to New Mexico and was working in a lab, the National Labs for my internship. I remember speaking with my mentor and advisor and started to articulate that I was being pulled in different directions and had begun taking the philosophy courses, and wasn't as convinced as I had been in previous years that physics was the path forward for me. Courtney Bowman: And then I remember one very distinct conversation with my advisor where I started to articulate this alternative or branching path. And she sort of reacted quite abruptly and was concerned, and maybe even a little bit disappointed and began to discourage me from getting distracted from physics and engineering. And I in that moment really thought to myself despite the guidance that I was getting from her and despite conversations I was having with my family at the time, who all sort of saw philosophy as kind of a dead end or something that hermits or academics pursue. I had this kind of inner gnawing, this intuition that this was something that was really important that I needed to pursue. And I did. And I kind of hedged my bets at the time, pursued both courses of study. Courtney Bowman: So I ended up getting degrees in both physics and philosophy. But philosophy from that point on became kind of the stronger passion for me and one of the driving thrusts for the things that I wanted to focus on, not just in my personal life, but see if I could figure out ways of applying that knowledge to the things that I was doing professionally. Chitra Ragavan: So what did you do next and how did you start to move your career forward with this dual interest? Courtney Bowman: So after I graduated, I ended up spending some time abroad, mostly in Germany. And at that point I was trending in the direction of philosophy graduate work. And one of the things that you do if you're preparing for philosophy graduate studies is you make sure that you have both the academic grounding, but also language grounding in a core language that's associated with philosophical study. So usually it's German, French, Latin, or Greek. And my focus and interest being in the school of 20th century German philosophy dictated that German was the course of study that I need to pursue. So I ended up living in Berlin for a while taking language courses, getting more proficient in German language. And that continued for a while as I was thinking about applications for graduate study. Courtney Bowman: But another interesting thing happened at that point. I started to become a little bit disenchanted with the prospect of becoming a 'professional' philosopher. Or going into academic study in part because of conversations that I had with many friends who were in that course of study, but also realizing that the richness of descriptions of the world that I was looking for and that I found insufficient in physics also kind of nagged at me in the views that I was getting on the humanity side and the philosophy course of study that I was pursuing. Courtney Bowman: So I was kind of at a bit of a crossroads. And ended up coming back to the states a bit shiftless at the time and on a lark interviewed and took a job in Silicon Valley and started working at Google. This was roughly back in 2004, 2005. Chitra Ragavan: And were you able to kind of bring these things together starting, because you were now working on some of these technology issues and problems at Google? Courtney Bowman: A little bit. So at the time I was mostly in a position where thankfully I had some physics and mathematics background, was able to apply that to quantitative analytics....

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