Podcasts about gsas

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 4, 2022 24:58

As the 2022 midterm elections approach, many citizens are worried about the state of our democracy. And with good reason. Our electoral system increasingly produces leaders who do not represent the will of the majority. The national popular vote was lost, for instance, by two of the last four presidents. In the evenly divided United States Senate, the 578,000 citizens of Wyoming have as much representation as the 39 million of California. And Gerrymandering? Aided by complex computer algorithms, it's easier than ever for political parties to choose their Congressional voters—and harder for majorities to dislodge them.This month, we discuss the history and state of our democracy with Harvard Kennedy School Professor Alex Keyssar. Professor Keyssar's books include The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, which was named the best book in U.S. history for the year 2001 by both the American Historical Association and the Historical Society and was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. In 2004 and 2005, Keyssar chaired the Social Science Research Council's National Research Commission on Voting and Elections. Keyssar's latest book, Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? looks at that institution's persistence despite several attempts throughout history to reform it. Alex Keyssar got his PhD from GSAS in 1977.

Beyond the Massacres, Part II: Solutions for Red States and Blue

Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 21, 2022 21:53

In this episode of Colloquy, part two of our discussion of guns and public health in America. In part one, we got a sense of the scope of the problem: nearly 400 million guns owned by US civilians, over 45,000 gun deaths in 2020, dramatically elevated risk of suicide among people who own handguns, and much more. So, can anything be done about the problem in a society as politically polarized as ours? David Hemenway, one of the country's leading experts on guns and public health, says yes. If we set aside our prejudices and assumptions and focus on areas of common concern, we can work together to improve safety and public health—even in places where gun rights are sacrosanct. But Hemenway says we shouldn't stop there. There's plenty to be done in states like Massachusetts, where guns are more strictly regulated.David Hemenway is a professor of health policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. The author of five books, Professor Hemenway, has written widely on injury prevention, including firearms, violence, and suicide. He headed the pilot for the National Violent Death Reporting System, which provides detailed and comparable information on suicide and homicide. In 2012, he was recognized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as one of the 20 most influential injury and violence professionals over the past 20 years. Professor Hemenway got his PhD from GSAS in 1974.

america phd guns massachusetts suicide states prevention public health massacre centers gun control uvalde disease control gun violence firearms red state gun safety background checks firearms training gun deaths colloquy harvard phd hemenway public health research gsas david hemenway harvard injury control research center

928: Andrew Knott of Savannah Energy: Results demonstrate continued strong underlying progress

The Vox Markets Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 30, 2022 7:40

Andrew Knott, CEO, of Savannah Energy #SAVE say their interim results demonstrate the continued strong underlying progress they have made in their existing producing business with a 10% year-on-year increase reported for both revenues1 to $128.7m and adjusted EBITDA to $100.3m. H1 2022 Financial Highlights · Total Revenues1 of US$128.7m (up 10% on H1 2021: US$116.5m); · Adjusted EBITDA2 of US$100.3m (up 10% on H1 2021: US$91.5m); · Operating expenses plus administrative expenses3 of US$24.5m (H1 2021: US$22.4m); · Loss before tax of US$11.3m (H1 2021 profit before tax: US$7.7m); · Capital expenditure of US$14.0m (H1 2021: US$5.2m); · Net debt position as at 30 June 2022 of US$327.1m (Year-end 2021: US$370.0m) with Adjusted Leverage4 of 2.0x (Year-end 2021: 2.5x); and · Total cash5 of US$182.8m as at 30 June 2022 (Year end 2021: US$154.3m) H1 2022 Operational Highlights · New gas sales agreements ("GSAs") were signed with Central Horizon Gas Company Limited ("CHGC"), a major gas distribution company situated in the South-South region of Nigeria, and TransAfam Power Ltd, a licensed power generation company in Nigeria and, post-period-end in August 2022, with Notore Chemical Industries PLC for its fertiliser plant. These customers are accessed via Accugas' pipeline network to Ikot Abasi and on to the Port Harcourt area via third party infrastructure, thus no capital expenditure is required; · A contract extension was signed with First Independent Power Limited ("FIPL") to supply gas to its Eleme and Trans Amadi power plants, bringing the total number of power plants supplied under the contract to three, including the FIPL Afam power plant; · During the period, Savannah commenced gas deliveries to three new customers in Nigeria, FIPL's Trans Amadi power plant, TransAfam's power plants in Rivers State, and CHGC. Savannah now has operational GSAs with power plants comprising 24% of Nigeria's thermal generation capacity; · Average gross daily production, of which 89% was gas, remained almost constant during H1 2022 at 22.5 Kboepd (H1 2021: 22.6 Kboepd). The broadening of our customer base during H1 2022 has enabled us to increase gas deliveries to support Nigeria's power generation needs; · A new gas production well, Uquo 11, commenced production in April 2022 and produced at an average rate of 68 MMscfpd up to 30 June 2022; and · Our Renewable Energy Division signed agreements for the development of up to 750 MW large-scale greenfield solar and wind projects with the Governments of Niger (Parc Eolien de la Tarka) and Chad (Centrale Solaire de Komé and Centrales d'Energie Renouvelable de N'Djamena). To read the full RNS click here

GSAS Clubs: Activating Your Child for Educational Justice

Parents' Rights Now!

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 29, 2022 21:06

GSAS Network TOOLKITHow to build a GSA to talk "really explicitly and seriously about sexuality and gender" to childrenThis is an audio clip of an April 26th virtual panel titled “Creating and Sustaining GSAs in Elementary Schools.” In this clip, a teacher is heard discussing how to start a GSA/Rainbow Club by seeding questions "organically" in order to recruit young children into a GSA club where they talk "really explicitly and seriously about sexuality and gender."Support the show

child clubs activating elementary school gsa educational justice gsas childrenthis

Inclusion for LGBTQ Students

OEA Grow

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 17, 2022 26:06

This week's episode is on safe, welcoming, and inclusive schools for LGBTQ+ students. Leonne discusses the topic with three staff members of Basic Rights Oregon: Jo Xavier Doyle, Leadership Development & Training Program Manager, Gaby Gardiner, Statewide Engagment Manager, and Seth Johnstone, Transgender Justice Organizer & Trainer. Basic Rights Oregon works for legal and lived equality for LGBTQ+ Oregonians. To support LGBTQ+ students, educators are encouraged to start by building relationships with students and getting to know them. To affirm their identities, let go of assumptions when a student tells you about who they are and instead, believe them. Our guests have some additional suggestions for supporting LGBTQ+ students such as inclusive sex education, gender inclusive and neutral facilitaties, and visual display of support for marginalized students. Students themselves have wisdom we can learn from. Jo, Gaby, and Seth advise us to pay attention to the situations in schools that cayse anxiety for our LGBTQ+ students, then get creative about how to make those situations less stressful. Additionally, student-led efforts to make changes are important and powerful, such as Gender and Sexuality Alliances (GSAs). School staff can help by uplifting students involved in GSAs. Educators can also be prepared to interrupt biased or harmful comments or actions by having and practicing a clear plan of how to respond. And finally, we are reminded that one supportvie adult can significantly reduce suicidal ideation among LGBTQ+ youth. Resources: Basic Rights Oregon LGBTQ2SIA+ Student Success - Oregon Department of Education Educator Resources - GLSEN Health, Safety, and Wellness: Sexuality Education - Oregon Department of Education

school education lgbtq safety students gender inclusion educators lgbtq students gsas basic rights oregon

428: LGBT YouthLink of CenterLink with Deborah Levine

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 23, 2022 25:00

Deborah Levine is the Director of LGBT YouthLink at CenterLink, which supports, strengthens, and connects LGBT centers. Chad talks with Deborah about working on something new called imi: a free digital research-backed mental health tool intended to support and help LGBTQ+ teens explore and affirm their identity and learn practical ways to cope with their sexual and gender minority stress, founding Q Chat Space, a digital LGBTQ+ center where teens join live-chat, professionally facilitated, online support groups, and how over the time that she's been doing work in LGBTQ+ spaces products and online interaction have changed and evolved. CenterLink (https://www.lgbtcenters.org/) Follow CenterLink on Twitter (https://twitter.com/CenterLink), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/CenterLink), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/lgbtcenterlink/), YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPvnzC7fGKBYKj9p4YlMGNw), or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/2129279/). LGBT YouthLink (https://www.lgbtcenters.org/Programs/YouthLink) Q Chat Space (https://www.qchatspace.org/) HopeLab (https://hopelab.org/) Follow Deborah on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/deborah-s-levine/). Follow thoughtbot on Twitter (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel, and with me, today is Deborah Levine, Director of LGBT YouthLink at CenterLink, which supports, strengthens, and connects LGBT centers. Deborah, thank you so much for joining me. DEBORAH: Thanks, Chad. I appreciate you inviting me. CHAD: So I was first introduced to you and to CenterLink through the Q Chat Space product. And that's still going, right? DEBORAH: Yeah. CHAD: But you're working on something new called imi. DEBORAH: Mm-hmm. We actually just launched imi on June 1st. CHAD: Congratulations on the launch. DEBORAH: Thank you. Yes, it went pretty smoothly. [laughs] CHAD: That's good. So, what is imi? DEBORAH: So imi is a free digital research-backed mental health tool. It was developed by Hopelab in partnership with CenterLink, and the It Gets Better Project, as well as hundreds of LGBTQ+ young people across the U.S. It's a little hard to describe, to be perfectly honest. It really is intended to support and help LGBTQ+ teens explore and affirm their identity and learn practical ways to cope with their sexual and gender minority stress. And we really hope that the tool is helpful, relevant, inclusive, and joyful. It is a web app, but it operates...it's not a lot of reading. It's listening, and doing, and thinking, and really giving youth an opportunity to explore and consider ways that they might help support themselves. CHAD: That's great. And I suppose it's even a compliment to your prior work at CenterLink and with Q Chat Space, which is an online support community. DEBORAH: Yes. CHAD: People can use both. DEBORAH: Exactly. We actually engaged in a partnership with Hopelab because we recognize that though youths were really excited about and engaged in the support groups that Q Chat Space provides, those are synchronous, and they happen once or twice a day. They last for an hour and a half, but that's all there is. So if you come to the website when a chat isn't happening, then there's not much to do. And we wanted to be able to provide youth with something else, and imi really fills that gap. CHAD: So when it comes to the product itself, how long was it in development for? DEBORAH: Great question. Of course, there was the pandemic, so there were some delays related to that. But it was about two and a half years from when Hopelab first approached CenterLink until the actual launch date. CHAD: That's a fairly significant amount of time. DEBORAH: It is for when you're working, I think if we were only tech firms, but both Hopelab and CenterLink are nonprofits. And the process included a lot of steps. So we actually had a prototype pretty early. But because we wanted to make sure that we did put something out into the world that actually had the impact we were seeking, we did a randomized controlled trial. We had 270 youth, half of them using a similar-looking website with just resources and the other half using imi. And we did that randomized controlled trial as well as a test of marketing. Those were both pieces that extended our timeline. And then ultimately, we also wanted to launch during Pride Month, so we timed it for that. CHAD: This idea of a randomized control trial is pretty incredible to me. A lot of product people wouldn't necessarily do that; maybe certain companies do. Why do you think you went in that direction? DEBORAH: So our goal is not to make money. And ultimately, if that was the goal, then we put something out, we see if people are using it and using it at the rate and the ways...I'm a social worker, so my business lingo is going to be limited. [chuckles] But that's the way to test it. And if youths use it but don't have any impact or potentially even harms them, which is not the case usually; it's just neutral, but if it doesn't have any impact, it's not worth our time. And so, a randomized controlled trial really allows us to see whether or not it's working and then to make changes if it's not. We're testing not only whether it works in terms of the impact but also whether or not youths were interested and wanted to use it. And those are important elements for us before we're going to go out with something. CHAD: That's great. That's what I was thinking you [chuckles] would probably say. In your work, correct me if I'm wrong, but your main demographic that you work with is youth. DEBORAH: Yes. CHAD: You alluded to this earlier, but how do you make sure that you're building products and things that they want to use? DEBORAH: For sure. So it's really about involving them in the process. Going back in time to Q Chat Space, the idea for Q Chat Space actually came from focus groups we did with youth. It wasn't an adult who thought this is a good thing to do for youth. We really went to them to see what it was about and then kept youth involved in the process. We had youth involved in the design process. We had youth involved in the conceptualization and design and continue to this day to have a Youth Advisory Board who participate in Q Chat Space chat and give us feedback. And when we want to change something, we look to them. And similarly, with imi but we have even more resources. We have, over time, including the randomized controlled trial, involved over 600 youth in the production and creation of imi. And really, the process was so deeply embedded with the youth that we used the language of co-creation and really make sure that youth are saying exactly what it is that they want and need and that they'll be willing to do. So we did qualitative research in 2019 with over 350 youth initially all across the United States, all the way to Anchorage, Alaska, and to Birmingham, Alabama, and a bunch of places in between. And of those interviewed, 61% identified as racial and ethnic minorities. We really did want to make sure that this reached those youth as well as trans and non-binary and gender-nonconforming youth. So we always oversampled or over-included those youth. And we also engaged with organizations that serve youth and know youth in a daily way, a lot of LGBT centers, and other organizations as well. And really, again, focused on organizations that are made by and are focused on QTBIPOC or queer and trans youth of color. CHAD: Over the time that you've been doing this work, has expectations around online interaction, what products are, how youth will use them, has that changed? Has it been evolving? DEBORAH: It certainly has been evolving. I mean, I think it's an interesting question. I'm not sure of the timeframe that you're asking. In terms of the work that I've done, I started doing digital health education in 2007. And I remember very well because the person who interviewed me and became my boss said, "You don't have to even know anything about technology. Don't worry; we'll figure that out." CHAD: [laughs] DEBORAH: They didn't expect, and to be honest, I say to people all the time that if somebody came to me now with a resume that I had in 2007 for one of the jobs that I did then, I would not have hired them. Things have changed dramatically. I mean, that's obviously 15 years we're talking about. Things have changed so very dramatically in the last 15 years. But even I would say thinking about Q Chat Space, because Q Chat Space launched as a pilot in 2018 and then launched nationally in the summer of 2019, and then the pandemic hit 7-8 months later. And the concept of a digital support group we had to explain that to people at Q Chat Space. And now, post-pandemic, we don't have to explain that anymore. And if anything, we have to differentiate ourselves in ways that we never had to. The irony of Q Chat Space, in particular, is that it was started both because youth identified the need but also our member centers, the LGBT centers, often had inquiries from youth who couldn't access them in person, and many of them started satellite programs, but still, you know, a 13-year-old you could live next door and not be able to get. There are other barriers besides location and distance. And so, at that point, centers really wanted to do something digitally, but they couldn't because they didn't have the resources. They didn't know how to do it, or they were concerned that it would start and then youth from all over the place would be contacting them. But in a matter of weeks, maybe months, once the pandemic set in and the kids were...just like school figured out how to do things, the LGBT centers did as well. And so now Q Chat Space is one of many virtual programs with many different mechanisms. But I think it's really shifted, and youth are more open to it. Not that they weren't before, they definitely were, but they know more. There are less questions about what's this? What's going on here? I think there's a broader definition of what a virtual experience can look like because youth have been participating in synchronous and asynchronous and in text-only and video, and it's just there are so many ways. In terms of imi in the last couple of years, all over the pandemic, but imi itself, I think, actually, the landscape for imi hasn't changed. But interestingly enough, Hopelab actually came to us with another product that they had already developed and they were hoping to use as the backend, which was a chatbot. They had created something called Vivibot, and it was helping young cancer survivors build resilience. And we know that resilience is an important quality for any person, but particularly: youth, it's important to develop it. And when someone's young, it's easier, not that it's easy. [laughter] And they thought that they would be able to use that technology, but ultimately the testing with young people really revealed that they didn't want a chatbot. If you check out imi, which is imi. guide, you can see that there are actually several chat experiences within that are the last remnants of that initial chatbot that we started with. But youth weren't interested in a chatbot, and I think that's one thing that's changed is that they have much higher expectations for automated communication. I formerly worked at Planned Parenthood. They have a great product called Roo, that's a chatbot. We talked about it before I left there. I wasn't there when it was started. But there are high expectations for what a chatbot can do. And I think there's also just an understanding, oh, this is a bot, and that's okay. Versus a few years ago, maybe people wanted to pretend that it was a real person. And now it's like, no, it's fine that's it's a bot. I understand, and it's okay that this kind of conversation can happen with a chatbot. So there are a few things that I think have changed, but I'm also not a trend person. [laughter] CHAD: No, that's okay. That's great. So when it comes to...we talked a little bit about the timeline and the process you went through to arrive and launch imi. With multiple parties all bringing things to the table, how do you tend to manage the products that you work on? DEBORAH: Sure. So Hopelab, really, I give almost all credit to Hopelab. I mean, I was really pleased to partner with them. And I definitely feel that CenterLink and It Gets Better bring a lot to the table. But ultimately, Hopelab did something I haven't seen happen very often, which is really helping nonprofits work together in a collaborative manner. It's a struggle. I think nonprofits are competing for funds and donors. And it's a little bit more difficult to collaborate. But Hopelab really led this process and took us all through it and made sure to really put youth at the center, which I think is the force that we all have to remember when we do have conflicts between nonprofits is that we're all in the same missions, and missions that match each other in terms of helping the community. Mid-Roll Ad: I wanted to tell you all about something I've been working on quietly for the past year or so, and that's AgencyU. AgencyU is a membership-based program where I work one-on-one with a small group of agency founders and leaders toward their business goals. We do one-on-one coaching sessions and also monthly group meetings. We start with goal setting, advice, and problem-solving based on my experiences over the last 18 years of running thoughtbot. As we progress as a group, we all get to know each other more. And many of the AgencyU members are now working on client projects together and even referring work to each other. Whether you're struggling to grow an agency, taking it to the next level and having growing pains, or a solo founder who just needs someone to talk to, in my 18 years of leading and growing thoughtbot, I've seen and learned from a lot of different situations, and I'd be happy to work with you. Learn more and sign up today at thoughtbot.com/agencyu. That's A-G-E-N-C-Y, the letter U. CHAD: Do you have people...when it comes to a project like this, are you hiring people? Is it a full-time team working on it? How does it tend to usually shape up? DEBORAH: No. [laughs] It doesn't shape up like that. At this point with imi, Hopelab really focused on what our current capacity was. They're continuing to support us in a lot of ways. And they do have a full team. But the product that they're handing over to me, me as a non-techie social worker, I can manage it. It's on Squarespace. There are a lot of integrations, but they have made sure that those are things that I can really manage. I mean, I'm not a non-techie, really. I'm underestimating myself. I'm under-selling myself. But ultimately, I am going to manage that with...I have a staff person who works full-time on Q Chat Space, not a technical person. They're really there to support facilitators and the youth as an administrator and manager, and that person will help me with promotion. But otherwise, imi is a tool that is out there and doesn't...I mean, we'll update it and make changes. But ultimately, it's not a team once it's launched. But the development, yes, it was about 14 people more or less throughout the last two years. CHAD: I think that that's great and really important. Software isn't cheap. It's not easy. And if you're put in a position where you're putting...I don't know the right word; burden comes to mind. Like, the burden of future work and maintenance and investment in an organization that maybe isn't set up to do that that could be a problem. DEBORAH: Right. Now talk to me in six months or a year, and I'll know more. [laughter] But that said, even with Q Chat Space, I, with hundreds of people, including folks at thoughtbot and other places, volunteers, and donors, and supporters, really made Q Chat Space a reality, but I was the lead on it. And again, I used, you know, off-the-shelf products, basically. And I have a developer for the website. But besides that developer, who is a part-time person, we manage. We figure things out ourselves. We get help from volunteers. We bring in a consultant here and there. But we try to keep the technology slim, trim, easy, user-friendly, whatever language we want to use. So that really serves the purpose of the youth. We don't need to be using anything fancy per se. CHAD: I could be misremembering, but I think when we were first talking, one of the first conversations we had this came up with Q Chat Space. Because if you look at what it does and the problem set, and particularly the market, I think there could be a tendency for someone looking at that especially, I'm a programmer, and so I want to solve problems by programming things. You could say, "We should really build something specific for this. DEBORAH: [laughs] CHAD: It's not that difficult. It's just a chat thing. There are lots of these things out there." And I'm right in terms of the actual core functionality. You could bang that out in a little while. But doing that would create a burden then to you have a custom piece of software that you need to constantly evolve, maintain, and those kinds of things. And so I think this was a discussion we had about what was out there in the ecosystem, what open source or other things you could pull together so that we weren't creating that burden. DEBORAH: Exactly. And interestingly, my developer has said to me many times, "I could just build something for you." [laughter] And I say, "No, like, I don't need that." And ultimately, we did end up going with an open-sourced product; it's Rocket.Chat. We picked Rocket.Chat. This was in 2017, I think. We looked at 30 different products. And there were that many products on the market already, and today, I think there'll be even more. But ultimately, we just took Rocket.Chat because it's highly customizable. For those of you who aren't familiar with Rocket.Chat, it's like Discord. It's actually the same code, from what I understand. It's sort of like Slack. But in the end, we were able to...because there's a lot of like, turn this on, turn this off, turn this on, turn this off, just a lot of different features, we were able to just make it into what we needed. We're using it in a way that very few people are using Rocket.Chat because we opened up a channel just for that hour and a half, and then it's gone. It's not an ongoing conversation. But Rocket.Chat has been a great supporter. They give us a fabulous nonprofit rate and really appreciate the unusual use case that we have for their product. CHAD: Yeah, that's great. I think one of the things that hopefully motivates a lot of people is having a positive impact on the world. This is Pride Month. You alluded to it already. And I think it's important that we celebrate Pride. I think you have a great organization that I hope people will get involved in and pay attention to even outside of Pride Month. How has it been for you? And sometimes, it's hard for me to judge are things better or worse in terms of really supporting LGBTQ+ youth today? DEBORAH: Both. [laughs] It's better, it's worse. There's no question to how far are we going to go back? But there's so much more media representation, and more schools have GSAs, and more people know someone who's LGBTQ. And I think it's different for lesbian, gay, and bisexual folks than it is for trans and non-binary and gender non-conforming folks. There's more acceptance of sexual orientation differences than there are gender differences. But I think culturally, that's changing, and as a result, there is currently quite a large...the word coming to me is flashback, but that's not the right word. Backlash, push back, exactly. And we are seeing alarming numbers of legislative efforts to particularly limit what transgender and gender nonconforming and non-binary youth can do and what their parents can do. And that is very alarming and certainly highly regressive. But I do think that it comes out of the fact that we have moved forward in so many ways. So for any young person who's listening or any of you who are listening, you can say this to the young people in your lives like, "You deserve to be yourself. You deserve to be able to be yourself and open. And you deserve a good and strong and mentally healthy life." And that message is really what imi certainly gives, a joyful life. It is about pride. We are proud to be LGBTQ. There's nothing to be ashamed of. And yet there are many forces in our culture and government who do make young people and adults feel shameful about it. So that's really what we're trying to counter. CHAD: And that's one of the great things I think about when it comes to online tools is because you could be in an environment where you're not supported, where you don't see that support or people like you, or it could be very isolating. And the ability to reach beyond your family boundaries and geographic boundaries and connect with people who can support you is really great. DEBORAH: It is. And to know ultimately, the tools are really designed to acknowledge that some young people have to keep it a secret or private. They're not ready to come out. Both websites have a quick exit, so a young person can click on that and go right to Google. imi also times out after 10 minutes. And it's an interesting thing because the folks who are regressive, going back to our last bit, those folks jump on that and say, "Look, they're keeping it a secret from their parents." And we're like, well, if the parents are going to be abusive, then yes, we're going to keep it a secret from their parents. But if the parents want to figure out how to be affirming, we are with them. We want to help them be affirming. So it really does allow youth...both tools really reach youth who may feel as if they have no one around them. And imi, in particular, provides community in a way youth don't even have to talk to anybody else. But they're going to hear the voices and see the faces of other young people dealing with similar things. imi is rich with those stories as well as other activities. And then on Q Chat Space, they can connect to a real other teenager who's dealing with similar things but maybe in a different state or a different country even. CHAD: I guess that's another...I think the conversation I was having was very U.S.-centric, too. And you think things are bad here; they're even worse in a lot of other places in terms of LGBTQ rights and support. DEBORAH: They are. CHAD: And I guess that's another benefit of online. It really crosses those boundaries too. DEBORAH: It does. And we have enabled that on Q Chat Space and imi. Both are accessible from anywhere in the world. We have heard from youths in 149 other countries, I believe [laughs] on Q Chat Space. CHAD: Wow. DEBORAH: And we just launched imi, so we don't have that data yet, but it is available. Unfortunately, right now, imi is only in English. Q Chat Space, we do have a weekly chat in Spanish. So we welcome any youth who prefer to chat in Spanish on Monday nights. But imi from now is just in English. But other than that, I mean, the reality of colonization is that a lot of youth speak English, even if it was not their first language. So we have had chatters from Korea, Vietnam, Australia, UK, and everywhere in between. CHAD: That's great. If folks want to get involved, where are the best places for them to do that? DEBORAH: Sure. So anybody who feels like they can help in any way, whether it's tech help, or with financial support, they can connect with us through the websites. And we will happily figure out ways to get engaged. In terms of your more traditional volunteer situation, I recommend folks go to the LGBT Center Directory that we have on CenterLink's website; CenterLink's website is lgbtcenters.org, and find your local LGBT center. They have many opportunities for volunteers as well as support and tech help. If you check out their website and you think it doesn't look so great, [laughter] offer help with their website. So there are a lot of ways to get involved in the LGBTQ community between these two products, as well as just the LGBT centers that the two products are really meant to serve. I didn't really mention that, but we have 300+ LGBT centers that are part of the CenterLink network that we work to support, strengthen, and connect. And imi really is a product that none of them would be able to develop on their own. And this way, they're all able to use it as if it was their own. That's one of the beauties that, of course, the greatest impact is for youth. But for our centers to be able to have that kind of resource available to them, we owe a huge thanks to Hopelab for doing that for CenterLink and all of our members. CHAD: We're going to include links in the show notes for all of the things that you just mentioned. DEBORAH: Awesome. CHAD: I really encourage people to if you want to reach out with your time and get involved, that's great. You can also, as Deborah said, go there and donate. If you can't donate your time, but you can donate some money, that'd be great. Deborah, thank you so much for stopping by and sharing with us. I really appreciate it, and I appreciate all the work you do. DEBORAH: Absolutely. It was a pleasure. Thanks so much. CHAD: You can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. And you can find me on Twitter at @cpytel. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks so much for listening, and see you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success. Special Guest: Deborah Levine.

