Podcasts about lee so

What does empathy have to do with design thinking and pipe cleaner hats? Lee is a design thinker, an engineer, and a community builder. She founded a community innovation lab, Design Dream Lab, where anyone with a giving heart can make an impact and dream of a better future. Lee loves building and fostering creativity through everyday experiences and finds joy in connecting dots with other fun-loving and joyful human beings. Lee currently serves as a Service Design Experience Lead at Pfizer. When she is not playing at work, she brings amazing people together to build the future that we desire. Traci was introduced to Lee just because.  Traci never even knew Lee was a bit of a celebrity who made and wore pipe cleaner hats. She had worn them for a year and was covered in a beautiful New Yorker article and video expose.  You are in for inspiration and a positive sparkle in your day when you listen to Lee's creative nudges and design thinking ethos. Episode Timeline [00:09] Intro  [0:58] Meet Lee Kim [4:01] Lee describes the hat she is wearing for our podcast interview. [5:14] How “wearable Tracy” pipe cleaner hats were birthed. [8:33] A family feud repaired through empathy and design thinking. [14:44] Playing empathy kaleidoscope game at Queens Library in New York. [21:00] Creating an end-of-life vision in a New York City Park [27:32] Defining Design Thinking [33:47] Our failed design prototypes are necessary for lighting our path [40:34] Parting wish to listeners [43:32] Outro Resources Mentioned New Yorker Piece on Silly Hats (Article / Video) Design Dream Lab (website) Memory Kaleidoscope (website)    Standout Quotes “...it's impossible to achieve 100 % empathy because even if you were born in the same time go through the same life as a twin or someone, your life is different. So you can never actually 100 % empathize with that person. But as a person who is curious, what we can do is we could try, attempt to be that person.” (Lee) “Oftentimes it is us just helping each other to grow to be a better person rather than us trying to create products to make the world better. (Lee). “The perspective shifting reframing of the questions from the lens of the person who's going through it always start the design thinking process. And that is what designers do.” (Lee) “So what excites me about design thinking is it's never a lone game. There are always partners who are going to come along the journey with you.” (Lee) “And you create prototypes not to prove you're right. You create prototypes to see what you can learn more about the person. And then you go test and iterate, and then you come back to, Okay, this is what we think can help you.” (Lee) “...the solution is communication. The solution is sharing their lived experiences, not the theory that you can find in research papers.” (Lee)  “I think it's important for me to at least know that to myself, am I true to myself.” (Lee)   Connect: Find | Sidewalk Talk  At sidewalk-talk.org On Instagram: @sidewalktalkorg On Twitter: @sidewalktalkorg   Find | Traci Ruble At Traciruble.com On Instagram: @TraciRubleMFT On Twitter: @TraciRubleMFT On Facebook: @TraciRubleMFT   Find | Lee Kim At www.designdreamlab.org On LinkedIn: @leekim   SUBSCRIBE TO THIS PODCAST On Apple Podcasts On Google Podcasts On Spotify On YouTube

Second of a double podcast episode about the South Korean movements of 1987 which overthrew the US-backed military dictatorship and won big improvements for workers. In these episodes we speak with Kim Jin-sook and Hong Seung Ha about their experiences of the June Democratic Struggle, and the Great Workers' Struggle which immediately followed it.Our podcast is brought to you by our patreon supporters. Our supporters fund our work, and in return get exclusive early access to podcast episodes, ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, free and discounted merchandise and other content. Join us or find out more at patreon.com/workingclasshistoryPart 2 covers the Great Workers' Struggle, the massive strike wave, the first elections after the fall of the dictatorship, and its legacy today.More informationE53-56: The Gwangju uprising – WCH podcast about the 1980 uprising in Gwangju which preceded these movements.E51: Jeon Tae-il and Lee So-sun – WCH podcast about the organising of textile workers and the general historical background to South Korean history in the 20th-century.Timeline of South Korean history.Webpage for this episode with sources, full show notes, and transcripts.AcknowledgementsThanks to our patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jazz Hands, Jamison D. Saltsman, Fernando López Ojeda and Jeremy Cusimano.Thanks also to the following people and groups for additional assistance with these episodes: Hwang Jeongeun and Steven, of the International Strategy Centre, Kwon Beomchul, Angela Lee, Kap Su Seol, Hwang Yi-ra, and Loren Goldner.Learn more about the International Strategy Centre at https://www.goisc.org/homePhotograph used in episode graphic courtesy 『세계는 서울로, 서울은 세계로: 1984-1988』(2019) (The World to Seoul, Seoul to the World: 1984-1988) by 서울역사아카이브 (Seoul History Archive)/Wikimedia CommonsMusic used in this episode under fair use was “Marching For the Beloved” by Baek Ki-wan, Hwang Seok-young and Kim Jong-ryul.This episode was edited by Jesse French.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/working-class-history--5711490/support.

First of a double podcast episode about the South Korean movements of 1987 which overthrew the US-backed military dictatorship and won big improvements for workers. In these episodes we speak with Kim Jin-sook and Hong Seung Ha about their experiences of the June Democratic Struggle, and the Great Workers' Struggle which immediately followed it.Our podcast is brought to you by our patreon supporters. Our supporters fund our work, and in return get exclusive early access to podcast episodes, ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, free and discounted merchandise and other content. Join us or find out more at patreon.com/workingclasshistoryPart 1 covers the June Democratic Struggle, the historical background, and how the movement began. Listen to part 2 now by joining us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/e92-south-korea-110947071More informationE53-56: The Gwangju uprising – WCH podcast about the 1980 uprising in Gwangju which preceded these movements.E51: Jeon Tae-il and Lee So-sun – WCH podcast about the organising of textile workers and the general historical background to South Korean history in the 20th-century.Timeline of South Korean history.Webpage for this episode with sources, full show notes, and transcripts.AcknowledgementsThanks to our patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jazz Hands, Jamison D. Saltsman, Fernando López Ojeda and Jeremy Cusimano.Thanks also to the following people and groups for additional assistance with these episodes: Hwang Jeongeun and Steven, of the International Strategy Centre, Kwon Beomchul, Angela Lee, Kap Su Seol, Hwang Yi-ra, and Loren Goldner.Learn more about the International Strategy Centre at https://www.goisc.org/homePhotograph used in episode graphic courtesy 『세계는 서울로, 서울은 세계로: 1984-1988』(2019) (The World to Seoul, Seoul to the World: 1984-1988) by 서울역사아카이브 (Seoul History Archive)/Wikimedia CommonsMusic used in this episode under fair use was “Marching For the Beloved” by Baek Ki-wan, Hwang Seok-young and Kim Jong-ryul.This episode was edited by Jesse French.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/working-class-history--5711490/support.

Rules were a major part of Lee's household growing up. But it wasn't until he started to dig into his family's history that he began to realize that the rules that he was expected to follow had a long, dark history. In this episode, Lee speaks with historian Dr. Daina Ramey Berry to better understand the life of Lee's great-great-grandmother Charity, an enslaved woman, and learn about how the slave codes and Black codes shaped her life, and the lives of her descendants. Later Lee speaks with Professor Sally Hadden to learn about the origins of the slave codes, and how they've influenced the rules that govern our modern society.TranscriptWe wanted to give a heads up that this episode includes talk of abuse, and acts of violence. You can find resources on our website, WhatHappenedInAlabama.org - listener discretion is advised.Hi - this is Lee Hawkins and thanks for joining me for episode six of What Happened In Alabama. In this episode we dive into the slave codes and Black codes - what they were, and how they show up in our current day to day. If you haven't already, I encourage you to go back and listen to the prologue first. That'll give you some context for putting the whole series in perspective. Do that, and then join us back here. Thank you so much. INTROEven when we don't realize it, life is governed by rules. We often say we “should” do things a certain way without knowing why. The truth is, many actions have root causes that trace back to how we were raised and what we were socialized to believe – both by our families and the societies we live in.In dictionaries, rules are described as explicit or understood regulations governing conduct. We see these guidelines in everything from the order and cadence of the written and spoken word, to how we move from A to B on the roads, or the ways different sports are played - the “rules of the game.”But “rule” also means to have control or dominion over people or places.This was the way of colonialism around the world for centuries. And this control manifests as laws and codes that yes, create order, but can also have the power to suppress freedoms - and instill fear to ensure compliance. In past episodes you've heard me talk about the rules of my household growing up in Maplewood, Minnesota, and the many layers of history that get to the root of those rules. Talking with my father and other family members who lived under Jim Crow apartheid provided one piece of understanding. Learning of my white ancestry from Wales dating back to the 1600s offered another. But we have to revisit my ancestors on both sides of enslavement, white and Black – back to the physical AND mental trauma that was experienced to really connect the dots to the tough rules that governed the household, and why my parents and some other relatives felt they needed to whip their children. Also, why so many other racial stereotypes were both imposed on us by society, and often internalized by some within our Black families and communities. For that, we have to dig deeper into the story of my Grandma Charity, her experiences as a Black girl born enslaved and kept in bondage well into adulthood, and the rules that governed her life, both during her time of captivity and after that, under Jim Crow apartheid. This is What Happened in Alabama: The Slave Codes. [music up, and a beat]I can't tell you how many thousands of hours I've spent digging through genealogy reports, archives and police records looking for documentation about my family. Sometimes I can do the work from my computer at home, other times, for the really specific details around my dad's family, I've had to make the trip back to Alabama, to gather oral history, go to courthouses, walk through cemeteries, and drive around. [sifting through papers] It can be slow and tedious work. Sometimes you think you've found a lead that's going to take you somewhere that you could have never imagined - but then you realize it's a dead end. Sometimes, you get a huge rush of endorphins when you make a discovery that blows open the doors that once seemed forever closed.One night, in 2015, I'd recently received my DNA results showing a strong connection to the white side of the Pugh family. I was sitting in my dark living room, looking into the illuminated screen of my computer at two in the morning. I'd just found the last will and testament of Jesse Pugh, a white ancestor who genealogists surmise is my great great great grandfather, from Pike County, Alabama. We met Jesse Pugh in the last episode. The will was dated March 24, 1852. Jesse Pugh died two years later. To his wife and children, he left hundreds of acres of land, household furnitures, plantation tools, farming animals, bushels of corn, and a number of enslaved people – all listed as “Negroes.”As I pored over the details of the will, I came across a name I'd heard before: Charity. I read it over again. “Second, I give and bequeath to my son Mastin B. a Negro Girl, Charity…” Fixating on those words,“a Negro girl, Charity” my eyes welled up. She was left to Jesse Pugh's son, Mastin B. Pugh. Charity was the grandmother Uncle Ike told me and my father about on our trip to Alabama back in 1991. I remember Uncle Ike telling us about how, when Charity's son, his own father Isaac Pugh Sr., acquired his own farm, mean ol' Grandma Charity would constantly beat Uncle Ike, my Grandma Opie, and their other siblings, right there in the field, usually because she thought they weren't working fast enough. Rosa: Now I'll tell you the exact word he told me, he said "that was the meanest old heifer I ever seen." That's my cousin, Rosa Lee Pugh-Moore, Uncle Ike's daughter. She has few memories of her father talking about his grandmother Charity. But she says whenever he did talk about her, he always had one thing to say. Rosa: He hated his grandma, said she was just really mean. And that's all he talked about. How mean she was and how people tried to get over on her doing things she didn't like them to do, and she would fight.I'd heard so much about Cousin Rosa - a real Pugh matriarch. In 2018 I headed to Birmingham, Alabama to meet my sweet cousin for what I thought would be a conversation with just the two of us. I didn't realize it was her birthday, and when I arrived, it was cousin Rosa, plus about 30 other relatives - her grandchildren, great grandchildren and even a newly born great-great grandchild. Stepping into the home, I was surrounded by generations of family members - and they were just as excited as I was to hear what Cousin Rosa had to say. There was so much they hadn't heard about her life - from walking for miles as part of the Montgomery bus boycott, to leaving the country in Georgiana for the big city in Birmingham, all the way back to the stories she'd heard about Grandma Charity.Before I settled in, I kissed her cheek and sat in a chair next to her to hear as many of the stories of her life and our family as I could. That's what some of the elders who weren't reluctant to share stories used to do, she told me. Rosa: And at night sit up and they tell us about the families and stuff like that. Pots of peanuts and sweet potatoes, stuff like that.With the rest of the family close by, still celebrating her birthday, I can feel those stories passing through her childhood memories into my recorder. I feel so blessed to be here. And I realize she's my gateway to the family in Alabama, because she's called family members all over the country, and pushed them to talk with me. She was brave, never afraid to talk about Alabama, the good and the bad. And her knowledge went all the way back to Grandma Charity. Lee Hawkins:So when, how old were you when you learned when you first learned about Grandma Charity? Rosa: I guess. Oh, good gracious. I was about nine or ten like that. Something like that.Cousin Rosa and I remember Uncle Ike saying that she hated white peopleUncle Ike: She hated white folk... And uh, and uh one time my daddy was fifteen and one of them told them get out or something and someone knocked them down and Grandma kicked them and she did all three of them yeah. This is a recording of Uncle Ike from 1991, when my Dad and I sat down with him at his home in Georgiana, Alabama. It's hard to hear, but he's telling us about how a group of white men showed up at their house one day and tried to pull Grandma Charity out of the house to whip her, until she came out fighting. Rosa: Yeah, that kind of stuff he told us. I don't know that whole story. I don't remember the whole story. Rosa: So then she had that boy. That boy is Isaac Pugh Sr. Uncle Ike's father, Rosa's grandfather, and my great grandfatherRosa: And daddy say he was too light for Black people like him, and he was too dark for white people to like him. So he's kind of a loner.As I listen to Cousin Rosa talk about Grandma Charity, I can't help but think about the most obvious fact about her that eluded me for so much of my life – Grandma Charity was born enslaved. No one had ever told me that! No one had mentioned it. I only learned this that early morning in 2015, when I found Jesse Pugh's will.As Cousin Rosa said, Uncle Ike hated his grandmother. But understanding that she was enslaved for the early part of her life - around 20 years - added a dimension to this supposedly “mean ol” woman. Just how learning more about my father's experiences under Jim Crow added nuance to him as a man in my eyes. They both went through Alabama's version of hell on earth. We model what we see and many of us adopt the rules and customs of the country we're born into. America, before anything else, was founded on violence.Knowing that, I felt skeptical about the way Grandma Charity was characterized for all those years in the family history. And once I discovered Jesse Pugh's will I realized that she'd been simply pathologized – even by her own family– and that, like me with my father, my ancestors and elders didn't know enough about the atrocities she'd experienced to be able to explain why she sometimes thought the way she did, and was the way she was. For the benefit of this project, for my family, and most of all, for Grandma Charity, I knew I had to learn more about what life was like for an enslaved Black woman in the mid-1800s, to add meaningful context to her story. So, what did Grandma Charity endure? What laws and codes governed her life? To learn more, I started with a conversation with Daina Ramey Berry.Dr.Berry: I am the Michael Douglas Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts and a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I call myself a scholar of the enslaved. Most of my time in the academy has been in archives, conducting research, and trying to find and tell stories like people like your Great Great Grandmother Charity.Dr.Berry: A number of historians are skeptical about making connections between the past and the present. But if we trace the past decade by decade, year by year, we can see connections to contemporary America, and if you look at history as a foundation, the foundations that were laid are still what have built our houses, and we need to, we need to dismantle the parts of our history that need to be rewritten to be more inclusive, right?I reached out to Daina Ramey Berry after I found records and research on Grandma Charity and her mother Laner. It was all words and numbers on a page and I needed more context. I don't remember how I found her - I was knee deep in books and papers and articles at the time. But I wanted to understand more about what life was like for enslaved Black women. LEE: What don't we know about Black women during history? What haven't people been able to pay attention to or, as I would believe, haven't always wanted to pay attention to? Dr.Berry: I think the latter is really where I'd like to start because there are conferences over the years that I've attended with historians, my colleagues, and oftentimes scholars will say, well, Yes, Black women were exploited during slavery, but not that much.Dr.Berry: And my question always is, have you tried to calculate it? How do you know it's not that much? What is not that much? When I look at narratives, I've looked at court records, I've looked at letters and diaries and all kinds of different documents, where enslaved girls and women are talking about sexual exploitation and abuse, physical and sexual abuse.Dr.Berry: Mothers were teaching their daughters how to quote unquote protect their principal at a very young age. Young girls did not want their enslavers to know that they had their first menstrual cycle. And on the flip side, some women even bound their breasts up so that they didn't look like they were developing and they were maturing, um, into adulthood.Dr.Berry: So there's a number of things that enslaved women and girls did to try to protect themselves from puberty and from signs of showing evidence of puberty, because they knew what that meant. On the flip side, enslavers were often hyper focused on women's menstrual cycle, and you might ask, well, why something so personal would they be so concerned with?Dr.Berry: That often was because enslaved people were expensive to purchase. To purchase in the auction, you had to be quite wealthy, and the values of enslaved people were high. So if you could quote unquote grow your own enslaved people, or if natural reproduction, forced reproduction, i. e. rape, then you're gonna, you're gonna grow your plantation workforce without having to purchase somebody.This practice of growing your own free labor is in my bloodline - and repeated for generations. Grandma Laner - Charity's mother - was raped while enslaved. Grandma Charity - who was described as a light skinned woman - is the product. Grandma Charity was also raped by a white man while she was held captive under enslavement, and Isaac Pugh Sr is the result. This is the so-called “white man” I saw as an image on Uncle Ike's mantle when I visited in 1991. If I had just seen his picture without the history, I would never have known his mother was Black. Dr.Berry: So enslaved women's bodies, their reproductive capabilities, their fertility was one of the most important aspects of what maintained and grew through the 19th century the institution of chattel slavery in the United States. LEE: Which is inextricably tied to capitalism. Dr.Berry: Yes. LEE: Yes, and one of the most painful things that I've experienced in the course of doing this research was a conversation that I had with a genealogist who said, well, you know, um, how do we know that she was raped?LEE: Maybe she was a mistress? Dr.Berry: No. Like other enslaved women, Grandmas Laner and Charity had no legal right to refuse sexual advances from their male enslavers - because they were property, nowhere near a relationship of equals. They were also often young girls.The sexual abuse of young girls is shocking, yet this is a key part of maintaining the power dynamic during slavery. Ripping enslaved families apart made it easier for white slave owners and other men to prey on young girls. When she was about 14 years old, Grandma Charity was separated from her mother, Laner. Just a child, she had to adjust to a different plantation and community, and a new enslaver, alone. Dr.Berry: Family separation was one of the most traumatic experiences that enslaved people went through. And it's something that they lived in day to day fear of, of being separated from their, from their parents, from their siblings, from any, any kin that they had, um, on their, in their proximity.Dr.Berry: We've seen it from the perspective of a child remembering the wailing of their mother as they were pulled off and put on a wagon and the child is remaining and they hear their wailing cries of their mothers up until like a mile later or just until they can't hear it anymore.Dr.Berry: There's extreme examples of, babies, infants being ripped from the mother's breast and being sold, literally, uh, breastfeeding mothers. There are also examples of fathers and sons standing on the auction block holding hands, you know, and just silently tears coming down their face because they know that after that day, after that moment, they won't, they most likely won't ever see each other again.Dr.Berry: Um, there's other stories of mothers knowing that this, this stranger that's come to the, the property has asked me to put my son in his Sunday best and I, I've said this before, it's like that child was a child and didn't have really any clothes but a smock and their first set of clothings that they received was the clothing that they were going to put for the auction.Dr.Berry: Another mother talked about braiding her daughter's hair for the last time and putting a ribbon in it, knowing. that she was preparing her for the auction and that she would no longer see her again. These were traumatic experiences and we find that the closeness of the families and the desire to be connected to a family was a survival mechanism for Black people.Dr.Berry: And that even if you look at the evidence we have now in information wanted ads,and these advertisements are powerful testimony to Black genealogy from the perspective of the enslaved and formerly enslaved people searching for, I haven't seen my mother since I was two. I'm 40 years old now. You know, I remember her name was Laura. Her hair was shoulder length. She was wearing an apron and a, and a, and a long dress.Dr.Berry: You know, those kinds of testimonies just show the strength and the impact of the desire to connect to your family, but the impact of separation still did not push them away from trying to locate and connect with their blood relatives or kin. In trying to connect my family tree, I found so many sources of loss. There's the parental loss Grandma Laner experienced with Charity, knowing almost certainly the physical brutality her daughter would face once separated from her. Two generations later, Charity's granddaughter, and my grandmother Opie, experienced the loss of her father at age nine, after seeing him blood splattered and slumped over his horse. And then my father - Opie's son and Charity's great grandson - lost his mother to health inequality when he was just 12 years old. These are the building blocks of a cycle of generational loss. So when I hear Daina Ramey Berry talk about the desire to connect to your family and the impact of separation, I get it. Genealogy is like a giant DNA puzzle that stretches across time. Until you dig, you don't learn these things. Geneticists have data that shows that Black Americans have on average 24 percent European blood in their veins. Yet, there's a denial or an unwillingness to acknowledge how prevalent and pervasive rape was. And some of this is embedded in the laws and the codes of slavery…Dr.Berry: We need context to understand, like you said, the contemporary connections to our current bloodlines.Dr.Berry: And that we are, that slavery was an intimate institution. We are interlaced. We are connected whether we want to be or not, but we are connected. LEE: Thank you so much. Thank you for this magnificent work you're doing.Dr.Berry: Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it.[MUSIC BEAT]Learning more about what enslaved Black women lived through deepened my love for my strong, brave matriarch, Grandma Charity. And to think she then had to live through Jim Crow apartheid.But I wanted to drill down even more into the specific rules that she – in Greenville in the 1800s - had to live under and follow. For that, I dug up the Alabama Slave Codes of 1852, which governed every facet of Black lives. Under the slave codes, enslaved people were property, not people. The codes were used to regulate the behavior of enslaved people and ensure their subjugation by curtailing many aspects of their lives. Note that I didn't say that these codes only restricted the enslaved, but ALL Black people. I discovered that one widespread myth is that the Black people who weren't in bondage were FREE. Under the slave codes, enslaved people were property, not people. After the abolition of slavery the Black codes picked up where the slave codes ended, and restricted the freedoms of the “free”And then there were the restrictions of Jim Crow policies. In states like Alabama– and the many states in the North that had their own Jim Crow rules – ALL Black people lived under laws and codes, at the country, state or national level, that curtailed their physical and emotional freedom in the United States. As Daina Ramey Berry mentioned in our conversation some of these rules still hold us in invisible bondage and shape how we live and how for some - we parent. For more on “the rules” I spoke with Sally Hadden, a professor at Western Michigan University…Prof.Hadden: I'm a specialist in legal and constitutional history, particularly of early America. My first book was entitled, “Slave Patrols, Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas”. And that book tracked the development of slave patrols as a legal institution from the 1600s to the 1870s.I told Professor Hadden about my family, my white European ancestry, and the enslavement of Grandma Charity and other family members. By then, I'd studied the Slave Codes, the Black Codes, and Jim Crow, and realized that the slave codes that governed Grandma Charity's life informed how she raised her children and grandchildren. And in many ways, the rules my dad learned while growing up under Jim Crow apartheid governed the way my parents raised me.The whip used to punish Slave Code and Black Code violations, became the belt I often faced in the living room. But it was more than the physical. The fear of disobeying the rules added to the mental toll. Those codes also helped shape how many others– both in my family and beyond– expected me to act..it shaped the idea that I needed to stay in my place, or be punished. Prof.Hadden: People parent the way that they experienced being a child with their own parents. It's very hard to break that cycle of parent to child. And I, I'm not a parent myself, I don't have kids. But I see this with my brother's children, and my sister's children, who are all now in their 40s and have kids of their own. And it's remarkable how, to use an old phrase, how close the apple drops from the tree. LEE: So you get it. And, and the academic term is intergenerational trauma. But I like the way you put it because, um, this is my, this was my way to show some level of graciousness to my dad when I got this history. And then for him to show me the grace of being able to go through the journey and study it with me and to say, Hey, you know what?LEE: This should stop in our bloodline.LEE: But one way to heal is certainly, the best way to heal, I think, is to confront it. And that's why the work that you've done is so important, because history just holds so many powerful clues, um, into how, you know, how we got to the way we are. But very few people understand the role of violence and, but the necessity in the context of the capitalism and the, you know, the system of capitalism and what we were trying to accomplish as a nation.Prof.Hadden: A lot of people think that when they discuss slavery, what they think of is, they think of a two party relationship, a master and an enslaved person. And what I was trying to write about was, there's always a third party, and the third party is always government. It's always the state, and whether it's the, uh, at the national level, the state level, or the county level, there's this, third party.Prof.Hadden: And the state is always the backer up of this because the state creates the laws that make it, that, that within the society of that time, legitimated the institution of slavery. Prof.Hadden: So for the purposes of our discussion about the law, we're interested in the common law and how slave patrols were developed as legal institutions. South Carolina had the first laws on the books about, um, slave patrols and, uh, attempts by the state to control enslaved people.LEE: So what did patrols do? Prof.Hadden: Patrols were required by their government, either the, the local or state government or the militia, to perform surveillance and to use violence towards enslaved people. That was their job. They were responsible for going into slave cabins, to see who was there, to make sure there were no runaways.Prof.Hadden: They looked for uh, goods that they thought slaves shouldn't have, they hunted, uh, nighttime music to its source, uh, to look for, uh, dancing groups or for religious meetings where African Americans might be in attendance.Prof.Hadden: Their job was to effectively enforce a curfew. that would have kept every enslaved person on the farm of the master who owned them. They were effectively the government's backstop to a master to make sure that the slaves were where they were supposed to be. So they were a type of government group that used white on Black violence to achieve their ends.The slave patrols enforced the slave codes - created by a colonial or state legislature. Walking into the interview with Professor Hadden, I knew the Slave Codes restricted Black people's movement, requiring written passes for travel. They forbade assembly without a white person present. It was often illegal for Black people to read or write, or for a white person to teach them to do so. Marriage and family rights were non-existent, allowing enslavers to separate families at will. Enslaved people could not testify in court against white people; their testimonies were generally inadmissible. They were also barred from owning property, entering into contracts, or earning wages, with any income typically claimed by their enslavers. Whipping was often the punishment. In Greenville, it was usually 39 to 100 lashes for an offense. And in the case of a rebellion or insurrection, the penalty could be death.And what was most devastating, was that I knew that some of our white family members – mainly Mastin Pugh, the man who inherited Grandma Charity from his father, Jesse – was also in charge of the enforcement of the Alabama Slave Code across Butler County. Him holding that power would have been brutal for Grandma Charity. And eventually, generations later, for me. It made sense that my parents would be overly cautious about us kids not doing anything wrong. They policed us so the law - or those who felt empowered to police us, even without authority - wouldn't. It all goes back to the codes and patrols. Prof.Hadden: The very earliest laws put a requirement on ordinary individuals, uh, to have them be responsible for enforcing slave laws. The idea here was that all whites theoretically would understand that it was in their best interest to keep slaves controlled.Prof.Hadden: Now, this kind of enforcement didn't necessarily work terribly well to ask just everybody walking around in society who's white to keep an eye on everybody who's, um, enslaved. And so, gradually, colonial legislatures switched to other systems of using patrols to say, you people are designated as individuals.Prof.Hadden: Uh, to control slave behavior and so legislatures, um, either required the militia to carve out groups of patrollers and have them do the work or county courts turned to their tax lists and used