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Guest: Jon Wortmann

Resilience is a key factor in leadership success during times of stress. Our ability to manage our own energy and thinking have a significant impact on our ability to deliver personally and on our ability to inspire our followers. By building our resilience and creating a culture where others are expected to build theirs, we can make a significant impact on driving and sustaining our success as individuals and as organizations. Jon and Maureen start with defining resilience then move to the critical aspects of personal resilience. They include a focus on how brains and bodies react to stress and practices that will reduce the impact events have on leaders. discuss their areas of expertise in brain functioning. This interview includes a discussion of specific tools that allow leaders to build more resilient brains and reduce emotional reactivity. These tools help leaders manage feelings thereby also reducing stress. Equipped with these tools, leaders need to build practices.

Guest: Victor Prince

The best way to become a better leader is to better yourself. Sometimes taking on a big adventure on your vacation is a great way to do that. Pilgrims from all over the world have walked the Camino de Santiago trails across Europe for centuries, making their way to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, North-West of Spain. Today, more than a pilgrimage, the Camino is an unforgettable experience and unique journey. The pilgrimage to Santiago has never ceased from the time of the discovery of St. James’s remains in 812 AD, though there have been years of fewer pilgrims, particularly during European wars. Victor shares his adventure in hiking the 500 mile trek along the Camino in Spain which resulted in his best selling book: The Camino Way: Lessons in Leadership from a Walk Across Spain. He shares how he personally applied the Camino Values to his journey and how he integrated them into his life and business practice as a leader upon his return.

Guest: Dr. Dale Meyerrose

We have been hearing about the topic of doing well by doing good for a few years. Should tech leaders take adopt this concept to reevaluate how they do business? If so, why would they? How would they? To take the question further, what accountability (if any) do leaders have for the uses of their products and services? During this conversation, Dale and Maureen will discuss the questions posed above and a project Dale has been involved with where Imcon International Inc., the developer of the Internet Backpack, a remote connectivity solution that allows users to communicate from almost every location on the planet, the School of Information Studies (iSchool) at Syracuse University and the Republic of Liberia will collaborate on a far reaching project that will digitally transform Liberia by increasing the nation’s current internet penetration of about 7% to 40% by 2021. This project is a strong example to illustrate how technology leaders can solve global challenges.

Guest: Angelo Mazzocco

As a CIO and member of the executive team, Angelo’s focus is well beyond that of CIO – he focuses on overall success and health of his organization, Central Ohio Primary Care. This means he shifted his activities and mindset when promoted to “C” level. During this interview, Angelo talks about how his career evolved and how he made these important shifts. He also talks about how his personal life events prompted him to make specific job choices and how these choices unfolded to create success. He discusses the following topics: 1. How did your role change when you got your first “C” level role? 2. How was this different than you anticipated? 3. Where do you spend your time? 4. What is your technology role? How much time? 5. What is your role in the community? 6. Why do you invest so much in building cross industry CIO success, student success and manager success? If you aspire to fill a “C” level or senior role, this conversation provides great insight!

Featured Guests: Congress Woman Beatty and Doug McCollough

In a time when people are sharing more of their personal struggles, we talk to Congress Woman Beatty and Doug McCollough about their struggle and more importantly how they navigated those struggles so that she could make their greatest impact on the world. Congresswoman Beatty not only overcame, she changed the people’s view of what it was to be a successful black woman and she mentored women to make sure the pipeline behind her was strong and the country was better because of all facets of her service! She talks about how helping women succeed helps America succeed. She serves as a role model for inclusion globally by serving with grace and decorum! Doug shares how his focus on inclusion is expanding the field of employees working in technology in central Ohio. Through his board work as well as his work as CIO, he is creating a pipeline that allows unemployed people to get trained and find technology jobs. He is helping build the system that will close this gap long term!

Guest: Olivia Parr-Rud

We know in a knowledge economy, we need to use different skills and mindsets to drive success. This means different cultures and systems. People need to feel comfortable showing up as their whole selves rather than cogs in a wheel. Many of us are waking up… We yearn to make a difference – to use our innate gifts in a way that improves our lives and the lives of others. We want to be seen for who we are, not what we do. We yearn to connect, to be heard, to hear others. We ache to share our stories, our talents, and our passions – to make a positive difference in the world. If this resonates with you, then I have good news! Not only are we waking up – Corporate America needs us to wake up! The businesses that are most successful today and will thrive going forward, are the ones that require us to show up fully and in deep connection with our hearts and the hearts of others. During the interview, we explore the book and concrete practices that can be applied appropriately at work.

Guest: Simon Mac Rory

We will talk about Simon’s book Wake up and smell the coffee: The imperative of Teams. Teamwork is such a quintessential and critical element of organizational life. Teams are an imperative to agile and effective organizational performance. With a consistent and sustained effort much can be achieved in terms of improving team effectiveness and the associated benefits of increased productivity and impact to the bottom line. Around 90% of what we do in the organization today happens through collaborative effort. This makes teamwork the imperative that it is. In today’s challenging and increasingly complex business environment we need teams to deliver. If the organization can deliver a 5% improvement across the entire organization in terms of team effectiveness, imagine the impact to the bottom line. Simon believes that the approach he advocates, if implemented across the organization, can deliver up to a 20% improvement in effectiveness.

Guests: Tom Grote & Rick Neal

As we look at the challenges we see in the world, it is easy to become disillusioned. Depending on geographic location, you are likely facing some type of disruption. As people who want to make a difference, how do you know where to focus your energy? Tom and Rick say yes to challenge. Separately, have done humanitarian work in Africa, formed a LGBTQ state wide advocacy organization in Ohio and many other acts of advocacy large and small. As a married gay couple and adopted parents of two daughters, they talk about their recent activism and how what they have chosen to say yes to is informing the arc of their lives as well as the lives of the people their work touches. Rick recently ran for political office in the US. They talk about how this “yes” impacted their families and how it creates new opportunities for both of them going forward. They inspire the question what will you say yes to?

Guest: Rebecca Hall Gruyter

With Rebecca’s experience leading women’s empowerment network and extensive work with entrepreneurs, she will share her story of overcoming challenges and stepping forward in her life to make her unique impact in the world. Her journey involved overcoming significant fear and changing her thinking about who she was and what she should be doing in the world. She needed to address these fears and like most of us manage through her fear about each of her next steps. With each next step, she fought, bargained then surrendered to what she was being called to do in the way she was being called. Each step allowed her to get closer to her “why” in life – her authentic purpose. Rebecca’s story is inspirational on many levels and gives practical guidance for moving forward to live your highest impact life.

Guest: Venki Rao

Many companies are trying to recruit executives to address the labor shortage. Years ago, many men moved several times in their careers – my father was one of them. We are seeing the rate of movement decline. Venki talks about his transition from GE and how he is applying that experience to CAS in playing a foundational role in their transformation. There are many factors to consider for dual career families before relocating. Venki talks candidly about what made his shift work. He discusses factors such as: 1. Opportunity to make an impact 2. Autonomy to operate independently 3. Timing with family 4. Willingness to travel on the part of both working spouses 5. Community – ease of living and working If you are considering career mobility as an option to enhance your career, this interview provides some unique insight into how one senior executive evaluated his range of options to identify a great career building opportunity.