The Local-Global Advantages of Government Contracts with Rick Lamb of Frank's Supply

Distribution Talk

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 1, 2022 41:04

Government contracts aren't for the faint of heart. Rick Lamb, marketing manager with Frank's Supply in Albuquerque, NM, understands the arduous truth of that statement better than most. Jason chats with Rick about the complexities inherent to General Services Administration (GSA) certification and why it might make sense for other suppliers to jump through those hoops. When Frank's found itself in a position to bid for its first government contract in 1996 for Los Alamos National Lab, Rick found himself in the thick of it. “We had never even attempted something like that,” he says, but two Frank's employees who knew just enough about GSAs to convince the company to put together a bid. Nine months later, Frank's phone rang. “It was Christmas Eve, 1996. We get a call from the head of purchasing at Los Alamos, and they go, ‘Be ready to start the contract April 1st.'” Frank's first scramble was on. While the bid timeline has shortened somewhat since the mid-90s, other aspects, like authentication and security clearance, have grown increasingly rigorous. Vendors must detail every level of the contract's implementation, from the level of support to chain of responsibility to security clearances and quality assurance programs, But is the GSA route profitable? CONNECT WITH JASON LinkedIn CONNECT WITH RICK LinkedIn Special thanks to our sponsor for this episode: INxSQL Distribution Software, integrated distribution ERP software designed for the wholesale and distribution industry. *** For full show notes and services visit: http://www.distributionteam.com Distribution Talk is produced by The Distribution Team, a consulting services firm dedicated to helping wholesale distribution clients remove barriers to profitability, generate wealth and achieve personal goals. This episode was edited & mixed by The Creative Impostor Studios.

government global local christmas eve lamb supply advantages albuquerque nm erp vendors gsa los alamos government contracts los alamos national laboratory general services administration gsa gsas creative impostor studios

Lila D'Antonio Medford High School GSA

Medford Bytes

Play Episode Listen Later May 30, 2022 24:51

Today's episode includes an interview with a member of the Medford High School's GSA. As stated on their website, https://medfordhighgsa.wordpress.com/about-2/ , the Medford High Gay-Straight Alliance is one of the largest GSAs in Massachusetts. We work throughout the high school to create a safer, more accepting environment for the LGBTQ+ community and for people of all identities. We often collaborate with other clubs, such as Amnesty International, to host well-known and well-loved events throughout the year. Thanks so much for listening today's episode and as always, if you have feedback about this episode or ideas for future episodes, you can email medfordpod@gmail.com. You can also subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on spotify and apple podcasts. Thanks so much for listening.

lgbtq massachusetts amnesty international gsa gsas medford high school

Recruitment, Retention, and Culture: Building from a Strong Foundation with Dick and Jordan Bader, Acme Construction Supply

Distribution Talk

Play Episode Listen Later May 25, 2022 32:12

Government contracts aren't for the faint of heart. Rick Lamb, marketing manager with Frank's Supply in Albuquerque, NM, understands the arduous truth of that statement better than most. Jason chats with Rick about the complexities inherent to General Services Administration (GSA) certification and why it might make sense for other suppliers to jump through those hoops. When Frank's found itself in a position to bid for its first government contract in 1996 for Los Alamos National Lab, Rick found himself in the thick of it. “We had never even attempted something like that,” he says, but two Frank's employees who knew just enough about GSAs to convince the company to put together a bid. Nine months later, Frank's phone rang. “It was Christmas Eve, 1996. We get a call from the head of purchasing at Los Alamos, and they go, ‘Be ready to start the contract April 1st.'” Frank's first scramble was on. While the bid timeline has shortened somewhat since the mid-90s, other aspects, like authentication and security clearance, have grown increasingly rigorous. Vendors must detail every level of the contract's implementation, from the level of support to chain of responsibility to security clearances and quality assurance programs, But is the GSA route profitable? CONNECT WITH JASON LinkedIn CONNECT WITH RICK LinkedIn Special thanks to our sponsor for this episode: Moblico, helping businesses do more business on mobile devices. *** For full show notes and services visit: http://www.distributionteam.com Distribution Talk is produced by The Distribution Team, a consulting services firm dedicated to helping wholesale distribution clients remove barriers to profitability, generate wealth and achieve personal goals. This episode was edited & mixed by The Creative Impostor Studios.

government christmas eve construction supply recruitment retention albuquerque nm vendors bader acme strong foundation gsa los alamos los alamos national laboratory culture building general services administration gsa gsas creative impostor studios

74. Advising a gay-straight alliance with James Potteiger

Teaching Tomorrow Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 24, 2022 51:37

How can Gay-Straight alliances support students and make schools more inclusive spaces for all? Today on the show I speak with GSA advisor and coach James Potteiger There is a lot happening in schools right now that put our LGBTQ students at risk. So I'm thrilled to get to share this conversation I had with James about his work with GSAs. James has been running at GSA at his school in Pennsylvania for the past two years and he shares the ways the alliance has improved his school for all students, the role that the GSA plays for young people in his school, and James' journey towards running the GSA––which is especially powerful to hear since he identifies as a straight, white, cis-gender man with an Evangelical background. I left this conversation feeling inspired, hopeful, and so deeply grateful for how people like James are making all of our schools better places. For the show notes, visit: https://cohort21.com/teachingtomorrow/2022/05/24/episode73/

lgbtq pennsylvania evangelical advising gsa gay straight alliance gay straight gsas

Graduate Student Mental Health Crisis

Profiles in LGBTQ+ Courage

Play Episode Listen Later May 12, 2022 26:44

Co-chaired by GSAS Dean Emma Dench, Harvard University's Task Force on Managing Student Mental Health reported in 2020 that nearly one in four graduate students surveyed exhibited symptoms of moderate to severe depression. Nearly one in four exhibited symptoms of moderate to severe generalized anxiety. Underrepresented minority students, first-generation students, low-income students, and students who identified as LGBTQ all were more likely to screen positive for these conditions. This month on Colloquy, we're taking a deep dive into the graduate student mental health crisis with Dr. Emily Bernstein, PhD '20, a clinical psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital's Center for Digital Mental Health. In 2018 while working toward her doctorate, Dr. Bernstein and her cohorts piloted a successful group intervention for GSAS students that's still offered today. Since then, she and her colleagues have published research on ways to address the increasing need for mental health services. She talks about that work, the challenges faced by graduate students, and why she thinks our smartphones could become an important vehicle for delivering mental health care.

Interview with Alex Hagler | Ep #25

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 22, 2022 37:33

Alex Hagler is a Latin and history teacher at a prestigious private school outside Boston. They're also the recent co-founder of their school's first Gay Straight Alliance. GSA's (also known as Genders & Sexualities Alliances) operate in many school systems across the country today. As clubs, they're intended to serve as safe spaces for LGBTQ+ youth in middle schools and high schools. Increasingly, however, they're also serving as catalysts for social, racial, and gender justice. In this interview, conducted just after they founded their school's GSA Chapter, Alex talks with PFLAG Cape Cod's Rick Koonce about the valuable role GSAs can play in schools today. Not just as safe places for young people to be affirmed in their sexual orientation and gender identity, but also as resources for educating entire communities about human sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender diversity. Please click the button to subscribe so you don't miss any episodes and leave a review if your favorite podcast app has that ability. Thank you! For more information, visit the PFLAG Cape Cod website: https://www.pflagcapecod.org/podcasts.html © 2022 PFLAG Cape Cod

lgbtq latin gsa hagler gay straight alliance gsas

Russia, Ukraine, and Avoiding WWIII

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 11, 2022 26:40

Today on Colloquy, we bring you a recent conversation with two of the country's leading experts on eastern Europe and national security. Dr. Fiona Hill is a senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. She recently served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council from 2017 to 2019. From 2006 to 2009, she served as national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at The National Intelligence Council. She is author of the 2021 book, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century and co-author of Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin. She received her PhD from GSAS in 1998.Engaging Dr. Hill in discussion is Graham Allison, the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard University. Allison is a leading analyst of national security with special interests in nuclear weapons, Russia, China, and decision-making. As Assistant Secretary of Defense in the first Clinton Administration, Professor Allison received the Defense Department's highest civilian award, the Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, for "reshaping relations with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to reduce the former Soviet nuclear arsenal." He received his PhD from GSAS in 1968.Next on Colloquy: Russia, Ukraine, and avoiding WWIII.

united states europe china phd war russia european ukraine government russian defense harvard university nato cold war soviet eastern europe belarus diplomacy foreign policy russia ukraine national security kremlin kazakhstan brookings institution wwiii authoritarianism nuclear weapons national security council eurasia defense department clinton administration fiona hill national intelligence council graham allison colloquy gsas distinguished public service defense medal you here finding opportunity

The Black Agenda

united states black phd racism artificial intelligence climate change social justice black history inequality criminal justice racial justice intersectionality incarceration black agenda gsas

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 14, 2022 23:48

The Black Agenda is a new collection of essays that centers the voices of Black experts—particularly women. Whether the issue is climate change, public health, economic inequality, or education, the contributors to The Black Agenda see social and racial justice as integral—not supplemental—to solutions. Along the way, the book interrogates our assumptions about the ways we live and work together in the United States, as well as our notions of where to look for answers. Join us as we discuss The Black Agenda with editor Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, an author, entrepreneur, researcher, and PhD student at GSAS.

Stephanie Martin

Canada Out of the Closet

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 24, 2021 43:10

Travis's good friend Stephanie Martin joins him and John today to share her own coming out story. An educator from Medicine Hat, Alberta, Stephanie opens up about not being confronted with her identity until later in life, where she fits on the LGBTQ+ spectrum, and the importance of GSAs in our schools.

lgbtq medicine hat stephanie martin gsas

Who's Afraid of Inflation?

university pandemic michigan recovery afraid economics council labor inflation infrastructure prices supply chains unemployment deficit obama administration stagflation economic advisers betsey stevenson gsas

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 27, 2021 32:45

What's behind the price hikes on cars, food, fuel, and many other items? Is there too much money in the economy? Is it a supply chain problem? And is this a bump on the road to recovery from the economic shocks of the pandemic or a long-term trend? We ask GSAS alumna Betsey Stevenson, professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan and a member of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama Administration, how worried consumers should be about inflation.

The Incredible Shrinking Vaccine Efficacy

covid-19 pandemic professor medicine harvard vaccines incredible public health stanford university shrinking efficacy bioscience pfizer vaccine moderna vaccine vaccine efficacy gsas michael lin

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 1, 2021 29:59

COVID-19 infections are surging again in the U.S., despite the availability of vaccines that are both safe and effective. In the inaugural episode of the GSAS Colloquy podcast, alumnus Michael Lin, a microbiologist and Professor at Stanford University talks about vaccination mandates as a path out of the pandemic, but also about the decline in vaccine efficacy over time. He advocates booster shots for adults over the age of 16, as well as continued public health measures like masking indoors. Lin also speaks about ongoing work at his lab to develop a new treatment for COVID-19 that targets the virus on the molecular level.

Egypt's LEED Fellow & Edge Auditor Karim Farah

The Green Building Matters Podcast with Charlie Cichetti

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 16, 2021 36:11

LEED Fellow, experienced Sustainability Manager with a demonstrated history of working in the design industry. Skilled in Sustainability, Sustainable Architecture, Environmental Awareness, Sustainable Design, and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). Strong community and social services professional with a Bachelor's of Urban Planning focused in the Faculty of Engineering - Ain Shams University. Collège de la Sainte Famille. Show Highlights The DAR group's conglomerate of many companies to promote an international experience. Being the first, LEED AP in Asia. Difficulties and techniques to build a green building in Egypt. The need for various rating systems applied on projects in Egypt (Qatar, QSAS, GSAS and EDGE). EDGE provides Egypt with something that is easier and simpler to apply to complex builds. Avoid pricing LEED out of the projects with poor consulting advice Karim shares difficulties working in a large firm with his unique career experience. Changing the level of awareness of green and healthy building in Egypt “If you want to be good at something, really know it! Don't pretend that you know about it, but get to know it so that when you are tested, you can show your methods. Don't pretend, don't move to trends because the trends change. Follow your passion. Really follow your passion and get a lot of knowledge about it - more than anybody else, and become the person to go to. Then you will not be afraid to give your knowledge to other people because you will be moving forward.” -Karim Farah Karim Farah Transcript Karim Farah's Show Resource and Information Out of the Middle East LinkedIn Connect with Charlie Cichetti and GBES Charlie on LinkedIn Green Building Educational Services GBES on Twitter Connect on LinkedIn Like on Facebook Google+ GBES Pinterest Pins GBES on Instagram GBES is excited our membership community is growing. Consider joining our membership community as members are given access to some of the guests on the podcasts that you can ask project questions. If you are preparing for an exam, there will be more assurance that you will pass your next exam, you will be given cliff notes if you are a member, and so much more. Go to www.gbes.com/join to learn more about the 4 different levels of access to this one-of-a-kind career-advancing green building community! If you truly enjoyed the show, don't forget to leave a positive rating and review on iTunes. We have prepared more episodes for the upcoming weeks, so come by again next week! Thank you for tuning in to the Green Building Matters Podcast! Copyright © 2021 GBES

LGBTQ+ Youth Allies

For the Sake of the Child

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 4, 2021 33:06

In this episode, MCEC MSC Sue Lopez talks with Sadie a college student who has been brought up in a military family about practical ways that military-connected parents, extended families, teachers, school counselors and peers can become effective allies for the LGBTQ+ loved-ones in their lives. This podcast has been brought to you thanks to the Air Force Officers’ Spouses’ Club of Washington, DC. Gay Straight Alliance https://gsanetwork.org/ Gay Straight Alliance supports LGBTQ+ youth organizers across the country to take action and create change at all levels, from school-based campaigns that impact individual school districts to national days of action that unite GSAs for racial and gender justice. GSA organizing is making schools safer, changing communities, and building power for the next generation of LGBTQ+ youth. Trevor Project- https://www.thetrevorproject.org/ The Trevor Project is the leading national organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer & questioning youth. Brene Brown— https://brenebrown.com/ Ted Talks https://www.ted.com/talks Join us again next week to hear from Sadie’s mom Brooke.

washington dc lgbtq ted talks allies brene brown trevor project gsa lgbtq youth gay straight alliance gsas

Zero Degree Murder

My Spooky Gay Family

Play Episode Listen Later May 20, 2021 91:52

Hey kids! This week is a heavy topic, but a surprisingly light conversation. We're delving back into the world of true crime with a local (to us) murder from the 70s- The John List murders. Be forewarned that, while we try to keep this conversation as fun and bubbly as you're used to, this does discuss a very brutal NJ crime and some listeners may find it disturbing. Otherwise, enjoy a conversation about tooth whitening, GSAs in the early 2000s, what the hell Taylor Ham is, Pissi's version of heaven, and why that heaven involves zapping John List every morning.

john list degree murder taylor ham gsas

Chris Bruno, FCRH '06, GSAS '07

Fordham Footsteps

Play Episode Listen Later May 17, 2021 31:45

Chris Bruno, FCRH '06, GSAS '07, was a history major who now serves as the Director of Economic Development for the City of Fairfax, Virginia. How did he get there? Tune in as Chris discusses this journey and his time in the NYC mayor's office, in law school, and with Michael Bloomberg's presidential campaign.

director new york city economic development michael bloomberg fairfax chris bruno gsas

growing up queer

Adirondack Queer

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 6, 2021 37:10

colby discusses growing up queer in the adirondacks, gender free parenting, never “coming out,” and GSAs. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

growing up queer gsas

PART 6: Transgender Ideology and Your Public Schools, GLSEN and GSA Clubs welcome your child.