tax lists to nominate people to serve as patrollers for three months or six months. And, and Alabama's solution was to use the militia, to have the militia be the substitute and say the militia will choose patrollers to work in rotation.Prof.Hadden: So, the militia were ordinary people who were supposed to be self arming. That is to say, you're supposed to show up with your own, uh, rifle, your own gun, uh, with ammunition and enough shot to, um, uh, carry out orders issued by a superior commander. Um, and to do what was necessary to protect your community. Something to highlight here: Patrolling and policing was EVERYWHERE. There was no option for Black people to escape the patroller's whip and gun, and white men were EXPECTED to patrol - they were governmentally required to do so. There was a financial consequence if they didn't. This was the culture and the law. And while it may not be explicit now, we see the ways this culture of being policed versus feeling empowered to patrol plays out along racial lines. There are countless news reports of white people calling the police on gatherings of Black people at cookouts or for watering a neighbor's lawn. Or questioning a Black person's right to be in a gated community - when they live there. That's patrolling - the power of oversight. And then you have some Black parents who continue to have “the talk” with their children, warning them of the ways to address police officers if stopped. Or telling them not to stay out after dark. Or not to gather in large groups in case it draws the wrong kind of attention. That's self policing for preservation and to avoid white oversight. Even though slave patrols came to an end - in theory - with the abolition of slavery, the culture remained.Prof.Hadden: After the Civil War ends, white Southerners are afraid. There's a lot of fear about, um, the African Americans who live around them, who live in their communities, and if patrols no longer exist, um, just like slavery no longer exists, then from the perspective of white lawmakers, Who is supposed to keep African Americans in line? Who is supposed to supervise them if there are no more slave masters? What would be done to stop crime, what would be done to control African Americans?Prof.Hadden: Southern whites in the 1860s were terrified of the possibility of race war, and they lived with that. They talked about that race war was likely to happen, and without patrols, they were sure that they would they had no way to prevent one. So the work done by patrols was divided, you could say. The work that they had done that was about surveillance, that was about stopping crime, became part of the work of police forces. Some southern cities had had police forces, but others had not, in the world when slavery still existed.Prof.Hadden: But the other thing that happens with patrol work after 1865 is that some of the work that patrollers had done, intimidation work, becomes, uh, the, the central feature of the Ku Klux Klan, that, that's, um, that their legacy of intimidation, of, uh, race based violence, uh, very much becomes, um, part and parcel of the Klan's, um, operating uh daily operational activities. Um, the Ku Klux Klan wanted to scare African Americans in the Reconstruction South into doing what the white community wanted. They wanted African Americans to only do agricultural work, not to have schools, not to have guns, not to vote, not to organize, not to demand um, appropriate wages, and the Klan used violence or the threat of violence to get African Americans to do what they want, what they wanted, which was all of those things.This form of control remains, but as we've talked about throughout the series, it's fear based. The whip controlled the enslaved. Scare tactics and violence were used by the Ku Klux Klan. And today, corporal punishment - the threat and the practice - is still perceived by some as a way to keep children safe. LEE: Can you tell us about the differences and similarities between the violence of the slave patrols and corporal punishment that we see in modern times in homes and schools? Prof.Hadden: Well, the, the use of violence usually has one object in mind to get obedience, to get control. And so there's, there's the root of the similarity is if, if corporal punishment or violence has an objective of to get to control, then they spring from the same kinds of beginnings. Now, there are some key differences, obviously. Um, control as a parent might be for an immediate and a transient reason.Prof.Hadden: Um, you know, a mother spanks a child to reinforce the idea in the child's mind that it's a bad idea to go out and chase a ball onto a road where there are lots of cars. Um, I speak on, from personal experience on that one, Lee. Um, having been on the receiving end of my mother's hand when I chased a ball out into the street.Prof.Hadden: I think she probably lost a few years off of her life watching that happen, but she wanted to make sure that I got the message as a preschooler that I shouldn't do that again. Believe me, I remember it firmly. But control can also be about long term domination. And that's different. Um, an abusive parent that beats a child every weekend for no reason, just to reinforce the idea that the parent is bigger, um, badder, a bully, an abuser.Prof.Hadden: Um, you know, the very threat of violence can almost be as intimidating as the actual use of violence in that sort of situation. Um, an abusive father. puts his hand on his belt and the child doesn't have to see anything more because the connection between the belt and its use on them is there. as an instrument of corporal punishment is very live.Prof.Hadden: It's nearly as terrifying that the belt itself is almost as terrifying as, as seeing it in use. Now, of course, there are several large differences between what patrols did and the kind of, corporal punishment or violence one might experience in a home or in a school. One of the biggest is that when a patroller used, um, a rod or a whip against an enslaved person, they could be strangers to each other.Prof.Hadden: That is to say, they might be, the patrol member might not know who the enslaved person was. The enslaved person might never have laid eyes on that patroller before that night. Um, uh, a second difference obviously is, is the racial one. That is to say, patroller is white and the enslaved person is Black. And within the family or within a school, that sort of distinction, both of those distinctions are missing.Prof.Hadden: They're not strangers to each other. They're maybe share the same race as each other. And there are also differences of expectation. Um, we expect, or at least society teaches us to expect, kindness from our family members, from our teachers, that we're going to be nurtured or supported by them. But that may or may not be the case.Prof.Hadden: Whereas, I don't think enslaved people ever thought that they'd see the milk of human kindness coming from a patroller. So they're bearing those differences in mind. There are some similarities, and one of the similarities is the use of an instrument of violence. whether it be a belt or a whip or a rod, um, certainly the instrument by which punishment is inflicted might look very much the same.LEE: Yeah. And you touched on kindness and the expectation of kindness. When I was a kid, I didn't expect kindness from my parents, and the reason was, I did receive kindness from my parents, but I also received the brutality of violence, and in my community, it was stressed to me that violence was kindness, because we're protecting you from the evils of the world, we're protecting you, we're scaring you so that when you go out, you know how to act right, When you're at the mall with your friends so you don't get killed by the police or accused of stealing something you didn't steal or decide to steal something and get arrested and in the process of getting arrested, get killed or join a gang because you're, you're not being disciplined and then get killed on the streets. LEE: And so we're doing this because we have to do this, because the society will kill you if we don't do this, if we don't instill this fear in you. And so it was a very mentally, it was a very, um, hard thing to process as a kid, because I just fundamentally did have that understanding that as a Black kid, there were a different set of rules for me.We talked alot about how concepts and ideas are handed down through generations. Prof.Hadden: But I can tell you that in the early 20th century, um, there was tremendous fear. Again, we're back to a period of fear in American society and fear motivates people to do very strange and dangerous things. And one of the things they were afraid of was the massive influx of immigrants that were coming to America from Southern Europe.Prof.Hadden: Um, this was a time when, um, immigration numbers were going through the roof, nationally, and there's a backlash to that. And for some people, that backlash takes the form of joining, um, uh, political organizations, and sometimes it takes the form of joining a group like the Klan, uh, to demonstrate white supremacy against these perceived outsiders. But it's also just as much about in the 20s, you begin to see the migration, the out migration, of a large number of African Americans from the South to other parts of the country. Um, this is something that had, obviously started in the 1860s and 70s, but it accelerates in the early 20th century, and, um, people moving to Detroit, people moving to Cleveland, people moving to, um, uh, St. Louis, moving to loads of cities where there were industrial opportunities. Prof.Hadden: Um, many of those individuals, African American individuals, moved during, uh, World War I in the late 19 teens. And what this did, it changed the, uh, population complexion of a lot of previous cities that had previously had, um, very large, uh, white, um, populations to being ones that were more racially mixed, where before more than three quarters of the African American population lived in the American South.Prof.Hadden: When you move into the 20th century, this outward migration of African Americans to other parts of the United States meant that, in other communities, a lot of whites begin to experience fear, fear of the unknown. And that concept – the fear of the unknown – also applied to my family and my own community. My father's family moved from Alabama to Minnesota, but those fears of Jim Crow remained. I thought back to my interview with my mother, in which she told me, “we didn't know if something could happen to you, because things have happened.” For Black parents who used the belt to keep their children in their perceived place – or even for Black people who called other Black people “acting white” for excelling in school or having friends of other races – they were paralyzed by that generational fear, which, if you really sit down and read them, are the same attitudes that the Slave Code is rooted in. Prof.Hadden: Um, you know, violence. is something that is passed down just like a family name. And it starts with knowing our history, but then it takes action. And that kind of action, I think, is up to each individual. It can't, you can't wait around for government to do it.It's up to the individual to act and to try to make a change. That's my own personal view. LEE: Okay. Incredible. Thank you, Professor Hadden. Prof.Hadden: You're so welcome, Lee. My research into Grandma Charity's life under the brutal rule of Mastin Pugh and the Alabama Slave Code of 1852, led me to confront a painful question: When my father whipped me with that belt, hoping to mold me into an exceptionally productive Black boy who had to grow up too fast, who was really whipping me? Was it Lee Roy Hawkins Sr., the strong, omnipresent Black father who, drawing on the power of our irrepressible Black village, wanted me to achieve our wildest dreams?Or was it Lee Roy Hawkins Sr., the great-grandson of a Black woman enslaved by Mastin Pugh, driven by the white supremacist DNA in his veins, believing he had no other choice?For me, one of the biggest challenges was accepting that both could be true. As Americans, the same complexity that inspires and haunts the American family hung over my father and our family for generations.To confront this generational tragedy, I had to peel back the layers of truth about the origins of this country and our family's place in it. For only then did I truly understand why so much of my upbringing was defined by rules enforced by the whip, which, for generations, was meant to keep us enslaved. In facing this undeniable American history, I hope that I helped position us to reclaim my family's power and to rewrite our narrative, transforming the pain inherited from “mean ol' Grandma Charity” into a legacy of resilience, and, most importantly, liberation.[outro music]CREDITSWhat Happened In Alabama is a production of American Public Media. It's written, produced and hosted by me, Lee Hawkins.Our executive producer is Erica Kraus. Our senior producer is Kyana Moghadam.Our story editor is Martina Abrahams Ilunga. Our lead writer is Jessica Kariisa.Our producers are Marcel Malekebu and Jessica Kariisa. This episode was sound designed and mixed by Marcel Malekebu. Our technical director is Derek Ramirez. Our soundtrack was composed by Ronen Lando. Our fact checker is Erika Janik.And Nick Ryan is our director of operations.Special thanks to the O'Brien Fellowship for Public Service Journalism at Marquette University; Dave Umhoefer, John Leuzzi, Andrew Amouzou and Ziyang Fu. And also thanks to our producer in Alabama, Cody Short. The executives in charge at APM are Joanne Griffith and Chandra Kavati.You can follow us on our website, whathappenedinalabama.org or on Instagram at APM Studios.Thank you for listening.

Around 1910, Black farmers collectively owned over 16 million acres of farmland. A century later, over 90% of that land is no longer owned by Black farmers. In Lee's own family, the acquisition and loss of land has been a contentious issue for nearly every generation, sometimes leading to tragic circumstances. In this episode, Lee heads back to Alabama to meet his cousin Zollie, a longtime steward of the family land, to learn more.Lee is later joined by Jillian Hishaw, an agricultural lawyer and author, who has devoted her life to helping Black families keep their land. They discuss the tumultuous history of Black land ownership and what Black families should do to keep land in the family.TranscriptLee Hawkins (host): We wanted to give a heads up that this episode includes talk of abuse and acts of violence. You can find resources on our website whathappenedinalabama.org. Listener discretion is advised. Hi, this is Lee Hawkins, and we're about to dive into episode four of What Happened In Alabama. It's an important conversation about the history of land in Black communities – how it was acquired, how it was taken, lost, and sometimes given away, over the past century – but you'll get a lot more out of it if you go back and listen to the prologue first. That'll give you some context for putting the whole series in perspective. Do that, and then join us back here. Thank you so much. [music starts]Around 1910, Black farmers collectively owned over 16 million acres of farmland. A century later, 90% of that land is no longer in the hands of Black farmers. Economists estimate that the value of land lost is upwards of 300 billion dollars.This is an issue that's personal for me. There were large successful farms on both sides of my family that we no longer own, or only own a fraction of now. How we became separated from our land is part of the trauma and fear that influenced how my parents raised me. I want to get to the heart of what happened and why. That's the goal of this episode. I'm Lee Hawkins, and this is conversation number four, What Happened In Alabama: The Land.Zollie: I may not have money in my pocket. But if I have that land, that is of value. That is my – my kids can fall back on this land, they'll have something.That's Zollie Owens. He's my cousin on my dad's side, and Uncle Ike's great-grandson. Zollie lives in Georgiana, Alabama, not far from Uncle Ike's farm. Uncle Ike is a legend in my family. He was my Grandma Opie's brother, and very much the patriarch of the family until he passed in 1992. I only met him once, back in 1991 when my family drove down to Alabama. But his name and presence have held a larger-than-life place in my psyche ever since.Zollie: And so that was instilled in me back then from watching Uncle Ike and my uncles, his sons, do all that work on that land.For the first time since my visit with my family in 1991, we're headed back there. Zollie's lived his whole life in this town. It's where he played and worked on the farm as a kid, where he got married, and where he raised his family. And because Uncle Ike had such an influence on him, he's made working and farming the land his life. I would say that out of all my cousins, the land is the most important to him. And that was instilled in him through Uncle Ike. Zollie: This man. I don't know if he was perfect, but he was perfect to me. I didn't see him do anything wrong from my understanding. And reason being, because whenever he said something, it generally come to pass.He was extremely respected and well-liked. So much so that years after his death, his impact is still felt.Zollie: I have favor off of his name now today. When they found out that I'm his grandson, I get favor off of his name because of who he was. And that's not for me to just go out and tear his name down, but it's to help keep up his name.Lee: Oh, that was one thing that was mentioned about credit – that way back in the day he had incredible credit around the town. That even his kids, that they would say, “Oh, you're Ike's kids. You don't have to pay. Pay me tomorrow,” or whatever, [laughter] which was a big deal then, because Black people didn't get credit a lot of times. Black people were denied credit just based on the color of their skin. But he seems to have been a very legendary figure around this town. Zollie: Being amenable, being polite, speaking to people, talking to 'em about my granddad and everything. And so once I do that, they get the joy back, remembering, reminiscing how good he was to them – Black and white.[music starts]Cousin Zollie spent a lot of time at Uncle Ike's when he was a kid. Like all my cousins who knew Uncle Ike, he had fond memories of him. Zollie: He passed when I was like 12 or 13, but I remember him sitting me in my lap or sitting on the shoulder of the chair and he would say, “Man, the Lord gonna use you one day, the Lord gonna use you. You smart, you're gonna be a preacher one day.” And like so many of the men in my family, Zollie is very active in the church. In fact, he became a preacher, and even started a gospel group. And he's preached at Friendship Baptist, where the funeral services for my Grandma Opie were held.We bonded over both growing up in the music ministry, listening to our elders singing those soul-stirring hymnals they'd sing every Sunday.Lee: And now, of course, they didn't even, I realize that a lot of times they weren't even singing words. They were just humming –Zollie: Just humming. Lee: You know? Zollie: Oh yes. Lee: And then the church would do the call and response. And the way that that worked, somebody would just say [singing], "One of these days, it won't be long," you know, and then –Zollie: [singing] “You're gonna look for me, and I'll be gone.” Lee: Yup. [laughter][Lee humming] [Zollie singing]Lee: Yeah. [Zollie singing]Lee: Yeah. [Lee laughs]Uncle Ike owned a 162-acre farm in Georgiana. Zollie and his wife took me back to visit it. The farm is no longer in the family, but the current owner, Brad Butler, stays in touch with Zollie, and he invited us to come and check out the property. Zollie: There was a lot of pecan trees, which he planted himself. Kyana: These are all pecans? Brad: Yup, these are pecans. These are, the big ones are pecans. That's a pear.Zollie's wife: And that's a pear, okay.Brad: Yeah.Lee: Did he plant that too? Zollie: Which one?Lee: The pecans? Zollie: Yes, he did. Yes, he did. Brad: But now, come here. Let me, let me show you this pear tree. This pear tree will put out more pears than any tree you've ever seen in your life. Lee: Oh, yeah?Brad: Yup, there'll be a thousand pears on this tree.These are all trees Uncle Ike planted decades ago. It was an active farm up to the 1980s – and a gathering place for family and so many other people in the region. The property is split up in two sides by a small road. One one side is where all the pecan and peach trees are. The other side has a large pond about twice the length of a pro basketball court. Beyond that, it's all woods. [walking sounds]As we walk, I look down at the ground beneath my feet at the red soil that many associate with Alabama and other parts of the deep south. It's a bright red rust color, and it's sticky. There's no way to avoid getting it all over and staining your shoes. Lee: Why is the dirt so red here? Zollie: It's been moved in. Lee: Okay.Zollie: The red dirt has been moved in for the road purpose – Lee: I see. Zollie: It get hardened. And it is hard like a brick, where you can drive on it. The black dirt doesn't get hard. It's more ground for growing, and it won't be hard like a brick. Zollie's referring to what's underneath this red clay that makes the land so valuable: the rich, fertile soil that makes up the Black Belt – a stretch of land across the state that was prime soil for cotton production. This land wasn't just valuable for all the ways it offered sustenance to the family, but also for everything it cost them, including their blood. When I was 19 years old, I found out that Uncle Ike's father, my great-great-grandfather, Isaac Pugh Senior, was murdered. Isaac Pugh Senior was born before emancipation in 1860, the son of an enslaved woman named Charity. His father remains a mystery, but since Isaac was very fair-skinned, we suspect he was a white man. And the genealogy experts I've worked with explained that the 18% of my DNA that's from whites from Europe, mainly Wales, traces back to him and Grandma Charity. The way it was told to me the one time I met Uncle Ike, is that Isaac Pugh Senior lived his life unapologetically. He thrived as a hunter and a trapper, and he owned his own farm, his own land, and his own destiny. And that pissed plenty of white folks off. In 1914, when he was 54 years old, Isaac was riding his mule when a white man named Jack Taylor shot him in the back. The mule rode his bleeding body back to his home. His young children were the first to see him. I called my dad after one of my Alabama trips, to share some of the oral history I'd gotten from family members.Lee: When he ran home, her and Uncle Ike and the brothers and sisters that were home, they ran out. And they saw their father shot full of buckshot in his back. Lee Sr.: Mm mm mm. Mm hm.Lee: They pulled him off the horse and he was 80% dead, and he died, he died later that night.Lee Sr.: With them? Wow. Lee: Yeah.Soon after Isaac died, the family was threatened by a mob of white people from around the area, and they left the land for their safety. Someone eventually seized it, and without their patriarch, the family never retrieved the land and just decided to start their lives over elsewhere. Knowing his father paid a steep price for daring to be an entrepreneur and a landowner, Uncle Ike never took land ownership for granted. He worked hard and eventually he bought his own 162-acre plot, flanked by beautiful ponds and acres upon acres of timber. [music]Over four years of interviews, Dad and I talked a lot about the murder of Isaac Pugh Senior. Uncle Ike told us about it during that visit in 1991, but years passed before I saw anything in writing about the murder.Before that, I'd just been interviewing family members about what they'd heard. And their accounts all matched up. For years, some family members interested in the story had even gone down to the courthouse in Greenville to find the records. On one visit, the clerk looked up at one of my cousins and said, “Y'all still lookin' into that Ike Pugh thing? Y'all need to leave that alone.” But they never gave up. Then, I found something in the newspaper archive that would infuse even more clarity into the circumstances surrounding the murder of my great-grandfather Ike Senior. It brought me deeper into What Happened In Alabama, and the headline was as devastating as it was liberating.There it was, in big, block letters, in the Montgomery Advertiser: WHITE FARMER SHOOTS NEGRO IN THE BACK. The shooting happened in 1914, on the same day as my birthday.It read: “Ike Pew, a negro farmer living on the plantation of D. Sirmon, was shot and killed last night by a white farmer named Jack Taylor. An Angora goat belonging to Mr. Taylor got into the field of Pew and was killed by a child of Pew. This is said to be the reason Taylor shot the Negro. The Negro was riding a mule when he received a load of buckshot in his back.”My dad was surprised to hear all the new details. Grandma Opie herself only told Dad that he'd died in a hunting accident. Lee: Do you realize that when your mom's father was killed, she was nine?Lee Sr.: She was nine?Lee: She was nine. And she never told you that her dad was killed? Lee Sr.: Well, let me think about that. My sisters told me that. Not my mom. My mom didn't talk about anything bad to me.I asked Zollie about Isaac, and if he ever remembers Uncle Ike talking about his father's murder. Zollie: No, I never heard that story. No, no, never. Not that I can remember him mentioning it. No sir. I can't say that I'm surprised by this answer. By now, I've seen how so many of our elders kept secrets from the younger generations, because they really didn't want to burden us with their sorrow. But I couldn't help but think, “If these trees could talk.” Walking around the family property, I feel the weight of history in the air. To me, that history makes the land valuable beyond a deed or dollar amount.Uncle Ike's farm is no longer in the family. It wasn't taken violently the way his father's farm was, but it fell victim to something called Heir's Property, which as I realized talking to Zollie, can be just as heartbreaking and economically damaging to generations of Black landowners. Zollie: I may not have money in my pocket. But if I have that land that is of value, that is money. [music starts]When Zollie was younger, he lived on part of Uncle Ike's land and he paid lot rent every month. When Uncle Ike passed in 1992, he had a will. In it, he left the land to his living children, but it wasn't clear how it should be divided up. His son, Pip, was the only one living on the land, so that's who Zollie paid rent to. But when he died, there was no documentation to prove that Zollie had been paying rent. Zollie: And so when it came up in court, I did not have no documentation, no legal rights to it.After the death of a property owner, and without proper estate plans, land often becomes “heirs property,” which means that the law directs that the land is divided among descendents of the original owners. The law requires “heirs” to reach a group consensus on what to do with the land. They inherit the responsibility of legal fees to establish ownership, property fees, and any past debt.Zollie wanted to keep the land in the family. He was ready to continue farming on it as he had been for 17 years. But some other family members weren't interested. Many had long left Georgiana and the country life for Birmingham or larger cities up north, like my father and his sisters. Some didn't want to take on the responsibilities of maintaining the land.Zollie: The part of the land that I was living on, on the Pugh family estate, it got sold out from up under me. I could have never dreamt of anything like that was gonna happen to me. Where I would have to move off the family land. The family didn't come together. They couldn't even draw me up a deed to take over the spot I was on. In the South today, “heirs property” includes about 3.5 million acres of land – valued at 28 billion dollars. Heirs property laws have turned out to be one of the biggest factors contributing to the loss of Black family land in America. It's devastating not just for the loss of acreage but the loss of wealth, because when the court orders a sale of the land, it's not sold on the market, it's sold at auction, usually for much less than it's worth. Brad: When this thing sold at auction, Hudson Hines bought it, and they cut the timber. That's Brad Butler again. He bought Uncle Ike's farm at auction in 2015.Brad: And we were just gonna buy it, kind of fix it up a little bit and then sell it and go do something else. Towards the end of our tour, my cousin Zollie turns to Brad and makes him an offer. Zollie: You know, some of the family, like myself and Mr. Lee, want to get together and make you an offer. Would you be willing to sell? Brad shakes his head and points to his son, who's been hanging out with us on the tour of the land. Brad: Not right now. Now right now. This is, this is his. And we've done so much trying to get it ready.It's his land, he says. His son's. It's heartbreaking to hear, but I didn't expect any different. It makes me think about Uncle Ike and if he ever thought things would pan out this way. After the property tour with Brad, Zollie invited me over to his house, where I asked him how he thinks Uncle Ike would feel. Zollie: He would be disappointed. That just the way, my memories of it and the way he, he did, I believe he would be disappointed. I really would. Lee: And he did the right thing in his heart by leaving the land and putting everybody's name on it. But then that ended up making it harder –Zollie: Yes.Lee: Right, and I don't quite understand that, but, because everybody's name was on it, then everybody had to agree. If he would have left it to one person, then you could have all, that person could have worked it out. Is that how – Zollie: Yes, that is correct. Lee: The law works?Zollie: And then when the daughters and the sons, when they all passed, it went down to their children. And that meant more people had a hand in it now and everybody wanted their share, their portion of it. Because they're not used to the country living it, it didn't mean anything to 'em. It was just land. Lee: So it sounds like a generational thing. Zollie: Yes. Lee: And especially if you're, not only if you're not used to the country living, but if you didn't grow up there –Zollie: If you didn't grow up there.Lee: And you didn't really know Daddy Ike.Zollie: Mm hm. Lee: Is that also –Zollie: Yep.Lee: A factor?Zollie: I can see that. Yes.Lee: Okay. Zollie: Oh yes.Lee: Man, this is so interesting because it happens in so many families –Zollie: It does.Lee: Across the country. It really does. And this land out here more and more, it's getting more and more valuable.Zollie: Oh yes. It's just rich. Some parts of it is sand, but a lot of part – and it's, the stories that I've been told, Bowling is up under a lake. There's a lake flowing up under Bowling. Lee: Oh.Zollie: That's why it's so wet all the time in Bowling, and it is good for growing because the ground stays wet. That wet ground is fueling an agricultural economy that so many Black farmers – like my cousin – have been shut out of. It's enough to turn people away from farming altogether. I couldn't imagine being a farmer, but Zollie wasn't deterred. After leaving Uncle Ike's land, he and his wife purchased a plot and built a house on it in 2021. It's on the edge of Georgiana, six miles away from Uncle Ike's old farm. It's a four-bedroom, three-bath brick home which sits on three acres Zollie owns. He said it was important for him to own so that he could leave something behind – and he's already talked with his children in detail about succession planning. Lee: What I love about you is that you are one of the people who stayed. Zollie: Yes.Lee: And you are our connection to the past, which we desperately need. Because I think a lot of people feel like, ‘Well, where would I work in Georgiana,' ‘Where would I work in Greenville?' And then they end up leaving and then they lose that connection. And I think a lot of us have lost the connection, but you're still here with a farm. What does it mean to have land and to have a farm? What does it mean to you? What's the significance to you?Zollie: My kids can fall back on this land. They'll have something. Like when it comes to getting this house. My land helped me get my house built this way. And so I thank God for that. [music starts]I'm so glad that I was able to sit with my cousin Zollie and hear his story. Growing up in a suburb outside of a major city, the importance of land was never really impressed upon me. In some ways it felt regressive to make your living with your hands, but I understand so much clearer now how powerful it is to be connected to the land in that way. Imagine how independent you must feel to be so directly tied to the fruits of your labor – there's no middleman, no big corporation, and no one lording over you. When you have land, you have freedom. What must that freedom have felt like for the newly emancipated in the late 1800s? And how did it become such a threat that in the past century, Black people would lose over 90% of the farmland they once owned?Jillian: Land is power, because you not only own the soil, but, it's mineral rights, you know, which is what my family have, you know, is airspace. You know, you own everything when you, when you own acreage. These are some of the questions that led me to Jillian Hishaw. She's an agricultural lawyer with over 20 years of experience helping Black families retain their land. She previously worked in the civil rights enforcement office of the US Department of Agriculture, or USDA, and she founded a non-profit called FARMS that provides technical and legal assistance to small farmers. She's also the author of four books including Systematic Land Theft which was released in 2021. In our wide-ranging conversation, we talked about the history of Black farmland, how it was gained and how it was lost, and what people misunderstand about Black farmers in this country. Lee: I mean, you've done so much. What drew you to this work? Jillian: My family history. My grandfather was raised on a farm in Muskogee, Oklahoma. And when they relocated to Kansas City, Missouri, which is where I was born and raised, my great-grandmother moved up several years later, and they hired a lawyer to pay the property tax on our 160-acre farm. Our land was sold in a tax lien sale without notice being given to my grandfather or my great-grandmother. And so where