Leadership In Focus

You're in rare company when someone suggests that you are the best in the world at something, much less the best for an entire century. But that is exactly what happened when the international volleyball federation named my guest, Karch Kiraly, the great volleyball player of the 20th century. He's a three-time olympic gold medalist on top of countless championships at all levels of the sport. Just last summer, Karch coached the U.S. women to their first olympic gold medal in the program's history at the olympic games in Tokyo. Despite the many championships and great success on the court and in the sand, Karch experienced some notable setbacks too. His examples of rebounding from tough loses was an inspiration to me, and I hope you'll find encouragement from this conversation too.

Aaron Kardell is a serial entrepreneur with a history of starting successful technology companies going back to his college days. At the time we recorded this interview, Aaron was CEO of HomeSpotter, a real estate technology company he founded which was subsequently acquired by Lone Wolf Technologies. Now VP of Product at Lone Wolf, Aaron has some great insights about what it takes to build successful teams and sustainable businesses.

After a 25-year career as an executive at Medtronic, a huge, multi-national medical device company, my guest, Ross Allen, changed career direction in a big way and took the helm as president of Bethel University right at the beginning of the Covid pandemic. We talk about the leadership lessons Ross acquired in his time leading a variety of Medtronic businesses around the world and how he's applying those lessons now in the world of higher education.

Jee Chang is the Leadership Director at UME in New York City, a collaborative design studio she founded that goes beyond the typical mold of a design company to include business consulting and leadership development. She's also a lecturer in Design Strategies at the Parsons School of Design in New York. We talked about how her vision for collaborative design informed the creation and ongoing work at UME and how she lives that out in her day to day leadership.