Parents' Rights Now!

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 23, 2020 19:51

GSA Clubs - Gender Sexuality Alliance ClubsChampioning issues in K-12 education since 1990, the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN) seeks to make LGBTQ persons a protected class enumerating specific "rights" schools must secure for students and teachers. GLSEN is the force behind the Day of Silence.Formerly Gay Straight Alliance, Gender Sexuality Alliance (GSA) clubs are promoted in middle and high schools. “GSAs for short, are student-run organizations that unite LGBTQ+ and allied youth to build community and organize around issues impacting them in their schools and communities. GSAs have evolved beyond their traditional role to serve as “safe spaces” for LGBTQ+ youth in middle schools and high schools, and have emerged as vehicles for deep social change related to racial, gender, and educational justice.Using school climate-surveys, they make the case that GSAs provide essential support for transgender students while enlisting other students as allies, and sponsoring school-wide LGBTQ educational activities. However, GSA support for LGBTQ students is agenda-driven, putting LGBTQ identity front and center and limiting parents' involvement. Schools generally cannot require parental permission before joining a club. Support the show (https://www.parentsrightsined.com/support-the-cause.html)

child lgbtq silence schools transgender clubs public school ideology gsa glsen gsas

The Solutions Podcast — Protecting queer kids

Calgary Journal Podcasts

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 30, 2019 22:31

Our team this week — Hadeel Abdel-Nabi, Qassim Merali, Michaela Neuman and Isaiah Lindo — look at the problem of protecting queer kids at school why we may have eliminated the best vehicle to do that in Alberta.

kids protecting queer gsas

Kylie M. Brown & Leigh Honigman of “Of the Woman Came the Beginning of Sin and Through Her We All Die”

elections united conservative party gay straight alliance gsas

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 23, 2019 16:18

Listen in as GSAS! correspondent Alex Randrup meets with Of the Woman Came the Beginning of Sin and Through Her We All Die director Kylie M. Brown, along with producer Leigh Honigman, to discuss basement cults, Biblical inspiration & imagery, … Continue reading →

woman sin biblical gsas alex randrup

episode 16.0 | The Plight of Alberta's GSAs

Pride Social

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 13, 2019 71:59

This week on the podcast, #TheSquad™ takes a deep dive into recent legislation concerning Gay/Straight Alliances (GSAs) in Alberta schools. There are some that believe parents should have the right to know whether their children are in such a group, whereas others want to protect their anonymity as it is their personal right to freedom and privacy to express who they are. As it has been as it has been a hot button issue in Alberta for a few years, opinions (like always) are polarized.

plight thesquad gsas

Carbon Tax Ruling, GSA Walkouts, and Hike for Hospice

Calgary Today

Play Episode Listen Later May 3, 2019 24:33

PROVINCIAL vs. FEDERAL CARBON TAX A Saskatchewan provincial court just ruled the federal carbon tax constitutional. We'll chat about provincial vs. federal carbon tax and which benefits Alberta more. GSA WALKOUTS Thousands of students walked out across Alberta in protest to the UCPs policy on GSAs. HIKE FOR HOSPICE Hike for Hospice is this Sunday and we'll chat with Stampeders Alum Rob Cote about how the Stamps are helping raise money.

calgary hike ruling hospice stamps provincial carbon tax walkouts yyc gsas

Episode 32: GSAs, GSAs, GSAs. Week 2 of Alberta’s Election.

The Daveberta Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 1, 2019 81:42

Alberta's provincial election is 16 days away and for the duration of the campaign, we are going to be recording a new episode of the Daveberta Podcast each week. In this episode Dave and Ryan talk about the United Conservative Party reopening the Gay-Straight Alliance debate, the transphobic comments that led to the departure of […]

That’s a Thing?! Live: The Internet is my GSA

That's a Thing?!

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 31, 2019 56:39

Recorded live at the SkirtsAfire Festival, Elizabeth explains how she has felt more comfortable exploring her queerness online rather than in person (though we’re happy those in-real-life places exist). Then we discuss such issues with our eloquent guests.

internet lgbtq queer representation gsas

God, Gays & GSAs

Sprawlcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 31, 2019 40:54

UCP leader Jason Kenney set off a culture war in the middle of an election campaign. He also says his views on LGBTQ2+ rights have changed. So what does real change look like? Taylor Lambert interviews Laurie Moore, who squared off against Kenney when they were both students at the University of San Francisco. In Part 2, Jeremy interviews activist Pam Rocker, who works to build affirming faith communities in Calgary.

university san francisco calgary gays kenney ucp jason kenney lgbtq2 gsas laurie moore pam rocker

Alberta Teachers Association respond to UCP platform

Afternoons with Rob Breakenridge

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 26, 2019 11:33

Alberta Teachers Association president Greg Jeffrey joins Rob to discuss the issues the Association has with class sizes, standardized testing, GSAs and charter schools for the next Alberta government.

teachers platform respond gsas

GSAs, Child Care, Canola Farmers, and Mochas with Mounties

Calgary Today

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 26, 2019 41:47

GSAs We'll be talking about GSAs, what they are, and who they serve with Director of Affirming Choices, Pam Rocker. CHILDCARE: 6 QUESTIONS FOR THE NDP With the announcement of $25 a day daycare, the Alberta Association of Childcare Operators has six questions about the plan. CANOLA PRODUCERS A growing numb er of farmers are speaking out about the financial impact of the Chinese ban on canola. MOCHAS WITH MOUNTIES The RCMP is inviting the public to have "Mochas with Mounties" in Airdrie.

director chinese farmers calgary childcare canola mounties airdrie yyc mochas gsas alberta association pam rocker

GSAs are a bi-partisan issue

Calgary Today

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 26, 2019 14:06

Pam Rocker, director of Affirming Connections in Calgary, joins Joe to discuss the many issues surrounding GSAs and the threat of the UCP rolling back GSA legislation.

calgary partisan gsa ucp gsas pam rocker

Nicola Korzenko, Cesar J. Rosado, Sheila Vand, Maggie Bofill, Brian Miskell, Knud Adams, Claire Siebers, & Anand Wilder of “Nylon”

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 19, 2019 22:05

Listen in as Nylon director Knud Adams, along with producer Nicola Korzenko, composer Anand Wilder, and cast members Maggie Bofill, Brian Miskell, Cesar J. Rosado, Claire Siebers, & Sheila Vand, speak with GSAS! correspondent Alex Randrup to discuss how best … Continue reading →

adams nylon rosado knud bofill sheila vand gsas anand wilder alex randrup

Episode 52: Bryan Brazeau GSAS '15 PhD Italian Studies, Faculty member w/ cohost Chase Lau (RA in Second Street)

Where R.A. Now?

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 6, 2019 29:07

Dr. Bryan Brazeau is a Senior Teaching Fellow in Liberal Arts at the University of Warwick (UK). He began at NYU as a graduate student in Italian Studies working with residential life (first on the Graduate Programming Initiative, and then as an RA in Stuy Town from 2009-2012). He obtained his Ph.D. in Italian Studies from NYU in 2015 and his MA in the same field from NYU in 2010. Prior to his arrival at NYU, Bryan obtained a BA in Western Society and Culture from Concordia University’s Liberal Arts College in Montréal in 2008. Bryan is currently editing a volume of essays on new perspectives in the study of early modern poetics, Beyond Aristotle's Poetics: New Directions in Early Modern Italian Literary Criticism—which emerges from a conference and graduate workshop that he organized at the Newberry Library in March 2017. As Senior Teaching Fellow in Liberal Arts at Warwick, Bryan teaches interdisciplinary courses such as Science, Society, and the Media; Underworlds; Paradises; and Sustaining the Serenissima: Venice and Sustainability (which includes a week at Warwick’s campus in Venice). As Study Abroad co-ordinator for the department, he also maintains and oversees exchange partnerships with international institutions in the Netherlands, Germany, and Canada. At Warwick, he has co-created programs such as the Early Career Convivium, and maintains the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance Podcast. Prior to his current role, Bryan served as Research Fellow at Warwick on a project funded by the European Research Council titled “Aristotle in the Vernacular,” with project teams at Warwick and at Ca’ Foscari in Venice. As part of his work on the project, he worked on the reception of Aristotle’s Poetics in early modern Italy, carried out the legacy migration of the Aristotle in the Vernacular Database and collaborated on an exhibition of early modern Aristotelian texts Aristotele e Venezia at the Museo Correr and Marciana Library in Venice. During this time, he also taught graduate-level seminar courses: Latin for Researchers; Early Modern Palaeography; and lectured on undergraduate courses such as Defining France; and The Epic Tradition. As part of this teaching, he helped organise field trips to the Bodleian Library (Oxford), and the British Library (London). Bryan has published several articles and book reviews in journals including MLN, Renaissance and Reformation, The Italianist, California Italian Studies, and History of European Ideas. His essays have appeared in collections such as Dante and Heterodoxy, ed. Maria Luisa Ardizzone (2014), and MLA Approaches to Teaching the Italian Renaissance Romance Epic (2018). He is also working on his first book, Hero of the Day: The Development of Christian Epic in Sixteenth-Century Italy.

4.2 Pothole Politics

Veritalk

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 31, 2019 17:32

Potholes are an everyday annoyance for commuters, but they're a really complex problem for cities to solve. Many cities, including Boston, have 311 apps that allow citizens to report potholes in their own neighborhoods. But Elijah de la Campa is curious to know whether those apps are actually improving citizen participation in local government. Full Transcript The Veritalk Team: Host/Producer: Anna Fisher-Pinkert Executive Producer: Ann Hall Sound Designer: Ian Coss Logo Designer: Emily Crowell Special Thanks: Graham Ball, Elijah de la Campa, the Government Performance Lab at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the What Works Cities Initiative funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Episode 36: Jamia Wilson '09 GSAS, Exec Director and Publisher Feminist Press w/ RA Ishani Synghal

Where R.A. Now?

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 16, 2018 34:20

Jamia A. Wilson M.A. '09 GSAS served as the ACDE (Asst Community Development Educator) at University Hall while attending the graduate program at GSAS. She currently serves as the Executive Director and Publisher of the Feminist Press at City University of New York. Having formerly served as Executive Director of Women, Action, and the Media, as a TED Prize Storyteller, and as Vice President of Programs at The Women’s Media Center, Wilson has been a powerful force at the intersection of social justice movements and media for nearly a decade. As a leading voice on feminist and women’s rights issues, Wilson has had her work featured in such outlets as The New York Times, New York magazine, The Today Show, and The Washington Post. She is also a staff writer for Rookie and has contributed to several books, including Madonna and Me: Women Writers on the Queen of Pop (2012) and I Still Believe Anita Hill (2013). Wilson is the author of the children’s book Young, Gifted, and Black (2018), and she wrote the oral history in Together We Rise: Behind the Scenes at the Protest Heard Around the World (2018). She co-authored Road Map for Revolutionaries: Resistance, Advocacy, and Activism for All (2018). Her next children’s title, Step into Your Power, will be released in spring 2019. Wilson has spoken alongside prominent feminist figures such as Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda. She has traveled globally to speak on race, feminism, and leadership, from the stages of TED Women and Netroots Nation to the Facing Race conference and numerous college campuses. Wilson serves as a board member for Hollaback!, Groundswell Fund, Omega Institute, and Feminist.com, and she is also affiliated with #FemFuture, SPARK Movement, and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. Jamia is an NYU ‘legacy’ as her grandfather graduated from NYU as well. And she is most proud of her recent selection as the recipient of the 2018 NYU GSAS Alumni Achievement Award Recipient.

women new york black world media action young new york times executive director vice president pop washington post programs rookies advocacy activism roadmap publishers nyu feminists scenes today show gifted city university jane fonda gloria steinem omega institute exec director alpha kappa alpha sorority your power media centers hollaback tedwomen feminist press jamia netroots nation ishani gsas jamia wilson university hall facing race groundswell fund together we rise behind protest heard around

James Rutherford, Feathers Wise, & Laura Butler Rivera of “Salome”

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 22, 2018 20:00

Listen in as Salome director James Rutherford (who also translated Oscar Wilde’s script from the French) and actors Feathers Wise & Laura Butler Rivera, with GSAS! correspondent Alex Randrup, discuss dark rituals, queerness & desire, what is seen and what is … Continue reading →

french wise rivera oscar wilde feathers rutherford gsas laura butler alex randrup

Jake Lipman & Jessica Ammirati of “Relentlessly Pleasant”

PLuGHiTz Live Special Events (Audio)

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 19, 2018 29:50

GSAS! podcast correspondent Tara Gadomski attended the first performance of Tongue in Cheek Theater Productions‘ world premiere Relentlessly Pleasant, and hosted an interview/talkback with the audience, featuring writer/director Jake Lipman and dramaturg Jessica Ammirati. Listen in as they discuss “what it’s like to … Continue reading →

pleasant lipman gsas ammirati tara gadomski

Interfaith, Creative Writing, and Magic with Alex Sullivan

T.H.E. Celebration

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 1, 2018 45:09

Poet and editor Alex Sullivan is studying the ways religion and and culture interact, with a focus on postcolonial and diaspora studies. So it was no surprise when our conversation this week went into the areas of interfaith work, and big vocabulary words like intersectionality. This is also Alex’s birthday week so we couldn’t resist talking about cool magic spells, and some really terrifying things like reading poetry OUT LOUD. Alex has her BA in both Religious Studies and Social Science, and is currently doing her Masters at NYU’s Center for Experimental Humanities. She edits for GSAS literary journal Caustic Frolic and believes there’s beauty in everything and she is always looking for it. Check out this week’s beauty-full episode.

The Perfect Combination of Social Media and Social Action

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 9, 2018 19:24

We were thrilled to see one of our favorite start-ups from Collision 2017 back again this year. It was great to catch up with Ultimatum Inc and learn about their progression. Since we last spoke, they have been working on their fascinating crowd funding platform for 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations and have gotten their beta version up and running. This year we got a chance to speak with the CEO, Matthew McCabe. For those who had not yet heard of them, he explained that Ultimatum is a web platform that allows you to take action on social and political issues using event based donations to nonprofits. There are any number of issues that many of us have very strong feelings about. Using their platform is an excellent way to not only donate to the causes that we find important, but also make more than just a monetary impact. You can also help to raise social awareness in the process. Individuals and companies alike can set up donation campaigns on Ultimatum. Instead of donating one lump sum to a particular cause, extra awareness is brought by setting it up so that small amounts get donated every time a specific hashtag is used. For example, one recent and special campaign was set up to donate a dime to The Dru Project, a non-profit that supports LGBTQ high school GSAs and college scholarships, every time somebody used #thedruproject. The campaign went viral after IGN Tweeted about the campaign. According to Keyhole, the campaign resulted in 5,000 posts, engaged 3,000 people, and had 17 million impressions on Twitter. So even more important that the donation was the increase in awareness that was created as a result of the campaign. This platform is also perfect for generating brand recognition and can be used in so many creative ways. After watching the complete interview, head over to their website for more information and find out how to start your own campaign. Sponsored by: Amazon Prime gives you more than just free shipping. Get free music, TV shows, movies, videogames and more. Enjoy your favorite books while you work or travel. Get a free book and a 30 day trial with promo code Try70.

tv ceo social media lgbtq amazon prime individuals collisions ultimatum combination social action keyhole gsas

Queering the Classroom - GSAs with Rebby and Parker

Queering the Classroom

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 3, 2018 15:48

On this episode of "Queering the Classroom," we speak with Rebby and Parker from Time Out Youth in Charlotte, North Carolina about the importance of GSAs and the impact they can have on a school community. To learn more about Time Out Youth, visit http://www.timeoutyouth.org and follow them on Instagram @timeoutyouthcenter. [Music c/o purpleplanet.com]

music school north carolina lgbt queer classroom lgbtqia outreach gsa queering gsas time out youth

Queering the Classroom: What IS a GSA?