my grandfather's house is, there's an oil pump going up and down because the land had known oil deposits. So that's why I do what I do. Lee: Okay. And I mean, wow, that, that is just such a familiar narrative. It sounds like this is a pervasive issue across the Black community –Jillian: Yes. Lee: How did Black people come to acquire farmland in this country? And when was the peak of Black land ownership? Jillian: Yes. So the peak was definitely in 1910. According to census data and USDA census data, we owned upwards to 16 to 19 million acres, and we acquired it through sharecropping. Some families that I've worked with were actually given land by their former slaveholders and some purchased land. Lee: Wow. Okay. And that dovetails with an interview that I did with my uncle in 1991 who told me that in his area of Alabama, Black people owned 10 to 15,000 acres of land. And when he told us that, we thought, ‘Well, he's old, and he probably just got the number wrong.' But it sounds that that's true. It sounds like Black people in various parts of the country could own tens of thousands of acres of land collectively. Jillian: Yes, yes, I know that for a fact in Alabama because I finished up school at Tuskegee University. So yes that is accurate. Your uncle was correct. Lee: Okay. And when and how did many of these families lose the land? Jillian: So the majority of land was lost after 1950. So between 1950 and 1975, we lost about half a million Black farms during that time. The primary reason why it was lost in the past was due to census data and then also record keeping. With the census data, they would state, ‘Oh, well, this farmer stated in his census paperwork that he owned 100 acres.' But then the recorder would drop a zero. Things of that nature. And so also courthouses would be burned. So let's take Texas, for example. There were over 106 courthouse fires. And a lot of those records, you know, were destroyed. Now, ironically, often during those courthouse burnings, the white landowners' records were preserved and, you know, magically found. But the Black landowners' records were completely destroyed, and they have no record of them to this day. Now, the primary reasons for the present land loss is predatory lending practices by US Department of Agriculture. Also, lack of estate planning. Lee: So for our family in particular, I mean, I never really understood the heirs property and how that ended up causing our family to have to, you know, get rid of the land or sell the land. Can you tell me about heirs property? What is it and why has it disproportionately affected Black landowners? Jillian: So over 60% of Black-owned land is heirs property, and the legal term is “tenants in common.” But, you know, most Black folk call it heirs property. And heirs property begins when a, traditionally a married couple will own the land outright in their names. And so it'll be Mr. and Mrs. Wilson. And if they don't have a will and they die, what's called intestate, and they die without a will, the state takes over your “estate distribution.” And when I say estate, that's all of your assets that make up your estate. So your property, your house, your car, your jewelry, your clothes, everything. And the state will basically say, ‘Okay, well, since you died without a will, then all of your living heirs will share equally,' you know, ‘ownership in whatever you left' in, you know, with Black farm families, that was the land, that was the homestead, that was the house. And so say Mr. and Mrs. Wilson pass away without a will, and they have 10 kids, and then those 10 have 100 kids and so forth and so on. And so, you know, five generations later, there's 300, you know, people that own, you know, 100-acre, you know, or 200-acre farm outright. And if one of those 200 heirs sells to a third party, oftentimes it's some distant cousin in LA or Pennsylvania for whatever reason, and they just sell their rights, to a developer often, that developer basically takes the place of that, you know, third cousin in LA. And they'll go around, like in the, you know, the Bessemer case in South Carolina, and they'll, you know, get another third cousin in San Francisco and in, you know, Arizona and in Houston and then they'll go to the court and they'll force the sale of the remaining, you know, 195 heirs because 200 were owners in what's called a court partition sale. And that's how we lose 30,000 acres each year so fast, so quick. Lee: Wow. And this is exactly, very similar to what happened to my cousin Zollie. I mean he was just heartbroken, because he didn't have the money to do it himself. And so he ended up getting some other land, but it was really hard for him. People talk about this in the context of saying, “We lost the land.” But there are others who might say, “Well, you didn't lose the land. You sold the land because you couldn't come to an agreement.” Is this a strategic way to wrestle land away from families? Jillian: Yes. In, in part. But, you know, Black people also have to accept responsibility. You know, I, I've tried years to get families to agree. I mean, you know, you have to come to some agreement. You can't just, you know, bicker about stuff that happened in 1979. I mean, you have to get past your own differences within your family. And that's part of the problem. And the families need to come together to conserve their land. Because, you know, I'll tell you right now, if my family had it any other way, we would come together to get our land back. I have taught workshops and written books. You know, I've written about four or five different books, and families have taken those books, you know, attended the workshops, and they've cleared their deed, you know, and it's heirs property. And so what I'm saying is that it can work. And I wish more families would, would do that because I've seen it work. Lee: We definitely don't want to take a victim mentality, but the legacy of white supremacy in this country sort of positions us to have tense relationships, because there's a lot of unaddressed things that happen, and there are a lot of secrets that are kept. [music]Lee: Tell me about the clashes over land between whites and Blacks. What did they look like, especially in the period following the Civil War? Jillian: So during Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction, we all know about the “40 acres and a mule” program and how, you know, within a year the land was given and then taken back. But there were landowners, particularly Black, of course, that got to keep the land, and some were located in South Carolina, primarily South Carolina, Georgia, and a few areas in Alabama. Of course, there were clashes with, particularly when the patriarch passed away, similar to to your ancestors. Whites would go to the land and force the Black mother and wife off of the land, and they would set the house on fire and just force them to, to get off the land. When she shared those details, I thought back to the family members who told me about Isaac Pugh's wife and my great-grandmother, Ella Pugh, and the horrifying situation she found herself in, with more than a dozen kids, a murdered husband, and a mob of men on horses coming by every night, screaming for them to leave. That's the part of this story that the newspaper article didn't contain. Uncle Ike said, “They were jealous of him.” He talked about Taylor, too, but also about a band of whites that he believed were working with him. The news reports said the murder was about livestock, but according to Uncle Ike, it was about land. The assaults on my family and many others were orchestrated, and institutional. And the attacks on Black landowners wasn't just about one white man resenting a Black man. The damage was often done by groups of people, and institutions, including government agencies like the United States Department of Agriculture. Lee: What was the impact of Jim Crow on Black land loss? Jillian: Well, it was definitely impactful. You know, again, going back to the, 1950 to 1975, half a million farms were lost during that time, and the equivalent now is 90%. We've lost 90% of the 19 million acres that we owned. You know, according to the 1910 census data. And, a lot of that is due to, you know, Jim Crow and, you know, various other factors. But, you know, this was predatory lending, particularly by USDA. And so you also need to look at USDA. And the reason why you need to look at USDA is because it's “the lender of last resort.” And that's basically the hierarchy and the present foundation of the USDA regulations right now. And it's admitted guilt. They, they've admitted it, you know, from the 1965 civil rights report, you know, to the CRAT report to the, you know, the Jackson Lewis report, you know, 10 years ago, that they purposely discriminate, particularly against Black farmers. And it's due to predatory lending. You look at the fact that between 2006 and 2016, Black farmers made up 13%, the highest foreclosure rate out of all demographics. But we own the least amount of land. And so, you know, that right there is a problem. Lee: What is the state of Black land ownership today and where is it really trending?Jillian: To me it's trending down. The '22, '22 USDA census just came out last month, and the demographic information will be out, I believe, June 26th. But, we own, you know, less than 2% according to the USDA census, but I believe it's like at 1%, because they include gardeners in that, in that number to inflate the numbers. But, but yeah. So it's, it's trending down, not up. Lee: Okay. And what do people get wrong about Black land ownership in this specific history? I mean, I know that there are everyday folks who have opinions that they speak about freely, as if they're experts, but also educators and journalists and policy makers and lawmakers. I mean, what do they get wrong about this history? Jillian: They portray the Black farmer as poor, illiterate, and basically don't know anything, but that's for, you know, that's far from the truth. I know families – five-generation, four-generation cotton farmers that own thousands of acres and are very, you know, lucrative. And so the, this portrayal of the, you know, the poor Black farmer, you know, dirt poor, land rich, cash poor is just a constant. And a lot of my clients don't even like talking to reporters because of that narrative. And it's, it's not true. Lee: I feel like it's missing that the majority of this land in this country was acquired unfairly. And on the foundation of violence and on the foundation of trickery – Jillian: Yes.Lee: And legal maneuvering. And I don't see that really as something that is known in the masses. Jillian: Correct. Lee: Or acknowledged. Is that true or –Jillian: That's true. Lee: Or am I off?Jillian: Yes. That's true. But with Black folk it wasn't, it's not true. So Black people earned the land. They, they worked, they paid, you know, for it. It wasn't acquired through trickery and things like that compared to the majority. You know, the 2022 USDA census, you know, 95% of US farmland are owned by whites. You know, as you know, similar to the 2017, you know, USDA census. And so that is often, you know, the case in history. That it was acquired through violence. Lee: Mm hm. And how would you like for the conversation around Black land ownership to grow and evolve? Where's the nuance needed?Jillian: I believe the nuance is through – like you referenced – financial literacy. We need to retain what we already have, and that's the mission of my work, is to retain it. And so we've saved about 10 million in Black farmland assets, you know, over the 11 years that I've been in operation through my non-profit. And it's important that we focus on retention. You know a lot of people call me asking, ‘Oh, can you help me, you know, find land, buy land,' but that's not my job. My job is to retain what we have. In my family's case, I wonder if the inability to reach an agreement on whether to keep Uncle Ike's land in the family would have been different if the younger generations would have had a chance to talk with Uncle Ike about the hell he went through to acquire it. Or maybe if they'd all had the opportunity to learn about the history of Black land loss and theft even in more detail. I just don't know. But what's clear is, though I don't hold any resentment about the decision, I do think it's just another example of how important studying genealogy can be. Not just the birth dates and the death dates, but the dash in between. Learning about our ancestors, and what they believed in, what they went through, and what they wanted for us. I know that's what a will was intended for; but in Uncle Ike's will, he thought he was doing the right thing by leaving the land to his children equally. I don't know if he knew about heirs property law. But even if he did, I suppose he never dreamed that the future generations would see any reason to let that land go. Not in a million years. [music starts] Lee: And what do you think about the debate around reparations, especially as it relates to land? I know that there was a really hyper visible case of a family in California that got significant land back. Do you think justice for Black farmers is achievable through reparations? Jillian: I believe it is, but I don't know if it's realistic because it's based on the common law. It's based on European law and colonial law. And so how are we supposed to get reparations when, you know, we can't even get, you know, fair adjudication within, you know, US Department of Agriculture. And so we're basing it, and we're trying to maneuver through a system that is the foundation of colonial law. And, I think that that will be very hard. And I think that we should take the approach of purchasing land collectively. Where are the Black land back initiatives? When are we gonna come together, you know, collective purchasing agreements? Lee: You're blowing me away. Jillian: Thank you. Lee: And I just really want to thank you for this work that you're doing. I believe that as a Christian, I'll say that I believe that what you're doing is God's work. And I just hope that you know that. And I just wanted to, to really just thank you. On behalf of my family, I thank you so much. Jillian: Thank you.Talking with Jillian Hishaw helped me clearly see that the racial terrorism and violence against my Black American family and countless others under Jim Crow was not solely physical but also economic. Hordes of white supremacists throughout America felt divinely and rightfully entitled to Black land, just as their forefathers did a century before with native land. They exploited unjust policies and the complacency of an American, Jim Crow government that often failed to hold them accountable for their murders and other crimes. Before Malcolm X yelled out for justice “by any means necessary,” Jim Crow epitomized injustice by any means necessary. This conversation deepened my understanding of the deadly penalty Black Americans paid for our determination, for daring to burst out of slavery and take our piece of the American Dream through working hard and acquiring land. Since 1837, I've had a family member killed every generation, and this reporting helped me understand why so many of them were killed over land and the audacity to move ahead in the society. So to see the deadly price family members paid only to see it lost or sold off by subsequent generations that are split as to how important the land is to them is truly eye-opening, something I see more clearly now.To understand part of the root of this violence, I have to travel back to uncover a part of my history I never thought about until I started researching my family. It's time to meet the Pughs – my white ancestors from across the Atlantic. Next time on What Happened in Alabama. What Happened In Alabama is a production of American Public Media. It's written, produced, and hosted by me, Lee Hawkins.Our executive producer is Erica Kraus. Our senior producer is Kyana Moghadam.Our story editor is Martina Abrahams Ilunga. Our producers are Marcel Malekebu and Jessica Kariisa. This episode was sound designed by Marcel Malekebu. Our technical director is Derek Ramirez. Our soundtrack was composed by Ronen Landa. Our fact checker is Erika Janik.And Nick Ryan is our director of operations.Special thanks to the O'Brien Fellowship for Public Service Journalism at Marquette University; Dave Umhoefer, John Leuzzi, Andrew Amouzou, and Ziyang Fu; and also thank you to our producer in Alabama, Cody Short. The executives in charge at APM are Joanne Griffith and Chandra Kavati.You can follow us on our website, whathappenedinalabama.org or on Instagram at APM Studios.Thank you for listening.

Lee always knew that his father grew up during Jim Crow, but he never really understood what that meant as a child. In school he was taught that Jim Crow was all about segregation - separate but unequal. It wasn't until Lee started asking his dad more questions about Jim Crow as an adult, that he realized that it was much, much deeper than he could've ever imagined. In this episode, Lee sits down with Dr. Ruth Thompson-Miller, a professor at Vassar College and co-author of Jim Crow's Legacy, The Lasting Impact of Segregation. Together they detail the depths of terror that characterized the Jim Crow era and discuss why it's important to tell these stories.TranscriptLee Hawkins (host): We wanted to give a heads up that this episode includes talk of abuse and acts of violence. You can find resources on our website whathappenedinalabama.org. Listener discretion is advised. [music starts]Hi, this is Lee Hawkins, and we're about to dive into episode three of What Happened in Alabama. It's an important conversation about the intergenerational impact of Jim Crow, how it affected the way my family raised me, and why it matters today. But you'll get a whole lot more out of it if you go back and listen to the prologue first – that'll give you some context for putting the whole series in perspective. Do that, and then join us back here. Thank you so much. [musical transition] Jim Crow survivor. This isn't a common term, but it's what I use to describe my father and family members who grew up during this time in American history.Jim Crow was a system of laws that legalized racial segregation and discrimination through state and local legislation – mostly in the South – for close to a hundred years. After slavery – from 1877 until 1965 – Black people living under Jim Crow continued to be marginalized, even though they were “free.” Housing, education, and access to everything from healthcare to public parks was all separate, and definitely not equal. This history affected how my father was raised, how his siblings were raised, and – even though I wasn't born during Jim Crow – how I was raised.The fact is, there are millions of Black Americans alive today – 60 years or older – who survived Jim Crow and were never defined as a group, acknowledged, or even compensated for their experiences. Instead, Jim Crow survivors are sandwiched between the anger around slavery, and the glimmers of hope from the Civil Rights Movement. It's a time that's talked about in shorthand. We're taught that the worst of it was separate drinking fountains and bathrooms, and sitting in the back of the bus. But this wasn't the extent of what my father, my family, and countless others went through. Not even close. So that's what we tackle in this episode. The lasting legacy of Jim Crow.Seven years ago, when I was on the phone with my dad, he told me a story about his childhood in Alabama during Jim Crow.Lee Sr.: Yeah, me and my sister, me and my, uh, cousin be walking to school, and this one little, little ass boy, we knew we could kick his ass, but he'd come over every day and we'd be going one way and he'd be passing us. He'd run into one of us and just push us, just bump us. And we, we couldn't do nothing, man. We were scared, you know? We, you know, we could kick his ass, but we would have had to pay the price. Lee: So what could happen if you would have beat his ass?Lee Sr.: Oh, they probably would have hung our asses, man, or anything. See, it wouldn't have been no kid getting in fights, it would have been these niggas touched this white boy. That was always there, Lee. [music starts]My dad was 10 years old when this happened. Only a decade into his life and he already knew what he had to do to stay alive: stay in his place. This was his reality growing up under Jim Crow.Dad grew up in Greenville, Alabama, a small town of a few thousand people, just about an hour south of Montgomery. His father worked at the railroad and the sawmill, and his mother was a homemaker. They were part of a strong Black community with businesses and churches. And while separate, they interacted with white neighbors in an uneasy existence. But despite all this, Dad was constantly on edge.Lee Sr.: The white folks that, you know, we literally came in contact with in the neighborhood, my dad used to go over and help them cut trees and mow lawns and stuff like that. Of course, when you went downtown, that's a different story because, you know, you had to give them the right of way, you know. Lee: So what did that mean?Lee Sr.: That mean if a white person's coming down the street, you gotta kinda stay over to, out of their way. Don't get close to them. Try not to, you know. Same with the cops, you know, if they on the street, you just walk by them, that's easy, you know what I mean? It was, it was that sensitive, you know. Sensitive. I always marveled at Dad's word choice.This sensitivity manifested as fear for his mom, my Grandma Opie Pugh Hawkins. And she passed that fear down to my dad. My relatives described her as a nervous, jittery woman who used to grind her teeth and drink Coca Cola by the eight pack to keep going every day. She taught my father not to trust white people and to be very cautious with them. One of his most vivid childhood memories is from a trip to a local department store with Grandma Opie.The trip was supposed to be uneventful, just another day shopping for household necessities, people laughing and having conversations as they shop for deals. Lee Sr.: And they had water fountains in the store, one over there for the whites, and one over here for the Blacks. And I, I didn't care. I didn't know the difference. I went and drunk out of the white one. Now you might think you know where this is headed. A little Black boy drinks from the wrong fountain, and all hell breaks loose. But that's not what happened. No one even noticed. But all hell did break loose.Lee Sr.: My mom just went crazy, man. To protect me, she went crazy, because you couldn't miss me over there drinking. So instead of having them come hang me, she did, you know, went into her act, you know. [music starts]Grandma Opie unleashed a wrath dad had never seen before – he was four or five years old at the time. Boy, she yelled, swatting him repeatedly on his butt, “I told you not to go near that fountain. That's for the white folks.” This show was a protective instinct.Grandma Opie only beat Dad a few times as a kid, and every time she did it, it was in public to keep him in line with the rules he was still too young to know or understand. But things were different at home. Grandma Opie and her husband, my grandfather Papa Lum, they never laid a hand on Dad there.He was the baby of the family, showered with love. Grandma Opie had him when she was 43, and by then she and Papa Lum were past their whooping years. He was Grandma's miracle baby and constant shadow. He even slept in the bed next to her.Lee Sr.: I never told anybody that, but I did, yeah. That's what I did, I was in the middle. I only had a little while with her being healthy.When he was about six years old, Grandma Opie fell sick with kidney disease. She made several visits to the doctor, and dad would wait at home patiently for her after each one. Lee Sr.: We used to get on our knees every night, every night and every morning, but especially at night. And when my mom was sick, I could hear her praying to God, you know.Over the years, her health worsened, until eventually, when my dad was around 12, she was confined to bed rest. Shortly after that, family members began visiting from as far as California to pay their respects. Lee Sr.: She had talked to me a lot before she died.Lee: And what were some of the lessons? Lee Sr.: Oh, she's just telling me, ‘I ain't gonna be here much longer.' You know? And I, it was hard for me to get that in my head. I couldn't even, I denied that shit all the way, you know? But she was telling me that I'm gonna have to grow up faster than I really was supposed to. You know, ‘You're gonna have to try and get along,' and, you know, ‘Listen to your older sisters and brother.' She died telling them to take care of me. That's what happened there. Only a few years ago did I learn the full story behind Grandma Opie's declining health and passing. The main medical facility in Greenville at the time was LV Stabler Memorial Hospital.It was a segregated hospital, meaning in this case that the same white doctors and nurses treated everyone, but in separate facilities. White folks received their care in a state of the art building. Black folks could only be seen across the street in a little white house with just 12 hospital beds.This is where Grandma Opie was treated. The last time she visited that hospital, they wouldn't admit her and sent her home. Instead, a few hours after she was turned away, the doctor came for a house visit. He told the whole family, “I'm going to give her this shot, and if it doesn't work, there's nothing more I can do.”He administered the shot, packed his supplies, and left. No one knows what was in the shot, or what it was supposed to do. Grandma Opie died of kidney failure at the age of 56. This happened in 1961. At the time, life expectancy for black people was 64. For white Americans, it was 71. A whole seven more years of life.Lee Sr.: You know, that was a real devastating thing for me when I lost my mommy. I just can't even, you know, I, shit, I couldn't, uh, I couldn't make it through that man, you know, 'cause I fell asleep during the funeral, and that was just like, trying to just get it out of my mind, you know? Big sleep came on me, man, and by the time it was over, then I was waking up, you know. In the nights following Grandma's funeral, Dad stayed haunted.Lee Sr.: For a whole week or so, I was having nightmares like a motherfucker. That's one thing. I was going crazy.Grandma Opie's dying wish was that her youngest children be moved out of Alabama to Minnesota to live with one of her oldest daughters, my dad's sister. Aunt Corrine and her husband LC were in their early thirties when Grandma Opie died and had moved to Minnesota years before.Aunt Corrine honored Grandma Opie's request. Just two days after Grandma Opie's funeral, Dad and two of his sisters were packed into the back of Aunt Corrine and Uncle LC's Ford Fairlane headed up the interstate to start a new life.I never had the honor of meeting my grandmother Opie, but I thank God for her. She had a strong spiritual intuition. One of my aunts called her “the holiest woman I've ever known.” She had a divine foresight that told her she needed to get her babies out of Alabama. Lee Sr.: When I left Alabama something came out of me man, a big ass relief. And I didn't even know where I was going, but it was a big ass, just, man, like a breath of fresh air, man.[music starts]In trying to understand my dad and how he raised us, yes, with love and with care, but also with fear that manifested as belt whipping, I turned to research. I traced this violence centuries back in my own family. I learned that Grandma Opie's father was murdered when she was just nine years old. She went outside to see his bullet-riddled body slumped over his mule, with his feet still in the stirrups. And my grandfather – Papa Lum – his dad was also murdered, when he was just five. Both of them were killed by white men who were never brought to justice. This is what Jim Crow means to me: violence and fear.To connect the dots between my ancestors' experiences and my own, I read dozens of books and talked to experts, like Dr. Ruth Thompson-Miller. She's a professor at Vassar College and co-author of Jim Crow's Legacy: The Lasting Impact of Segregation. She spoke with almost 100 Jim Crow survivors as part of her research, and coined the term “Segregation Stress Syndrome.” This refers to the chronic, painful responses to the individual and collective trauma that Jim Crow survivors endured. Over the course of my research we talked a number of times, but I started by asking Dr. Thompson-Miller why she took on this area of study.Dr. Thompson-Miller: I went to, um, the University of Florida to get my bachelor's degree in anthropology. And I had this interesting experience. I took a class with this older white gentleman called Dr. Fagan who, I have to say, Dr. Fagan literally did save my life. And so he had said to me that he wanted me to try to talk to people who lived through Jim Crow.I only knew minimal stuff about it. I mean the history that you learn in school. And so I was naively going out there to ask folks, “How did you cope?,” I mean, “How did you get through the day to day with everything being separated?” And I gotta tell you, what I learned from those folks who were willing to share with me, even through their own pain, was something that has changed my life forever.Lee: I'd like you to kind of get in deeper into telling us about the research that you did. What kinds of people did you talk to? Who were they?Dr. Thompson-Miller: Um, well, I interviewed nearly a hundred folks and most of the African Americans that I interviewed were women, um, in their, you know, sixties and seventies, eighties, nineties. Some were educated. Um, some were just domestic workers. So they ranged from, uh, you know, different, uh, socioeconomic statuses. And it took a few interviews before I started getting troubled, like I knew I was looking at something, but I was missing something. And then it hit me one day. I was interviewing this woman in her house. It was the middle of the day, it had to be noon, it was, it was very sunny. And I walked in the house and it was so dark I couldn't even see my, my tape recorder and my pad and stuff. And they had the drapes and everything was really closed up. And so, um, she didn't want to be tape recorded, this woman, she must have been in her seventies, I believe. And I had to constantly reassure her that nobody would know that it was her that was talking to me.Because people were still afraid, people are still afraid, right? So she told me, this incident that happened to her. I think she was elementary school age. She said that one day she went with her mother to work. Her mother was a domestic worker and she had washed this white man's, you know, shirt, and there was a spot on the shirt that she had missed and she talked about how, you know, he was yelling and screaming at her mother, how afraid she was for her mother. And, um, there wasn't anything that she could do. And her mother was apologizing and begging him to forgive her. And, and my God, and she starts crying. And it hit me what I was looking at.I was looking at people that were suffering from trauma that's never been addressed. This happened over 70 years ago and she's still emotionally responded to it. And I said to her, “Listen, we can stop. I'm really sorry that this happened to you.” And she said to me, she said, “No, I don't want to stop. I want people to know what I went through.” [music starts]And what these folks really told me was that they never shared things with their children. They kept it all to themselves. Why? Because they really wanted to protect their children. They didn't want their children to be angry. They didn't want them to, you know, to react to whites in a particular way because they knew, as their parents, what these children might experience and they didn't want that for them. And they thought that it would help them to be, for lack of a better word, to live a like normal childhood if they didn't understand what came along with living under this extreme system of oppression.Lee: I want to interject here because I think that that's a really profound contradiction that you've pointed out. And that's the one thing, is that so many of our elders wanted to protect us by not telling us the stories. And that's almost like a coddling thing. But then on the other side, we're we're going to whip them to protect them. And somehow something gets turned off in the brain that makes people think that the best way to go about this is to whip them.Dr. Thompson-Miller: Oh, my goodness. Absolutely. I mean, listen, I got, I got whipped. You know, my father was always the one that, you know, did it. But I think he felt like he was protecting us because he got whipped really badly by his father and by his stepfather. So this is the way that you're socialized. And you don't even know where this stuff comes from, but it absolutely comes from that connection. There's hundreds and hundreds of years of history that has gotten us here where we are, the way that we are. This theme of protection surfaced many times in my conversations with Dr. Ruth Thompson-Miller. It wasn't just protection through punishment. It was also about shielding some children from the truth of the atrocities they endured – and the fractures it caused in the Black family dynamic. Dr. Thompson-Miller: There was a, um, a man, uh, that I interviewed, and he told me about kitchen babies. They called them kitchen babies. I said, “Kitchen babies, what is that?” He said, ‘Those are the babies that black women had when they were raped by the person who came to your house to maybe bring ice.' Or, you know, these traveling salesmen would rape women and they would get pregnant and they would call them kitchen babies.One woman told me about a particular case in her family where she said her mother and her grandmother, she said, would have gone to their graves with this information, but she had a cousin that told her about a member of their family, a woman who was working, doing domestic work, like, you know, cleaning this woman's house who happened to be the town prostitute.And so there was this white guy pretty well known in the community who visited this prostitute, a white woman prostitute. And so one day the man came over and the woman was gone. And so he raped the girl. And so she never told anybody what happened to her. She didn't run home and tell her family that he had raped her. But then she got pregnant. And she explained to her family what happened, that this man had raped her. So they were going to go see the man. And the