Tepper Reads

In the first Tepper Reads 2020 podcast, SHIFT program managers in the Accelerate Leadership Center, which is part of Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business, discuss SHIFT programming, and their love of books.

Executive Director of the Accelerate Leadership Center, Leanne Meyer, talks about her immigrant experience, relationships, and why reading doesn't feel as important as it once was, but should.

Dr. Andreea Ritivoi, Head of Carnegie Mellon University's School of English, talks about her immigrant experience, personalizing the immigrant story, why Mohsin Hamid uses the doors for his characters' journeys, how Exit West makes us more empathic, what made her cry in the novel, and much more.

Laura Maxwell, Leadership Coach in the Accelerate Leadership Center, talks about getting out of her comfort zone, the importance of gratitude and empathy, how leadership means caring and always learning, and how she can never look at a door the same way again.

Dr. Marian Aguiar, Associate Professor of English in Carnegie Mellon's Department of English, talks about relationships, the importance of stories, why Hamid chose a novel over a work of nonfiction, what it means to cut out the immigrant journey, and how knowing that we continually reinvent ourselves is key to self-awareness.

Lauren Miller, Leadership Coach in the Accelerate Leadership Center, talks about the excitement and loss of relocation, what a big move can do to a couple, finding the right balance of togetherness and autonomy in relationships, how you can live anywhere for a year, and how open, honest communication is needed when a couple decides to relocate.

Jarred Lazear, Leadership Coach in the Accelerate Leadership Center, talks about the "inside-out" approach to coaching, how both coaching and reading helps to grow our individual worlds, context dependent memory (and how Pittsburghers love it), how everyone is fighting a battle, always, and what it's like to be a manager of an employee who's relocated, and to be the employee as well.

In our final podcast of the Tepper Reads 2020 project, SHIFT co-managers in the Accelerate Leadership Center, Matthew Stewart and Michelle Stoner, talk about reading like a writer, the collision of everyday experiences and the dramatic, magical realism lite, aging ourselves, showing vs. telling, and how people are people, no matter who they are, where they come from, or what they believe, and we're all equal.

In the first podcast for the Tepper Reads Fall 2020 project, SHIFT Program Managers in the Accelerate Leadership Center, Matthew Stewart and Michelle Stoner, discuss reading like a writer, and reading for empathy, when reading Colson Whitehead's The Nickel Boys.

In episode two of the Fall 2020 Tepper Reads podcast series, we talk with Chief Operating Officer of the Tepper School, Rhonda Fischer, about the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., her experience of raising Black boys in 21st century America, and the capacity for loving one's enemies. This is a powerful episode, you don't want to miss it.

The third installment of the Fall 2020 Tepper Reads podcast series features Associate Director of Tepper Graduate Student Services, Kevin Dietrick. We talk about the banality of evil, growing up in a multicultural family, and what to do after you vote, all through the lens of The Nickel Boys.

Dr. Rich Purcell is an Associate Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University, as well as Director of the Literary and Cultural Studies Program. In this episode we talk about a day in the life of an English faculty member, post-Civil War Reconstruction in the U.S., voting rights, changing the pop culture narrative, inclusive, democratic leadership, and confronting our past and the literal and figurative bones beneath our feet.

In the final podcast of the Tepper Reads Fall 2020 project, we talk with Leanne Meyer, Executive Director of the Accelerate Leadership Center in Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business. Leanne talks about how she ended up at Tepper, hope and pragmatism, empathy vs. sympathy, having an Elwood and Turner on each shoulder, chains of inspiration, and surrounding yourself with what inspires you.

For the first podcast of Spring 2021 we talk with one very recent Tepper MBA alum, Jillian McCarthy, one current MBA student, Cynthia Mills, and one May 2020 alum, Adeel Rind, about their experience with Tepper Reads. If you're not sure if Tepper Reads is for you, give it a listen. We think you'll be surprised about the impact a book club at Tepper can have on students. And if you're already all-in, this will be a good opportunity to hear from some of your past and present friends at Tepper.

SHIFT Program Managers in the Accelerate Leadership Center, Matthew Stewart and Michelle Stoner, dissect this spring's book, Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half. They talk about the cinematic qualities of the book, community and place in the book, Bennett's clear and accessible writing style, its classic fictional style, and how well it works to build empathy in readers (Hint: it works really well!).

In this episode, Accelerate lead for Tepper Reads, Matthew Stewart, speaks with CMU School of English professor, Jane McCafferty about being seen vs. being unseen, the roles we play in families and society, the costs associated with changing your identity, imposter syndrome, and what all of this has to do with The Vanishing Half.

In this episode, Accelerate lead for Tepper Reads, Matthew Stewart, talks with Rhonda Fischer, Tepper's Chief Operating Officer, about colorism, the depth of Stella's deception, why understanding passing is important to understanding the racial landscape of America today, and so much more.

It's our final podcast of the Spring 2021 Tepper Reads season, and it's a great one. For our final podcast we talk with Leanne Meyer, Executive Director of the Accelerate Leadership Center at Tepper, about what she's reading, leadership and identity development, and how it relates to The Vanishing Half, and a whole lot more. 

In the first episode of the Tepper Reads podcast for fall 2021, Accelerate Leadership Center program managers, Matthew Stewart and Michelle Stoner, talk about the genre mashups of Charles Yu's Interior Chinatown, what white space on a page means, how something can be both funny and important, and why this book works so well for building empathy.

In the second and final episode of the Fall 2021 Tepper Reads podcast we speak with Leanne Meyer, Executive Director of the Accelerate Leadership Center in Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business about Charles Yu's Interior Chinatown. Leanne talks about her immigrant experience, the notion of "Be more," the model minority myth, John Denver, and the meaning of "home."

In the first episode of the spring 2022 podcast season, academic program managers in the Accelerate Leadership Center, Matthew Stewart and Michelle Stoner, discuss why Gold Diggers is the Tepper Reads pick for this spring. In the discusssion they touch upon how the novel helps one understand the motivations of others, relatability vs. empathy, upending stereotypes, the joy of reading the novel, and much more.

Our discussion of Sanjena Sathian's Gold Diggers continues in the second podcast of the Spring 2022 season. Academic Program Managers in the Tepper School of Business' Accelerate Leadership Center, Matthew Stewart and Michelle Stoner, talk about metonymy, how it's different from metaphor, and how it helps us make sense of the world around us. Also discussed is America's penchant for quantity over quality, how gold functions in the novel and in real life, and different ways of being.

In the final podcast of the Spring 2022 Tepper Reads project, Academic Program Managers in Tepper's Accelerate Leadership Center, Matthew Stewart and Michelle Stoner, continue their conversation about Sanjena Sathian's Gold Diggers. In this episode they talk about history and the importance of knowing where you come from, whose stories are told and whose are erased and why, and the first rule of leadership: "It's not about you."

In the first of two podcasts this fall about Weike Wang's Joan is Okay, Academic Program Managers in the Accelerate Leadership Center, Matthew Stewart and Michelle Stoner, discuss how people don't always lead or influence in the same way, learning to empathize with characters you don't like, and the paradox of what makes an American.

In this episode of the Tepper Reads podcast, Accelerate Leadership Center Academic Program Managers Matthew Stewart and Michelle Stoner discuss the character of Mark in Weike Wang's Joan is Okay. Topics covered include: how exposure to diversity and different cultures increases self-awareness and helps you grow as a person, the Golden Rule v. the Platinum Rule, and more.