Queering the Classroom

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 27, 2018 3:09

Today's episode is a brief foray into the world of GSAs in order to prepare us for next week's episode in which we will be hearing from Rebby and Parker of Time Out Youth (timeoutyouth.org) about the role of GSAs in schools. That interview -- which was originally scheduled to drop today -- will be available next Friday, August 3rd. Sorry for the inconvenience!

school education lgbt advocacy classroom lgbtqia gsa queering gsas time out youth

Queering the Classroom: Episode Three

Queering the Classroom

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 20, 2018 23:14

On this week's episode, Miss F reads YOUR school-age coming out stories! Thank you to Grace, Lilith, Ravin, and Oliver for writing to us at queerclassroom@gmail.com. Tune in next week for an interview with Rebby and Parker of Time Out Youth Charlotte for a discussion on the importance of GSAs in our secondary schools! [Music c/o purpleplanet.com]

music school students classroom queering ravin gsas

Episode 3

Pridecast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 24, 2018 31:59

Episode 3 Notes Pridecast Episode 3 Content Warning - there is a brief mention and discussion of suicide from 7:00 - 8:00. Feel free to skip that time period or the entire episode. Please take care of yourself! On Episode 3 of Pridecast Zoey and Gen chat about high school GSAs, IB and AP classes, physics fun, and some really exciting news - we’re on iTunes and Google Play now! Go subscribe! iTunes - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pridecast/id1400007374?mt=2 Google Play - https://play.google.com/music/m/Iznhqzr74z2jb3sim6ityq6ozam?t=Pridecast Edited by Gen Lantto Theme song and Pridecast logo by EmiLeigh! Recorded June 20th, 2018. Follow us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/RT_LGBT Join the RT LGBT+ Discord - https://discord.gg/3aRfyXM Zoey's Twitter - https://twitter.com/TheQuestCrafter Gen's Twitter - https://twitter.com/GenLantto

google play ib pridecast gsas

GSAs $50B IT services contract on hold

Federal Drive with Tom Temin

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 1, 2017 8:34

Across the government, the number of bid and contract award protests dropped last year. But that doesn't mean agencies with the must have contracts are finding easy going. A case in point: The General Services Administration. Its next and large IT services contract is on hold because of protests. Executive Editor Jason Miller is following the story and shares the details on Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

services contract jason miller gsa it services general services administration gsas federal drive tom temin executive editor jason miller

Category management helped agencies save $500 million on mobile devices, services

Federal Drive with Tom Temin

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 2, 2017 9:43

Jon Johnson, the director of GSAs enterprise mobility program, said the MSCT now is looking at total cost of ownership for mobile devices and services.

services helped agencies jason miller gsa mobile devices category management jon johnson gsas msct federal drive tom temin

Front End Chatter #60

Front End Chatter

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 9, 2017 60:25

Welcome to Front End Chatter E60, sponsored as always by our good friends at www.bikesocial.co.uk and backed by Bennetts, the bike insurance boys and girls. And what a scandal-laden FEC we have this week: • despite a truncated MotoGP/racing section we still manage to disrespeculate on Lorenzo’s future at Ducati and compare his debut season so far to Rossi’s disaster in 2011... • get into the financial fall-out from the shambles formally known as the Circuit Of Wales... • details of the new Ducati V4 replacement for the Panigale, after the Final Edition – which, it turns out, might not be so final after all, and will be available from September this year and will cost £35,000... • ...and why the V-twin is the most versatile engine layout ever built • BMW’s service campaign to check all R1200GSs and GSAs built between late 2013 to date, to make sure the forks aren’t about to fall off – and why we should or shouldn’t be alarmed by it • and how Honda’s blighted 2017 FireBlade, both base and SP versions, stands up at a Mallory Park track day – a Bennetts Mallory Park track day, no less – against Suzuki’s new GSX-R1000R All this takes so long we don’t get time to read any emails at all, so apologies – but at least it means we’ll have a another non-racing FEC in a few weeks’ time! Thanks again for listening, and please email us at anything@frontendchatter.com with questions and comments, or get us on the Twitter: @SimonHBikes & @Mufga

bmw honda chatter rossi suzuki motogp frontend ducati fec final edition bennetts gsas panigale

Refine Your Partner Focus

The Partner Channel Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 17, 2017 29:13

Joe Schramm, Vice President of Strategic Alliances at BeyondTrust, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss refining your focus on specific partners, channel growing pains, understanding the win for your partner and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast. Jen: Hi, everybody, welcome to The Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer, Vice President of Sales and Marketing here at Allbound. And today, I'm joined by Joe Schramm who is Vice President of Strategic Alliances at BeyondTrust. Welcome, Joe. Joe: Thanks, Jen. Good to be here. Jen: I'm glad to have you. I think the best way for us to get started first of all is maybe if you can tell us a little bit about BeyondTrust and your organization. Joe: Sure, sure. So BeyondTrust is in a segment of cyber security focused on privilege access management. We're also in another segment called vulnerability management. Both segments are pretty well defined in the cyber security landscape, but I would say that privilege access management is probably growing at a higher rate, and that's where we're seeing, a lot of our new product growth, net new logo acquisitions, and so forth. So we're very much focused in the cyber security domain, and it's a very hot market. It's something that we're doing really well in and are very happy to be participating in. Jen: You have a history of working in business development, strategic alliance roles at very high-tech companies in security. And, I don't know if you have a byte of information or a hard and fast rule, something that you've really taken with you as you've gone from one organization to another to really help grow your channel program at BeyondTrust. How do you help it really run smoothly? Joe: Yeah, that's a great question. So I think probably my favorite hard rule that I like to live by I learned some time ago now...this goes back several years and a few different organizations ago. But really, my favorite thing to think about and to focus on is what I call “partner profiling”. So a lot of organizations, when they start to build their partner program, they tend to gravitate towards easy wins, meaning if a partner came to you and said, "Hey, I'm interested in working with you," you'd rush to sign them up without really stepping back and understanding, "Are they the right partner for us, right, based on the type of company we are and the products we sell and how we sell them?" So partner profiling, for me, is one of those almost religious experiences where I sit down and set out to really define the top three or so attributes and partners that we want to proactively engage and recruit and bring into our partner program. And it's easy to get this wrong, right? A lot of organizations, like I said, will gravitate towards easy picking, sign up lots of partners without stepping back and understanding, "Are those partners really aligned to your market? Are they in business for a sustained period of time?" To me, that's an important attribute is length in the market. If an organization has been around 10, 20, 30 years, it's a very good leading indicator that they've got a big customer base and that they've had to reinvent themselves along the way a couple of times, and pivot as technology changes and continue to sustain and grow their business. That's an important attribute. And then certainly, things like a good go-to market capability, so having sales people, having pre-sales people, having perhaps delivery capability or at least very good technical competence within your domain. So profiling and identifying what those key criteria are is really, really important. And then making sure that as you engage and as you seek out partners that the ones you're engaging with proactively, even the ones that you're reacting to based on inbound interest, you're qualifying them against those criteria pretty firmly to ensure that your chances of success, once they're up and running, is going to be a lot higher. Jen: I think that's such great advice, and it should really resonate with a lot of folks who are focused on this account-based movement right now that's happening on the direct part of business because that's what we do, right? That's what we do with an account-based strategy is we identify who's a good target for us looking at those profiles. And, I know it can be challenging when you're building a partner program and you've got that inbound interest in joining your program. It almost like reminds me of if you've got someone volunteering their services, right, they are volunteering to sell for you or sell on your behalf, and you've got to say no to them sometimes. So it could be really hard to do, for sure. Joe: Yeah. It takes some practice, for sure. Jen: Yeah. Now, you have launched several key initiatives really to grow the channel at BeyondTrust. Can you share a little bit about the areas that you focused on so far in the organization? Joe: Sure. I'll touch on maybe a top three that I would want to share here in the context of this discussion. So the first one is that we decided to embark on a global distribution strategy for our company. If you look at the way we were organized from a distribution perspective, it was very localized, so specific countries. For example, in the U.S., we had a distributor. In Canada, we had a different distributor. Throughout Europe, we had many different distributors, throughout Asia Pacific, many different distributors. And what we found was that there was a lot of inefficiencies, a lot of inconsistencies with that model. Furthermore, we found that not all those distributors were doing much more for us than facilitating transactions, which is important, right? You need to have an ability to transact business. You need access to different kinds of resellers that distributors oftentimes have access to. And you obviously need access to certain kinds of procurement vehicles, which again, distributors often have access to either directly or through their network of resellers, so state and local contracts, for example, GSAs, too, and the federal site to name a couple. So it's really important that you have some measure of a strategy there. But what we did was we set about to consolidate our distribution strategy and align ourselves to a distributor that we felt was very focused on the security domain, which is what we participate in, and also one that we felt could help us scale the business and generate net new opportunities through their network of resellers. And so we decided to join a program that Westcon-Comstor offers called Accelerate. And it's a very selective program. We're one of like, I think, five or six different vendors that belong in that program, and that's really the extent of it. This gives us a lot of focus with Wescon, gives us an ability to wide up each region in a sequence. So we're very active with them in AsiaPac. We are now writing up North America and Latin America. In Europe, we'll be coming online later this year, in fact in Q2. So it's provided us with a nice way to rationalize, streamline, drive more efficiency, drive more consistency with our distribution business, have one, well, not one entirely because we do have a couple of distributors that we're maintaining, but it helped us rationalize and reduce the number of distributors that we've had on a global basis. That's one initiative that we embarked on. Another one that we embarked on last year was our Technology Alliance Program. So we wanted to have an opportunity to provide our technologies, provide our open APIs to potential technology partners as well as potential consulting partners who would want to or need to develop custom integration in their product or on behalf of our customers. We launched the Technology Alliance Program last year, and that's been great. We signed a couple of very strategic technology relationships through that technology program, SalePoint, McAfee being a couple in particular. But we also have some others now coming to us and saying, "Hey, we want to build an integration to this product, to that product." We can do that very easily now. We can provision not-for-resale software. We can provide them with the APIs. We can provide them with some simple instructions on how to leverage them. And we're finding that some of these partners that are coming to us are now able to build these integrations very quickly. And the third area that I would highlight is that one of the things that I thought was missing for the company when I joined really late 2015 or early 2016 timeframe, was that we didn't have a partner strategy centered around consulting partners and system integrators. We had been talking to a few and have been having some conversations with some. But I saw that as really a missed opportunity to align ourselves to some very well positioned, very focused consulting organizations that are really centered on the identity access and privilege access domains in particular, and for us to align ourselves with them to create new opportunities for us and for our salespeople, as well as scale our delivery service capability. So as we're growing, one of our constraints or one of our challenges has been keeping up with demand for consulting services to implement our technologies. And so we aggressively recruited and onboarded about a half dozen or so boutique consultancies last year, and that's paying off for us really well. They're getting certified and getting consultants out there in the market who can implement our products and create bench strength and scale for us on the delivery side. And just as importantly, they are also identifying net new opportunities for our technologies with their clients that we didn't know about previously. So that's creating some net new business for us through that effort as well. Those are the three things that I'd call out. Jen: You've been busy. That's quite an undertaking in a fairly short period of time, which is really commendable. I want to dig into some of the results that you've been able to see. You shared with me previously kind of what happened in one year. Your channel business is up 100% year over year. Business through the channel has grown from 15% of the business to between 25% and 30%. I mean, is this the result of those initiatives? And also, is there anything else, any other great results that you've seen because of work that you've done in 2016? Joe: Yeah, I think there's a couple of forces in play here, right? One is that we're in a high growth market, right? Our market segment's growing at over 30% per year. And so there's always going to be organic growth with what you've been doing. So that's definitely attributable to some of the growth. But I think moreover and more importantly is that we've really aligned ourselves to not only the right partners that can help us, but we've also really narrowed our focus down. So when I joined the company, we literally had hundreds of resellers in our system, and I couldn't get my head wrapped around how we had so many. And then of course, you look back at the history of our company, and for a long time, we were a growth-by-acquisition company and we came together as BeyondTrust four or five years ago through the acquisition of four or five different companies. And with each acquisition, it brings a different partner base with it, right? And we never really rationalized that partner base. So this year, actually, last year, we started this process and we're going to continue to do it this year, but we've really started to refine our focus on the partners that we really want to proactively manage. That's not to say that we won't work on an opportunistic basis with any partner, but what we're doing with those other partners, what I call the tier-two partners, is we're rolling them underneath Westcon to help us manage and grow those partners so that we can take my direct team, right, the alliances people that we have on the team and have them spending the bulk of their time really building business with the core set of partners that we want to focus on. So I think those are a couple of contributing factors that have really played a role in our success and the growth that we've achieved. We expect this year to again significantly grow the channel business. So we're excited about the prospects, excited about the opportunities. I think we've got many of the key things in place to enable that growth, and it's really just going to be a question of our ability to execute. Jen: That's awesome. Anytime an organization grows, and especially when you're in channel and you grow so exponentially, it's exciting and it's amazing, it's great from a revenue perspective. It can also be a little bit painful. Just there's challenges anytime that you do grow. I'm wondering, could you share maybe some of the challenges that you faced or maybe some challenges that you're anticipating and how you're going to mitigate those? Joe: Yeah. So there's always challenges as you highlighted when you are growing, and these challenges that are good problems to have. And I like what our CEO says. He says, "We don't run away from problems or challenges, we run towards them," right? And so that's the attitude of our company, which I love and I embrace that philosophy. Every time he says that, I kind of smile because that's kind of how I operate. I want to attack things and get after it, right? But that being said, yeah, there's certainly growth pains. Now, there's a couple things that we did early last year in anticipation of the growth that we were expecting and wanting to drive, right? One was we needed to launch a partner portal. We had a large number of partners, some of whom were very active with us, some of whom were occasionally active with us. But we did not have a good vehicle for disseminating content, and for addressing the educational needs and the content needs of both our sales folks that work for the partners, as well as the technical folks that work for the partners. And so we stood up our partner portal last year, which has been very widely adopted, and I would say it allowed us to centralize a number of the processes, chief among them, our deal registration process. So that's been fantastic. And that's a key metric that we want to measure as you get your registration volume year over year, and even at a granular level by partner or region or what have you. We can measure how that's building. It's an important leading indicator as to what's going to come out the back end of the funnel, one, or two, or three, four quarters later, right? So that's been great. And I think that the usability of the portal and the intuitive nature of the portal has been great. We see very sticky behavior, very good evidence that a lot of our partners referenced the portal. They referenced it frequently and not just to do deal registration. We obviously can report and track on what artifacts they're accessing, how frequently those pieces of content are being accessed. We can look at that and kind of analyze, what's valuable, what's sticky, what's being consumed the most. And so all that's really, really important for us. And so that's been great. Another challenge that we've had to deal with has been training this new class of partners that I spoke of, right, the consultants and the systems integrators. Having training in education capabilities, certification capabilities was a really important driver to help us scale. And we launched our BeyondTrust University early last year as well. And that, too, has been extremely well received. We probably have over 500 partner individuals across the globe that are engaged in BeyondTrust University either from a sales enablement, pre-sales enablement, or technical consulting enablement perspective. And we're now starting to turn out certified consultants who can actually help scale on the delivery side. So those are a couple of highlights and things that we've had to overcome. And we're not done yet. We're never, I think, fully satisfied. We can always do more. But, those were a couple of really important foundational components that we needed to get in place to help scale. Jen: Well, with all of those individual partner users, you were talking about those partner entities, you weren't talking about the companies, right? You're talking about actual individual people who are engaging with that content or who are phase two, your end customer. You've got all those folks. You've got over 4,000 organizations as customers. You've got half of the Fortune 100. I mean, I'm just baffled. Like how are you able to dedicate time to your individual partner entities? I know tiering's got to be a big part of that, not just the segmentation of types of partners but also tiering within. Is that something that you guys are doing as well? Joe: Yeah, yeah. We did that last year for North America. We just completed our first pass of it for Europe, and we're in the process of doing it now for Latin America. And I think AsiaPac is a little different for us. We've kind of been working through a two-tier distribution model in AsiaPac from earlier points in our history and so there is less rationalization needed there, I believe. But certainly, if I take North America for an example, we looked at the entire pool of literally over 300 reseller accounts that we had in our CRM system and we started winnowing that down and looking at it different ways. We said, "Okay, over the last two years, how much new business has been booked by each of those partners," right? And obviously, you typically see a 80/20 kind of formation there, where 80% of the revenue comes from the top 20% of the resellers. And we quickly realized that we've got literally hundreds in our system who haven't done any business with us over the last two or three years. We also looked at how much renewal business is being handled by that pool of resellers, and we found that there is some that do a large number of renewals for us but there's an awful lot of onesie-twosies out there, right? Literally, we have a reseller that handles a couple of renewals for us a year, and that's the extent of it. So we value that. We don't want to just throw that out the window, but we look at the volume of it and we look at the alignment to the partner profile that I spoke of at the top and say, "All right, who are the top 12 that we want to focus on, or the top 15," and really zero in on those resellers and say, "Okay, how do we sit down and build a business plan that's meaningful for both companies?" And for us, we're kind of looking for anywhere from half a million in net new product license bookings or more from those kinds of partners, and whether they've done that historically or not may not necessarily be the critical decision factor. Maybe a partner has only done 250,000 with us but they've only been working with us for six months and we believe that they've got the right DNA, the right profile to really take that up to the right level. So that's kind of how we've done some tiering here in North America. And I'd say that we're really focused on probably the top 10 or so resellers, and then there's a cadre of consulting partners maybe 15 or 20 in total that we're either on board with or working with in some capacity to try to figure out whether they belong in that bucket or not. But taking it from literally 300 down to 15, 20 is a much more manageable number, and we believe that by providing that focus that we're going to see more benefits coming out of those relationships. Jen: Thanks for sharing that. I think it's really, really helpful to a lot of people who are in a similar situation that you're in. And on that note, the last question I really want to ask you is if you have any sort of concise piece of advice that you can give fellow business development professionals who might be in a situation similar to the one that you embarked upon when you joined BeyondTrust, any words of wisdom that you can share? Joe: Yeah, I'd piggyback on the first point about the partner profiling, and say that it's really important that you understand what your targets looks like. And then the second thing, which is really important, once you start getting into discussions and conversations with potential partners, you really need to understand what the win is for the partner. And it kind of amazes me that a lot of times, people don't step back and ask that question or even understand that and they may assume that, "Oh, these guys are VAR, therefore, they're only interested in margin on the sale of products." Well, the landscape is changing out there, right? I don't really believe that organizations that may have historically survived and thrived on just being product-resale companies are going to survive, right? We're seeing a lot of evidence that traditional resellers are morphing into what I call a solution provider, and they're trying to solve problems for clients that includes products, that includes services, and it may include managed services. So the landscape is shifting a little bit, but the point being is that it's really important for you to understand what the win is based on the partner you're talking to. And, one partner may say, "Hey, I'm only interested in selling product." Fine. Another partner may say, "Well, we do some product resale but we're really in the consulting business." Or it might be obvious from the onset that they're in the consulting business but, they like referral margins on the back end of deals, too, right? So trying to be flexible, trying to frame and understand the win for the partner is equally as important as understanding what the win is for you. So that's my piece of advice. Jen: I think that's great advice. We can always be better listeners. Really listen to what our partners need and what's going to make them successful. That's fantastic. You know, Joe, before I let you go, before we totally sign off here, I always put people through a little bit of like a fun personal speed round, so ask some questions that kind of dig in a little bit, get to know you as a person a little bit more. Are you up for it? Joe: Yeah, sure, why not. Sounds like fun. Jen: All right, all right. So easy questions. First one is what is your favorite city? Joe: My favorite city, oh, that's a good one because I've been to so many great cities. Honestly, my heart belongs to New York. Jen: Good. What do you love most about New York? Joe: I grew up in the New York area and I've always loved it. It's a city that, honestly, you can pretty much do anything within the bounds of law, of course. Jen: Right, right. Joe: Do anything, see anything, experience, any kind of entertainment, any kind of cuisine. It's just an amazing city to me. I've always loved it. But I've got to tell you, I do love London and I love Tokyo. I got to Tokyo last year and I am absolutely amazed by Tokyo and I'm dying to go back. I was only there for two days, and if I can figure out how to go back for 10 days, I think that'd be like my first choice. And I may come back with a different opinion about what my absolute favorite city is after some real time in Tokyo I think. Jen: That's a really long way to travel for two days. Wow, wow. You need to go back. Joe: It was a total of a 10-day trip in Asia but we only had 2 days in Tokyo. Jen: Yeah, okay. That makes more sense. Okay, second question, are you an animal lover? Joe: Oh, yeah, definitely. Jen: Yeah. Do you have any pets? Joe: We've had some pets from time to time, cats, hamsters, fish those sorts of things. I'm an absolute dog lover. But here's the thing, I travel so much and my kids are getting older and heading off to college. And, it's always been one of those things that we'd love to do, but at the same time, we've always felt that owning a dog would be unfair to the dog because you need to be around to spend the right time with them and treat them like any other family member quite frankly. Jen: Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. Okay, next question, Mac or PC? Joe: Oh, gosh. If I ever had the choice of having a Mac for a work tool, I would say Mac. But I never seem to get that choice so I have to go with PC. I'm using a Microsoft Surface and I actually love it. It's great, very lightweight, very reliable. And you can use it as a tablet as well, so it's got some nice flexibility. Jen: Yeah, everyone who I meet who has one absolutely loves it, so that's great. My last question for you is let's say I was able to offer you an all-expenses-paid trip, where would it be to? Joe: It would probably be Italy, and I'd have to say Tuscany in particular. For me, Tuscany is kind of the perfect balance between my need to see things and do things, but you can kind of find the peace and tranquility to relax when it's time to do that, too. It also has that phenomenal food and wine aspect to it that I love. So Tuscany, I'd take it any day. Jen: Wonderful. Sounds lovely. I was picturing myself being there as you were talking about it with a glass of wine, of course. So thank you. Thanks so much for sharing your time with me, with us today, Joe. If any of our listeners would like to reach out to you personally, what's the best way for them to connect with you? Joe: Find me on LinkedIn. It's Joseph Schramm, S-C-H-R-A-M-M. Easiest way to find me. There's not too many of me out there that I'm aware of at BeyondTrust. So yeah, I would welcome the opportunity to chat with anybody or kick any of this stuff around. It's good fun. I'm passionate about it. I enjoy it and would welcome the opportunity to talk to people. Jen: Wonderful. Well, again, thank you so much. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. And thanks everyone else for tuning in, and join us next week for an all-new episode. Announcer: Thanks for tuning in to The Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at allbound.com. And remember, never sell alone.