family told her father, you have to send her out of town. You can't say anything to him. Send her out of town. Send her away, let her have the baby, and don't mention it.And this woman told me that this happened to a lot of women during Jim Crow. And it wasn't women, these were girls, right. And a lot of families kept this stuff a secret, to the point where you had this term called “kitchen babies,” where you have men who, some men would stay even after, um, their wife uh, had a child that was biracial. Um, but a number of men left. And you know, this is something that has always bothered me. This notion of protecting. Protecting the women, the girls in your family. And when that almost seems impossible, I think there's a certain amount of shame in, you know, humiliation. Because, I mean, one thing that most men are socialized to do is to protect. And when you can't even protect your own, what do you do with that?It's hard to comprehend. Some Black men could not always protect their wives and children in their own homes. And out in the world, they were scapegoats. Can you explain more?Dr. Thompson-Miller: I saw an example, and I mean and I had people tell me about lynchings, how, you know, like young men, and I'm sure some of this went on if, you know, a young white woman was fooling around with black guys or flirting or whatever and she got caught, she would say that they raped her. And one woman said, ‘I remember they went in a home, and they took these boys out – they were just boys – out in the middle of the night, and they lynched them.' And you know, it always reminds me of Emmett Till, and they focus on Emmett Till, but that happened everywhere.It's really frightening, you know, and I don't think we'll ever know the number of people that have been lynched in this country. They say it's thousands, but, you know, there's so many books about it, but we'll never know how many people really got lynched. That's what I believe. The number's a lot higher than we really know about. For me, one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life was sitting at the Legacy Sites in Montgomery as part of my research. One is a memorial that honors thousands of Black people who were lynched or murdered between 1877 and 1950. Their names are on more than 800 columns. To see that little children – four year olds, six year olds – were even lynched, and they all left families behind.The museum presented story after story of Black people being killed without any evidence or even a trial, or trials by all-white juries. Many were lynched for things like not stepping off the sidewalk for a white person to pass, talking too confidently to white people, for owning land, and for attempting to vote.And as I passed the rows and rows of names, I thought: if neither of my murdered great-grandfathers' names were on those memorials, how many other thousands of Black people were killed, whose names and stories will never make it into a museum, or be kept secret from future generations by their own families? Throughout our conversations Dr. Thompson-Miller shared example after example after example of the horrors of Jim Crow, resulting in what she calls, “Segregation Stress Syndrome.”Dr. Thompson-Miller: You know, the interesting thing about Segregation Stress Syndrome and how I came up with it was, I just looked at the post traumatic stress literature initially. I looked at the fact that like when you're in war, that's an event that happens. So you may be in war for a couple of years and then you come home and you get help and you're out of that situation, but for Black folks, you never get out. And so you went from slavery to Jim Crow, you might not have been in chains, but during Jim Crow, it wasn't much better. Yeah, you were able to have some stuff, but it could have been taken away from you at any given moment, and everybody knew that.And so it's this collective experience that people are having at the same time with, with no way, uh, and no recourse when bad things happen to you. So you just have to hold it in, you know, you have to eat your anger. And so that trauma, that collective trauma, keeps happening over and over again. And in every day that you live, you're running into something and it manifests itself in different ways. First of all, you pass it on onto your children, you know, you pass the trauma on. And I suspect that, you know, folks telling me their stories, I didn't realize they were passing it on to me, you know, and with Segregation Stress Syndrome, it's not just, you know, these traumatic experiences. It's this institutional betrayal. So institutions, you know, the judicial system, the medical system, you know, the educational system, they're supposed to be there, uh, for everybody, but unfortunately, when things happened to Black folks, they had nowhere to go. These institutions that were supposed to be there, equal justice under the law, that didn't mean that for them, so now you have this second class citizenship where everything that you believe about, you know, America, it really kind of gets thrown out the window.Lee: In our last interview and in previous conversations, we talked about your trip to South Africa. Dr. Thompson-Miller: Yes. Lee: And you interviewed people and they lived through apartheid. And it started to occur to you that that's what Black people went through in America. Dr. Thompson-Miller: Yes. Lee: What do you think about the use of the term apartheid in reference to Jim Crow? Dr. Thompson-Miller: I mean, I think you have to use it. You can't honestly say that Emmett Till was killed. He was viciously and violently tortured and murdered by people just because he was Black. And if you're uncomfortable with the term apartheid, well, to be honest with you, white South African, they actually were inspired by the system of Jim Crow in this country, which is where they got their system of apartheid. I remember being a kid in the 1980s and participating in marches against South African apartheid. What I didn't know is that this system – and also Hitler's regime – was modeled on Jim Crow. The dictionary defines apartheid as a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race. This definition is applied specifically to South Africa in the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam Webster, but just as easily could have been said about what Dad lived through in Alabama. Lee: What do you want people to understand about Jim Crow that they don't know already? You know, um, it's important for us, you know, we just talked a lot about the experience of living under it and the impact on families and communities, but if you really were to look back over the years and to feel like there's something more that you want to drive home, that you, the most important thing that people need to know about Jim Crow and Segregation Syndrome and everything that undergirds that, what would it be?Dr. Thompson-Miller: This is really hard because, you know, I think it, it brings me back to thinking about my father, and I just think it's really important to forgive people for not being honest, um, for hiding stuff that they thought that would be better for you if they did hide it, um, for not fighting back, um, because there's got to be something in particular about people who did fight, who did protest, who did get beaten, who got bitten, and who had water hoses on them that made them do something different.I'd like to know what that was so we can get it in more people, um, and not be, you know, these passive people that just have this stuff happening to them. So I think I, I would like to, to look at that and, um, just try to figure out a way to get people to heal.Lee: Which kind of leads me into that next question and that final question, why do you think this research is still important? Why is it so important that we do this now? I just added my piece that I believe that not just white Americans, but Black, Black people, Black descendants of slavery and Jim Crow, but also our brothers and sisters who are immigrants need to know this history.Dr. Thompson-Miller: So unless you really understand where we've been, and I mean it's an, it's an old cliche, you don't know, you know, if you don't know where you're, you're going, you know, it could happen again or however they say it, but that is actually true, you know, and I think that, in, in order to, to ensure and to help people understand why they do the stuff that they do.I just want Black folks to really start valuing themselves more. Because what you are saying is like, we value everybody else and want to help everybody else, but we're the last one in line to get valued, even, even by our own people and even by ourselves. And I think that's something that's been, you know, pushed into us from inception.And, um, people need to talk to their families, um, while you still can. That's all I say. Everybody go interview your grandma, your grandpa, or your auntie, or your uncle who's of age and who lived through Jim Crow, and hear what they went through, and you'll look at them differently, I promise you – in a better way, in a more respectful way, than you do now. That's my advice. Lee: And that's a wonderful way to end, you know, in the words of Alex Haley, regardless of the opinions that people may have of him, there was one thing that he said that always resonates with me with this work: when an elder dies, it's like a library burned down, and once it's gone, it's gone.Dr. Thompson-Miller: Yes. Lee: Sister, thank you. Dr. Thompson-Miller: Exactly. Lee: God bless you. I love you. Dr. Thompson-Miller: Oh, thank you so much. God bless you, too. Love you, too. Be well now. Lee: Okay. Dr. Thompson-Miller: Okay. Bye bye. I don't know if Dr. Thompson-Miller truly understands how grateful I am to her for venturing into this rare area of study around the effects of Jim Crow. It helps me validate my previous understanding that my work and my family's experiences are not an isolated experience.And it made me feel for my father's parents. Who wouldn't be impacted by having their father murdered as a child? When a family member is murdered, so much attention at the time is put on mourning the person in the casket, but what about the health and well-being of the people surrounding the casket – especially the children – who have to find a way to keep going, carrying all that pain? And then, my father's father was murdered as well.They did a lot of praying – which in our family, is often seen as enough – but my professional training and experience makes me realize that, on top of faith, therapy, self-care, and other strategies can help. Otherwise we can't really call this post traumatic stress, because the “post” implies that it actually ended. In my father's case, he was a middle-aged man before he could even talk in-depth about any of this.I hope that people whose families have been through any kind of government imposed atrocities and/or apartheid – Jim Crow, the Holocaust, Japanese internment, any kind of apartheid or political persecution, anywhere in the world – can give themselves permission to investigate these atrocities and how they truly impacted their families. I hope they can work on finding solutions together, as families. My conversation with Dr. Thompson-Miller also helped me truly understand why my father and some of my elders were so captivated with the discoveries I made about our family history. With each passing year, they became more eager to share their memories with a sense of urgency.Here's me and my dad talking with his sister, my beloved Aunt Toopie. Lee: You know, it's important because when y'all are gone, it's over. These future generations – Lee Sr.: Yeah, that's true.Lee: They're not gonna be interested in it. And when, when they get old enough to be interested in it, it's gonna be gone. Aunt Toopie: That's right. Lee: All the people who know are gonna be gone. So as a journalist –Aunt Toopie: That's right. Lee Sr.: Yeah, and it's gonna be more important even then than it is now.Aunt Toopie: That's right.Lee: Right. And I feel like I use all, I'm using all my journalism for other people's stories, so I feel like I need to, um, use it for my family story. Listening to our discussions about how important sharing family history is, it chokes me up a bit, especially now. Dad and Aunt Toopie are no longer with us. When I ventured into my family's history as landowners and settlers and how much of the blood of my ancestors was spilled just on the basis of their desire to buy land and live out the American dream, I got an even deeper understanding of how and why Jim Crow was so deadly. That's on the next What Happened In Alabama.[closing music]CREDITSWhat Happened in Alabama is a production of American Public Media. It's written, produced, and hosted by me, Lee Hawkins.Our executive producer is Erica Kraus. Our senior producer is Kyana Moghadam.Our story editor is Martina Abrahams Ilunga. Our producers are Marcel Malekebu and Jessica Kariisa. This episode was sound designed by Marcel Malekebu. Our technical director is Derek Ramirez. Our soundtrack was composed by Ronen Landa. Our fact checker is Erika Janik.And Nick Ryan is our director of operations.Special thanks to the O'Brien Fellowship for Public Service Journalism at Marquette University; Dave Umhoefer, John Leuzzi, Andrew Amouzou, and Ziyang Fu; and also thank you to our producer in Alabama, Cody Short. The executives in charge at APM are Joanne Griffith and Chandra Kavati.You can follow us on our website, whathappenedinalabama.org or on Instagram at APM Studios.Thank you for listening.

Jenny Lee, vice president for Arizona International, dean of international education, and professor of educational policy studies and practice at the University of Arizona, leads the conversation on U.S. international academic collaboration and how U.S.-China tensions are affecting higher education. FASKIANOS: Welcome to CFR's Higher Education Webinar Series. I'm Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Today's discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/academic. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We're delighted to have Jenny Lee with us to discuss U.S. international academic collaboration. Dr. Lee is vice president for Arizona International, dean of international education, and professor of educational policy studies and practice at the University of Arizona. She is also a fellow of the American Educational Research Association. Dr. Lee formerly served as a senior fellow of NAFSA, the Association of International Educators, as chair for the Council of International Higher Education, and as a board member for the Association for the Study of Higher Education. And she has also served as a U.S. Fulbright scholar to South Africa, as a distinguished global professor at Korea University, and as an international visiting scholar at the City University of London, the University of Pretoria, and the University of Cape Town in South Africa. So, Dr. Lee, thank you very much for being with us for today's topic. I thought you could begin by giving us an overview of current trends in U.S. international academic collaboration, especially looking at what's happening with our relations with China. LEE: Sounds great. Well, thank you for the opportunity, Irina. It's a pleasure to be here and to speak with you and all those listening right now. I'll speak for about ten or so minutes, and then open it up and engage with the audience. Hopefully, you all have some good questions that will come up during my remarks. So, clearly, we're entering a very interesting and somewhat uncertain chapter in how we understand the role of higher education globally. So I will begin with some general observation so all our viewers are on the same page. Now, first and foremost, the U.S. is mostly at the top when it comes to the higher education sector. Most of us already know that the United States houses the most highly ranked institutions. And this allows the country to be the largest host of international students and scholars from around the world. According to the latest IIE Open Doors report published a couple of weeks ago, the U.S. attracted over a million students from all over the world. And we're almost back to pre-pandemic levels. We also host over 90,000 scholars. And the primary purpose for them being here is research, for about two-thirds to 75 percent of them. These international scholars, as well as international graduate students, contribute significantly to the U.S. scientific enterprise. The U.S. is also among the leading countries in scientific output and impact, and the largest international collaborator in the world. In other words, the U.S. is highly sought because of its prestigious institutions, drawing top faculty and students from around the world. And with that comes the ability to generate cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs which further secures the U.S.' global position in academia. At the same time, of course, we've seen China's economy rise significantly as the country surpassed the United States in scientific output, and more recently in impact as measured by publication citations, and is outpacing the U.S. in the extent of R&D investment. Chinese institutions have also made noticeable jumps in various global rankings, which is a pretty big feat considering the fierce competition among the world's top universities. What we're witnessing as well are geopolitical tensions between the two countries that have impacted the higher education sector. While these two countries, the U.S. and China, are the biggest global collaborators—and they collaborate more with each other than any other country—they're also rival superpowers. As global adversaries, what we are witnessing as well is increased security concerns regarding intellectual theft and espionage. I'm going to spend some time summarizing my work for those who are not familiar to provide some further context. I and my colleagues, John Haupt and Xiaojie Li, also at the University of Arizona, have conducted numerous studies about U.S.-China scientific collaboration. And what we're observing across these studies is how the scientific pursuit of knowledge, which is fundamentally borderless, is becoming bordered in the current geopolitical environment. International collaboration, long valued as positive-sum, is being treated as zero-sum. Besides the rise of China and the accompanying political rhetoric that posed China as a so-called threat, tensions also grew among accusations, as you may recall, about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and a corresponding sharp increase in anti-Asian hate crimes in the United States. Public opinions about China were not favorable, and thus there was not a whole lot of public resistance when the FBI's China Initiative was launched in 2018. This initiative basically signaled that anyone of Chinese descent was a potential enemy of the state, including possible Chinese Communist Party spies in our own universities, even though there was no pervasive empirical or later judicial cases that proved such a damaging assumption. Nevertheless, world-renowned Chinese scientists were falsely accused of academic espionage and their careers and personal finances ruined. In my research that followed with Xiaojie Li, with support from the Committee of 100, we surveyed about 2,000 scientists in the U.S.' top research universities during the China Initiative. And we found that one in two Chinese scientists were afraid that they were being racially profiled by the FBI. We also observed that consequently scientists, especially those with Chinese descent, were less inclined to collaborate with China, less inclined to pursue federal grants, less inclined to even stay in the United States but rather to take their expertise to another country where they felt safer to pursue their research, including in China. In sum, the federal government's attempts to weed out possible Chinese spies was highly criticized as a damaging form of racial profiling affecting even U.S. citizens and, in the end, undermined the U.S.' ability to compete with China. Especially now, as we continue to observe Chinese scientists leaving the U.S. and taking their skills and talents elsewhere. With John Haupt and two academics at Tsinghua University in China, Doctors Wen Wen and Die Hu, we asked about two hundred co-collaborators in China and in the United States how were they able to overcome such geopolitical tensions and the challenges associated with COVID-19 during the pandemic? And we did learn something somewhat unexpected, and I hope valuable. Basically, we found that mutual trust between international collaborators helped overcome such perceived hurdles, including risks of being unfairly targeted. What this tells us is that a chilling effect is certainly real and remains possible, but in the end scientists have tremendous agency on what they study, where they study, and whether or not they seek funds, or where they seek funds. Regardless of the host or home country, international collaboration is important to all countries' scientific enterprise. Coauthors from different countries improve the knowledge being produced, its applicability, enlarges global audiences, and thereby increases the impact of the work. So considering the value, yet risks, where do we begin? Firstly, federal and institutional policies, of course, matter, for better or for worse. But policies do not manufacture trust. The formation of an academic tie does not suddenly occur over a cold call in the middle of a global meltdown, as often portrayed in Hollywood. Rather, this is a gradual process. And the longevity of the relationship helps strengthen that trust over time. According to our research, these collaborative relationships begin as graduate students, postdocs, visiting researchers. They occur at academic conferences and other in-person opportunities. Cutting short-term fellowships, for example, will impact the potential of a future scientific relationship, but its effects may not be felt for years. Same with denied visas and opportunities for travel. Fewer graduate students from particular countries or fields also means a different shape when it comes to global science. U.S. for instance, was not too long ago Russia's biggest foreign scientific collaborator, with the war in Ukraine, those research relationships, as well as much—with much of the Western world, have ceased. All of this, and my related empirical research, was conducted when I was a professor at my home institution. And since July, I've been serving, as Irina mentioned, as the dean and vice president of international affairs at my own institution. And I've been thinking a lot of, what does this mean for institutional practice? For those in university leadership positions, as mine, you know this is a tough challenge. Especially as domestic demand and state funding for higher education is generally declining. And at the same time, internationalization is increasingly central to senior leadership strategies. Universities are continuing vying to attract the world's students, even despite a decline of interest from China. And at the same time, research universities in particular are quite dependent on federal grants. We have our own research security offices that need to ensure our universities have good reputations and relations with our large federal funding agencies and taking every precaution to not be seen as a vulnerable site of intellectual theft. These units tend not to operate within international affairs. And I'm very well aware that in my role of trying to attract as many students from China and develop international partnerships, all of them can be suddenly erased if a Chinese University partner does not pass visual compliance or there is a sudden presidential executive order, as we experienced under the Trump administration. I'm also very well aware that of senior leaders have to choose between my educational offerings and partnerships in China versus risking a major grant from a federal agency, I will lose. We witnessed that with the shutting down of over 100 Confucius Institutes in the U.S., despite a lack of evidence of systematic espionage occurring through these centers. Public perceptions, informed or not, strongly affect the nature of our international work, as in the case of Florida. Such negative perceptions are not one country-sided, of course. A key concern for Chinese and other international students and their parents relate to safety. Gun violence, including on our own college campuses, anti-Asian hate crimes in surrounding neighborhoods, and unfavorable political environment in which studies might be interrupted as in the case of Proclamation 10043, or visa non-renewals are all contributing factors for the decline of interest from China, and uncertain future student exchange as well. In closing, when it comes to China these days no practices are guaranteed. However, I can recommend some while also keeping in mind geopolitical conditions can suddenly change for worse, or perhaps better. I mentioned earlier the value of mutual trust. At my university, we have long-standing relationships with university leaders at Chinese institutions. We've set up dual degree programs in China. Actually, about 40 percent of our international student enrollment are through such partner relationships throughout the world, in which we go to where they are. Hiring staff who speak the language and know the culture are also essential. And, like any relationship, these arrangements have developed over time. They are not built overnight. It takes intention. It takes effort. But in my experience, as trust is established the numbers have grown, and the positive impact is still being felt. Thank you. FASKIANOS: Thank you very much for that. That was terrific. Let's go now to all of you for your questions, comments. You can use this to share best practices and what you're doing to your universities or institutions. Please click the raise hand icon on your screen to ask a question. On your iPad or tablet, you can click the “more” button to access the raise hand feature. And when you're called upon, please accept the unmute prompts, state your name and affiliation, followed by your question. You can also submit a written question, they've already started coming in, by the Q&A icon. And if you can also include your affiliation there, I would appreciate it, although we will try to make sure we identify you correctly. So let's see. I'm looking for—no raised hands yet, but we do have questions written. So first question from Denis Simon, who's a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Many U.S. universities have curtailed their exchanges and cooperation with China. You referenced that. Officials at these universities are worried that if they appear too friendly toward China they will lose all sorts of federal funding. Are these concerns justified? Are there any regulations or legislation that actually says federal funding can be removed assuming these universities are in compliance with the export controls, et cetera? LEE: All right. Well, thanks, Denis, for your question. I know there—when I saw the list of those who signed up, I know there are many here who can speak to this directly. So I encourage those to also raise their hands and provide input in the Q&A, maybe in the form of an A instead of a Q. But in any case, going to that question, you know, it's a tough environment. And so much in my role, but what I even experienced in my research, is about that perception, that overinterpretation. So maybe signaling that we have this exchange program might draw attention in ways that might lead to suspicions that, oh, well is this, you know, somehow creating an opportunity for us to disclose military secrets? I mean, that's where we take it. A friendly exchange or visit is oftentimes now having to be scrutinized and ensuring that there is no remote violation of export controls, even in educational delivery in a non-STEM field. And what we're seeing is that this—we have our highly sensitive fields, but that kind of scrutiny we're also seeing applied to the institution more broadly. So these seemingly benign programs about language or culture, about fields that are enhanced or help promote so-called American values, are also being watched. So I believe as an institutional leader, again, as I mentioned earlier, having to deal with the possibility of unwanted or unwarranted attention versus not having that program, I think some, as Denis has pointed out, are leaning towards being more cautious. Unfortunately, China—any work with China is considered a risk, even if there is no reason for risk, as we've witnessed under—or, observed under the China Initiative. I don't know if I've fully answered that question, but please follow up if I haven't. And I know others can probably say more to that issue. FASKIANOS: Great. I'll take the next question from Peter—I don't know how to pronounce— LEE: Peter Becskehazy. Hi, Peter. (Laughs.) FASKIANOS: There you go. Thank you very much. LEE: I know Peter. FASKIANOS: All right. Good. Well, I'd love if Peter asked his question directly, if he can. Oh, good. From Pima Community College. Go ahead, Peter. Q: Hello, Jenny. Nice to see you. LEE: Hi, Peter. Q: Now my question is, the University of Arizona and other universities have had an inflow of dozens of countries, adding up to the million that you mentioned. Are other countries trying to fill in slots left vacant by Chinese students and scholars? LEE: Yeah. Great question, Peter. And I think you can also share what you've observed at Pima in terms of the patterns you've witnessed. But for us, and as we are seeing nationally, we're seeing India rise. Not at the—not at higher numbers in many institutions, compared to China, but the rate is rising. It's not so simple, though, because we also have relations in India, and trying to set up agreements, and bring students. The competition in India is intense. So even though there's a relatively so-called large market, and the U.S. has been quite successful in attracting Indian students, that is perhaps where the attention is as a more, I would say—I hate to use the word “market,”—but a stable student market. There's a lot more interest in graduate-level education globally, as we've observed. These countries that formerly didn't have capacity now do have capacity. They have online offerings. They have branch campuses, dual degrees, lots of other options. And so the niche for the U.S., whereas before we didn't really have to think about a niche, is really in graduate education. Now, of course, that's not good news for Pima, that's thinking about a community college and other kinds of educational offerings. But for us, we're thinking about India a lot. Southeast Asia, of course, has always been an important partner to us. Africa continues to be a challenge. We know that when we think about population growth, Africa is the future. There's still challenges and trying to identify places where there is capacity. But also the affordability of a U.S. education is a huge challenge. So it's a great question. And, again, I'm curious to know other places in the world people recommend. Of course, Latin America, given our location, is a key strategic partner. But again, affordability becomes an issue. And again, I'm just talking about the traditional international student who would choose to come to Arizona. Not talking about research collaboration, which is less bound by affordability issues. Irina, you're muted. FASKIANOS: How long have I been doing this? OK. (Laughs.) I'm going to take the next written question from Allison Davis-White Eyes, who is vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion at Fielding Graduate University: We have tried to work on collaborations with European universities and African universities, and met with much difficulty. What trends are you seeing in these regions? And what are emerging global markets beyond China? LEE: Great question, Allison. I mean, if you could leave the question in the future, so because I am visually looking at the question at the same time. FASKIANOS: Oh, great. Sorry. LEE: So, Allison, I'm not sure if you're referring to academic or research. Of course, within Europe, where the government does highly subsidized tuition, it's just becomes financially a bad deal, I suppose—(laughs)—for a student in the world who would normally get a free or highly reduced tuition to pay full price at our institution. So that kind of exchange of partnership, especially when it's about—when it's financially based, becomes almost impossible from my experience. But thinking about research collaboration, it depends on the level. So if it's an institutional agreement, you know, it's—often, these MOUs tend to just be on paper. It takes quite a bit of—it's very ceremonial. You need to get legal involved. It's a whole process to get an MOU. We really don't need these non-binding MOUs for research agreements. Some countries like it, just to display that they have an MOU with a U.S. institution. But essentially, it doesn't stop me as a professor to reach out to another professor at the University of Oslo, and say, hey, let's do a study. Which we actually are doing. So, yeah, feel free to be more specific, or if you want to raise your hand or speak on—and elaborate on that question. So, again, for educational exchange, it is difficult because we are—there's already a process within the EU that makes it very affordable and highly supported within the EU, or if you're part of that bigger program. Africa, again, my challenge from my role as an institutional leader is identifying places where there is already enough mass education up through high school where one would be able to consider, first of all, being admitted to a U.S. institution, but secondly, to be able to pay the cost. FASKIANOS: Allison, do you want to expand a little bit? Q: Oh, sorry. (Laughs.) FASKIANOS: There you go. There you go. Q: Right. Dr. Lee, thank you for your response. I think it was helpful, especially regarding the subsidizing of education in Europe. We've been working on some research partnerships. And we have just—you know, really, it has just been extremely difficult with European universities. And I do think part of it has to do with the way things are subsidized in Europe. I was just wondering if there were new and different ways to do it. I do appreciate your comment about the MOUs being largely ceremonial. I agree. And would like to see something with a little more substance. And that will take some creativity and a lot of partnership and work. As for Africa, we have tried to create partnerships with South Africa. I think there's some potential there. Certainly, some excitement. We've had a few students from Nigeria, extremely bright and motivated. I just would—you know, would like to hear, maybe from some other colleagues as well on the call, if there are creative ways in working with these students as well. So, thank you. LEE: Yeah, no. And just to follow up quickly, and, again, opportunities for others to share, academic collaboration, as I mentioned during my remarks, is largely built upon mutual trust. And not to say it can't happen from top down, but really does—is most successful from bottom up. And I don't mean to refer to professors at the bottom, but meaning those that are actually engaged with that work. And so just some considerations is rather than a top-down initiative or strategy, is to identify those that are visiting scholars, already from that country, have networks within that country. What's interesting, as I learned in my current role, is how little my predecessors worked with professors in these area's studies programs, because they're oftentimes treated as a separate or having different interests in mind when actually there is a lot of overlap to identify those that are actually there. Allison, by the way, I lived in South Africa for eight years. And I know it actually takes a long time. My Fulbright started off as a one year, and I had to extend it because even getting the data while I was on the ground takes time. And I'll be honest, I think part of it was taking some time just to build trust the intentions of my work, what was I going to do with that data, how is that going to be used? Was it actually going to be ways to empower them? You know, for those who study international collaboration, know this north and south divide, and I think there are places in the world that are—maybe have some guardrails up from those—not saying this is what's happening in your institution—but someone that they don't know coming from the Global North to study someone else in the Global South. And so how do we create or initiate a collaboration that is clearly, expressly mutual at the onset? And, again, this is where trust can be operationalized lots of different ways, but that even begins with that initial message. I mean, I remember when I started my work, nobody responded to me. They're like, who are you? And I don't care who you are or what your CV says. And it takes time. You know, building that relationship, and that person introducing me to that other person. Like, you know, this is how scientific networks form. And I think, to some extent, this is also how institutional collaborative relationships also form. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to go next to David Moore, who has a raised hand. Q: OK, thank you. I just got unmuted. FASKIANOS: Great. Q: Lee, I appreciate your comments. And I heard your reference to Florida earlier. I don't know if we have colleagues on this call from Florida, but I think they'll know what I'm about to say. I'm the dean of international education at Broward College in Fort Lauderdale. And as of tomorrow, December 1, Florida has to—all institutions in Florida, public institutions, colleges and universities, must be completely devoid of any partnerships in China. And not just China. There are seven countries of concern. And you probably can cite them, most of you would know the other six. But of the seven countries, Broward had four partnerships in China alone, none in the other countries that were active. And so we are now officially done, have to be. And I've had to notify the partners as well as our accrediting body, because these were international centers of Broward where they literally offer—we offered associate degrees, two-year degrees. And students could then transfer to an institution in the United States. Now, this didn't catch us too much by surprise because two and a half years ago our Florida legislature started in on this, really probably before that, where they isolated universities in Florida and said: You cannot do research—sensitive research, whatever, you know, engineering, computer science, et cetera—any research without notifying the state. And there's an elaborate process that had to be—you know, they had to go through to do this. But now it's not just research institutions. Now it's not just those kinds of collaborations. It is, in fact, all partnerships of any kind. We had to end our agent agreements where we were recruiting students from China that were—where the companies were based in China. And in course our programs were not research. They're just general education, two-year associate's degree, maybe some business. But we've been informed now it's completely done. And so I'm actually looking for institutions outside of Florida who might be willing to take over the role that we've had in transcripting students who later want to come to the United States. At least for the first two years in China, and then transferring to the upper division to the U.S. So I'm not sure. You're probably quite familiar with this. I don't know if you know the details of how it was worked out in practice. We were the only community college in the state that had any partnerships. So we were the ones that had to desist. So I want to—there are probably people on the call that are familiar with this, but there might be many others. And I just wanted to say that I'm looking to, you know, open that door to other institutions outside of Florida that might be willing in, yes, take a risk to go into China, but to—I've always felt that these kinds of programs were very good to build relationships, partnerships, communication. Ambassadors really. Where we feel like we were representing American education, whatever, you know, we call American values, democracy, you know, community. We thought we were doing good. But we found out we were—we were not. We were—we were doing something that went opposed to the prevailing political climate, at least in Florida. So that's my comment. I think people should know about it. And thank you for letting me speak to it a bit. Maybe someone will speak up and say they're interested in they can get in touch with me, David Moore at Broward College, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. LEE: David, thank you for sharing what you did. This is a really important example of where other states could very well head. And what's interesting, as David noted, we're talking about a community college. When we normally think about cutting ties, it's usually around the concerns about national security. Now, how this translates to a two-year degree that is solely educational based is a pretty far stretch, and yet is being impacted quite severely. So I think we should continue to follow this example—unfortunate example. And, David, yeah, your partners have reached out to my office, and I'm sure to others. But thank you for being available. Q: You're welcome. We have partners—we are also working with your Jakarta, Indonesia center there. So we have that connection. Thank you. LEE: Mmm hmm. Thanks. FASKIANOS: And if anybody wants to share contact information in the Q&A box, you can certainly do that. That would be great. There is a written question from Tutaleni Asino at Oklahoma State University: There was an article today in SEMAFOR highlighting that there are currently 350 U.S. students studying in China compared to 11,000 in 2019. Comparatively, there are 300,000 Chinese students in the United States. Is this a one-way problem, where the U.S. is not investing in international engagements as a result of being more inward looking and other countries having more options of who to collaborate with? LEE: Yeah. Tutaleni, that's—I think your question is an answer. And I think it's—I agree with your observation. So we are seeing that as there's state and public disinvestment in higher education, and including scrutiny about international higher education, we're also seeing a decline and cutting of foreign language programs in the United States. So here we are, a monolingual country whose students mostly go to Europe or other English-speaking countries to study abroad. A very limited number of international—U.S. students who pursue undergraduate degrees in a foreign country. And knowing that the future is global and international, at least in my opinion, does not set the U.S. up well to be globally competitive, even though much of its international policy is around this rhetoric of we need to compete with China. And so you raise a good point. How is this possible if U.S. citizens don't speak Chinese, or have no interest in learning about Chinese culture, or there's reduced opportunities even in our own institutions, I think is something to think about and ask more questions about. FASKIANOS: I'm going to take the next question from Zhen Zhu, chair and professor of marketing, director of faculty excellence, and director for international engagement at Suffolk University: How do you see the trend of U.S. students' interest in study abroad to China? LEE: There is actually growing interest. As many of you know, China—offering Chinese language in high schools is not as unusual as it used to be. There is growing interest as students are thinking about employability in global markets in multinational or international organizations or corporations. It would be fundamental, in fact, for someone who has any interest in international work to pick up the language if they can, and at your own institution. FASKIANOS: Great. Let's see. From—I'm going to take the next question from Jeff Riedinger: Is there a role for universities to play in knowledge diplomacy to sustain international relationships and collaborations in addressing global problems such as climate change and pandemics when national governments may be at odds with each other? LEE: Thanks, Jeff. And hi, Jeff. I'm just going to read over that question so I can kind of digest it a bit. Is there a role for institutions to play in knowledge diplomacy, such as climate change, pandemics, when national governments may be at odds with each other? Absolutely, 200 percent. It is occurring—knowledge diplomacy, science diplomacy. That one individual going on a Fulbright or coming to study here for some extended visit, having these collaborations and, ultimately, you know, science—knowledge production—I mean, there's no bounds. And when we think about the kind of research that may not occur because of these national governments are at odds when it comes to addressing climate change or other global issues, you know, the world is paying somewhat of a price when it comes to that in—when there are overarching concerns about national security. So, you know, my issue has always been with policy you overlook nuance, and with sweeping policies that overlook the disciplinary distinctions and contributions, what is lost in the pursuit of trying to stay ahead of another country in fields and areas that really have no economic or military value, right? But yet, have an important cultural value, or maybe will address something bigger, such as COVID-19. So as I mentioned, the work that I referenced earlier about U.S.-Chinese scientists coming together during COVID-19, were actually scientists who studied COVID-19 together. And again, this was not—this was fraught with risks. They were very well aware that there was a lot of scrutiny about any research about COVID-19 coming from China. There was scrutiny about, you know, where the data was held, who was analyzing it, who was funding it. And yet, these scientists took these risks in order to address how does the world deal with the pandemic. And this was based on interviews of those studies that were actually successful and published. This is where that mutual trust, as I've mentioned earlier, is so important. And without that mutual trust, these studies, I'm pretty certain, would never have been published, because it was not an easy path when it comes to that particular geopolitical climate during the pandemic. FASKIANOS: Jenny, I'm just going to ask a question. President Biden and President Xi met during APEC. Did anything come out of that meeting that could affect U.S.-China academic collaboration? LEE: Yeah. You know, this is tough. I mean, how do you analyze political statements? What do they really mean? And what is really going to change? I think what's clear is that there's an acknowledgment that we're interdependent, but we're also adversaries. Almost a love/hate codependent, in a relationship that we can't just easily separate but we do need each other. But the form that it takes, I think there's an understanding it needs to be more specific. And I don't think that has been clarified yet. I realize I missed part of Jeff's question on what can institutions do? That's such a good question. And I got more into the topic than the actual to-do. What can institutions do? Honestly—(laughs)—I'll just speak as a researcher, to back off a bit, right? To let scientists do what they want to do. Yes, we need to follow disclosures. We need to make sure there's no conflicts of interest. We need to follow all of these procedures. But what I also found during the China Initiative, there was also this chilling climate in which there's an overinterpretation that may put institutions at risk. And to my knowledge, institutions were not at risk to the extent to which their scientists, especially those of Chinese descent, felt scrutinized. FASKIANOS: Thank you. We have a raised hand from Dan Whitman. Q: OK, I think I'm unmuted. Thank you, Irina. And thanks, Professor Lee, for mentioning the Great Wall that that prevents us from dealing with even Europeans who have subsidized education or Africans who have no money. And just an anecdote, since you have welcomed anecdotes, I am an adjunct at George Washington University. But totally unrelated to that, just for free and just for fun, pro bono, nobody pays, nobody gets paid. A course that I'm giving by webinar, it's zero cost. The topic is crisis management, but it could be any topic. And in that group, which there are about eighty people who tune in twice a week, fifteen Kenyans, twenty-five Ukrainians, and forty Kazakhs. I mean, I don't know if there's ever been exchange between Kazakhstan and Kenya. Anyway, my point is things can be done. We share it for free. What motivates the students? A certificate. It's so easy to give them a certificate. And in many countries, they very highly value that, even though it's not a—there's no formality, there's no formal academic credit. But the students are very motivated. And possibly, there may be universities in the U.S. that could—that might want to give a professor a small stipendium to do an informal webinar course, which would create connections, which would be zero cost, basically, and would bridge that gap of funding that you've alluded to. Thank you. LEE: Yeah. Dan, thank you for that. And I think this leads to a kind of a spin-off comment about certificates. Absolutely. Micro-credentials or alternative forms of education, where there's maybe not a full-fledged undergraduate degree but some certificate, I think, is important niche, especially for returning adults or communities where they're not able to afford to take time off. So that flexibility, and obviously now with online education, just becomes so much more accessible and very low cost. Something else to keep in mind, though, is that, depending on the institution you're from, that will make a difference in certificates. I mean, an institution like George Washington University offering a certificate may have some symbolic or perceived value that may be higher than an institution that is lower or are not ranked at all. So this is where, unfortunately—I'm a big critic of global rankings. But unfortunately, it does play a role in how that certificate is being perceived and the attractiveness of that certificate. But absolutely, this is definitely a way to open access especially for places in the world that just cannot physically move or have the funds to support their studies. FASKIANOS: Great. There are two comments/questions in the Q&A that I wanted to give you a chance to respond to about Africa, from Tutaleni Asino and Fodei Batty. Dr. Asino talks about English is the language of instruction and governments in Africa where they're funding education to a higher degree, and thinks that there are opportunities there, but it sounds like all fifty-four countries are grouped together. And Dr. Batty talks a little bit about there are a lot of students from African countries pursuing graduate education in the United States. But South Africa is usually an exception to the higher education American norm in Africa. Most South Africans don't like to travel, especially travel to America. I thought maybe you could just clarify some—respond to those comments. LEE: Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you for sharing those comments. There's a book I edited called Intra-Africa Student Mobility. And I agree with the comments. And one of the things I didn't mention that I think is important to help us understand the broader global context is that there's actually considerable international activity within the continent. And there's actually considerable intra-Africa mobility within the continent. South Africa is the most important country player in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is globally ranked—has more globally ranked institutions than any other African country. And so South Africa then becomes an important hub. And, yes, as an English-speaking, among many other languages, country, that does attract African students to go oftentimes for a similar sense of shared culture, despite sometimes different languages and customs and backgrounds. And yet, nevertheless, South Africa is an important player within the continent. Not to say that there is no international mobility occurring, but there is increased capacity within the continent that would allow students and interested students to travel within the continent. Not the same extent, of course, as Europe. But the least we're seeing that rise over time. And so it's called Intra-Africa Student Mobility. Chika Sehoole and I coedited the book. We were able to get about eight African scholars to talk about the various reasons students would choose that particular African country, and what draw them. And what was really interesting about this phenomenon is that it goes against this prevailing notion of Africa's victim of brain drain or all going to the north. That's actually not what is happening. But that there is capacity building within the continent. So in trying to answer a different question, I skirted over a lot of the things I could go further into. But hopefully that book will shed light on what's happening within that continent, at least from the perspective of eight different countries. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. Thank you for that. I'm going to go next to Jonathan Scriven at Washington Adventist University in Maryland: What are some of the strategies universities are using to make education more affordable in the United States? If that is a challenge, are schools investing more or less in setting up campuses in foreign countries as a way to reach foreign students? LEE: I'm just going to read over that question. OK, yeah. Great question, Jonathan. So what's happening in my institution and many others is a way to attract students is we're providing considerable aid, merit aid, financial aid, aid even to international students. The majority may not even be paying the full sticker price. Now this, of course, will affect the revenue that would have otherwise been generated, but nevertheless is a way to deal with the fierce competition across U.S. institutions for these top students. So how to make it affordable? There's a lot of aid going around at the undergraduate, not just the graduate, levels. And so what are institutions doing? Well, for example, at the University of Arizona for our dual degrees, it's a fraction of the cost of what it would cost to be a student at our main campus. When you have a combination of hybrid or online delivery with a campus partner maybe providing most of the gen ed's and then we would teach most of the major courses as an example, that does significantly lower the cost where that student will still get a bona fide University of Arizona degree, just like they would at main campus. So these alternative forms of delivery certainly make it more affordable, especially for those that opt to stay in their home country and receive an online education, or a flipped classroom model, or a dual degree. FASKIANOS: Great. Denis Simon, if you can—why don't you ask your question? Q: Here I am. OK. Recently, on a trip to China in September, a number of faculty have told me they're no longer wanting to send their best students abroad. They want to keep them in China. And this is all part of the rise of Chinese universities, et cetera. And so it may not be simply the souring of Sino-U.S. relations that has causal effect here, but simply the fact that China now is becoming a major, you know, educational powerhouse. And that also could change the dynamics. For example, even the BRI countries could start to send their students to China instead of sending them to the United States. Do you see anything evolving like this or—and what might be the outcome? LEE: Yeah. Spot on, David. That halo effect of a U.S. degree is not the same as it was when I was a university student. Chinese students, as well as students in the world, are much more savvy. They have access to information. They have access to rankings. They know all universities are not the same. And they know that they have some institutions that are highly ranked and may offer better quality education than the U.S. So that the image of a U.S. degree, of course, is not as universally perceived as it may have been, I don't know, pre-internet, or without the—all sorts of rankings in which institutions are rated against one another. And absolutely, Chinese institutions are very difficult to get into, fiercely competitive, producing far more scientific output than some of our leading institutions. And there's another factor when it comes to Asian culture just more broadly speaking, is that social network tie. Sociologists refer to it as social capital. When a Chinese student, a Korean student, Japanese student decides to study in the United States, they may lose that social tie that may possibly put them in a disadvantage when they decide to come back and compete for a position when they may just have that U.S. credential, but may have either lessened or no longer have that relationship that may have allowed them to get a position at the university, or in a place where that alumni network would have been especially useful. So again, I don't want to generalize, you know, in any place to the world, but there is that component that I think sometimes is missed in the literature. Maintaining that social network is pretty key, especially as jobs, of course, global, you know, unemployment—places where students are competing for positions need to have every edge possible. So that also can be part of that reason they decide to stay. FASKIANOS: Great. The next question from Michael Kulma, who's at the University of Chicago. He's following on David Moore's comments about Florida: Do you know how many other states in the U.S. are enacting or are considering such policies against partnerships with China? LEE: I do not know the answer. So if anyone wants to raise their hand and share about their own state, or put it on the answer part of the question and answer. There are related concerns about DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Some of that may spill over to China. Hopefully, at some point at the Council of Foreign Relations will have a discussion on Israel and Hamas conflict and how institutions are dealing with that. And so we're seeing a pretty challenging political environment that is clearly spilling over to our classrooms and to our international activities, our domestic recruitment. But I'm not answering your question, Michael. (Laughs.) I'll leave it up to someone else to answer. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you. So we don't have very much time left. I thought maybe you could, given your research and expertise, could suggest resources—recommend resources for higher ed leaders and administrators to better understand how to promote collaboration. LEE: Sure. So promoting collaboration, it really—each person at a time. You know, again, MOUs may be signed, and maybe overarching presidents will come together and have an agreement, but there's no guarantee that will ever happen. I'd love to do a study on how many MOUs never actually materialized into real action. So where do we begin? International affairs SIOs out there, identify who are your area studies experts? Who are your visiting postdocs? Who are your Fulbright scholars from other parts of the world? They all represent their own network and are certainly are valuable resources to consider. What I've sometimes have heard even at my own institution is, you know, how do we bring these people to the table? Why are they not at the table to begin with, and then how do we bring them there? And this is a relatively low-cost way to go about this, right? Like, faculty engaged in service. What kind of opportunities can your university provide for faculty service that is aligned with their area of expertise, the areas of the world they represent, the networks they have? And many of—some of you already have experienced this directly. These partnerships often begin with our alumni, international—former international students who decide to go back home. So, again, there's just a lot of exciting opportunity. I love this field because it's never boring. There's always new ways to grow, expand new partners. But it really does begin with that essential element of trust. And that often begins with our own institutions and identifying those who've already started to build that network. FASKIANOS: Wonderful. Thank you very much. Really appreciate your being with us and for sharing your expertise and background, Dr. Lee. It's been fantastic. And to all of you, for your questions and comments, and sharing your experiences as well. You can follow Dr. Lee on X, the app formerly known as Twitter, at @JennyJ_Lee. I will send out a link to this webinar, the transcript, and the video, as well as the link to the book—your book that you mentioned, and any other resources that you want to share with the group. And I encourage you all to follow @CFR_academic on X, visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. We also—just putting in a plug for our other series, Academic Webinar series, which is designed for students. We just sent out the winter/spring lineup and we hope that you will share that with your colleagues and your students. It is a great way for them to have access to practitioner scholars and to talk with students from around the country. So if you haven't received that lineup, you can email cfracademic@CFR.org, and we will share that with you. So, again, thank you, Jenny, for being with us, and to all of you. And wishing you safe and happy holidays. And good luck closing out this semester before we get to the holidays. (Laughs.) So thank you again. (END)

Jenny Lee, vice president for Arizona International, dean of international education, and professor of educational policy studies and practice at the University of Arizona, leads the conversation on U.S. international academic collaboration and how U.S.-China tensions are affecting higher education. FASKIANOS: Welcome to CFR's Higher Education Webinar Series. I'm Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Today's discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/academic. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We're delighted to have Jenny Lee with us to discuss U.S. international academic collaboration. Dr. Lee is vice president for Arizona International, dean of international education, and professor of educational policy studies and practice at the University of Arizona. She is also a fellow of the American Educational Research Association. Dr. Lee formerly served as a senior fellow of NAFSA, the Association of International Educators, as chair for the Council of International Higher Education, and as a board member for the Association for the Study of Higher Education. And she has also served as a U.S. Fulbright scholar to South Africa, as a distinguished global professor at Korea University, and as an international visiting scholar at the City University of London, the University of Pretoria, and the University of Cape Town in South Africa. So, Dr. Lee, thank you very much for being with us for today's topic. I thought you could begin by giving us an overview of current trends in U.S. international academic collaboration, especially looking at what's happening with our relations with China. LEE: Sounds great. Well, thank you for the opportunity, Irina. It's a pleasure to be here and to speak with you and all those listening right now. I'll speak for about ten or so minutes, and then open it up and engage with the audience. Hopefully, you all have some good questions that will come up during my remarks. So, clearly, we're entering a very interesting and somewhat uncertain chapter in how we understand the role of higher education globally. So I will begin with some general observation so all our viewers are on the same page. Now, first and foremost, the U.S. is mostly at the top when it comes to the higher education sector. Most of us already know that the United States houses the most highly ranked institutions. And this allows the country to be the largest host of international students and scholars from around the world. According to the latest IIE Open Doors report published a couple of weeks ago, the U.S. attracted over a million students from all over the world. And we're almost back to pre-pandemic levels. We also host over 90,000 scholars. And the primary purpose for them being here is research, for about two-thirds to 75 percent of them. These international scholars, as well as international graduate students, contribute significantly to the U.S. scientific enterprise. The U.S. is also among the leading countries in scientific output and impact, and the largest international collaborator in the world. In other words, the U.S. is highly sought because of its prestigious institutions, drawing top faculty and students from around the world. And with that comes the ability to generate cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs which further secures the U.S.' global position in academia. At the same time, of course, we've seen China's economy rise significantly as the country surpassed the United States in scientific output, and more recently in impact as measured by publication citations, and is outpacing the U.S. in the extent of R&D investment. Chinese institutions have also made noticeable jumps in various global rankings, which is a pretty big feat considering the fierce competition among the world's top universities. What we're witnessing as well are geopolitical tensions between the two countries that have impacted the higher education sector. While these two countries, the U.S. and China, are the biggest global collaborators—and they collaborate more with each other than any other country—they're also rival superpowers. As global adversaries, what we are witnessing as well is increased security concerns regarding intellectual theft and espionage. I'm going to spend some time summarizing my work for those who are not familiar to provide some further context. I and my colleagues, John Haupt and Xiaojie Li, also at the University of Arizona, have conducted numerous studies about U.S.