ceo new york canada europe business marketing italy partner sales vice president dna north america fortune partnership tokyo pc mac honestly b2b latin america var crm accelerate asia pacific apis mcafee tuscany refine microsoft surface strategic alliances asia pac beyondtrust gsas joe it jen spencer allbound joe yeah throughout europe joe thanks joe do jen you jen yeah joe find announcer thanks jen well

#99: Are We Innately Driven to Serve Others With Matt Kidd

Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 9, 2016 47:20

#99: Are We Innately Driven to Serve Others With Matt Kidd Jenn T Grace: You are listening to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast, episode 99. Introduction: Welcome to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast; the podcast dedicated to helping LGBTQ professionals and business owners grow their business and careers through the power of leveraging their LGBTQ identities in their personal brand. You'll learn how to market your products and services both broadly, and within the LGBTQ community. You'll hear from incredible guests who are leveraging the power of their identity for good, as well as those who haven't yet started, and everyone in between. And now your host. She teaches straight people how to market to gay people, and gay people how to market themselves. Your professional lesbian, Jenn - with two N's - T Grace. Jenn T Grace: Well hello and welcome to episode 99 of the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and I am almost stunned that we are at episode 99 and the next episode will obviously be 100, that will be the last one of 2016 and it's almost a big monumental time to be hitting this 99th episode before going into the triple digits. So as I have been doing for the last couple of months, I have another interview to share with you and it's with Matt Kidd, and he is the Executive Director of Reaching Out MBA which is an organization that is focused on LGBTQ folks who are pursuing MBAs, and we really just had an amazing conversation that kind of went back and forth between LGBT culture and some of the challenges that we see, and personal brands, and how people can be change makers, and advocates, and really it was just a very fascinating conversation to be had. So per usual I will not dilly dally here with the introduction and we can just dive right into today's interview with Matt, and I will see you in episode 100, but for today please enjoy this interview with Matt Kidd, and if you would like to find information about this episode, see a transcript, any of that, you can do so at www.JennTGrace.com/99 for episode number 99. Thanks so much and enjoy the interview. Okay so I want to start off with just having you give the listeners a little bit of a background about yourself, maybe what you've done in the past, what your current position is, and then we can just kind of dive into other interesting topics from there. So why don't you just kind of take it away. Matt Kidd: Sure so my name is Matt Kidd. I'm currently the Executive Director of an LGBT organization called Reaching Out. A lot of people know us also as ROMBA, and the organization itself is effectively the now global organization for LGBT MBA both students and professionals. And it's something that I've been in this role now for a little over three years, but prior to that was on the board. So I've been involved with Reaching Out now probably for- gosh going on about eight years. But I would say for me being part of kind of the LGBT community is something that has gone on really since I was a teenager in some ways, which I can talk a little bit about later, and I have to say as I came to this role it really was because I was at a time in my life where I started really thinking about what difference can we make in the world? To be honest I'd gone through my own MBA business school experience, I was working at Tech Startup, and about two, three years after I'd been at that company I was number one kind of getting a little bit bored and I was thinking about what do I want to do next? But number two, I actually lost my mother and so at that point I'd lost both my parents. And when you go through something like that I think it forces a lot of self-reflection and kind of thinking about what is your purpose in the world? Why are you doing this? What really matters? And I think that was one of those moments. And so it was kind of probably about a year after that, that the organization was going through this big change where it went from what was effectively an all-volunteer model with a volunteer board, and using students to run basically one event to an organization that really wanted to have a larger scope, wanted to run year round, and [Inaudible 00:04:33]. And I vividly remember we were sitting in a room with some consultants that we were working with and one of them pulled me aside and said, "Hey would you consider raising your hand for this," and my gut reaction was, "No that's ridiculous." And then I think I went home and thought about it, and a couple weeks went by, and I just kept coming back to it. It was this really interesting part of me, 'What can we do with this? Like if I did this, why would it be interesting and why should I do this?' And it all kind of came back to in a weird way- I view my time at Reaching Out really in a weird way is working with some sort of startup or something entrepreneurial because I came in and it had been this established product which was this conference that's been going on now for nineteen years, but it really didn't do much else. And so it kind of gave me a blank slate to come and then say, 'Well what do we want to do? What impact do we want to do?' And as soon as I kind of had some of the conversations that made it clear that we really would be able to move forward quickly rather than kind of in the traditional slow nonprofit way, I threw my hat into the ring and lo and behold three years later we've built up a staff of three, we're doing probably close to twenty events a year, we have a scholarship program that's giving away over a million dollars a year to LGBTQ students in business school. So we've been able to accomplish a lot, but that's kind of how I got to where I am, and kind of a little bit about what's going on in my world. Jenn T Grace: Do you think with your kind of gut reaction of like, 'Oh hell no I don't want to go down this path,' and then somehow that being the path that you end up on, do you think that like if you look back it's just kind of really kind of changed the trajectory of your ability to make- create purpose and change kind of in your life? Matt Kidd: Yeah I do. The reality is I probably won't be in this role forever. Some people do ask me, "What are you going to do next?" And I think in a weird way this role has made me really reflect on what would make me happy in life, and what would not? And I think some of that has to do with the type of organizations that you work for. I think there's something inherently nice about working- for me at least, for a small to mid-sized organization rather than kind of a giant corporation. I think it tells you a little bit about kind of the impact that you can have. I think particularly when you're talking about a nonprofit or a v-corp or something like that, then I think in those cases you're doing more than just having an impact on the business line, you're having an impact on kind of the greater community. I think at this point- and I think it's- I alluded to this before, I think it's been true really since I was much younger, but now I consciously think about what can I be doing to make somebody else's life better at the end of the day? And I think some of that comes from mission driven work, and where you work, but some of that just becomes frankly how you treat people, how you talk, how you position yourself, and I think being in a role like this makes me hyper conscious of that and that's something that regardless of what I'm doing next, I that's had just had a tremendous impact really on my life. And like I said it can be just something as simple as how are you talking to other people? Are you kind of taking into consideration their priorities, their needs, how can you help them, how might they be at a disadvantage to you? Every conversation now in some form, that goes through my thinking. Jenn T Grace: Yeah and I know that you have kind of information from early back as we were talking before we hit record, do you think that for people to come to the realization that like their purpose in life is to really kind of serve others? Because that's really at the crux of what you're talking about, is serving others. Do you think that it requires some kind of pivotal moment to cause that? Or do you think that's innate to some people? Like what are your thoughts on that, and then of course how did you realize that about yourself? Matt Kidd: Yeah I think it's ultimately at the end of the day in everyone. I think there probably are varying degrees of it, but I do think it takes something in somebody's life really to kind of recognize it. And so what we were talking about before we recorded today is October 12th and so it's the eighteenth anniversary of the murder of Matthew Shepard, and I really vividly remember an experience when I was probably a junior or so in high school, and this was in Memphis, Tennessee so fairly deep south in kind of the late nineties, and I remember this experience, and I apologize for my language here but there was a teacher who kind of came in and basically said, "That faggot deserved it. He probably had Aids anyway." And you know, at the time I was not really out at that point, I would say I was exploring my sexual identity in some capacity and I think some people probably suspected, but I just remember that just first of all making me feel so little, but then I think the more I reflected on it, it started to make me angry. And a couple years ago I had the pleasure of sitting down with Judy Shepard, and we were talking, and my comment to her was the murder is obviously horrible, and I think everybody would go back in time and change it if they could, but there is a silver lining that comes of horrible incidents like this, and that's I think it gets a lot of people to reflect on their own purpose and kind of have a reaction. And so I would say if you look at a lot of my peers, particularly in the LGBT social justice faith now, a lot of them would say a moment to them where they realized that this was something that was important to them, something that moved them that made them care, was Matthew Shepard’s death. And so for a lot of us, kind of my generation, so people who are in their mid-thirties, I think that was a moment that sparked this idea of, 'This is wrong and I want to change that.' Now how people went about doing that, I think it takes a lot of different paths. And sometimes you'll see have you multiple encounters, like for me a second spark really was my loss of both my parents, that a moment where for me it was like, 'Well why am I on this earth? Like what am I meant to do?' And so I think you do have those points, and I think it's what you decide to do with them that really matters. Jenn T Grace: So I have a friend of mine who's writing a book, and it's really about what you're talking about of really kind of taking that challenging situation and turning it into that silver lining. And there's a whole concept around it called post-traumatic growth, and it's really that we grow from those really traumatic experiences that we kind of face. Do you think- because I too am in my mid-thirties looking back at Matthew Shepard, and that being in 1998, and I was also a junior in high school. I remember it really vividly as I think most people our age do, and do you think that there- because I think that Judy Shepard really, really made it her life's mission to use that incident and her experience as a grieving mother to really be a catalyst in so many ways across the board for LGBT equality. Do you think that because it was 1998, if we look back Ellen had come out a couple of years before, LGBT was so not on the forefront as it is now. If we look at something like what happened in Orlando in June, do we look at that as possibly one of those pivotal moments for people now? Like because I know for us, like I definitely- of course we all had a reaction to Orlando, but do we think that that is actually one of those defining moments for maybe the youth? Especially as you- with reaching out working with students, I'm curious just kind of your perspective and hearing stories that you might have heard from any of the students that you work with. Matt Kidd: Yeah you know I think at some level it did, I think that there are certainly differences kind of as you alluded to. In the nineties, LGBT- obviously being LGBT, being out, much less acceptable than it is now. And I think in many ways, Orlando in particular exposed people to this concept of we're still vulnerable. I think one of the things that I see in a lot of students, and it's a little bit horrifying for me to see some students who are kids now getting into the nineties, but some of them have never grown up in an age frankly without Internet, which I think for a lot of LGBT people kind of opened a community, opened kind of access to free communication that you might not otherwise have, and I think they've grown up in an environment thanks to people like Kevin Jennings where a lot of them have seen GSAs in their schools and stuff like that. And so they've always grown up in this environment where it's been acceptable, and I think that there's always this danger that people become a little bit complacent, and so I think it moved a lot of people to think, 'Okay there's still a lot of work to do.' Because I hate to say this, but let's be honest, the fact that not all states have workplace protection for example, it's actually not as sexy to at least a lot of my students because most of them are going to go work for corporations or multi-nationals who regardless of whether the state they're in has work protections or not, they're going to be protected by their companies. And so they're not really impacted by something like that so it's not as sexy. But this idea that there are people out there who want to do you harm, and it's like this in other places in the world, and that particularly is something that I think [Inaudible 00:14:00] people start to get with something like Orlando, I think it gets them to move, to act a little bit and it does spark something like that. I mean my true thought, and we saw this last week, we had our annual conference last weekend, and one of the speakers was this guy Darnell Moore, and Darnell Moore is kind of at the intersection of queer and Black Lives Matter as a lot of the Black Lives Matter are themselves. And he really talked about kind of the racial inequality within the LGBT movement and there were a lot of conversations following that, and I think that in a lot of ways Black Lives Matter is kind of the equivalent to some of the LGBT rights issues that we saw in the nineties, including the Matthew Shepard murder, and I think that's actually going to spark a lot of people towards just kind of general social justice movement. So it may not be precisely LGBT focused, but I think that there's a broad- if people are not being treated equally, that's a problem that people are starting to get in tune with, in part because of Black Lives Matter actually. Jenn T Grace: Yeah I feel like it's a collision- there's definitely a colliding of the Black Lives Matter movement and the LGBTQ movement all kind of boiling to a point at the same time, which if we look back just from a historical context, obviously I think it goes without saying that the Black Lives Matter should not be where it's at right now, this should not even be a movement currently. And I think there's a lot of power in the two communities trying to kind of raise one another up. I'm sure there's plenty of problematic areas too of we're all trying to fight for the same thing, but I think more often than not there's definitely a synergy, and a harmony if you would even want to call it that, of it's just injustice across the board, equality across the board, and I think that seeing these two different vantage points is actually I think helping one another in some degree from a media standpoint, or at least what's kind of being talked about because I think maybe the first time in history that these two things are so on the forefront every single day in any media outlet that you look at. Matt Kidd: I'd add gender equality to that as well, I mean if you look at what's going on with the whole Trump campaign kind of implosion if you will, a lot of that centers around gender equality. And I think that the fact that people are more attuned to this- you really can't talk about people like that, you really have to treat people equally. If that wasn't going on I feel like unfortunately this wouldn't be as big of an issue as it's turned into over the last week or so. Jenn T Grace: Yeah I feel like there's just so much going on, the political landscape. By the time this airs I think we will be post-election, and who knows what exactly that will look like. Good God let's all hope here, and I'm sure anyone listening to this is on the same page, I can't imagine that I would have any listeners who were not, but who knows. In looking at just kind of maybe how even just the election cycle has kind of gone in terms of opening awareness to all of these mass amounts of issues. Because I really feel like there's a lot to attribute to the Trump campaign of just kind of raising the collective consciousness of, 'Wow there are so many problems.' Whether or not there's any kind of resolution to anything that's been brought up over the last year and a half, who knows? But it will be interesting to kind of see how this all plays out as it relates to any number of disenfranchised communities. Obviously LGBT being kind of the one that we're discussing. Matt Kidd: Yeah the Trump campaign on LGBT has just been frankly very confusing, I mean to me as the whole Trump campaign has been. But I do think that it is kind of forcing people to really look at these issues, and the thing that at least is I guess slightly comforting to me is that this election cycle, LGBT has kind of taken a back seat in some ways. That to me means it's being used as less of a wedge issue, or kind of people view it as less of a wedge issue. I think that's promising. I think that there's also an inherent risk to that, which I alluded to in one of the last questions. I mean if you look at workplace equality, housing equality, transgender rights, look at what's going on in North Carolina; there's a lot that we really need to still accomplish. I think to the extent that people feel like, 'Okay we got marriage so we can move on,' which frankly is what a lot of people from the kind of straight- or to be more politically correct, non-LGBTQ population, that's how a lot of them view it is, 'Okay they got marriage last year so they're all set.' The reality is that's not true, but I also understand- kind of like you said the fact that we're still having some of these race inequality issues, essentially fifty years after we went through a whole racial equality movement, is just absolutely insane to me. And to me when people say, 'Well what do you think the importance of LGBT organizations-' like mine going forward are going to be. I think number one there's still stuff to accomplish, but number two, if we look at women's equality movement, and the black equality movement in particular, those are still ongoing, and to think that we're done and that we're going to politically at least get to a point where we're in the clear, we have nothing to worry about, I think it's naïve. I think the reality is we need to continue to be a pretty cohesive community, and I think that there are a lot of ways to do that, and the way that my organization kind of thinks about that is we want to bring these students together who are ultimately at the end of the day most likely to go onto jobs that are well-positioned within corporations, and pay well, and presumably they'll amass some sort of power, and I think one of the things we're really starting to focus on is how do we plant that seed that gets them to think about how they can number one, support each other, but more importantly, how can they support the rest of the LGBTQ community that may not have that same power, privilege and money? How can they essentially be giving back to their peers who are not as privileged as they are? And I think that's kind of the next wave of LGBT movement, is some of us are doing exceedingly well, particularly if you're a white, cisgender, gay male. Some people are not in as good a position, and how do we lift those people up? Jenn T Grace: Yeah I feel like you've kind of said so much because it's almost like you're helping enable an army that can kind of infiltrate from the inside of the corporate walls. And I think that with marriage equality, or even to some degree kind of the non-discrimination legislation that is still kind of in limbo, but the states that have adopted some kind of policies to protect their LGBT work force, so many of them have done so under the pressure of the corporations within those given states. So this seems like it's definitely the long term game strategy that you're kind of viewing, but it really- I think to some degree only takes one individual LGBT person, or even ally within an organization to really affect the type of change that's needed in order to continue to kind of propel things forward. Matt Kidd: Yup absolutely, and I spent a day last week at the Out and Equal Workplace Summit, and a lot of the conversations that I was either part of or sat in, really kind of talked about how it's at the end of the day, particularly within corporations, getting stuff done, getting influence can come from two directions, it can come from kind of top down or bottom up, and it really takes passionate individuals to make that happen. The challenge that I think a lot of corporations right now face is that yes you're having these C-level folks, somebody like a Marc Benioff really step it up and taking some bold, bold actions. And you have some really passionate kind of lower level employees particularly amongst the millennials. But then you kind of have this layer of middle management, and frankly in my opinion to be middle management in a corporation sucks. You're getting a lot of pressure to perform from both ends, you can't take as many risks as you want, and so that is actually where I think a lot of kind of social justice movements within corporations kind of hit friction. It's not actually because of the C-suite, it's because of middle management, and it's essentially a fear, it's a fear for their own careers. And so I think as we think about who we want to influence and whom we should be talking to, I think those are kind of the key stakeholders. As we think about how we can leverage corporations in particular for this. I think yes, if you can get the attention of the CEO that's great, and it lets you make what I would essentially say are like headline plays. Something that you do that kind of is there for a day or two and then potentially goes away. To make something that's really long-lasting, you really need to build it into the culture, and a lot of that deals with middle management and influencing them. And so I think as we think about whom we should be talking to, and where we can make relationships personal, I think it's with those middle managers that really is key. Jenn T Grace: Yeah and I had an experience this past year. So I have a corporate client that's a Fortune 100, and I've been helping them- I did an LGBT training for their staff, just kind of marketing wise how to get their salespeople communicating in the right ways. And it was kind of a really fun experience, and that was- I don't know, maybe two years ago, and earlier this year they reached out to me to say, 'Hey we recognize that our CEI score is atrocious, and we see that we're not able to attract the right type of talent because it's just so bad and we're really putting people off.' And it's not that they weren't practicing it internally, but the number on the page was- it was a ten. So I worked with them, and their HR department, and their marketing department, and they had top down buy-in. So I was expecting kind of a Herculean effort to be had of like this is going to be a slog, we're working with an all-white male board of directors who isn't really all about diversity, let alone LGBT, and I was beyond shocked with how easy it moved through because the top executives were saying, 'This is something that's important to us, this is what we have to do.' But it's what you were saying, it was the mid-level manager which is usually where things kind of go to die when- any type of initiative. Like somehow it just doesn't either get passed going upward, or doesn't get below going downward, and there's always- obviously I'm making a broad generalization, but in my experience anyway, this is what I've seen happen. And it was because that mid-level management was like, 'You know what? This is important. It's important to us from a how do we position our business as- how do we position ourselves as the employer of choice?' And it's amazing that they managed to get themselves up to a ninety with just working with me for six months to really just kind of get their internal stuff together, because again they were already doing it, they just weren't really getting the credit for it. So I think that there's a lot to be said because it was one marketing person in that organization of like 18,000 employees who was saying, 'Our CEI sucks. We have to do something about it.' And she's an ally to the community no less, not even part of the community and was like, 'We have to fix this.' So I think that that should give hope and inspiration to a lot of the young people that are students and going through Reaching Out because they really do have an impact to change so many people, it's just I think if you time the messaging right, you time the conversation at the right time, you talk to the right people eventually- and I'm sure my particular contact was having these conversations for quite some time before I was able to actually come in and deliver, but it took her to stand up to be like, 'This isn't right. We need to fix this.' And I think that anyone has that true potential, but in a lot of ways I feel like the stars have to kind of align to really kind of see that such quick progress. Because especially in corporate it does take a lot of time to do anything usually. Matt Kidd: Yeah, you know I think that there is increasing pressure on some of these organizations to really look at diversity numbers, metrics. When I throw around the word diversity, generally speaking I'm really talking about recruiting. I think if that pressure continues, and I think the pressure on that will actually fall on middle management, that by default is going to start making this part of the culture because people will think about, 'Well what can we be doing to affect this?' So I think setting some metrics in the hopes of companies essentially to task for you know, 'Gosh you really have no women.' I think it's a really important thing to do and I think over time that will start to change the culture of these organizations inherently as well. Jenn T Grace: Yeah and I think it's great that your focus is on MBA students because like you said, they are well-positioned by the time they hit the corporate workplace, so they automatically have an added layer perhaps credibility kind of bringing to the table, even if they are kind of in a very low position, you know that they're going to inevitably kind of succeed through the ranks based on what they're setting out to do. Matt Kidd: Yeah absolutely. Jenn T Grace: So switching gears just a little bit and thinking about earlier on, you were talking about for you, Reaching Out is likely not going to be something that you're kind of tied to for life. Do you think about how- like right now is your name- I'm just going down a path of personal branding here. In looking at your name, are you finding that it's becoming synonymous with Reaching Out, or Executive Director of Reaching Out? And are you consciously trying to think about how to gradually- not disconnect because of course your name is everything and it certainly plays a huge factor into your role, but just kind of from a general standpoint of thinking of like, 'How would I actually unravel this down the road should I need to?' Matt Kidd: Yeah, no I think that is top of mind for me lately. I think that actually if you look at a lot of LGBT organizations you have people who in a lot of ways, the person is interchangeable with the organization. So you look at like Out & Equal, and you think of Selisse Berry. You look at Out Leadership, you think of Todd Sears. And there are numerous cases like that, and unfortunately I think that there's a danger not only to the individual I think as they think about kind of their next chapter, although for some of these folks there may not be another chapter, they may decide to retire. But I think there's kind of a challenge for somebody like me where this certainly is- hopefully, knock on wood, not going to be the last chapter of my career, and so at one level you want to be associated with this but you don't want it to be your entire brand. I think there's also a danger for the organization because if it becomes so entrenched in kind of my personal brand, then the organization risks- if I'm not there and not present, people could say things like, 'Oh it was not the same as it was when Matt was there,' and I don't think that's good for the organization either. I increasingly as we do events and trying to do things to put a spotlight on our other stuff [Inaudible 00:2926] are students, because I think at the end of the day those are the people who are working equally as hard as I am, and maybe aren't always the face and voice but I think we should position them more to be in those kinds of situations. So there is a risk and I am thinking about how we slowly kind of unwind that a bit, and I think essentially lifting other people up is a huge component of that. Jenn T Grace: Yeah and I partially asked the question because in- everything is always clearer in hindsight, but when I was running the Connecticut LGBT Chamber of Commerce which I did for quite a number of years, and I was the Executive Director I remember that when I left that position the organization essentially imploded, and it took awhile to kind of regain its legs, and it certainly- this was a number of years ago at this point, so everything is on the up and up now, but it definitely was a significant hit because- and it wasn't anything that I intentionally had done from the onset. I wasn't trying to build the organization the Jenn way, it just happened to be a very small organization, not a lot of people. I relied heavily on volunteers and our board, and it was just a matter of we've got to do what we've got to do to get these events going, to get our members happy, and it just happened to be me that was always in front of people. So I think that that's a risk generally for anybody in a position like you're in now. Matt Kidd: I think it's a risk for any kind of small to mid-sized organization really to be honest, and part of why we built out our staff is certainly because if we continued on the trajectory that when it was essentially just me as a staff member with some contractors and volunteers, I was going to burn out which would not benefit anyone, and we wouldn't be able to expand and grow the way that we wanted to. But the second is like it essentially puts the institutional memory of an organization really in that one person, and if you lose that one person, back when we were kind of that staff of one plus some contractors, if I got hit by a bus not that the organization wouldn't continue on, but that would be really problematic. Today knock on wood that's not going to happen, but if it did I have full faith that between kind of the staff embers that we have and how we've kind of been able to lift them up and then have them kind of take over some things, I think that frankly things would go on without missing much of a beat. Jenn T Grace: Yeah which is such a good sustainable place to be in, which is not always what is accessible to every organization because they're not really kind of thinking about secession planning and what lies ahead, or if this key person were to not be here for whatever number of reasons, how do we kind of carry on without skipping a beat. And I would imagine- my gut says, and based on people that I know in Executive Director positions for other nonprofits, I feel like most of them are not necessarily thinking that forward in terms of 'what would we do in the situation?' So rather it's a reactive versus proactive. Matt Kidd: Yeah and you know I'll be honest, in the LGBT space in particular, I think we have a responsibility to start to think about secession planning, and the large reason actually is that if you look at the vast majority- not all, but the majority of LGBT social justice organizations, they're run by white cisgender gay men, and I don't think that that's the face of the movement going forward. And so I think we really need to kind of pause as a movement in general and think about how can we bring in the faces and the voices that maybe aren't heard as well right now, and put them into leadership roles? And I think we're really at an inflection point where it's time for those of us who- kind of going back to what I was saying before, are fairly privileged within the LGBTQ community, to lift up those who are not and make them heard, and I think that's one way that we can do that. And so I hope that as a lot of other LGBT organizations have [Inaudible 00:33:27] retire, or switch to something else, that that's something that they're starting to think about. Jenn T Grace: Yeah and so I'm curious to hear your thoughts, and if you've been paying attention to this at all, but I had someone from BuzzFeed reach out to me last week- and again we're recording this on October 12th, so whenever this does come out, it's obviously all a little bit in the past. But I had somebody reach out for my comment on the After Ellen platform kind of disbanding. So what you're talking about I think really kind of goes into that entirely of the face of the community is really gay, white, cisgender men, and we know that that is by far not the reality of the community. But when we look at something like a website, like After Ellen which was kind of a flagship type of lesbian driven centric platform and content generator for so many years. So for that to kind of no longer exist in the capacity that it did, and the reason being is that there just wasn't enough advertiser interest, it's almost like how do we combat that from recognizing that it's not just what this kind of stereotypical highly sought after demographic is, when we ourselves are kind of continuing to perpetuate that that is all there is when we know that that's not. Matt Kidd: Yeah, no I do know what you mean. The After Ellen thing is frankly a little surprising to me. I think some of what they struggled with is the business model issue, but some of it is- and also from firsthand experience, one of the things that I'm really focused on and the organization is, is really frankly trying to drive more LBTQ into business school and business in general. And so we started an initiative about probably three or four years ago now that we call Out Women in Business, and we hold a conference in New York, and it's a challenging audience to attract. I think each year it gets a little bit better, and there are some people like Leanne Pittsford with Lesbians Who Tech, who have something really special and magical there, but I mean Leanne will even tell you, like for her trying to attract an audience sometimes is a challenge as well. And so that's kind of a community thing, and I think it all starts with kind of visible leadership, and I think slowly but surely with folks like Megan Smith for example, we are carving out a space and leadership examples for the LBTQ community in particular, so I think that that's kind of a key component to it. But there aren't a lot of sources. After Ellen was one, there are what, maybe a couple- three or four others that are significant that are left, and that's pretty shocking. And then you get into other pretty gay-focused media sources; like to me, Towleroad or something like that is frankly pretty gay-focused. So that is a disturbing thing when you consider the fact that particularly bisexual women I think are the majority of the LGBTQ community. And so that's one of these moments where we should pause and say, 'Are we really reflecting what's out there, and is that part of why something like After Ellen isn't failing, it's because there's a representation issue.' Jenn T Grace: Yeah I feel like it's interesting because if you look at just kind of general demographic data, it shows that women are more likely to be the primary purchasers of households. So even in just looking at that as women as a more influential audience for buying whatever it happens to be, it seems like it just doesn't add up. And then I think about it, and I wonder if gay men, or any male within the LGBTQ community, is it because there is a bigger sense of community of like actually gathering that makes it easier to see them as a demographic to reach versus women are far more just kind of blending in with the individual cultures in which they live, whether that's geography, or whether it's different areas of interest. It's just really fascinating. When I was talking to the woman at BuzzFeed, I was just saying like, 'This is my lesbian perspective, but you should probably reach out to a cisgender gay male and get their point of view as well because there's got to be some underlying thing that's kind of here, and I do get the question quite often of how do I target lesbians, or how do I find lesbians to market to? And most often my advice is you just have to market to them as women first typically, and then go from there and be inclusive in that approach. But that's not necessarily what's going to be really kind of sexy to an advertiser to say, 'Oh this is a demographic I should invest in.' Matt Kidd: Yeah and you know, I think it goes back beyond just media. So if you look at a given city, and you look at like a nightlife scene for example, generally speaking you'll probably find a handful, probably three or four of what you would consider kind of 'gay bars,' and you might find one bar that caters towards LBTQ women. And I think that's there- I think it goes back to your clusters of people, you see them more visibly, and again I think the more that we can think about how we bring communities together, who's representing them; I think these are all really, really important things for the movement as we go forward, particularly with social justice organizations. Jenn T Grace: Yeah, absolutely. And do you see any kind of influence or impact on like the Reaching Out students? Because they are MBA focused, that obviously puts them in a different kind of track, but do you see that that's being another avenue for just kind of shedding light and awareness on all of this? Matt Kidd: I think interestingly enough we're at the point where we even have cisgender men kind of saying, 'What can we do to be getting more women here?' So like it's becoming front of mind for people. I would say for us probably even as recently as five or six years ago, we were the white gay male conference. And you know, I looked at the metrics this year, it's getting better. It's still not there, I think we were slightly under 50% Caucasian, so that's in my mind kind of a good change, although I think a lot of that frankly is being driven by international students who are at business schools. But the number of women in these programs is picking up a little bit each year, but we're not talking- we're talking like a percent each year. So the difference between like 26% and 27% and we really need to be focusing on it. And for me, I mean this is one of my big passions, is how can we drive this and we're fortunate to have a board chair who is a lesbian identifying woman herself, and both of us feel very passionately about it so we've convinced everyone to really put some money behind our mouths on this. And I think we're slowly making progress, it's just not as fast as I think any of us would like, and to be honest we just haven't figured out the silver bullet. So I'll say if any of your listeners know, please feel free to reach out because this is something that- it's not that we don't want them in business school, we actually desperately want them and so frankly do the business schools. I think the challenge that we run into, number one is a little bit of marketing to them, which like you said I think it starts with just marketing to women in general, and I think it gets a little bit more specific. But the other thing is, as I talk to a lot of LBTQ women and say, 'Hey have you ever considered business school?' the responses are pretty much, 'No that's not something that's really top of mind,' and ultimately when you kind of keep pushing it comes down to they're not seeing a community like themselves so they feel like it's not a place for them to be. And so it's a little bit of chicken or egg, but we've got to tell them that, 'This is a place where you're wanted,' and frankly if we start talking about the trans community it gets even harder. I had a conversation with the Executive Director of Campus Pride probably about a month ago now, and he was saying when he talks to his trans students- so these are all undergrad students, he says, 'What do you want to do in the future?' He said it's maybe one in a hundred that's saying some form of business, and the rest of it is something that might be more in the social justice space, or arts space, or even legal, and the fact that this really isn't on their radar and they don't see it as a place for them is a big problem. Jenn T Grace: Yeah and I think it's more of a systemic issue that is much broader than LGBTQ. It really kind of stems from what children are exposed to, and what classes they are exposed to in their elementary schools for example, and just kind of going through and in Connecticut we have a lot of stem type of schools that are popping up. So if either of my children who are in third and fourth grade, if they were interested or showed any inclination toward that stuff, then we could absolutely kind of push them in that direction. But I feel like school is so watered down now that there's just- it's focused on like the bare necessities and not really exposing children, and middle or high school to all of the things that they could be. And I feel like- and Lord knows that is going to be a fight that is not going to be won anytime soon. But I feel like it really- there's just such a systemic issue at play, and the LGBTQ community is really just a microcosm of a bigger- of the community of everyone. So I think we just see the issues because we are such a concentrated microcosm of the larger kind of landscape that we're all operating in. Matt Kidd: I agree. Totally agree. Jenn T Grace: Well it's already- we've already been chatting for 45 minutes which seems crazy at this point. But I would love to kind of ask you a final question and then just give you kind of free reign to tell everyone how to go about finding you. Matt Kidd: Sure. Jenn T Grace: But my question would be if we're thinking about people who are listening to this, who may be business owners, maybe they're in a professional sphere, they're LGBTQ, they're trying to kind of make a first step, or a first foray into identifying and really kind of honing in on what's meaningful to them, and how that might translate into their own personal brand, or the positioning of what they're doing. Do you have anything that maybe you've learned through your career that might be helpful that could kind of shortcut that process for them? Matt Kidd: Yeah I think what I have found kind of throughout my career is that- and I know this sounds kind of cliché, particularly for kind of any LGBTQ folks, but authenticity sells. By talking about stories that I've really gone through, and that's why I'll use something like my experience around the day when Matthew Shepard died makes it more relatable and it makes people kind of understand you and what you're doing a little bit better. And so I'll say from kind of a personal brand point of view, I'm one of these people that for the most part I'm a pretty open book and keep it that way. I think even about like social media. If a student wants to add me on Facebook, go for it because frankly at this point I live pretty authentically and intentionally so because it makes me more human and it makes me more real and it makes people more willing to collaborate and to connect with you. And so I think don't be afraid of that, don't try to hide that because I think the reality is it probably opens more doors than it closes at this point. So never forget that, and always just kind of go back to your roots and kind of what you care about. At the end of the day, that is what it's all about, and if you don't care about something you probably shouldn't be doing it. Jenn T Grace: I feel like that's such good wisdom. Really being mindful of what you stand for and just being transparent from the onset. It certainly will save you a lot of headache later. Matt Kidd: Absolutely. Jenn T Grace: So for anyone who was inspired by this conversation and interested in connecting with you, how would you go about directing them to do that? Matt Kidd: Yeah please. So Reaching Out is online at www.ReachingOutMBA.org. Please visit our website. If you're an MBA yourself, we do have an online community that you can join. It's on that website and it's called Reaching Out Connect, so it's our individual member platform, so we certainly encourage you to do that. If you're part of the LBTQ community, we certainly would welcome and love to have you with us at the Out Women in Business Conference in New York which will be March 31st of 2017. So certainly join us because like I said, we do want to bring that community together, and that is open to non-MBAs so you don't need an MBA to be there, and I would say less than half of the folks who are there have an MBA, so you're certainly welcome for that. And then people can always find me online, LinkedIn, Twitter and if you search very carefully you can find me on Facebook. I'm usually pretty open to adding people on any of the platforms so you can hear what I have to say about things, because like I said I am my authentic self out there. Jenn T Grace: That's awesome. Well thank you so much for spending some time today, and I feel like there's a lot that can be gained for the listeners from our conversation, so thank you for that. Matt Kidd: Absolutely, thank you Jenn. Jenn T Grace: Thank you for listening to today's podcast. If there are any links from today's show that you are interested in finding, save yourself a step and head on over to www.JennTGrace.com/thepodcast. And there you will find a backlog of all of the past podcast episodes including transcripts, links to articles, reviews, books, you name it. It is all there on the website for your convenience. Additionally if you would like to get in touch with me for any reason, you can head on over to the website and click the contact form, send me a message, you can find me on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter all at JennTGrace. And as always I really appreciate you as a listener, and I highly encourage you to reach out to me whenever you can. Have a great one, and I will talk to you in the next episode.

#87: How Lindsay Felderman Turned a Pile of Words Into an Inspirational Book

Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 27, 2016 43:37

#87 - How Lindsay Felderman Turned a Pile of Words Into an Inspirational Book [Podcast] Jenn T Grace: You are listening to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast, episode 87. Well hello and welcome to episode number 87 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today I have a special interview for you. As you know for the last probably three months or so at this point, and for probably the next three months to come, I have had nonstop interviews. And I'm so excited to be back on the interview kick, and today I have Lindsay Felderman on, and she is the proud new author of the book, 'Walking through Walls. Finding the Courage to be Your True Self,' and I cannot be more excited to have Lindsay on because she shares her journey of writing and publishing her very first book. Her book talks about the coming out process, and a lot of really kind of amazing things in terms of just getting outside of your comfort zone, and really kind of pushing yourself to realize that you have a story to tell, and your story is important, and your story can impact the world. So it's super exciting to have Lindsay on, and even more so because she is one of the first graduates- or one of seven people who graduated from my spring session of the Purpose Driven Author's Academy, and she's the first of those seven to produce her book through the program. So I could not be any more excited as my second group of authors recently started on June 7th. So I'm in the summer session right now with seven new amazing authors. So it's really kind of cool to have Lindsay on who talks about her experience of writing the book, a little bit about her experience of publishing the book, and kind of the things that have been a little more of a pain versus things that were a little bit easier. So yeah, it's just- it was a really good conversation, and the moral of everything in what we talked about is it's really kind of about finding the courage to just be yourself, whether you are part of the LGBT community or not. So her book is already available on Amazon, which is super exciting, so you can go to Amazon and type in Lindsay Felderman or type in Walking Through Walls, and either way you should find Lindsay's book, and you can purchase it, and I've already read it so I'm excited for you to get your hands on it as well. So that is what I have for an introduction. I don't want to take up any more time, but I do want to let you know that if you want to see the transcript for today's show, if you want to have access to the links that Lindsay and I talk about, if you want a direct link to the Amazon page where you can find her book, you can go to www.JennTGrace.com/87 and that is for episode number 87. So enough of my blabbering on, let's just dive right into the interview with Lindsay. So yeah if you just want to start off by giving the listeners a quick kind of background of yourself, and then we'll get into all the good things about your book. Lindsay Felderman: Okay, I don't even know where to start with a background I guess. Yeah I'm Lindsay, I'm in my late twenties, I am gay and I wanted to write a book about my coming out story because I struggled with my identity for a long time, and I wanted to kind of just share that with the world and show them that it's okay to struggle. But at the end of the day you really should trust your gut and believe in yourself. Yeah. Jenn T Grace: So how long would you say you had been thinking about writing a book? Because I know when we first talked which was like six or eight months ago at this point when you were first thinking about this, that we were talking about how it feels like there's a lot of books out there for this topic, but in the way that you were thinking about it, it just didn't feel like anything was landing for what you were feeling. So how long has that been on your mind? Lindsay Felderman: I probably first started thinking about writing a book probably a little bit after college. When I graduated from college which was in 2006, so I guess like ten years ago- oh now that was high school, college was six years ago. Yeah okay so 2010 I graduated from college, and I don't know, soon after that. I'd been thinking about it, and then a few times I would actually go to like write it on my computer, and start writing, and I always for some reason just had this like inclination that what I had to say didn't really matter, and always ended up just like shutting my computer down and was like, 'Forget this, I don't know why I'm even thinking about doing that.' And then it wasn't until I guess last year, I went to this- I guess you could call it a seminar with Seth- I always mess up his last name. Jenn T Grace: Godin? Lindsay Felderman: Yes. My old boss called him 'Gahdin,' so then like it's in my head as 'Gahdin' but I know it's Godin, so every time I go to say it I like stutter. Anyway I went to a seminar with him, and it was called 'The Ruckusmaker's Seminar,' and basically it was just this whole thing where you were just bringing like a project, an idea that you wanted to make better, and like everybody kind of had the same theme of like making the world a little bit of a better place. So my old job actually sent me to it, which was kind of funny because I didn't really use it for that, which was probably- he doesn't need to know that. I mean I did, I did think about work, but I really was there like personally. People would ask me, "What do you want to do if you're unhappy at your job?" And I was like, "I don't know. I really want to help LGBTQ youth. I don't really know how to do that." At that point- had I started volunteering for GLSEN? Yeah I think I had already started volunteering for GLSEN, so I was doing that. But other than that I was really unsure what I wanted to do. So I just kind of talked to people all weekend about that, how I wasn't really super happy in my corporate marketing job, but I wanted to find something that I felt like I was helping people. And then Seth wrote a book called, 'Your Turn,' and it's just kind of basically just a bunch of passages just talking about all sorts of things about life, and I kind of was sitting there looking at the book on like a break, and I turned it to a page and there was a quote at the bottom and it said, 'The most important book you'll ever read in your life is the one you write yourself.' And I kind of just was like, 'You know what? I've been wanting to do that forever. I really need to stop messing around with it.' So we had to like break up into groups, and I was in with a couple of my friends, and I just was like, "I want to write a book." And they both were like, "Yes, you should, oh my gosh," and I had never really said it out loud or told anybody that I had wanted to, so that was like a really big moment for me when I realized like, 'Yeah I'm going to do this.' And then I actually went up to Seth to thank him for the seminar, and I told him, "I'm going to write a book." And he's like an accomplished author, he's written like twenty books, and I was so nervous to say it, and he just like looked me in the eye and he said, "Yes you will." Jenn T Grace: That's awesome. Lindsay Felderman: I don't know, from there that's when I was like, 'I've got to this. It's something that I really just need to do.' Jenn T Grace: That's awesome. Not everyone can say that Seth Godin said it right to their face that, "Yes you will." That's pretty impressive. Lindsay Felderman: It was cool, yeah. Jenn T Grace: So that's awesome. So in terms of like getting past that place of turning the computer off because you're like, 'I can't do this,' and being completely afraid; how did you get from that hump to actually starting to put words on paper? Because I know that when we finally connected, which wasn't until December, you had already had so much of it finished. So that's like a big kind of emotional and some kind of like mental roadblock type of hurdle that you had to get over. Do you have any specific ways that you feel like you got through that? Lindsay Felderman: I think a lot of it had to do with the confidence in myself that when I had first thought about writing it, I was only like 21 or 22, and you've read the book so you've seen I went through a lot after that. And I think I was finally in a place now to actually believe that what I was saying would matter, and that I kind of know what I'm talking about when- because I'd been through so many things versus just kind of writing about life. And I kind of got more of a vision too of what I wanted to do. When I first would go to write it I kind of just was like writing my thoughts on the world, and kind of how I felt, and I don't really think there was real purpose to it, and so just like over the years realizing my- focusing more on my vision, and then like going to Seth's thing was really like the catalyst because I said it out loud for the first time, I think that was a really huge thing, and I had some validation from my peers saying, "Yes you need to do that," and that was a really huge thing as well. So then at first in order to like kind of start, I started actually writing my blog which I've been horrible at doing this year because I've been focusing on the book, but writing a blog was super helpful too, just kind of like writing in chunks and having people respond to that. And then I just took my computer and started like writing, it kind of was like word vomit, it was literally just write down everything that you can think of that happened in your life, and why that's relevant, or why that would help somebody else. But I'm not going to lie, it was hard. Like every time I would go to do it, it was super emotional for me. I had to be in a spot where I could actually focus on it, and like really just focus on that. And I actually wrote a lot- because I travelled a lot for work, a lot of it I wrote on like planes because it was like easy to be able to just kind of like shut everything down, and there was nobody there to bother me, and I kind of just could like zone in. But I never felt like I could just go in for like twenty minute spurts and just kind of write, because I would- it just kind of lost the emotional feel for me, and it was too much. But it just was really just telling myself, 'Okay you've got to go do this,' and other people asking me about it. "How's your book going?" Or "What are you doing and what are you thinking about?" And I was kind of like, 'Oh yeah I've got to do that.' And I set a date for myself, I think that was helpful, so I told myself by my 27th birthday which was October 22nd, that I would have my rough draft finished. So when we talked in December, that is what I had done. I had just my rough draft and then I kind of didn't know what to do with it. And I had some peers from this thing that I met at Seth's, that I tried to kind of reach out and was like, "What do you think I should do?" But everybody's kind of going at a thousand miles per hour, so they didn't- we kind of talked through it, but it just got stagnant. But yeah I think the validation of just hearing, "Yes, you should do that," and having the confidence in myself that it matters, and saying it out loud. Saying something out loud and telling yourself you're going to do it is- you think that it kind of sounds silly, but when you actually say it or like write it down, it like changes your perception of what that actually means. Jenn T Grace: And how many people do you think you told? Obviously you told the people in that room that were there that day, but did you announce it on any social media that this is something you were going to do? Was it only close friends and family? Like to what degree did you put yourself out there to tell people- or declare this to the world that you were doing this? Lindsay Felderman: Right. I guess so initially it was just the people that I met that weekend, I came home and obviously told Sam. I was super emotional when I came home and told Sam. She like realized because I was just not happy in my other job, and she was like super happy to see that I was having something that I was really passionate to start working on. But then I didn't announce it on social media right away. I did tell like close friends and family kind of just like over that next month or so that that's what I was planning on doing. But in my blog a few times, I started to mention it. I didn't kind of just say, 'Hey I'm writing a book, this is what I'm doing.' I would say, 'I'm going to be working on a project,' or something along those lines that that's what I was doing. But I pretty much told anybody I saw in person that I was doing it. So it wasn't like I was hiding it per say, but I didn't really know- at that point in my early stages I didn't have the whole concept down yet, so I didn't- I don't think I actually fully announced it until after I started your class online, because then I was asking people for help. So that's I think the first time that I was kind of like, "Hey, I'm writing this book, I want your story, I want you to be involved." And that's kind of I think the first time I did it. I guess it was like January or February. Jenn T Grace: So now in looking at your story, part of- again we briefly touched on this, was the fact that you felt like there weren't enough coming out stories that kind of resonated with you, and I know that when you and I connected, I completely agreed with that because I'm like, "You know what, my coming out story isn't tragic, but it's certainly not fun or great." I don't think anybody's is. So have you found some kind of niche- or I don't even know if niche is the right phrase, but do you feel like what you've put together is really going to help that person who may not have the worst possible coming out story? To just kind of hear from you, and then also that process of reaching out to other people to say, "Hey can you share some of your thoughts?" Can you kind of describe what that process was like in terms of just reaching out to other people to add to what you were already writing? Because I can imagine that can be kind of a pain in the ass in some regards, but also adding good value to the end reader, which would be an LGBTQ youth. Lindsay Felderman: Yeah. So it was kind of a pain in the ass, and I actually got kind of the same almost reaction that I felt before even writing the book. A bunch of people said to me, "I could give you my story but there's really nothing to it, or it's not exciting, or there's nothing really that I can say." And I would explain to them it's like no, any coming out story is like a struggle. Like I have a very good friend of mine, her parents aren't really accepting of it, they don't really know that she's with her current girlfriend. They do know but they don't, it's kind of one of those things they just don't talk about. And she kept telling me, "I could give you my story but it's really not that much." And it's like, no that kind of thing matters. The fact that you struggled with your parents, like there's plenty of people struggling with their parents. Yeah like were you kicked out, or were you harmed, or were you severely bullied? Maybe not, but I think the family struggle is probably one of the biggest struggles that isn't talked about. The ones that are just, 'Here's my family and we struggle every day. And yeah we still have a relationship, but it isn't the really, really dramatic stories that we do hear about. I think the majority of us go through that as- you mentioned when I listened to the recording you gave me after you read my book, and you said something about your parents have to grieve the loss of what they thought, and I think that it's like really important, and I think a lot of parents like take a really long time to do that because you spend a lot of time thinking about who you are, and what you want, and when you finally take the step to say, "Hey, yeah I'm gay, or I'm this, or I'm that," or whatever to the outside world, it's like this relieving feeling for you, and it's so exciting, and it's new and it's fresh, and you finally feel like, 'Yes I'm showing myself to the world,' and you weren't showing that part of yourself to the rest of the world, so all of a sudden they feel like you're this new different person, where you feel that this is who you've been the whole time, you just weren't sharing that. And I think that more people really have those types of stories but aren't talking about it because they think that, 'I wasn't beat up, or I wasn't this, or I wasn't that,' and so it doesn't really matter, but every single- I think out of all my friends I have one friend that I can think of, that her parents were like excited when she came out. And it was like this weird thing, it was like a coo, "Oh yay, you're gay, that's so cool!" But like everybody else that I know has had some struggle, something going on where their parents were just not accepting, or they didn't want to hear it, or they just told them they didn't know what they were talking about. And I think especially for me, coming out so young and being told you don't know what you're talking about, was really hard for me. It really- like that's why I really started to question myself and have a lot of self-doubt because the people that raised me, and told me, "Hey you don't know what you're talking about, you're fifteen, you have no idea." It's like wait a minute, how do you know how I feel inside? Like this is not something that we're talking about, like I'm saying I'm dumb or something and you know that I'm smarter than that. It's like I'm telling you I'm attracted to females, I romantically want to be involved with females, and you're telling me that you know me so there's just no way that that's possible. That at that age did a lot of- I don't want to say damage, but almost damage to me in my confidence, in my feelings, and like I had a lot of doubt for a long time about who I was because I really trusted my parents, and I didn't expect that. And I think that a lot of people have that same type of thing, where I wish I had a book like this one, where I could have read and been like, 'Oh my gosh, you were doubting yourself too? Oh my gosh, you thought your parents knew everything and that was like earth shattering to you?' I think that would have been everything for me, and I started to realize that too when I started volunteering for GLSEN and I was speaking to some of the youth, and just in passing just explaining to them some of the things about myself, and why I was there, and just like little bursts of story and they would be like, "Oh my gosh, thank you so much for sharing. I feel so much better about X, Y, and Z. Or why my parents are being annoying, or not accepting." And that's why I was really like, I've got to write this. There's more people out there that I think need to hear it's okay to like have all this self-doubt, and it's okay to like have people not accept you, and it's okay to continue trying to figure out yourself, and not listening to the people that are just not willing to even understand what's going on. So that was a really long-winded answer. Jenn T Grace: No that was such a perfect, beautifully articulated answer. And for anyone who might be listening who doesn't know what GLSEN is, can you just kind of give a thirty second of what GLSEN does? Lindsay Felderman: Sure, so they are the Gay and Lesbian Straight Education Network, and they basically are the ones that started GSAs in school, so Gay Straight Alliances, and have done a lot of work over the years in really just helping gay youth feel comfortable, and have resources and outlets for them in schools in order to be themselves. And I actually didn't even know about GLSEN until later because of Sam, she worked for Teach for America and then met through GLSEN. But that's over there. They basically started the GSAs in schools, they spent a lot of time with LGBTQ youth, and making sure that they feel confident in themselves, or even as something as serious as the trans bathroom issues that are going on, they work on- I don't exactly know how they do it, but they work to try to get legislation changed. For me it was just volunteering, you worked with youth in the schools, and we'd have meetings, and just kind of talk about like all sorts of issues surrounding the LGBTQ youth, or being queer in high school. Jenn T Grace: Perfect. And so for those listening who keep hearing you reference Sam, that is indeed your fiancé, so we want to make sure people know that. Lindsay Felderman: Oh yes, that is my fiancé. Jenn T Grace: Yes. So if we're talking about just kind of how you started to volunteer with GLSEN, and really started to interact with other young LGBTQ people, did- I guess if you could turn back time and you had an opportunity to have recognized that they were a resource to you, do you think to some degree- because I feel fortunate that I've actually read your entire book before it's published, and I obviously now have a really good handle on your story, but the fact that you had a- that you came out twice. And I wonder how many people have had that type of experience. And have you had- have you talked to others through GLSEN or any of the other work that you're doing and found that that has happened to other people as well? Lindsay Felderman: I have obviously talked about it. I don't think I've met anyone specifically that has done it the way that I have. I think the more stories that I've heard is somebody comes out as gay, and then they later realize they're actually trans. So I think for our generation, especially for me when I was in high school, it was like you were gay or straight, there wasn't all these other letters. There wasn't all these other identities, or these things that you could associate with or feel that you were. So it was like if you don't feel straight then you're gay. And I think so for a lot of people in my generation they kind of would come out, 'Okay I'm obviously gay,' and then as these letters have been progressing, and all these identities and people really saying hey, it isn't just black and white like that, there's a lot more going on. And as people started to associate with other identities, I think that's kind of the- I would say double coming out story. But I have not heard of anybody that came out in high school, decided to pretend they were completely straight, and then come back out again. It was definitely an interesting one. I felt so dumb when I was 21. I was like, 'Seriously? You were fifteen, you knew exactly what you wanted, and then like you have to do this all over again.' It was stressful to say the least. Jenn T Grace: Yeah, I can feel the stress and the angst in your writing, and so hopefully- well we haven't even said the name of the book, so I would love for people to know the name of the book, and then I feel like we have a good synopsis of what it's about, but maybe give a synopsis as well so that way people who are listening to this can actually go read your story, and really kind of get this- it's not like an opposing view at all, but I feel like your take on it is very unique, and I think for anyone who might be saying- and mind you my audience is mostly LGBT people listening, so it's not like we're talking to a completely unknown audience. But I feel like a lot of people nowadays are saying, 'Well why do we have to talk about this? Why does this matter? It's 2016, we have marriage equality, this, that and the other,' and to me it's a very short-sighted type of view on things. So I feel like you're kind of shedding some light on things that people are absolutely going through right now, like in present day. But yeah can you just say the name of the book, and just a brief kind of description of what it entails. Lindsay Felderman: Sure so the name of my book is 'Walking through Walls: Finding the Courage to be Your True Self.' I can't believe I just tripped over that. And it is just a- the whole background of the book is my coming out story, which as we said I came out twice, and then what I did is I took stories of others that represent all the LGBTQ letters, and intertwined them into my book. Just asked them a bunch of questions, and they responded to them about pretty much anything that has to do with coming out. And I totally get what you're saying about it's 2016, and why do we need to talk about it, and let's just everybody kind of be equal, but the issue is we're not, and I think that we can't brush all of that under the rug. And even though we have a lot of milestones, and I will honestly say that I did not think that I would be able to get married when I came out in high school. Like I remember- I think it was Massachusetts passed something and I was like, 'Wow that's crazy,' and I never thought that like that was going to be able to be a thing. You know, like it would be like, 'Hey I'm actually getting married in 2017 and I'm literally getting married, not just having the ceremony to say that I'm married,' and that kind of thing. And I think as much progress as we're making, there's still so many issues that need to be talked about, and I think if we just kind of pretend that they're not there, that- I don't know, I just think they need to be talked about, and I think they need to be validated, and in order to truly be equal with everybody and be accepted, we need to have everybody actually be accepted, which is just not the case. I mean you can turn on the news for five minutes any day, or go on Facebook, and there's just so much hate, and so much ignorance. And even people that are my age, I'm like shocked the ignorance when it comes to like the LGBT community, and the misconceptions, and thinking that people are just- somebody who they're just not. And it's like I think it's just- the fight has been fighting, and people have been fighting, and we've won a bunch of battles, but I still think there's a huge war that we're still up against. And for everybody in the community, and specifically with trans people right now, I mean just the bathroom laws. Like that's just ridiculous. Like the things that I hear people say to me about those like, 'Oh well they can do something in the bathroom. I don't want them with my child.' It's like are you serious? Like any guy can walk in the bathroom and like hurt your little girl if they want to, or little boy. Like it has nothing to do with your identity, how you identify who you are. Like no, they're just shitty people, like stop. And I think that kind of thing just needs to be talked about, because the amount of ignorance I think is really the biggest battle that we need to fight. I mean I literally wrote an article yesterday too, about a boy who identifies as a girl, out in Alaska so she was competing in a track event, and I guess like demolished all the other girls. And somebody wrote an article like, 'See world, you made your bed, now you need to lie in it. You can't complain that this girl decimated the other girls when she was born a male.' And it's just like seriously? You just don't understand. And so I think this type of thing does need to be talked about. We can't just pretend that we're equal and say, 'Hey we're equal.' Jenn T Grace: Yeah, I cannot agree more. Have you seen the thing on- the Save Sarah that's a Go Fund Me campaign that's happening right now? And I feel fortunate that this episode is going to air within like a week of us recording it versus a lot of times I have like months delay. But the seventeen year old gay girl in- I think she's in Austin, Texas, who was sent away to a Christian boarding facility that's one of those pray the gay away type of places, and she's basically trapped, and her family is doing nothing so she has a cousin who's trying to kind of help her get through it, and they're raising money for her legal fees. And it's like, okay it is June 8th as we're recording this, it will be out next week, but this is happening on June 8th in 2016, that we have children who are being forced into places that are already deemed not helpful by many, many governing medical bodies, saying that this does not help and it actually causes more harm than good. So it just kind of continues to prove that books like yours, and books like anybody who want to write about LGBT and about coming out, or anything like this, it just kind of continues to prove that there's such a need for it because this stuff is not going away, and it's not going away as fast as we would like it to. Lindsay Felderman: And that kind of thing blows my mind. I didn't get sent to like a Christian camp, but just the same kind of mindset. 