-China scientific collaboration. And what we're observing across these studies is how the scientific pursuit of knowledge, which is fundamentally borderless, is becoming bordered in the current geopolitical environment. International collaboration, long valued as positive-sum, is being treated as zero-sum. Besides the rise of China and the accompanying political rhetoric that posed China as a so-called threat, tensions also grew among accusations, as you may recall, about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and a corresponding sharp increase in anti-Asian hate crimes in the United States. Public opinions about China were not favorable, and thus there was not a whole lot of public resistance when the FBI's China Initiative was launched in 2018. This initiative basically signaled that anyone of Chinese descent was a potential enemy of the state, including possible Chinese Communist Party spies in our own universities, even though there was no pervasive empirical or later judicial cases that proved such a damaging assumption. Nevertheless, world-renowned Chinese scientists were falsely accused of academic espionage and their careers and personal finances ruined. In my research that followed with Xiaojie Li, with support from the Committee of 100, we surveyed about 2,000 scientists in the U.S.' top research universities during the China Initiative. And we found that one in two Chinese scientists were afraid that they were being racially profiled by the FBI. We also observed that consequently scientists, especially those with Chinese descent, were less inclined to collaborate with China, less inclined to pursue federal grants, less inclined to even stay in the United States but rather to take their expertise to another country where they felt safer to pursue their research, including in China. In sum, the federal government's attempts to weed out possible Chinese spies was highly criticized as a damaging form of racial profiling affecting even U.S. citizens and, in the end, undermined the U.S.' ability to compete with China. Especially now, as we continue to observe Chinese scientists leaving the U.S. and taking their skills and talents elsewhere. With John Haupt and two academics at Tsinghua University in China, Doctors Wen Wen and Die Hu, we asked about two hundred co-collaborators in China and in the United States how were they able to overcome such geopolitical tensions and the challenges associated with COVID-19 during the pandemic? And we did learn something somewhat unexpected, and I hope valuable. Basically, we found that mutual trust between international collaborators helped overcome such perceived hurdles, including risks of being unfairly targeted. What this tells us is that a chilling effect is certainly real and remains possible, but in the end scientists have tremendous agency on what they study, where they study, and whether or not they seek funds, or where they seek funds. Regardless of the host or home country, international collaboration is important to all countries' scientific enterprise. Coauthors from different countries improve the knowledge being produced, its applicability, enlarges global audiences, and thereby increases the impact of the work. So considering the value, yet risks, where do we begin? Firstly, federal and institutional policies, of course, matter, for better or for worse. But policies do not manufacture trust. The formation of an academic tie does not suddenly occur over a cold call in the middle of a global meltdown, as often portrayed in Hollywood. Rather, this is a gradual process. And the longevity of the relationship helps strengthen that trust over time. According to our research, these collaborative relationships begin as graduate students, postdocs, visiting researchers. They occur at academic conferences and other in-person opportunities. Cutting short-term fellowships, for example, will impact the potential of a future scientific relationship, but its effects may not be felt for years. Same with denied visas and opportunities for travel. Fewer graduate students from particular countries or fields also means a different shape when it comes to global science. U.S. for instance, was not too long ago Russia's biggest foreign scientific collaborator, with the war in Ukraine, those research relationships, as well as much—with much of the Western world, have ceased. All of this, and my related empirical research, was conducted when I was a professor at my home institution. And since July, I've been serving, as Irina mentioned, as the dean and vice president of international affairs at my own institution. And I've been thinking a lot of, what does this mean for institutional practice? For those in university leadership positions, as mine, you know this is a tough challenge. Especially as domestic demand and state funding for higher education is generally declining. And at the same time, internationalization is increasingly central to senior leadership strategies. Universities are continuing vying to attract the world's students, even despite a decline of interest from China. And at the same time, research universities in particular are quite dependent on federal grants. We have our own research security offices that need to ensure our universities have good reputations and relations with our large federal funding agencies and taking every precaution to not be seen as a vulnerable site of intellectual theft. These units tend not to operate within international affairs. And I'm very well aware that in my role of trying to attract as many students from China and develop international partnerships, all of them can be suddenly erased if a Chinese University partner does not pass visual compliance or there is a sudden presidential executive order, as we experienced under the Trump administration. I'm also very well aware that of senior leaders have to choose between my educational offerings and partnerships in China versus risking a major grant from a federal agency, I will lose. We witnessed that with the shutting down of over 100 Confucius Institutes in the U.S., despite a lack of evidence of systematic espionage occurring through these centers. Public perceptions, informed or not, strongly affect the nature of our international work, as in the case of Florida. Such negative perceptions are not one country-sided, of course. A key concern for Chinese and other international students and their parents relate to safety. Gun violence, including on our own college campuses, anti-Asian hate crimes in surrounding neighborhoods, and unfavorable political environment in which studies might be interrupted as in the case of Proclamation 10043, or visa non-renewals are all contributing factors for the decline of interest from China, and uncertain future student exchange as well. In closing, when it comes to China these days no practices are guaranteed. However, I can recommend some while also keeping in mind geopolitical conditions can suddenly change for worse, or perhaps better. I mentioned earlier the value of mutual trust. At my university, we have long-standing relationships with university leaders at Chinese institutions. We've set up dual degree programs in China. Actually, about 40 percent of our international student enrollment are through such partner relationships throughout the world, in which we go to where they are. Hiring staff who speak the language and know the culture are also essential. And, like any relationship, these arrangements have developed over time. They are not built overnight. It takes intention. It takes effort. But in my experience, as trust is established the numbers have grown, and the positive impact is still being felt. Thank you. FASKIANOS: Thank you very much for that. That was terrific. Let's go now to all of you for your questions, comments. You can use this to share best practices and what you're doing to your universities or institutions. Please click the raise hand icon on your screen to ask a question. On your iPad or tablet, you can click the “more” button to access the raise hand feature. And when you're called upon, please accept the unmute prompts, state your name and affiliation, followed by your question. You can also submit a written question, they've already started coming in, by the Q&A icon. And if you can also include your affiliation there, I would appreciate it, although we will try to make sure we identify you correctly. So let's see. I'm looking for—no raised hands yet, but we do have questions written. So first question from Denis Simon, who's a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Many U.S. universities have curtailed their exchanges and cooperation with China. You referenced that. Officials at these universities are worried that if they appear too friendly toward China they will lose all sorts of federal funding. Are these concerns justified? Are there any regulations or legislation that actually says federal funding can be removed assuming these universities are in compliance with the export controls, et cetera? LEE: All right. Well, thanks, Denis, for your question. I know there—when I saw the list of those who signed up, I know there are many here who can speak to this directly. So I encourage those to also raise their hands and provide input in the Q&A, maybe in the form of an A instead of a Q. But in any case, going to that question, you know, it's a tough environment. And so much in my role, but what I even experienced in my research, is about that perception, that overinterpretation. So maybe signaling that we have this exchange program might draw attention in ways that might lead to suspicions that, oh, well is this, you know, somehow creating an opportunity for us to disclose military secrets? I mean, that's where we take it. A friendly exchange or visit is oftentimes now having to be scrutinized and ensuring that there is no remote violation of export controls, even in educational delivery in a non-STEM field. And what we're seeing is that this—we have our highly sensitive fields, but that kind of scrutiny we're also seeing applied to the institution more broadly. So these seemingly benign programs about language or culture, about fields that are enhanced or help promote so-called American values, are also being watched. So I believe as an institutional leader, again, as I mentioned earlier, having to deal with the possibility of unwanted or unwarranted attention versus not having that program, I think some, as Denis has pointed out, are leaning towards being more cautious. Unfortunately, China—any work with China is considered a risk, even if there is no reason for risk, as we've witnessed under—or, observed under the China Initiative. I don't know if I've fully answered that question, but please follow up if I haven't. And I know others can probably say more to that issue. FASKIANOS: Great. I'll take the next question from Peter—I don't know how to pronounce— LEE: Peter Becskehazy. Hi, Peter. (Laughs.) FASKIANOS: There you go. Thank you very much. LEE: I know Peter. FASKIANOS: All right. Good. Well, I'd love if Peter asked his question directly, if he can. Oh, good. From Pima Community College. Go ahead, Peter. Q: Hello, Jenny. Nice to see you. LEE: Hi, Peter. Q: Now my question is, the University of Arizona and other universities have had an inflow of dozens of countries, adding up to the million that you mentioned. Are other countries trying to fill in slots left vacant by Chinese students and scholars? LEE: Yeah. Great question, Peter. And I think you can also share what you've observed at Pima in terms of the patterns you've witnessed. But for us, and as we are seeing nationally, we're seeing India rise. Not at the—not at higher numbers in many institutions, compared to China, but the rate is rising. It's not so simple, though, because we also have relations in India, and trying to set up agreements, and bring students. The competition in India is intense. So even though there's a relatively so-called large market, and the U.S. has been quite successful in attracting Indian students, that is perhaps where the attention is as a more, I would say—I hate to use the word “market,”—but a stable student market. There's a lot more interest in graduate-level education globally, as we've observed. These countries that formerly didn't have capacity now do have capacity. They have online offerings. They have branch campuses, dual degrees, lots of other options. And so the niche for the U.S., whereas before we didn't really have to think about a niche, is really in graduate education. Now, of course, that's not good news for Pima, that's thinking about a community college and other kinds of educational offerings. But for us, we're thinking about India a lot. Southeast Asia, of course, has always been an important partner to us. Africa continues to be a challenge. We know that when we think about population growth, Africa is the future. There's still challenges and trying to identify places where there is capacity. But also the affordability of a U.S. education is a huge challenge. So it's a great question. And, again, I'm curious to know other places in the world people recommend. Of course, Latin America, given our location, is a key strategic partner. But again, affordability becomes an issue. And again, I'm just talking about the traditional international student who would choose to come to Arizona. Not talking about research collaboration, which is less bound by affordability issues. Irina, you're muted. FASKIANOS: How long have I been doing this? OK. (Laughs.) I'm going to take the next written question from Allison Davis-White Eyes, who is vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion at Fielding Graduate University: We have tried to work on collaborations with European universities and African universities, and met with much difficulty. What trends are you seeing in these regions? And what are emerging global markets beyond China? LEE: Great question, Allison. I mean, if you could leave the question in the future, so because I am visually looking at the question at the same time. FASKIANOS: Oh, great. Sorry. LEE: So, Allison, I'm not sure if you're referring to academic or research. Of course, within Europe, where the government does highly subsidized tuition, it's just becomes financially a bad deal, I suppose—(laughs)—for a student in the world who would normally get a free or highly reduced tuition to pay full price at our institution. So that kind of exchange of partnership, especially when it's about—when it's financially based, becomes almost impossible from my experience. But thinking about research collaboration, it depends on the level. So if it's an institutional agreement, you know, it's—often, these MOUs tend to just be on paper. It takes quite a bit of—it's very ceremonial. You need to get legal involved. It's a whole process to get an MOU. We really don't need these non-binding MOUs for research agreements. Some countries like it, just to display that they have an MOU with a U.S. institution. But essentially, it doesn't stop me as a professor to reach out to another professor at the University of Oslo, and say, hey, let's do a study. Which we actually are doing. So, yeah, feel free to be more specific, or if you want to raise your hand or speak on—and elaborate on that question. So, again, for educational exchange, it is difficult because we are—there's already a process within the EU that makes it very affordable and highly supported within the EU, or if you're part of that bigger program. Africa, again, my challenge from my role as an institutional leader is identifying places where there is already enough mass education up through high school where one would be able to consider, first of all, being admitted to a U.S. institution, but secondly, to be able to pay the cost. FASKIANOS: Allison, do you want to expand a little bit? Q: Oh, sorry. (Laughs.) FASKIANOS: There you go. There you go. Q: Right. Dr. Lee, thank you for your response. I think it was helpful, especially regarding the subsidizing of education in Europe. We've been working on some research partnerships. And we have just—you know, really, it has just been extremely difficult with European universities. And I do think part of it has to do with the way things are subsidized in Europe. I was just wondering if there were new and different ways to do it. I do appreciate your comment about the MOUs being largely ceremonial. I agree. And would like to see something with a little more substance. And that will take some creativity and a lot of partnership and work. As for Africa, we have tried to create partnerships with South Africa. I think there's some potential there. Certainly, some excitement. We've had a few students from Nigeria, extremely bright and motivated. I just would—you know, would like to hear, maybe from some other colleagues as well on the call, if there are creative ways in working with these students as well. So, thank you. LEE: Yeah, no. And just to follow up quickly, and, again, opportunities for others to share, academic collaboration, as I mentioned during my remarks, is largely built upon mutual trust. And not to say it can't happen from top down, but really does—is most successful from bottom up. And I don't mean to refer to professors at the bottom, but meaning those that are actually engaged with that work. And so just some considerations is rather than a top-down initiative or strategy, is to identify those that are visiting scholars, already from that country, have networks within that country. What's interesting, as I learned in my current role, is how little my predecessors worked with professors in these area's studies programs, because they're oftentimes treated as a separate or having different interests in mind when actually there is a lot of overlap to identify those that are actually there. Allison, by the way, I lived in South Africa for eight years. And I know it actually takes a long time. My Fulbright started off as a one year, and I had to extend it because even getting the data while I was on the ground takes time. And I'll be honest, I think part of it was taking some time just to build trust the intentions of my work, what was I going to do with that data, how is that going to be used? Was it actually going to be ways to empower them? You know, for those who study international collaboration, know this north and south divide, and I think there are places in the world that are—maybe have some guardrails up from those—not saying this is what's happening in your institution—but someone that they don't know coming from the Global North to study someone else in the Global South. And so how do we create or initiate a collaboration that is clearly, expressly mutual at the onset? And, again, this is where trust can be operationalized lots of different ways, but that even begins with that initial message. I mean, I remember when I started my work, nobody responded to me. They're like, who are you? And I don't care who you are or what your CV says. And it takes time. You know, building that relationship, and that person introducing me to that other person. Like, you know, this is how scientific networks form. And I think, to some extent, this is also how institutional collaborative relationships also form. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to go next to David Moore, who has a raised hand. Q: OK, thank you. I just got unmuted. FASKIANOS: Great. Q: Lee, I appreciate your comments. And I heard your reference to Florida earlier. I don't know if we have colleagues on this call from Florida, but I think they'll know what I'm about to say. I'm the dean of international education at Broward College in Fort Lauderdale. And as of tomorrow, December 1, Florida has to—all institutions in Florida, public institutions, colleges and universities, must be completely devoid of any partnerships in China. And not just China. There are seven countries of concern. And you probably can cite them, most of you would know the other six. But of the seven countries, Broward had four partnerships in China alone, none in the other countries that were active. And so we are now officially done, have to be. And I've had to notify the partners as well as our accrediting body, because these were international centers of Broward where they literally offer—we offered associate degrees, two-year degrees. And students could then transfer to an institution in the United States. Now, this didn't catch us too much by surprise because two and a half years ago our Florida legislature started in on this, really probably before that, where they isolated universities in Florida and said: You cannot do research—sensitive research, whatever, you know, engineering, computer science, et cetera—any research without notifying the state. And there's an elaborate process that had to be—you know, they had to go through to do this. But now it's not just research institutions. Now it's not just those kinds of collaborations. It is, in fact, all partnerships of any kind. We had to end our agent agreements where we were recruiting students from China that were—where the companies were based in China. And in course our programs were not research. They're just general education, two-year associate's degree, maybe some business. But we've been informed now it's completely done. And so I'm actually looking for institutions outside of Florida who might be willing to take over the role that we've had in transcripting students who later want to come to the United States. At least for the first two years in China, and then transferring to the upper division to the U.S. So I'm not sure. You're probably quite familiar with this. I don't know if you know the details of how it was worked out in practice. We were the only community college in the state that had any partnerships. So we were the ones that had to desist. So I want to—there are probably people on the call that are familiar with this, but there might be many others. And I just wanted to say that I'm looking to, you know, open that door to other institutions outside of Florida that might be willing in, yes, take a risk to go into China, but to—I've always felt that these kinds of programs were very good to build relationships, partnerships, communication. Ambassadors really. Where we feel like we were representing American education, whatever, you know, we call American values, democracy, you know, community. We thought we were doing good. But we found out we were—we were not. We were—we were doing something that went opposed to the prevailing political climate, at least in Florida. So that's my comment. I think people should know about it. And thank you for letting me speak to it a bit. Maybe someone will speak up and say they're interested in they can get in touch with me, David Moore at Broward College, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. LEE: David, thank you for sharing what you did. This is a really important example of where other states could very well head. And what's interesting, as David noted, we're talking about a community college. When we normally think about cutting ties, it's usually around the concerns about national security. Now, how this translates to a two-year degree that is solely educational based is a pretty far stretch, and yet is being impacted quite severely. So I think we should continue to follow this example—unfortunate example. And, David, yeah, your partners have reached out to my office, and I'm sure to others. But thank you for being available. Q: You're welcome. We have partners—we are also working with your Jakarta, Indonesia center there. So we have that connection. Thank you. LEE: Mmm hmm. Thanks. FASKIANOS: And if anybody wants to share contact information in the Q&A box, you can certainly do that. That would be great. There is a written question from Tutaleni Asino at Oklahoma State University: There was an article today in SEMAFOR highlighting that there are currently 350 U.S. students studying in China compared to 11,000 in 2019. Comparatively, there are 300,000 Chinese students in the United States. Is this a one-way problem, where the U.S. is not investing in international engagements as a result of being more inward looking and other countries having more options of who to collaborate with? LEE: Yeah. Tutaleni, that's—I think your question is an answer. And I think it's—I agree with your observation. So we are seeing that as there's state and public disinvestment in higher education, and including scrutiny about international higher education, we're also seeing a decline and cutting of foreign language programs in the United States. So here we are, a monolingual country whose students mostly go to Europe or other English-speaking countries to study abroad. A very limited number of international—U.S. students who pursue undergraduate degrees in a foreign country. And knowing that the future is global and international, at least in my opinion, does not set the U.S. up well to be globally competitive, even though much of its international policy is around this rhetoric of we need to compete with China. And so you raise a good point. How is this possible if U.S. citizens don't speak Chinese, or have no interest in learning about Chinese culture, or there's reduced opportunities even in our own institutions, I think is something to think about and ask more questions about. FASKIANOS: I'm going to take the next question from Zhen Zhu, chair and professor of marketing, director of faculty excellence, and director for international engagement at Suffolk University: How do you see the trend of U.S. students' interest in study abroad to China? LEE: There is actually growing interest. As many of you know, China—offering Chinese language in high schools is not as unusual as it used to be. There is growing interest as students are thinking about employability in global markets in multinational or international organizations or corporations. It would be fundamental, in fact, for someone who has any interest in international work to pick up the language if they can, and at your own institution. FASKIANOS: Great. Let's see. From—I'm going to take the next question from Jeff Riedinger: Is there a role for universities to play in knowledge diplomacy to sustain international relationships and collaborations in addressing global problems such as climate change and pandemics when national governments may be at odds with each other? LEE: Thanks, Jeff. And hi, Jeff. I'm just going to read over that question so I can kind of digest it a bit. Is there a role for institutions to play in knowledge diplomacy, such as climate change, pandemics, when national governments may be at odds with each other? Absolutely, 200 percent. It is occurring—knowledge diplomacy, science diplomacy. That one individual going on a Fulbright or coming to study here for some extended visit, having these collaborations and, ultimately, you know, science—knowledge production—I mean, there's no bounds. And when we think about the kind of research that may not occur because of these national governments are at odds when it comes to addressing climate change or other global issues, you know, the world is paying somewhat of a price when it comes to that in—when there are overarching concerns about national security. So, you know, my issue has always been with policy you overlook nuance, and with sweeping policies that overlook the disciplinary distinctions and contributions, what is lost in the pursuit of trying to stay ahead of another country in fields and areas that really have no economic or military value, right? But yet, have an important cultural value, or maybe will address something bigger, such as COVID-19. So as I mentioned, the work that I referenced earlier about U.S.-Chinese scientists coming together during COVID-19, were actually scientists who studied COVID-19 together. And again, this was not—this was fraught with risks. They were very well aware that there was a lot of scrutiny about any research about COVID-19 coming from China. There was scrutiny about, you know, where the data was held, who was analyzing it, who was funding it. And yet, these scientists took these risks in order to address how does the world deal with the pandemic. And this was based on interviews of those studies that were actually successful and published. This is where that mutual trust, as I've mentioned earlier, is so important. And without that mutual trust, these studies, I'm pretty certain, would never have been published, because it was not an easy path when it comes to that particular geopolitical climate during the pandemic. FASKIANOS: Jenny, I'm just going to ask a question. President Biden and President Xi met during APEC. Did anything come out of that meeting that could affect U.S.-China academic collaboration? LEE: Yeah. You know, this is tough. I mean, how do you analyze political statements? What do they really mean? And what is really going to change? I think what's clear is that there's an acknowledgment that we're interdependent, but we're also adversaries. Almost a love/hate codependent, in a relationship that we can't just easily separate but we do need each other. But the form that it takes, I think there's an understanding it needs to be more specific. And I don't think that has been clarified yet. I realize I missed part of Jeff's question on what can institutions do? That's such a good question. And I got more into the topic than the actual to-do. What can institutions do? Honestly—(laughs)—I'll just speak as a researcher, to back off a bit, right? To let scientists do what they want to do. Yes, we need to follow disclosures. We need to make sure there's no conflicts of interest. We need to follow all of these procedures. But what I also found during the China Initiative, there was also this chilling climate in which there's an overinterpretation that may put institutions at risk. And to my knowledge, institutions were not at risk to the extent to which their scientists, especially those of Chinese descent, felt scrutinized. FASKIANOS: Thank you. We have a raised hand from Dan Whitman. Q: OK, I think I'm unmuted. Thank you, Irina. And thanks, Professor Lee, for mentioning the Great Wall that that prevents us from dealing with even Europeans who have subsidized education or Africans who have no money. And just an anecdote, since you have welcomed anecdotes, I am an adjunct at George Washington University. But totally unrelated to that, just for free and just for fun, pro bono, nobody pays, nobody gets paid. A course that I'm giving by webinar, it's zero cost. The topic is crisis management, but it could be any topic. And in that group, which there are about eighty people who tune in twice a week, fifteen Kenyans, twenty-five Ukrainians, and forty Kazakhs. I mean, I don't know if there's ever been exchange between Kazakhstan and Kenya. Anyway, my point is things can be done. We share it for free. What motivates the students? A certificate. It's so easy to give them a certificate. And in many countries, they very highly value that, even though it's not a—there's no formality, there's no formal academic credit. But the students are very motivated. And possibly, there may be universities in the U.S. that could—that might want to give a professor a small stipendium to do an informal webinar course, which would create connections, which would be zero cost, basically, and would bridge that gap of funding that you've alluded to. Thank you. LEE: Yeah. Dan, thank you for that. And I think this leads to a kind of a spin-off comment about certificates. Absolutely. Micro-credentials or alternative forms of education, where there's maybe not a full-fledged undergraduate degree but some certificate, I think, is important niche, especially for returning adults or communities where they're not able to afford to take time off. So that flexibility, and obviously now with online education, just becomes so much more accessible and very low cost. Something else to keep in mind, though, is that, depending on the institution you're from, that will make a difference in certificates. I mean, an institution like George Washington University offering a certificate may have some symbolic or perceived value that may be higher than an institution that is lower or are not ranked at all. So this is where, unfortunately—I'm a big critic of global rankings. But unfortunately, it does play a role in how that certificate is being perceived and the attractiveness of that certificate. But absolutely, this is definitely a way to open access especially for places in the world that just cannot physically move or have the funds to support their studies. FASKIANOS: Great. There are two comments/questions in the Q&A that I wanted to give you a chance to respond to about Africa, from Tutaleni Asino and Fodei Batty. Dr. Asino talks about English is the language of instruction and governments in Africa where they're funding education to a higher degree, and thinks that there are opportunities there, but it sounds like all fifty-four countries are grouped together. And Dr. Batty talks a little bit about there are a lot of students from African countries pursuing graduate education in the United States. But South Africa is usually an exception to the higher education American norm in Africa. Most South Africans don't like to travel, especially travel to America. I thought maybe you could just clarify some—respond to those comments. LEE: Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you for sharing those comments. There's a book I edited called Intra-Africa Student Mobility. And I agree with the comments. And one of the things I didn't mention that I think is important to help us understand the broader global context is that there's actually considerable international activity within the continent. And there's actually considerable intra-Africa mobility within the continent. South Africa is the most important country player in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is globally ranked—has more globally ranked institutions than any other African country. And so South Africa then becomes an important hub. And, yes, as an English-speaking, among many other languages, country, that does attract African students to go oftentimes for a similar sense of shared culture, despite sometimes different languages and customs and backgrounds. And yet, nevertheless, South Africa is an important player within the continent. Not to say that there is no international mobility occurring, but there is increased capacity within the continent that would allow students and interested students to travel within the continent. Not the same extent, of course, as Europe. But the least we're seeing that rise over time. And so it's called Intra-Africa Student Mobility. Chika Sehoole and I coedited the book. We were able to get about eight African scholars to talk about the various reasons students would choose that particular African country, and what draw them. And what was really interesting about this phenomenon is that it goes against this prevailing notion of Africa's victim of brain drain or all going to the north. That's actually not what is happening. But that there is capacity building within the continent. So in trying to answer a different question, I skirted over a lot of the things I could go further into. But hopefully that book will shed light on what's happening within that continent, at least from the perspective of eight different countries. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. Thank you for that. I'm going to go next to Jonathan Scriven at Washington Adventist University in Maryland: What are some of the strategies universities are using to make education more affordable in the United States? If that is a challenge, are schools investing more or less in setting up campuses in foreign countries as a way to reach foreign students? LEE: I'm just going to read over that question. OK, yeah. Great question, Jonathan. So what's happening in my institution and many others is a way to attract students is we're providing considerable aid, merit aid, financial aid, aid even to international students. The majority may not even be paying the full sticker price. Now this, of course, will affect the revenue that would have otherwise been generated, but nevertheless is a way to deal with the fierce competition across U.S. institutions for these top students. So how to make it affordable? There's a lot of aid going around at the undergraduate, not just the graduate, levels. And so what are institutions doing? Well, for example, at the University of Arizona for our dual degrees, it's a fraction of the cost of what it would cost to be a student at our main campus. When you have a combination of hybrid or online delivery with a campus partner maybe providing most of the gen ed's and then we would teach most of the major courses as an example, that does significantly lower the cost where that student will still get a bona fide University of Arizona degree, just like they would at main campus. So these alternative forms of delivery certainly make it more affordable, especially for those that opt to stay in their home country and receive an online education, or a flipped classroom model, or a dual degree. FASKIANOS: Great. Denis Simon, if you can—why don't you ask your question? Q: Here I am. OK. Recently, on a trip to China in September, a number of faculty have told me they're no longer wanting to send their best students abroad. They want to keep them in China. And this is all part of the rise of Chinese universities, et cetera. And so it may not be simply the souring of Sino-U.S. relations that has causal effect here, but simply the fact that China now is becoming a major, you know, educational powerhouse. And that also could change the dynamics. For example, even the BRI countries could start to send their students to China instead of sending them to the United States. Do you see anything evolving like this or—and what might be the outcome? LEE: Yeah. Spot on, David. That halo effect of a U.S. degree is not the same as it was when I was a university student. Chinese students, as well as students in the world, are much more savvy. They have access to information. They have access to rankings. They know all universities are not the same. And they know that they have some institutions that are highly ranked and may offer better quality education than the U.S. So that the image of a U.S. degree, of course, is not as universally perceived as it may have been, I don't know, pre-internet, or without the—all sorts of rankings in which institutions are rated against one another. And absolutely, Chinese institutions are very difficult to get into, fiercely competitive, producing far more scientific output than some of our leading institutions. And there's another factor when it comes to Asian culture just more broadly speaking, is that social network tie. Sociologists refer to it as social capital. When a Chinese student, a Korean student, Japanese student decides to study in the United States, they may lose that social tie that may possibly put them in a disadvantage when they decide to come back and compete for a position when they may just have that U.S. credential, but may have either lessened or no longer have that relationship that may have allowed them to get a position at the university, or in a place where that alumni network would have been especially useful. So again, I don't want to generalize, you know, in any place to the world, but there is that component that I think sometimes is missed in the literature. Maintaining that social network is pretty key, especially as jobs, of course, global, you know, unemployment—places where students are competing for positions need to have every edge possible. So that also can be part of that reason they decide to stay. FASKIANOS: Great. The next question from Michael Kulma, who's at the University of Chicago. He's following on David Moore's comments about Florida: Do you know how many other states in the U.S. are enacting or are considering such policies against partnerships with China? LEE: I do not know the answer. So if anyone wants to raise their hand and share about their own state, or put it on the answer part of the question and answer. There are related concerns about DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Some of that may spill over to China. Hopefully, at some point at the Council of Foreign Relations will have a discussion on Israel and Hamas conflict and how institutions are dealing with that. And so we're seeing a pretty challenging political environment that is clearly spilling over to our classrooms and to our international activities, our domestic recruitment. But I'm not answering your question, Michael. (Laughs.) I'll leave it up to someone else to answer. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you. So we don't have very much time left. I thought maybe you could, given your research and expertise, could suggest resources—recommend resources for higher ed leaders and administrators to better understand how to promote collaboration. LEE: Sure. So promoting collaboration, it really—each person at a time. You know, again, MOUs may be signed, and maybe overarching presidents will come together and have an agreement, but there's no guarantee that will ever happen. I'd love to do a study on how many MOUs never actually materialized into real action. So where do we begin? International affairs SIOs out there, identify who are your area studies experts? Who are your visiting postdocs? Who are your Fulbright scholars from other parts of the world? They all represent their own network and are certainly are valuable resources to consider. What I've sometimes have heard even at my own institution is, you know, how do we bring these people to the table? Why are they not at the table to begin with, and then how do we bring them there? And this is a relatively low-cost way to go about this, right? Like, faculty engaged in service. What kind of opportunities can your university provide for faculty service that is aligned with their area of expertise, the areas of the world they represent, the networks they have? And many of—some of you already have experienced this directly. These partnerships often begin with our alumni, international—former international students who decide to go back home. So, again, there's just a lot of exciting opportunity. I love this field because it's never boring. There's always new ways to grow, expand new partners. But it really does begin with that essential element of trust. And that often begins with our own institutions and identifying those who've already started to build that network. FASKIANOS: Wonderful. Thank you very much. Really appreciate your being with us and for sharing your expertise and background, Dr. Lee. It's been fantastic. And to all of you, for your questions and comments, and sharing your experiences as well. You can follow Dr. Lee on X, the app formerly known as Twitter, at @JennyJ_Lee. I will send out a link to this webinar, the transcript, and the video, as well as the link to the book—your book that you mentioned, and any other resources that you want to share with the group. And I encourage you all to follow @CFR_academic on X, visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. We also—just putting in a plug for our other series, Academic Webinar series, which is designed for students. We just sent out the winter/spring lineup and we hope that you will share that with your colleagues and your students. It is a great way for them to have access to practitioner scholars and to talk with students from around the country. So if you haven't received that lineup, you can email cfracademic@CFR.org, and we will share that with you. So, again, thank you, Jenny, for being with us, and to all of you. And wishing you safe and happy holidays. And good luck closing out this semester before we get to the holidays. (Laughs.) So thank you again. (END)

ASCO: You're listening to a podcast from Cancer.Net. This cancer information website is produced by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, known as ASCO, the voice of the world's oncology professionals. The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guests' statements on this podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Cancer research discussed in this podcast is ongoing, so data described here may change as research progresses. In September 2022, ASCO and the Society for Integrative Oncology, or SIO, published a joint guideline on using integrative therapies to manage pain in people with cancer. Integrative therapies are treatments and techniques used in addition to standard cancer treatment to help people cope with the side effects of cancer, including cancer-related pain. In this podcast, Dr. Richard Lee talks to the guideline panel co-chair, Dr. Jun Mao, about these guideline recommendations. They discuss why the guideline was created and the different types of integrative therapies included in these recommendations, including acupuncture, reflexology and acupressure, hypnosis, massage, yoga, guided imagery and progressive muscle relaxation, and music therapy. Dr. Lee is a clinical professor in the Departments of Supportive Care Medicine and Medical Oncology at City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center and serves as the medical director of the Integrative Medicine Program. Dr. Lee is also the 2023 Cancer.Net Associate Editor for Palliative Care. Dr. Mao is chief of the Integrative Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and holds the Laurance S. Rockefeller Chair in Integrative Medicine at the institution. View disclosures for Dr. Lee and Dr. Mao at Cancer.Net. Dr. Lee: My name is Richard Lee. I'm a clinical professor here at City of Hope Cancer Center. I'm in the Departments of Supportive Care Medicine and Medical Oncology and medical director for the Integrative Medicine Program. I'm honored to be accompanied today by Dr. Jun Mao. He's the chief of the Integrative Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering and holds the Laurance S. Rockefeller Chair in Integrative Medicine. So we're going to talk about the joint SIO-ASCO guidelines that recently came out in the Journal of Clinical Oncology looking at integrative approaches to cancer pain. And so let me first ask you, Jun, could you talk about what is a clinical practice guideline, and how does it help guide cancer care? Dr. Mao: The clinical practice guideline is a process bringing multidisciplinary experts to look at the evidence from randomized clinical trials or systematic reviews and meta-analysis and to really evaluate the level of the evidence from research and clinical trials, and also incorporate our clinical expertise, consideration for the benefit and risk. Then, making a set of recommendations for doctors and nurses, health care providers to make informed decisions for patients. Dr. Lee: Great. And tell us more, what is integrative medicine for those patients who may not have a full understanding what this field is about? Jun Mao: So integrative medicine is a complex term. Originally, a lot of people may have heard that term of “alternative medicine” or “complementary medicine.” So those terms are referring to using things like herbs or shamanism instead of a conventional cancer treatment. So recognizing the needs of patients who want to explore alternative ways to help them to cope with cancer, and the importance of adhering to conventional surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy. So the field of integrative medicine has emerged. Integrative medicine is a field that is based on evidence and acknowledge the patient's wishes to carefully incorporate evidence-based lifestyle interventions, mind-body treatments, and consider for natural products and herbal medicine in a safe and effective way to improve patients' physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Also, part of the goal of integrative medicine is to really engage the patient as an active participant to prevent cancer and to really engage in their own care during and beyond their cancer treatment. Dr. Lee: And for patients who are new to this concept of integrative medicine or integrative therapies, why is it important for us to study this for cancer care? Dr. Mao: Richard, this is really important because often when a person gets cancer, you get friends and family who really want to be helpful who say, “Do this, try that, use this herb, or this supplement has been used by that.” So there's a lot of anecdote. There's a lot of sort of people just want to be helpful. But in actuality, some of the treatments, without carefully considering actual evidence and potential risks of drug herbal interaction, can induce harm, not only increase the toxicity of the cancer treatment, but may even shorten the lives of cancer patients. Therefore, we often tell patients don't use these treatments as alternative, but to use in an integrated way. And doing research is going to be helpful to understand in what setting for what condition or symptoms. These are helpful, not helpful, are they safe or unsafe? Dr. Lee: That's really important. That's great to see the research coming along. And so let's talk about ASCO, the American Society for Clinical Oncology, which is the world's leading and largest professional organization for oncologists, as well as Society for Integrative Oncology, SIO. You know, how did they come together to produce this joint guideline on integrative medicine and pain management? Dr. Mao: So, as you know, ASCO is a world-leading conventional oncology society. It's a multi-discipline, you know, surgeons, medical oncologists, radiation oncologists, a lot of psychosocial supportive care folks are part of this society. Society for Integrative Oncology is a relatively new society, but this year we're celebrating 20th year, so it's not so new anymore. You know, a lot of very passionate physicians, nurses, nutritionists, social workers, we joined together to really help to advocate for evidence-based integrative medicine in the context of care delivery. SIO brings that expertise together with ASCO to formulate a set of guidelines that can be readily implemented into the care setting to help patients and families to deal with pain, a very common and disturbing side effect for cancer and cancer treatment. Dr. Lee: It's so great to see 2 leading organizations come together to put these guidelines together. So let's jump into the guidelines a little bit, and one of the areas that they covered is acupuncture. So can you let us know and let patients know what is acupuncture, and what types of cancer-related pain has it been shown to be helpful? Dr. Mao: Acupuncture is a type of therapy that originated from the traditional Chinese medicine. It has been documented over 2,500 years ago. So the way acupuncture works clinically is putting very thin, sterile needles in specific locations of the body to help address symptoms, promote a sense of relaxation and wellness. Often, you need a series between 6 to 10 treatments. I always tell patients it's almost like a physical therapy. You need a few treatments to see the benefit. In animal research, there has been a documented mechanism that acupuncture may help your brain to release endogenous neurotransmitters, like endogenous opiates, serotonin, or dopamine, as a result to reduce pain, increase a sense of relaxation, well-being. So the ASCO-SIO Joint Clinical Guideline looked at clinical trials, found pretty strong evidence that acupuncture can be used for a type of joint pain that is very common in women with breast cancer taking aromatase inhibitors. Aromatase inhibitors are a class of drug that drop the estrogen level in women with breast cancer as a result of preventing the breast cancer from spreading. Unfortunately, about 50% of women do develop very diffuse joint pain. A lot of time it is in the low back and knees and makes a lot of patients stop this life-saving drug. The committee feels strongly like acupuncture should be recommended as one of the options to treat aromatase inhibitor-related joint pain. In other areas, not as strong, but also in general cancer-related joint pain and musculoskeletal pain. And there are also some weak evidence on acupuncture can be helpful for chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, as well as to be used in post-surgical related pain. So those are the recommendations we would tell a patient who experienced those pains to try acupuncture. Dr. Lee: So Jun, you mentioned about the different recommendations around acupuncture, and you're talking a little bit about levels of evidence. Could you explain to patients what you mean by the levels of evidence and the types of recommendations that were put forward by ASCO and SIO? Dr. Mao: So when experts review evidence from clinical trials, if you have several large clinical trials producing very consistent findings that a therapy is beneficial with very low risk, that will give you a high level, strong quality of evidence with strong recommendation. Unfortunately, in the field of integrative medicine, often there's a lack of funding for this type of research. So what you do see is there are maybe only 1 trial showing that it's very beneficial and maybe there are some smaller trials to show some signal, then we will give an intermediate quality of evidence and moderate strength of recommendation. And then you have therapies that are being used by patients, but there's very little trials or the trials, the sample size are very small. Sample size means how many patients participate. Then you see some promising signals overall, but it's kind of, you know, we don't have a strong confidence in the result. That's where we give low quality of evidence and weak strength of recommendation. Dr. Lee: That's really helpful and it's, I think, important since integrative medicine is really based on evidence-based approaches that we are looking at the levels of evidence. So thank you for explaining that. Let's move on to some other therapies that were mentioned within the guidelines. You talk about reflexology and acupressure. Can you talk about what these types of therapies are and what have they been shown to help? Dr. Mao: So reflexology acupressure, so this is a very similar sort of a principle of treatment, but instead of putting needles, it's actually a therapist will put hands on or teach the patient to press specific acupuncture or pressure points as a result to reduce pain or induce relaxation. So here is where you see some intermediate quality of evidence with moderate strength of recommendation for general cancer pain or musculoskeletal pain as the patient is receiving treatment. One common area you would see that is sometimes when a patient's getting chemotherapy, they will have these muscle aches and joint pain. It's not long lasting, but it's very annoying for a number of days. So in those settings, you can try that.   Dr. Lee: So for patients who might have a needle phobia and are very hesitant, would it be reasonable for them to think about reflexology and acupressure as another modality? Dr. Mao: Oh, absolutely. And also I want to clarify reflexology often is done on the feet. So a lot of patients may not necessarily like general massage. Some people love it, but other people just don't want people to touch their whole body. Then the reflexology just focusing on massaging the feet or lower legs can be a really good option. Dr. Lee: Yeah, great to see there are options for patients, depending on their preferences. Let's move on to another therapy in the guidelines that mention hypnosis. And so a lot of patients may not be familiar with what is hypnosis and where can that be applied for patients with cancer? Dr. Mao: Hypnosis is really about changing a state of awareness and a sense of increased relaxation that often allows for improved focus or concentration. But when you talk about hypnosis in a health care setting, it is often done by a provider with verbal repetition, provided with some mental images. Often during hypnosis, patients can be taken to a different mental place and feel a sense of relaxation and calm. And where you see some evidence is actually for procedural pain. This is derived from a large, randomized trial for biopsy, as well as some interventional procedure showing that hypnosis produces benefit for pain reduction, more of acute pain relief. Again, it makes sense physiologically, right? You take your mind and consciousness to a different place rather than focus on the procedure and pain. So this is where we give intermediate quality of evidence and moderate strengths of recommendation. Dr. Lee: Mm-hmm, good. And let's talk a little bit more about massage. You mentioned that a little bit when you were talking about reflexology. Can you tell us about what situations might massage be helpful for the patients? Dr. Mao: So massage, many people know is really applying pressure in a specific body area. And certainly, for oncology massage, people need to have some specific training to be safe, make sure people don't put pressure in where the tumor is or where there may be fracture risk for bone metastasis as well as in where their medical port is. So I would advise patients work with people who have specialized oncology training. With that said, I think we find really good evidence, particularly in the area of use in palliative care. So there was a large trial with over 300 people randomized to either massage or just gentle touch. Massage reduced pain and improved mental health. So I would say massage to be utilized in patients living with advanced cancer or for patients in a hospice setting can be a really beneficial tool. Where there is a slightly, sort of a weaker evidence I would say, is in the area of a general musculoskeletal pain as the patient is experiencing treatment or in survivorship. There, we give a low quality of evidence, but a moderate strength of recommendation. The reason we give a moderate strength of evidence is the risk is really minimal, right? Like even though we don't have a good amount of research, but even say massage produces some temporary relief, it can still be very beneficial for the patients. Dr. Lee: And let's shift gears a little bit to something called yoga, which many of us may know from your local gym. Can you talk a little bit about yoga and what does that mean for patients who have cancer, and how can that help with cancer-related pain? Dr. Mao: Yoga, as many of you know, originated from India, maybe even as old as 5,000 years ago. So yoga practices, it really combines breath work with meditative work with posture, right, specific postures. So often we know in routine, just health industry, yoga can be really good for physical balance, for flexibility, for induced sense of relaxation. So less is known about the use of that for pain management. So there were some small studies to show that yoga showed really good potential benefit in addressing aromatase inhibitor-related joint pain. The reason we give it a low quality of evidence and weak strength of recommendation is because the research is not as developed in this area. Also, in one of the trials, the pain was the secondary outcome rather than the primary outcome. So it was not the outcome they hypothesized to find, although they did find some benefits. So with that, we do feel like given how yoga is relatively low risk, it's very accessible. So it could be considered for women with breast cancer experiencing aromatase inhibitor-related joint pain. Dr. Lee: And then, Dr. Mao, could you comment a little bit about--there's so many different styles of yoga. Some of them are very physical, like the kind of hot yoga versus other styles might be more gentle. Can you comment a little bit about that and in terms of what style patients might want to consider? Dr. Mao: There's also a national organization to help to train yoga instructors to work with cancer survivors. So as you look out for those programs, you should really look at people who have those experiences. And I would say most of the studies use more of a hatha type of, more gentle yoga rather than the probably rigorous sort of yoga. Particularly, I would say for women with breast cancer on hormonal drugs, there's higher risk for osteoporosis. So it's important to consider the risks. And I would work with highly experienced instructors rather than trying very risky moves that potentially can cause musculoskeletal injuries or fractures. Dr. Lee: Good things to keep in mind as you think about these different therapies. Let's focus more on these kinds of what some consider mind-body techniques: guided imagery, progressive muscle relaxation. Can you talk about these types of therapies, and can the 2 techniques be used in combination to help with cancer pain? Dr. Mao: So these are very common techniques in the realm of mind-body and relaxation technique. Often you will listen to words and the words will guide you to imagine you're on a beach or hiking in the green meadows. And often there's nice music along with the verbal suggestions. And with progressive muscle relaxation, sometimes we'll ask you to squeeze certain muscle and then release, squeeze and release. By doing that, it also causes a sense of relaxation. So where the application for this is where you see in general cancer pain or musculoskeletal pain. So in those settings, this can definitely be elements to help you improve the coping of pain, it's almost in the realm of self-care. So patients can potentially do that at home. However, I would say the evidence still very low. So the quality of evidence we give is a low quality of evidence and weak strength of recommendation. Although this therapy is very intuitive, they cause relaxation, which should help with pain. But I would say they by themselves may not be... the primary mode to manage pain, but rather than improve the coping of pain. Dr. Lee: And let's shift gears a little bit to other techniques. One that was mentioned was music therapy. And of course, a lot of people listen to music on the radio or on the way to work. Can you talk about  what is music therapy? Is that the same as just turning on the radio, and where can that be helpful for pain management?   Dr. Mao: So I'm so glad you're asking this question because music therapy is not just music. Music therapy is working with a specialized trained therapist to use music as an avenue to allow patients to develop a very meaningful therapeutic report to induce relaxation, to manage specific physical and emotional symptoms such as pain, depressive symptoms, anxiety. So often, you know, either through playing an instrument, creating sounds, and sometimes by passive listening and passive relaxation. So it's a very sort of an involved process. Where I think there are currently some weak levels of evidence is music therapy for post-operative for surgical pain. That's where there are some research, but because of the trial, the sample size and the control, so unfortunately we can only give a low quality of evidence and weak strength of recommendation. There's much more knowledge about the use of music therapy to reduce anxiety and depression. So, and often those psychological symptoms go hand in hand with a patient with pain. So I do think when we talk about pain management, we shouldn't be so reductionist to just think of a person with pain. Often you have pain, you have anxiety, then you feel depressed about the pain, right? So I think music therapy can play a role to improve the mental coping with pain. Dr. Lee: I think you bring up a really great point, Dr. Mao, about for patients who are being evaluated for pain to really work with their medical team to explore all the potential factors that might be contributing to the pain. Not only their cancer or the treatment, but their mood or how they're sleeping might play a factor. Dr. Mao: Rich, as you know, I'm an integrative medicine specialist. So when we work with patients, we really take a comprehensive history to really understand what are the symptoms. Often, I have never seen patients just presenting with one symptom, right? So then you'll understand their symptoms and needs and then help them to prioritize what matters the most for them and which therapies potentially have the biggest bang for the buck to improve the things they want to help the most. And then often those therapies will produce some, what I call the “side benefit,” say by improving pain, also improve your sleep, improve your anxiety. So the mechanism may be slightly different, and also patients may have different preference. Some people love yoga, other people would never try it. So you got to really, this is what the beauty is about integrative oncology, to give that choice and control back to the patients. But really, as physicians, we provide them with the evidence to help them to make informed decisions. Dr. Lee: And what do you think are the kind of key takeaway points a patient should think about based on these guidelines? Dr. Mao: I think the key takeaway is when you experience pain, don't just think about drugs. Really think about, there are evidence-based non-pharmacological interventions that can really potentially help you reduce pain, improve your emotional and physical coping with the pain. So talk to your doctors and nurses. Are there those therapies available in your cancer center or clinical practice? Or connect you with the qualified community providers and be a strong advocate for your own health. Dr. Lee: And for patients who really want to dive deep and learn more about these, where would you suggest they go to learn more about integrative therapies for cancer-related pain? Dr. Mao: Yeah, as a patient as well as a family member, it's really important to go to websites that are credible for reliable information. So, ASCO has Cancer.Net. It provides incredibly valuable information for patients and families impacted by cancer. American Cancer Society will be a good resource as well. National Cancer Institute also have monographs for integrative therapy, so those can be really valuable. Other places like a Society for Integrative Oncology website or Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center website also have a lot of information about integrative therapies. Dr. Lee: So this has been wonderful. I really want to thank Dr. Mao for a great overview regarding the ASCO-SIO joint guidelines on pain management. And you mentioned a lot of great websites, including Cancer.Net, in which you can learn more about these guidelines as well as other therapies to help with your care. Dr. Mao: Dr. Lee, thank you so much for doing this really important podcast. I do think as one of the co-chairs for this committee, our group really aspired to use this set of ASCO-SIO clinical guidelines to make integrative therapies part of comprehensive pain management for patients impacted by cancer. And together, we can move closer to allow cancer patients to have lower symptom burden, high quality of life. Dr. Lee: I really congratulate you and Dr. Bruera for a job well done, co-chairing this really large effort. It took a lot of time. We're looking forward to additional guidelines coming out from ASCO and SIO looking at different symptoms. ASCO: Thank you, Dr. Lee and Dr. Mao. Learn more about integrative medicine at www.cancer.net/integrative. Cancer.Net Podcasts feature trusted, timely, and compassionate information for people with cancer, survivors, and their families and loved ones. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts for expert information and tips on coping with cancer, recaps of the latest research advances, and thoughtful discussions on cancer care. And check out other ASCO Podcasts to hear the latest interviews and insights from thought leaders, innovators, experts, and pioneers in oncology. Cancer.Net is supported by Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation, which funds lifesaving research for every type of cancer, helping people with cancer everywhere. To help fund Cancer.Net and programs like it, donate at CONQUER.ORG/Donate.

As broadcast September 28, 2022 with plenty of Turkish delight for your Wednesday night.  Last week saw our dear Dunia depart Gwangju to move to Istanbul, so what better time to rock one of our first shows together and feel the vibe of her current reality together?  This was a rawkus trip to Anatolya and a brilliant feature of why Turkey is so famous in music, with old and new, funk and funk, rock and pop from all over the country to showcase this week.  Not to worry though, Dunia will continue to do her thing on our show remote once she's set up in Istanbul properly.#feelthegravityTracklisting:Part I (00:00)The Weeknd feat Daft Punk – Starboy Elias Rahbani – Dance of MariaAltin Gun – Goca DunyaMazhar Ve Fuat – Adimiz Miskindir BizimNur Yoldas – Sultan-I YegahOzdemir Erdogan – Ac Kapiyi Gir IceriPart II (32:02)Magollar – Mektup Cem Karaca – Namus Belasi MogollarFikret Kizilok – Yeter KiZulfu Livaneli – Karli Kayin OrmaniEsin Afsar – Sandigimi AcamadimBaris Manco – Donence Part III (60:43)Güliz Ayla- Olmazsan Olmaz DIDOMIDO ft EGLO G – NIMETEdis - ArıyorumBoom Pam & Melike Sahin – Beni Yalniz Komaİbrahim Tatlıses - Tek TekAltin Gun – Yuce Dag BasindaPart IV (92:47)Pinhâni- Sevduğum Yanımda UyusunOzdemir Erdogan - GurbetNil Karaibrahimgil - ben aptal mıyımBaris Manco – Aman Yavas AhesteAlex Chu – Flower pot (화분)Lee So-ra – Wedding Proposal (청혼) 

As broadcast February 16, 2022 with plenty of extra Turkish Delights for your podcast apertif.  Tonight we head with the lovely Dunia Aljawad to a place she grew up next door to in a sense for a trip both to the past and present, as Turkey is a country that has huge influence and a lot to offer in music.  We explored newer artists like DIDOMIDO and Altin Gun along with the greats of the past like Ibrahim Tatlises and Baris Manco.  Lots to discover if you are not so initiated as we fly off to the crossroads of everything in Istanbul!#feelthegravityTracklisting:Part I (00:00)The Weeknd feat Daft Punk – Starboy Elias Rahbani – Dance of MariaAltin Gun – Goca DunyaMazhar Ve Fuat – Adimiz Miskindir BizimNur Yoldas – Sultan-I YegahOzdemir Erdogan – Ac Kapiyi Gir IceriPart II (32:02)Magollar – Mektup Cem Karaca – Namus Belasi MogollarFikret Kizilok – Yeter KiZulfu Livaneli – Karli Kayin OrmaniEsin Afsar – Sandigimi AcamadimBaris Manco – Donence Part III (60:43)Güliz Ayla- Olmazsan Olmaz DIDOMIDO ft EGLO G – NIMETEdis - ArıyorumBoom Pam & Melike Sahin – Beni Yalniz Komaİbrahim Tatlıses - Tek TekAltin Gun – Yuce Dag BasindaPart IV (92:47)Pinhâni- Sevduğum Yanımda UyusunOzdemir Erdogan - GurbetNil Karaibrahimgil - ben aptal mıyımBaris Manco – Aman Yavas AhesteAlex Chu – Flower pot (화분)Lee So-ra – Wedding Proposal (청혼) 

Podcast episode about two extremely influential South Korean worker organisers, Jeon Tae-il and Lee So-sun, and the autonomous self-organisation of women textile and garment workers in the country from the 1960s to the 1980s. Our podcast is brought to you by our patreon supporters. Our supporters fund our work, and in return get exclusive early access to podcast episodes, bonus episodes, free and discounted merchandise and other content. Join us or find out more at https://patreon.com/workingclasshistory For more on South Korean people's history, you can get this book, Asia’s Unknown Uprisings Volume 1: South Korean Social Movements in the 20th Century by George Katsiaficas, here in our online store – https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/asias-unknown-uprisings-volume-1-south-korean-social-movements-in-the-20th-century-george-katsiaficas Learn more about the Heung Coalition at their website: https://www.heungcoalition.com/ Full acknowledgements, sources, links, photos, more info and transcript on the webpage for this episode here: https://workingclasshistory.com/2021/03/24/e51-jeon-tae-il-and-lee-so-sun/

Salesforce Career Converstions #9: Andrew Hart Episode 9: Andrew Hart talks to Lee about his 2.5 year journey from zero Salesforce certs to #202 CTA of around 302 (last time he checked). [This interview with Andrew Hart has been transcribed for your benefit. Please ignore any rogue typos. Thank You.] Lee: So, Andrew Hart, hello. [...] The post Salesforce Career Conversations #9: Andrew Hart appeared first on Resource On Demand.