'You're not gay, you're not gay, what are you talking about?' It's just ridiculous to me. I mean one of the people that contributed to my book I met through my blog, I followed their blog, they followed mine and I posted that I wanted to write this and they submitted their story, and they're in their fifties, they're bisexual, they're married to a man, and she writes about how in her fifties she still realizes she thought that that would just go away, and it doesn't go away. Like I know for a fact that if I'd ended up marrying the guy that I'd been dating in college, or some other guy, like I would still be feeling the way that I felt when I was fifteen right now, and into the rest of my life. It just doesn't go away, and you can't pretend that it's just going to go away. I think that's probably the biggest thing too for me, is I want people to see like hey I tried to be somebody that I didn't want to be. I gave it more of an effort than I think that I probably should have. But I spent four years with a guy that- I loved him, I really did, that's the thing. He is still very angry with me, but I truly did love him, and we were best friends, but I wasn't romantically in love with him. I wasn't sexually attracted to him, and I could have stayed miserable, and stayed with him, and it would have been really bad for both us because we wouldn't have had the life that we should be living because I was hiding behind this wall of me, and I was a miserable human being. Like so miserable, I was very angry, I would get like little things that would happen, I would flip out, and it was just not me, but it was because I was holding so much angst in all the time, and nobody knew about it. It wasn't like only a few people knew, and I was talking to them on the side or whatever, and they helped me get through it. It's like I literally cut out every person in my life that knew that I was gay when I graduated from high school, slowly throughout my freshman year in college. It wasn't like a one and done, it was like I went to college, I didn't tell anybody there that I was gay or that I had been dating girls in high school, because they met me and I was dating my current boyfriend who I call Max in the book. I keep going to say his name and I don't want to do that to him. So anyway, there was no reason for me to talk about it, and then I just kind of let it be, and interestingly enough where I went to college there were people there that I went to high school with but they didn't really talk about it. I think one person that I wasn't friends with of course, because that's always what happens, the people that don't know you out you to other people, told one of my college friends, and it happened to be one of my Christian God-loving college friends, and she almost- she freaked out and I said to her, "I don't know what she's talking about. I'm with Max," and she was like, "I know, I told her she was crazy." In my head I'm like, 'No she's not, I did date girls all throughout high school, and they all knew it.' And so I started to just kind of get rid of it, and I didn't even talk about it like, "Oh yeah I dated girls." It was like, "No that never happened." Like I literally was like I took the delete button and pretended that whole part of my life just didn't exist. And so that pain and that struggle of thinking all the time like that didn't exist- and for my mom, and my boyfriend, it was a very hot topic for both of them because when he started dating me, everyone was like, "Why are you dating the lesbian? She's gay, what are you doing?" So he would get really angry, and even when I told him that I was gay, he freaked out and was like, "No you're not." Because we were best friends prior to us dating, and my mom, same thing. So it was just this hot button that I just never spoke about to anybody, and I didn't see anybody that knew it, and I moved down to Florida and so just nobody knew. And so it was like okay, I just literally went as far back into the closet as I possibly could, and it was just not good, and it didn't go away, and I didn't feel- I still felt that same way that I did when I was fifteen years old, and I think that- I don't even know what response I was responding to, but I want people to understand that it's like not going to go away. If you're feeling a certain way, you need to trust yourself because nobody is going to understand how you're feeling, and you don't want to be that miserable person. Like you could be something so much better. Where I couldn't bring anything to the world- I had nothing to offer because I was just so miserable, so caught up in hiding myself, so caught up in self-loathing. Gosh the self-hate that I had towards myself was bad, and anything gay that came up; stories, or people, it was just I had to- I couldn't take it. Like I said, I stopped talking to everybody, all my friends that knew. It was hard, I don't know why I did that to myself. And I don't want anyone else to do that to themselves which is why I wrote the book. Jenn T Grace: Yeah, it's such a perfect way of phrasing why you did what you did. So tell us how you came up with the title, because it's an interesting take on the typical coming out type of book. So 'Walking through Walls,' how- what sparked that? Lindsay Felderman: So initially actually, this weekend that I had with Seth Godin, right? Godin? I'm going to say it right. I'm just going to call him Seth. Anyway so that weekend literally was like the biggest catalyst for me. But everybody that was there kind of got like a nametag with a little catchphrase about themselves, so there was eighty or so people there, and each person had this little catchphrase and mine was I walk through walls. And I can't remember other people's to give a good example, but everybody- was something about what they were doing. So my friend works with Lululemon and something hers was about like I help- something with yoga, and every person's thing made sense for them. And for me I think they gave it to me because I worked at a software company, and so I'm not sure if they weren't sure what I did, and so it was kind of like firewalls or whatever. Jenn T Grace: Oh yeah. Lindsay Felderman: But I'm in marketing so I had nothing to do with the IT thing. So I felt very much a fraud when I was there that weekend because I really didn't know what I was doing there, I didn't really know how I could help my business- my old job there, and I had this thing where I walk through walls. And everyone is doing these amazing things helping children, and creating these like amazing businesses, they all give back to like communities, and I was just like blown away by the amount of people that were there and the work that they were doing, and I just felt very much like I don't belong here. But the whole thing is I walk through walls, and I started- as the weekend went on and I was talking to more people, and kind of telling them what I really wanted to do, they all kind of felt like the walk through walls tagline actually fit me because they were like, "You walk through kind of like these barriers, or you walk through these different ideas of who you are, and what you want to do." So I really actually started to resonate with that towards the end of the weekend, where at the beginning of the weekend I felt very like, 'Oh crap, what does this thing on my nametag? What am I going to talk about? I don't know what to do.' And by the end of it I was like, okay I really like the idea of I walk through walls because a wall is a very permanent fixture, a barrier to wherever you want to go. If there's a wall you can't walk through it, right? You have to find some sort of a door. But what I like about it, and what I ended up kind of playing it into is the whole idea of when you're queer or part of this community is you have to come out of the closet, and it's very cliché, it's like okay everyone's coming out, right? But for me I feel like I spent so much time building walls around myself to hide who I truly was, that at the end of the day I had to break down these walls. I had to actually almost physically walk through these walls that I'd built around myself of how I thought of myself, and I think that that is truly what it is. It's not about opening a door, opening a door is really easy. It's really easy to walk up to a door, hey somebody built this door and it's opening, and you can just walk through it. Where I think the majority of us, and I don't want to speak for everybody in the community, but it's much harder than that. It's not easy to come out, and a lot of times some people have to come out all the time. Like you have to constantly kind of just tell people- when you meet somebody, you like name drop that you have a fiancé that's a girl, or your wife, or whoever. And walking through walls to me spoke much more strongly about what I had to do, just breaking down those barriers that I'd built, took so many years building, to just say, 'Okay this is going to be who I am. I'm choosing to build these walls, and I'm going to do this, and how I'm going to live my life.' And then I realized these walls are trapping who I am, and I need to break them down, and walking through them is the only way that I'm going to be able to be truly happy. Jenn T Grace: I like it. Lindsay Felderman: Yeah, that's kind of it. Jenn T Grace: So what do you think in terms of- so if somebody's listening to this, and they're thinking, 'Wow I feel like I can resonate with her because I totally have sat at my desk and started to write, and then said no I have nothing to write.' Or kind of that stop and start. For somebody listening, what do you think that one piece of wisdom might be to push them out of their comfort zone, and have them just actually say, 'You know what? I am doing this.' Do you have any words of wisdom on that? Lindsay Felderman: Yeah I think first probably it would be good to just write in short bursts, and not about anything in particular. Like when I first started to like really write, I just would write almost like word vomit, just like what I was feeling, what I was doing that day. Almost like journals, but not. It's just writing, like you just need to get in the habit of writing and like letting your emotions and your thoughts, putting them down on paper. And then I was blogging, and I would share what I was writing for people, and you've just got to do it really. It's like one of those things where it's like, 'What's the great trick?' And like the great trick is just sitting down and writing. Like it's just taking that time and saying- and it doesn't need to be like you're sharing it with the world, but getting in the habit of writing and kind of just like doing what- figuring out what your writing style is too. I think for me the biggest thing too, I always was told I was a bad writer, so I really struggled throughout high school and college, in like English classes they were just like, "Yeah you don't really have great writing skills." And even in my work, my jobs, I had bosses tell me- my last job, he told me multiple times that I didn't know how to write, and it really like shattered my confidence. Like seriously? What are you talking about? And I worked really hard at kind of just like fixing it in business and whatever, but for me it was like you know what? I'm not listening to how you want me to write anymore, I'm going to write the way that I want to write, and I'm going to put it out there, and if people resonate with it, then okay, and they started to. So- but I just think the biggest thing is one, you have to believe in yourself, you really just have to believe that what you are going to say matters. And two you've just got to start writing. You literally just have to- whatever it is. I don't care if you write, 'Hi my name is Lindsay' five times on a piece of paper. Like you just need to understand that it's okay that you can actually do that. You have to have- starting to actually write, and believing that you can do it is like the two biggest things that you have to do. Because I still look at the proof that I have of my book, like when I get the actual book I don't even know what I'm going to do, but like looking at that- there are so many words in it. I still can't believe like I wrote all those words, but you just have to continue to like every day, wake up, 'Alright what am I going to write today?' And it doesn't have to be every day, it wasn't every day for me, but just doing it. Like Seth actually that weekend, he talked about- I can't remember what the name of the author was, but he said he woke up every morning at 6:00 AM, and he wrote from 6:00 until like- I don't know, 12:00 or 1:00 PM every day, and he wrote hundreds of books because he sat down and he did it every day. And that's the kind of thing- if you want to become something, you have to work at it, and you have to sit down, and you have to do it. And that's the biggest thing. And then finding somebody that supports you, I think too. So as soon as I started telling people, like really my fiancé Sam, she was like, "Wow that's amazing that you want to do that." I think she kind of didn't believe me that I was going to do it. Not so much that she didn't think I could, but she was just like, "That's a big thing to do." But having her support, and just like the support of my family saying, "Yeah you need to do that," I think- and I talk about that in the book too. Like as your coming out story- like just finding somebody that's supportive in your life is super important regardless. Whether it's you're writing a book, whether it's you want to become an astronaut or scientist, or whatever you want to do, you just need to find people that support your dreams and are positive. Because if you bring people into your life that don't believe that you can do what you know you can do, they're just going to bring you down, and there's no point in having those types of people in your life. So it's find somebody that's supportive, sit down and write, and just do whatever- you do whatever you want to do. There's just so many things you can do in this world, and you have to follow your dreams, and you can do it is what I would say. Jenn T Grace: I love it. Lindsay Felderman: Anybody can do it. Jenn T Grace: So speaking of anyone can do it, I totally agree. I think anyone if they focus and they sit down to do it, they totally can. So after the writing part, where do you feel like it was the second most challenging? Because obviously the writing- like you can't pussyfoot around that, there's just- it is what it is. But where were those other types of roadblocks, or perceived roadblocks where you were like, 'What the hell is going on here?' Did you have those moments where you were just kind of stressed out because of certain logistical things? Or what did that look like? Lindsay Felderman: So the logistical things- I guess initially they did. So basically I wrote my book, and then it sat in a Word document, I didn't know what to do. And I can't even begin to describe to you how I think like the universe works, but because I volunteer for- because I met Sam, because she worked for Teach for America, because I then found out about GLSEN, volunteered for GLSEN, because I chose to go to one like random Wednesday night at a business thing, walked by your booth, and I didn't have time to stop because I was leaving, I saw Jenn T. Grace, Professional Lesbian, looked it up on my way home and was like, 'Wow this lady is pretty cool.' Started following you on like social media, responded to you- whatever, got on your email list, and then like two months later got an email from you saying, 'Do you want to tell your story in 2016?' It's like, 'Wait what? Yes, yes I do. I literally wanted to pick up the phone right now, call you and be like, 'I absolutely want to tell my story. Like how did you know? Did you just send this to me?' It was so crazy. But so the biggest thing definitely is the writing, that sucks, but then the logistical thing was scary because I didn't know what I could do. I didn't know anybody in publishing, I didn't know do I just send my book to all these specific publishers? I had friends saying, 'Okay look up LGBTQ publishers, and reach out to them.' And that just all seemed really daunting and scary and I was like, 'I don't really know what to do with this.' And then meeting you, and your class really helped with all that, like I could self-publish through Amazon, great that takes all that away, I don't care what anyone else has to say. No that was fine, but then I think the editing part of the book, and going back and just having to re-read what you wrote is like really, really hard. Especially when it's something like the book that I wrote, where it's emotional and every time I read what I wrote about whatever chapter it is, like it brings me back into that moment of that pure raw emotion, and it's hard to kind of put yourself back in those moments I think sometimes, because it was really emotional. So I think just- I think I remember saying in your class one time I said, "I haven't read it in a while," because it took so much out of me to read it, and to have to go back, and figure out does this make sense? And then I had to go back and do like kind of the so what's at the end of the book- or end of each chapter because I kind of realized I just kind of moved on and I didn't really explain like why that was important. So just all that part is just- I feel like once you do it you feel really accomplished that you wrote it, you put all these words on paper, but you're only really halfway there. Like there's so much other things that go into it, and you want to just be like, 'This is a book, put it on the shelf, this is a book,' but you have to do so much more to get it to be- like I'm literally 99% of the way there. I literally just have to fix some formatting and the way that I fixed the quotes, and make it so it fits so that Amazon will say that my file looks good, and then I'm good. And it's just like I have to do it, but it's just getting there. Picking all the little details, and understanding, and yeah. Jenn T Grace: And you have a cover now, right? So I believe I saw your cover. Because when I saw the proof it was just plain white, which was like mysterious. Lindsay Felderman: Oh that's a piece of my cover actually, that's not even the whole thing. Jenn T Grace: Beautiful. Lindsay Felderman: The one that you saw on Instagram- or Facebook? Jenn T Grace: Yeah. Lindsay Felderman: Yeah it's a piece of it. Jenn T Grace: I like it. So when- so somebody listening to this, when should they expect your book to be available for purchase? They will be listening to this as of Thursday, June 16th this will be live. Lindsay Felderman: I am hoping that it will be published- I don't- once you hit the big- I should just ask you. When you hit the big publish button, like what's the waiting period on Amazon? Is it just like- do they need to like approve it? Or is it just like, 'Hey you're good.' Jenn T Grace: It's within like 24 hours that it's available for other people to buy. Lindsay Felderman: So yeah, I'm hoping either today or tomorrow I fix those little formatting issues, and then like I'm hitting publish. Jenn T Grace: Nice. Lindsay Felderman: So we're pretty much there. I would say by the time this podcast airs, you'll be able to buy it on Amazon. Jenn T Grace: Good, good. Now there is- you're having to be held to it because now there are thousands of people listening and may want to purchase, which I totally think they should. This was fantastic. I so appreciate you jumping on, and sharing your process, and hopefully inspiring some other people to share their stories too. If somebody wants to contact you directly, what is your- either your blog website, or where you are on social media? How would you prefer people to get in touch with you? Lindsay Felderman: Honestly I'll give out all my- I guess ways of contact because I know everybody is kind of different in the way they want to contact. So if you want to go to my website it's just www.LindsayFelderman.com, and there's like a form on there that you can submit and it goes directly to my email. My Instagram is LFelderman so you can find me there, I'm not private so you can follow me, or send me a message, or whatever you want to do. And then my Twitter, which I'm not going to lie I don't really use all that often, is LFelderman22. So those are probably the easiest ways to get in contact with me, all of them are hooked up with my email so I'll get it- and it's email that I actually check, so I'll see whatever you send. Jenn T Grace: Or go to Amazon and type in either your name or Walking through Walls, and your book should come up and be available for purchase. And of course if people do buy the book, I certainly want to know. So if anyone listening to this, if you buy it, please let me know about it so that way we can make sure Lindsay knows it came through here. And then of course leave a review. I feel like reviews are always important, even if you only have a couple, it's really helpful to have some reviews because I have no doubt that your story will help change lives, which is kind of the end goal that we're both going for, which is just so amazing and so awesome. So thank you again for your time, I really appreciate it. Lindsay Felderman: Thank you Jenn, I really appreciate it more than you know.

america amazon texas english walking lgbtq courage started massachusetts teach alaska lgbt picking walls gofundme personal branding seth godin pile lululemon godin christian god your true self glsen gay straight alliance inspirational books gsas jenn t grace walking through walls jenn grace

'1913 - A defining year in exhibition-making' (Frieze Talks London 2013)

Frieze

Play Episode Listen Later May 19, 2016 64:26

Bruce Altshuler (Director, Program in Museum Studies, GSAS, NYU) & Vivian Sky Rehberg (Director, MFA, Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam) in conversation at Frieze London 2013

art defining nyu talks mfa rotterdam exhibition exhibitions duchamp frieze museum studies armory show gsas frieze london

Interview with Ted Allen (GSAS '90)

nyu chopped gsas ted allen

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 9, 2015 16:30

Listen to our interview with Emmy award winner Ted Allen (GSAS '90) as he talks about his memories of NYU, his career path after NYU, and what happens behind-the-scenes on Chopped.

002 Graduate Student Association Senate (GSAS)

Masters Matter

Play Episode Listen Later May 29, 2015 19:54

senate graduate students gsas graduate student association

Why are Gay-Straight Alliances in Alberta Schools Political “Hot Potatoes”? (Part 2 Q&A)

Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs (SACPA)

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 12, 2015 32:11

A motion to mandate that Alberta schools support the creation of student-led gay-straight alliances (GSAs) in schools where students have requested it, was defeated in the Alberta Legislature early last year. In late 2014 two Bills dealing with the same student-led gay-straight alliances were brought before the legislature. The first, Bill 202, was a private members Bill, which prompted the Government to draft its own, Bill 10. By the time the dust settled and amendments were attempted, neither Bill was passed as Premier Prentice stepped in and put the Bills on hold pending further studies. Researchers at the University of British Columbia recently released the results of an extensive study showing that GSAs reduce the risk of suicide for all students, LGBTQ and straight. The speaker will present further background information on this controversial topic and discuss what is known about the effects GSAs can have for all students in the schools where they are established. Speaker: Robert Cey, PhD Dr. Cey is an Assistant Professor of Counselling Psychology with the Faculty of Education at the University of Lethbridge. He is also a registered provisional psychologist and has a research focus on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender issues in Psychology (particularly processes of individual identity development and understanding and overcoming the effects of homophobic violence and verbal abuse). Dr. Cey's presentation will include some background on the legislative history of GSAs in Alberta, some information on the common goals and activities of the groups, and what is known about how GSAs are believed to affect both the social and interpersonal climates of schools and students' mental health. Moderator: Shannan Little Date: Thursday, February 12, 2015 Time: Noon - 1:30 PM (30 minutes each for presentation, lunch and Q & A) Location: Country Kitchen Catering (Lower level of The Keg) 1715 Mayor Magrath Dr. S Cost: $11.00 (includes lunch) or $2.00 (includes coffee/tea at the presentation only)

Why are Gay-Straight Alliances in Alberta Schools Political “Hot Potatoes”? (Part 2 Q&A)

Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs (SACPA)

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 12, 2015 32:11

A motion to mandate that Alberta schools support the creation of student-led gay-straight alliances (GSAs) in schools where students have requested it, was defeated in the Alberta Legislature early last year. In late 2014 two Bills dealing with the same student-led gay-straight alliances were brought before the legislature. The first, Bill 202, was a private members Bill, which prompted the Government to draft its own, Bill 10. By the time the dust settled and amendments were attempted, neither Bill was passed as Premier Prentice stepped in and put the Bills on hold pending further studies. Researchers at the University of British Columbia recently released the results of an extensive study showing that GSAs reduce the risk of suicide for all students, LGBTQ and straight. The speaker will present further background information on this controversial topic and discuss what is known about the effects GSAs can have for all students in the schools where they are established. Speaker: Robert Cey, PhD Dr. Cey is an Assistant Professor of Counselling Psychology with the Faculty of Education at the University of Lethbridge. He is also a registered provisional psychologist and has a research focus on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender issues in Psychology (particularly processes of individual identity development and understanding and overcoming the effects of homophobic violence and verbal abuse). Dr. Cey's presentation will include some background on the legislative history of GSAs in Alberta, some information on the common goals and activities of the groups, and what is known about how GSAs are believed to affect both the social and interpersonal climates of schools and students' mental health. Moderator: Shannan Little Date: Thursday, February 12, 2015 Time: Noon - 1:30 PM (30 minutes each for presentation, lunch and Q & A) Location: Country Kitchen Catering (Lower level of The Keg) 1715 Mayor Magrath Dr. S Cost: $11.00 (includes lunch) or $2.00 (includes coffee/tea at the presentation only)

Why are Gay-Straight Alliances in Alberta Schools Political “Hot Potatoes”? (Part 1)

Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs (SACPA)

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 12, 2015 29:10

A motion to mandate that Alberta schools support the creation of student-led gay-straight alliances (GSAs) in schools where students have requested it, was defeated in the Alberta Legislature early last year. In late 2014 two Bills dealing with the same student-led gay-straight alliances were brought before the legislature. The first, Bill 202, was a private members Bill, which prompted the Government to draft its own, Bill 10. By the time the dust settled and amendments were attempted, neither Bill was passed as Premier Prentice stepped in and put the Bills on hold pending further studies. Researchers at the University of British Columbia recently released the results of an extensive study showing that GSAs reduce the risk of suicide for all students, LGBTQ and straight. The speaker will present further background information on this controversial topic and discuss what is known about the effects GSAs can have for all students in the schools where they are established. Speaker: Robert Cey, PhD Dr. Cey is an Assistant Professor of Counselling Psychology with the Faculty of Education at the University of Lethbridge. He is also a registered provisional psychologist and has a research focus on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender issues in Psychology (particularly processes of individual identity development and understanding and overcoming the effects of homophobic violence and verbal abuse). Dr. Cey's presentation will include some background on the legislative history of GSAs in Alberta, some information on the common goals and activities of the groups, and what is known about how GSAs are believed to affect both the social and interpersonal climates of schools and students' mental health. Moderator: Shannan Little Date: Thursday, February 12, 2015 Time: Noon - 1:30 PM (30 minutes each for presentation, lunch and Q & A) Location: Country Kitchen Catering (Lower level of The Keg) 1715 Mayor Magrath Dr. S Cost: $11.00 (includes lunch) or $2.00 (includes coffee/tea at the presentation only)

Jonathan Tropper (GSAS '93) talks about his novel and the screen adaptation of This Is Where I Leave You

screen adaptation jonathan tropper gsas this is where i leave you

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 16, 2014 6:11

Listen to our interview with writer Jonathan Tropper (GSAS '93). His novel, This Is Where I Leave You has been adapted into a movie for which he also wrote the screenplay.

Travel with Kate Thomas (GSAS '10)

travel documentary nicaragua tunisia southern spain kate thomas gsas

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 29, 2014 12:00

Kate Thomas is a 2010 NYU News and Documentary grad who is carving out a career in travel entertainment. She created the blog, TravelwithKate.com and the youtube series of the same name. She is currently the host, producer, shooter and editor of her show that uncovers local life wherever she travels. And in each episode she finds a passionate local to show her their unique perspective on her destination. Some regions covered so far include London, Paris, Southern Spain, Nicaragua, and Tunisia.

Live from New York University, it's Tonight Show Staff Writer Mike Drucker (CAS '06, GSAS '07)

new york university tonight show staff writer live from new york tonight show starring jimmy fallon mike drucker gsas

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 16, 2014 12:38

Listen to our interview with comedian and Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon staff writer, Mike Drucker.

The Mideast Show - Kayvon Afshari (GSAS '12) and Serhan Ayhan (GSAS '13)

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 30, 2014 11:31

Listen to our interview with the creator and head writer for The Mideast Show with Kayvon Afshari.

mideast kayvon ayhan gsas

Allen Salkin (GSAS '96), Author of <i>From Scratch: Inside the Food Network</i>

nyu scratch food network gsas allen salkin

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 13, 2014 19:47

Listen to our interview with journalist and NYU alumnus Allen Salkin as he talks about his time at NYU and his newest book which gives a behind-the-scenes look at the Food Network.

Interview with Janet Groth (GSAS, '68 '82)

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 10, 2012 15:57

Janet Groth talks about her years working at The New Yorker and her time at NYU. She is the author of the newly published memoir, "The Receptionist: An Education at the New Yorker."

new yorker nyu groth gsas

Interview with Pamela Schein Murphy (GSAS '94)