How do companies like Dell, SAP and LinkedIn build successful B2B influencer marketing campaigns that translate into real business ROI? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, TopRank Marketing CEO and Co-Founder Lee Odden talks about B2B influencer marketing and what it takes to build influencer campaigns that deliver measurable marketing results.  Lee uses his own agency, TopRank Marketing, as a laboratory where he tests new influencer marketing strategies that he then rolls out to clients like SAP and Cherwell Software. In this episode, he shares advice on how businesses can partner with influencers, and what kinds of results to expect. Highlights from my conversation with Lee include: TopRank Marketing is a B2B digital marketing agency focused on content, search and influence. Lee sees B2B influencer marketing as an opportunity to give subject matter experts a platform to talk about things they're really passionate about, and do it in a way that is a win for both the influencer and the business with which they're partnering. The best influencer campaigns bring together and curate credible voices in a way that gives them value from an exposure standpoint and at the same time are very "infotaining" to experience on the consumer side. With B2C influencer marketing, very often brands are simply feeding the message to the influencer. By contrast, with B2B influencer marketing, brands are giving the influencers - who are experts on a topic - a platform to create and share a message of their own. For companies interested in using influencer marketing, Lee says it is important to begin by identifying the business or marketing problem they are trying to solve. The next step is then to identify the topic about which the business wants to be influential. This is often in the form of a topic cluster, much like you might see in SEO. Once that topic has been identified, Lee and his team use three criteria to identify the right influencers: 1) Topical relevance (the degree to which that individual's own content that they're publishing is a match at a relevance level to the topic of influence that they're targeting); 2) Resonance (the degree to which that topic of influence actually resonates with the influencer's first and second level network); and 3) Reach (network size). Lee says that the process of identifying influencers is similar in many ways to the process of search engine optimization because influencer marketing is optimizing for both findability and credibility. Unlike B2C influencer marketing, B2B influencers do not always expect payment. It really depends upon the type of influencer you are working with and the level of commitment you are looking for. Lee suggests starting small and working with unpaid influencers before committing to larger paid partnerships. Lee has built strong relationships with a variety of B2B influencers and credits his success to something he calls "influencer experience management," which is essentially the process of ensuring the influencer has a positive experience working with the brand while also obtaining a high return on their contribution. One way he does this is by shortening the time horizon between the influencer's investment and effort and the return that they see, as well as by delivering longer term value. When it comes time to promote influencer content, Lee says it is important to be emphathetic to the influencer in developing a mix of media and messaging that you can supply to them and which they will want to promote. Timing is also important and it is critical to have sufficient volume of promotion right at the launch of a campaign in order to trigger social algorithms to show the content at the top of the feed. In terms of results, Lee says that if you are new to influencer marketing, you shouldn't expect that your first campaign will deliver a large number of leads, BUT you should plan to use the assets you develop in your lead gen campaigns and over time, you will see results. He suggests thinking of your first campaign as a pilot, and then building from there. Resources from this episode: Visit the TopRank Marketing website Check out the TopRank Marketing blog Follow Lee on Twitter Connect with Lee on LinkedIn Listen to the podcast to learn how to build a successful B2B influencer marketing strategy. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm Kathleen Booth and I'm your host. And today, my guest is Lee Odden who is the CEO of TopRank Marketing. Welcome Lee. Lee Odden (Guest): Hey, it's great to be here, Kathleen. Lee and Kathleen recording this episode. Kathleen: I am so excited to have you here. I've been following you online for a very, very long time. And this is one of my favorite things about hosting a podcast, is it gives me an excuse to meet and talk to people who I would otherwise never have a reason to get to know and pick their brains on really interesting marketing subjects. So, looking forward to doing that with you today. Lee: Well, I'm going to have to reciprocate. I'm going to have to reciprocate because I'm really... I'm interested in picking your brain too, so. Kathleen: Well, let's do it. Let's get to the picking. Lee: All right. About Lee Odden and TopRank Marketing Kathleen: So, for my listeners who may not be familiar with you, can you tell my audience a little bit about yourself and who you are, what you do, what TopRank does and really how did you wind up where you are today? Lee: Well, that's quite a story and I'll make it short. So, I'm the CEO of TopRank Marketing. We're a B2B digital marketing agency focused on content, search and influence. We create experiences that inspire people basically. And we started as a PR firm in 2001. I joined as an SEO guy at the time and started to really explore the confluence of content and PR/earned media and earned media and owned media and how we can surface a relevant audience, not only buyers but also journalists, through optimization. And I remember that kind of combined into this sort of hybrid mix of services that we have today where we are serving clients like Dell, LinkedIn, SAP. We've done work for Oracle and Adobe and lots of other really cool B2B technology brands. We're based in Minneapolis where it is wonderfully cold and snowy. We are in the heart of winter a little bit earlier than normal, but that's okay. That makes for some a very fun running in the morning. And that's one thing about me, I've become a runner in the last 12 months or so. Kathleen: Do you have some of those tracks things for your running shoes that they have the little springs on the bottom? Lee: I didn't. So, I opted to get some... oh God, what are they called now? Something One One, Kona One One, anyway. So, these are some special shoes that are made - they're actually a trail running shoes made for the winter. Kathleen: Oh, wow. Lee: So, it's a hybrid between a trail running shoe and a hiking boot basically. So, it's got a huge foam foot bed but with super grippy Vibram soles. And I ran in the ice this morning and it worked great. So yeah, I'm an all-weather runner. Kathleen: Oh, that's great. I used to be a runner. But things have caught up with me and my knees decided that I would no longer be a runner. So, now, I am an avid spinner Lee: There you go. Kathleen: But I miss running and I missed it. I used to love running in the snow. It's so pretty and it's such a great way to experience, snowy world. Lee: Absolutely. I spent many years not doing very much at all being very much a computer geek type person sitting behind a desk. And so, while a lot of other people my age are in your seat... in the situation you described where their hips or their knees or their ankles or various tendons have gone caput, I don't have that. So, hopefully, I have another 20 years or so of the joy and the euphoria that comes right from the... all those endorphins firing after a great run. And what's really interesting about what I found about running and really a big fitness focus for me over the last year and a half or so is the parallels to marketing. You know what I mean? Because it's just kind of interesting and very curious. I think the people expect to lose weight overnight because they tried a new exercise program or meal or diet plan. And people sometimes look at marketing tactics and feel the same way. A lot of inbound marketing tactics actually like SEO and content. It just doesn't work that way. You've got to invest, you've got to commit and all those other things. So, there's a lot of interesting parallels I think between fitness and marketing performance. Kathleen: So true. And you just gave me the perfect segue into my next question, which is that you and I really first connected around this because you reached out and asked me to participate in your B2B marketing fitness guide, which was related to MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum. I was speaking there and you were putting together a guide that essentially did tie marketing and fitness together and were asking for almost sort of submissions around that. And it's funny because when I got that email from you, I was like, "Yes, I have always thought this too" that with fitness, we all know what we're supposed to do, right? We know that we're supposed to regularly exercise and this and that. It's just that so few people actually do it. And it's the same thing with marketing. We pretty much all know what we're supposed to do. But so, few companies and marketers actually managed to do it consistently on a regular basis over time. So, I thought that was genius. But the other thing that really what's interesting to me as I interfaced with you and your team around that project was just the whole process that you put together and how incredibly thorough it was, how thoughtful and detail oriented it was. Watching you execute that and the way that you worked with the different contributors and influencers on the project to me was fascinating. And so, that's what I was excited to dig into today since then I've learned that you do this kind of influence our work not just with your own company but with all kinds of clients. And so, I would love to talk about that with you. B2B influencer marketing Lee: Sure, sure. It's one of the joys of what I get to do and that is to shine a light on people with great talent. And it's in the context of Influencer Marketing. But really, it's interesting to me to have an opportunity, create conversations to create opportunities or architect opportunities where people can talk about things that they're really passionate about, situations where they can add value. And then, as puzzle pieces, pull them together into an experience that really showcases them in a really positive, optimistic light. And ultimately, I'm after a 360 win situation. This brings me great personal and professional joy to get to do that. So, there are opportunities for marketing obviously when trying to create thought leadership or customer acquisition or we have other obviously traditional marketing objectives. But how can we create value for people first? How can we bring together and curate super credible voices, experienced voices together in a way that gives them value from an exposure standpoint? But at the same time, because of the story behind it all, it's very infotaining to experience on the consumer side, right? And so, people enjoy consuming the information, they are inspired to share it, people that contribute enjoy consuming the information and they too are inspired to share it. And ultimately, becomes more successful as a result. Kathleen: So, this is really interesting to me because you think about this term "Influencer Marketing" and it's a very broad catchall for a lot of different things. And I think most people think of influencer marketing and they're probably thinking of things like somebody pays a Kardashian to plug a product on their Instagram feed or the Fyre festival. There is certainly that kind of influencer marketing where you're just really paying to put your product or service in front of that person's audience. But then, there's this whole other world that I think you've tapped into which I think is the more interesting one. And I love that you refer to it as an experience. But what I noticed about the way that you managed this particular project that, that got this going was that it wasn't the typical, "Hey, you have an audience. I want to get in front of it." What will it cost? It was, "We're creating something and we want you to be a part of it." And the big takeaway I had was that every... I kept speaking only for myself as somebody who participated. I felt like I had a sense of ownership in it, right? Because I played a part in creating it. And I think that's a very different angle to Influencer Marketing when your influencer has a feeling of ownership actually co-create the content with you seems to lead to a very different outcome. So, maybe you could just talk about that a little bit. Because I just feel the spectrum of Influencer Marketing. Lee: Absolutely. One of the big challenges of our time in the marketing world is the growing distrust consumers have of brands. And so, our opportunity as marketers is to bring forward as much authentic information and create as many authentic experiences as possible. So, rather than treating people who are credible experts -- and in the case of B2B influencers, we are really talking about credible experts as opposed to people who self-anoint them, an influencer who are really good at taking selfies and all that other silly stuff -- so, what we're looking at is inviting them to contribute to a thing that's bigger than ourselves, right? Where in some cases, it really is changing the world, it's a movement. Others' work, we've done with SAP and the United Nations around some initiatives around the United Nations around purpose. And it's like pretty remarkable. Where I mean, these influencers are just CEOs of major corporations and celebrities sometimes and then... and other folks. But on the other hand, it's other folks who are working in their industry and they've really established the respect. And they also have that domain expertise too. So, rather than feeding them a message, rather than treating them like an ad by which is where the B2C world tends to focus, we're rather trying to help them. First, we identify them as the credible person around the topic and that that topic resonates with their audience. That's our data informed homework we do beforehand. And then, once we invite that person because they are credible and there's evidence that they are credible, we do invite them to contribute and we want to hear their authentic, authentic voice. We want to hear what their opinion is in the context of an overall story. And then, whatever they say is perfect because it's real. And that's what people are looking for. And that's why I think it turns into that experience that is not only good for the contributors, but it's obviously a good experience for the audience that we're out there to attract and engage. Getting started with B2B influencer marketing Kathleen: I love that. And trust really is at the heart of business. When people are buying from you, they're buying because they trust you. And that authenticity is the biggest thing that fuels that... You named a lot of the different companies that you work with. It's an incredibly impressive list. I imagine there are many clients and prospective clients who come to TopRank and they talk about wanting to do some form of influencer marketing. Can you talk a little bit about what those first conversations look like -- when you engage with someone or consider engaging with someone? I imagine that influencer marketing is not necessarily right for everyone and, or you have to have the right set of expectations. So, how do you suss that out? Lee: Yeah, that's a great question because people come in from a variety of perspectives. So, a lot of the time people come in from a marketing or demand gen perspective. And in that case, they may say influencer marketing outright because they've pulled themselves through education, around industry information or conferences or whatever and have come to the conclusion that this is something that will help them get solve a marketing problem. And so, really, what we're after first is defining what that marketing problem is because it's not always an exact match. You know what I mean? Also, we have people who have interpreted what the expression influencer marketing means and then, for example, if they see it only as an ad. We had a company recently that said, "We have 30 days." There's been some positive news in our industry that would be good and a good reflection on our brand and the problem that we solve as a company. And so, we have 30 days to quickly... I want you to find some influencers, run a campaign and take advantage and sort of ride the wave of this positive news in the industry. It's like, "no." But we're very focused on organic and authentic advocacy and engagement, not on just paying people who are willing to say something nice and it's not legitimate or genuine, you know what I mean? And also, the timeframe makes no sense. 30 days is crazy, especially in a B2B context. So, the first thing we're looking for is to really understand what it is that business is... what's the business problem or the marketing problem they're trying to solve? And the degree to which partnering with credible experts can help solve that problem. And the interesting thing is, from a demand gen lead gen standpoint, that is totally reasonable. And it is possible within a short period of time to find people who the right kind of people who can contribute to that outcome. It's not always possible. You do have to look for data, you have to look for evidence of people who are already actively advocating for the brand and that actively publish, that are respected in the industry. And when you have the good fortune of finding those combination of traits, then, you can reach out to them, invite them to contribute to something and have a reasonable expectation that one of the outcomes from that content you collaborate on is going to result in some sort of MQL. And usually, in a B2B case, it's a download or a trial or demo or something like that. On the other hand, there are people from PR who come in. And it's influencer relations to them, not influencer marketing. So, they think of it from an analyst relations standpoint. They're thinking more thought leadership. They're not looking at conversions. They're not looking at lead gen per se. They're looking at building the influence of the brand, building the reputation of the company and even ways in which they can elevate the influence of their key opinion leaders and senior executives. Well, that's a very different approach and is also appropriate as a collaboration with industry influencers. It's just executed in a very different way. So, we find out what it is that it needs to be solved and then we apply the expertise and knowledge and the networks that we've already built with all these different influencers in the different industries, especially in B2B industries and then architect a plan on how to do that. Identifying the right influencers with whom to partner Kathleen Booth: So, if you get someone in who has the right expectations and it's a good fit and you think influencer marketing makes sense, one of the things I'm curious about is, how do you identify the right influencers? I assume there's obviously a component of, they need to have something of a following. But I imagine there's probably more to it than just that. Can you talk about that a little bit? Lee: Absolutely. In fact, one of the biggest failures that people make is, when they do focus only on popularity. It's easy to do that, but everyone's doing it. And of course, it can be faked. It doesn't happen as often in B2B as in B2C. So, to identify the right influencers, starts with topic specificity. What is it that you want to be influential about? What topics are going to matter to your customers or to the audience that you're after? The association of that topic of influence amongst influencers is something that can then elevate the brand and can give the marketing message more credibility, more reach and more engagement. So, we have to understand what those topic or topics are. Usually, it's a topic cluster. There's a primary and derivative topics -- something similar to what you might do with SEO for example. And once we identify those topics, then we use a variety of approaches to brainstorm influencers -- everything from interviewing people at the brand to looking at CRM data to social data. But ultimately, we're going to use a platform that is crawling the social web platforms like Traackr, T-R-A-A-C-K-R. I spell it just because it's easy that... not spell that right. And so, what they're doing is they have a database of millions and millions of people on all the things that they're sharing and what their followers are interacting with. And so, the minimum criteria, the data points that we're looking at are topical relevance, the degree to which that individual's own content that they're publishing is a match at a relevance level to the topic of influence that we're after. Second, we're looking at resonance, the degree to which that topic of influence actually resonates with their first and second level network, right? Because we don't want it to be weird that they start talking about Apple mice or something like that and they never talk about that. And then, the third thing is reach, of course, which is network size. There are other elements like audience characteristics and what kind... do they publish their own blog? Do they publish to industry websites? Do they speak at conferences? Are they a book author? And there are other sorts of signals that are both online and offline that we may consider according to the situation. And increasingly, we're starting to bring in SEO metrics. So, we want to know sometimes where there's someone isn't a recognized entity by Google, right? And so, are they on Wikipedia? Are they showing up in... from an SEO perspective provided that the reason why we're doing the campaign has SEO expectations. We'll look for those criteria. That's not always the case, but increasingly it is because there's a lot of congruence between topic specificity as it relates to SEO and topic specificity as it relates to influence. You want to help someone be the best answer. And what we like to say is we're optimizing for findability. But we're also optimizing for credibility. So, all those factors come into play and identifying well, who's the right match, right? And obviously, there are other things, and I know that I could probably write a book all just about this but we want to make sure that the type of content we have planned is a match for obviously what they publish. So, YouTubers -- video, right? Bloggers -- text. Podcasters -- audio, and so forth. And making sure that we're really aligning from a value standpoint what that influencer has demonstrated through their interactions with their community and the values that brand stands for. All those things factor in to picking the right person. And still, after a campaign or two, it may turn out to be that that person is not a fit because influence is temporal. It is not permanent. It goes up and down and it is very important to revisit these... some of these criteria on an ongoing basis and that's something most brands are not doing. Working with influencers Kathleen: I hear a lot of marketers talk about influencer marketing and they're intrigued by it. They love the idea of it. They see the potential. But I think sometimes what stumbles them or causes them to stumble is the actual, like, execution. How is this going to work? And for somebody who's listening and they're thinking, "This sounds great, I love this idea, I'm willing to go out and find these influencers that combine the credibility with the popularity and all of the other things you just mentioned", this is a two-part question. First of all, what kind of expectations should they have around, should I be paying these people? And if so, how much? And the second part is, if they're not getting paid, what are the odds they're going to actually say yes to participate? Lee: Sure. So, getting paid or not paid especially, now, we happen to focus on B2B, so that's where my most of my experience lies. In B2C, if someone has a significant level of popularity and experience being an influencer for brands, almost all the time they're going to want to be paid. In a B2C scenario, where people don't get paid, maybe you have a cause-oriented marketing initiative. So, the influencer is part of the same cause or initiative that your brand is interested in and you come together to make a big difference and that's something where they may just volunteer their time because you believe in the same thing. In B2B, it's less common for influencers to be paid. There's a lot more content and when you look at the full customer life cycle at a B2B scenario, there's just so much more content involved as increasingly buyers are pulling themselves through that sales cycle or through that process before they ever contact sales. So, what you would pay an influencer for is what you would pay a consultant for in a lot of cases. So, for example, well, let's look at this. When I reached out to you and some of the others, you know I mean, they were super credible, it was a really a great group of people that shared a quote, a 50 to a hundred words, that's not normally a paid thing. Plus, we have a great reputation in our industry for making people look really good. We put them in these interactive experiences and it really does showcase and everyone gets... it's really valuable for them and they can monetize that exposure in other ways by being more credible at their job. It could contribute to book deals, it could contribute to paid speaking gigs or consulting gigs and so on and so forth. So, on the other hand, if I asked someone to... well, for example, I'm working with Brian Solis on an industry report as an analyst. I'm paying him. I mean, he's an influencer but he's also an analyst. Kathleen: But that's what he does for a living, right? Lee: So, he's doing work. Yeah, exactly. And that's a good distinction too. So, there are different types of influencers. There are "brandividuals" and I would say Brian is one of them. These are professional influencers. They are making it their business to continually collect intelligence to do analysis, to be a thought leader in their industry. So, they also publish and they actively engage in the network. And they're able to do this in a way that creates much value that it just makes sense to engage them on a paid basis. So, I mean, sometimes this manifests as a keynote presentation or they may emcee a whole track at your user conference. They may do a webinar for you that is hyper focused on something that you can monetize through lead gen. Or they could create a whole eBook or they could do a video series. We engage influencers like Tamara McCleary for example, who is the host for a season of podcasts for SAP called Tech Unknown. And you've got to listen, if you get a chance to listen to season two, just the first episode just dropped. It is so cool. We're talking about supply chain management and it's actually interesting. It's actually, it's amazing. You go from a farm in Thailand somewhere to a coffee shop and it's all audio. It's like you're listening to an NPR well-produced show but it's a podcast. And influencers are involved both as a host and as guests. So, the host is probably a paid situation whereas the guests are not because they're only on for one show, for one interview or whatever. So, hopefully, that makes sense. So, I think a lot of people just starting out feeling optimistic. They can start off by identifying people who are already advocates for their brand that are also influential and simply invite them to do something simple, share a quote, share commentary about a report, share some insights. Or at this time of year, some trends. And start things that way and see how that goes. And you can build from there. Building win-win influencer partnerships Kathleen: Yeah. And if I hear you correctly, part of it is also making it a great experience for that person who contributes. It's not just asking and getting the information, it's the follow-up that you do, the way that you help that person leverage their involvement in order to achieve their own goals. Whether that's building their personal brand or as you... I think you mentioned publishing a book or getting a speaking gig. I feel like there's that whole, you called it earlier a 360 win. How do you make it a win for them as well? Lee: I think that absolutely. And we call that "influencer experience management." So, customer experience is so much of a, a term, or it's in the vernacular of marketers these days of selling platforms and marketing services or whatever. And we apply those same ideas to the influencers that we work with because so many of them are organic sorts of collaborations and value exchanges that we have to. It's very important that we make it easy for them to do their best for them to enjoy it and to get a disproportionately high return on their effort. And that spells a win for everyone. It really, really, really does. Examples of TopRank influencer campaigns Kathleen: So, assuming that I wanted to do an influencer campaign. I'd love to just talk through what... how this work, what are some of the better frameworks for them and what kinds of results I could expect. And I guess the best way to tackle this might be to do it through some examples because I know that you've used your own company as a bit of a laboratory to try out new strategies and figure out what is going to work well and what isn't. And then, you tend to roll that out to some of your clients. Maybe you could share some of those examples and talk through the kinds of results you've gotten? Lee: Sure. So, excuse me, one of the earlier examples, I think it was 2012 or so, we approached, or Joe Pulizzi and I were talking. So, he's the founder of Content Marketing Institute, Content Marketing World conference. We were talking about how we might collaborate together. Because previously, our blog is fairly popular and we had been a media sponsor for quite a few conferences as a blog which at the time was very... you had to be actual magazine or have a massive email list or something like that. So, I had great success with that kind of collaboration with events and publications. And we were talking about what we could do together. And I thought, well, how about if I do this? Now, today, this is going to sound so unique. But at the time it was fairly unique. So, I thought, well the conference has, I think it was a secret agent was a theme somehow. I don't know if that was a theme of the conference. But oh, know what it was. So, I suggested, how about if I reach out to somebody of the other speakers and invite them to share their expertise as a preview to the conference. We'll publish this before the event and it'll attract attention to the conference. At one level, that was like, "Yeah, duh, that makes sense. Okay, great." But what I knew as a speaker is that this is a multi-track conference. And nothing is more disappointing to showing up at a multi-track conference and finding out that three or four other super popular people are speaking at the same time as you and there's only 25 people in your seats. So, I empathized with the speakers in this way. And so that is part of the context of my invitation to some of the really popular speakers that I didn't have a relationship with as an invitation to give them exposure, immediate return on their effort, opportunity is really what that was. And I learned a lesson in this. So, I started out thinking, I would just do 10 question interviews and publish the interviews on our blog. That was the format of the content I had in mind. I sent out these 10 questions to quite a few of the speakers and only one responded. And that was a big failure. So, one of the questions was, can you share one secret about content marketing? And I thought, I'm going to try this again. And so, I repositioned a question. I said, I asked it as if I was a character, I said, "You're a secret agent and you've just returned from a meeting with your handler and now you have a secret that will save the content marketing world. What's that one secret?" And these people who had no time for the 10 questions rapidly responded, many in character, "This is agent 35. Here's my secret from technology company X, Y, Z." And we got, I don't know, 30s or 25 responses. And so, we use the vintage James Bond sort of theme where you have an aged folder with coffee stains on it. And the red-letter stamps secrets as an eBook aesthetic that Joe Kalinowski at Content Marketing World created the cover. And then, we took that cover's inspiration and created all the interior aesthetics and everyone loved it. They had all these graphics and we positioned them as the little Polaroid photos and all this stuff. So, it was, what is it, 40,000, 50,000 views over the weekend on SlideShare alone. It was the featured content on SlideShare and other speakers at the conference were talking about it because it dropped right before the conference. So, that really set the stage for events and content, the people speaking at events and content, as something where we could create immediate value for people, right? Because, the hypothesis was not what can we get from people, it was what value can we create for people. But we've got to shorten the time horizon between their investments and effort and the return that they see. And we also want there -- because it would be digital content -- we want there to be an ongoing or long-term return as well, hopefully. So, that was the framework for what we still do today. And actually, that was the framework for the project that you contributed to as well. Kathleen: Yeah, it sounded- Lee: And so, there's lots of other examples like that. Yeah. Kathleen: Yeah. And kudos to you for recognizing a huge pain point because yes, I have spoken at many a multi-track event and there's nothing worse than there being three tracks and the other two guys have packed rooms and you're like, "Okay, you five people, we're going to have a really interactive session because there are so few of us." Lee: Yeah, exactly. Promoting influencer marketing content Kathleen: So, that's great. What I thought was really interesting is, a lot of what you talked about is, it really is leveraging the classic principles of marketing. Because when you talked about reducing the number of questions that you asked, it's the same principle behind how many forms do you put in a... or fields you put in a form. If you asked for 15 things, not a lot of people are going to respond. You asked for two things, you're going to get a lot more. So that makes a lot of sense. But I think one of the most interesting aspects of this to me is, how you enabled the share-ability. Because I know you did this with the one I participated in as well. And you talked about the graphics and making it really cool kind of Polaroid picture like things. Can you maybe talk through how you... what happens once the piece is done? In other words, what assets do you deliver to the contributors and how do you follow up with them to encourage sharing? Lee: So, the, the magic of promotion starts in the planning. So, I talked about topic specificity as it relates to search and influence. So, we use search data as a reflection of demand and we use other data sources to kind of get an idea of what questions are people actually asking around the topic, the brand wants to be known for. And that actually informs the influencers we pick but also the questions we asked them to give insights about. So, there's information architecture if you will, to the way the content is curated and then structured that follows through then to the promotional assets that are delivered, right? So, for example, if I worked with you on a future project, I'm like, "Kathleen in inbound marketing, inbound marketing." So, I'm going to ask you about inbound marketing. And then, in a promotion asset it may be an infographic, it maybe an interactive infographic. We often repurpose content into promotional videos. Actually, I've got a great example for you to just... we did a conference, had a game theme. All right. So, we decided to use 8-bit video game as an aesthetic. And then, we did these promo videos where we literally turn the influencers who contributed into these 8-bit characters and you could... and then, it had the music like the Mario Brothers music... and the left to right and the scene moving behind them and whatever. And so, we use those as a promotional videos and we gave static images, we gave the video content to the influencers to share. And of course, we shared that on our own network as well. And obviously, we pre-write social messages. And that is an art all by itself because the social message you would give to the industry is a completely different social message you would give to someone that works at that brand or to the influencers themselves, right? People often mistake that influencers only want to self-promote and they'll give them a graphic with their own photo in it and it's like, no, in certain cases that is... the last thing in the world they want. But if you give them a graphic with a photo of all the influencers that they are participating with, now, that is motivating because by association, that'll lift their credibility. Otherwise, it just looks like gratuitous chest beating. Kathleen: It's so awkward when you're like, "Look at me. I'm doing this thing." Lee: Yeah. And so, it's being empathetic. That empathy is instrumental obviously in marketing but especially with promotion. And so, there are promotional assets that are a mix of media and messaging. There's also a timing that comes into play. As we all know, social algorithms will emphasize engagement within a very focused period of time. So, when there's a launch, we want to architect as much organic sharing as possible around that very specific launch time so that algorithms will respond and then feature that content higher in the feeds and that sort of thing. What kinds of results can you expect from B2B influencer marketing campaigns? Kathleen: So, at the end of the day, you run a campaign like this. What kind of results does it deliver? Lee: So, again, results and metrics and all that obviously are tied to the goals of the program. While some people will start with a campaign sort of idea, really what it is, it's a pilot. And what you should expect from a pilot where you don't have an influencer program in place already is simply to create great relationships with the influencers to have created content that you can repurpose for demand gen efforts, which could lead to the lead gen that you're after. But as far as the actual influencer content on that pilot, that is a top of funnel thought leadership type of expectation, that's the reasonable expectation. And again, like I say, you can repurpose that content for demand gen efforts. You can deconstruct that influencer content and use its ingredients to put in other demand gen and lead gen types of efforts long-term. But I wouldn't expect leads off of a pilot. I really wouldn't. That said, we have had pilots do really well. There's a company, it is an IT service management industry called Cherwell software. The very first pilot we did for them, or the pilot we did for them, I don't know, they're 15 influencers talking about... is reacting to a report, an industry trends report that they had produced. And so, the influencers are reacting to that data and the content of that report, we put it together as an eBook. We gave them compelling content to share that one campaign because obviously, you were encoding all those URLs that they're sharing. That one campaign was responsible for 22% of their pipeline for the entire year. Kathleen: Wow. Lee: It's an award-winning campaign. Demand Gen Report gave it the Killer Content Award offer that year. In fact, well anyway, I'll stop there. But we're continuing to work with them- Kathleen: I want a link to this campaign so I can check it out and put it in the show notes by the way. Lee: Absolutely. Yeah. And so, that can happen. But that's not typical. And the thing is, when you do a pilot like this and you don't have influence or relationships already, I mean, it only makes sense that you're just opening the door to this as a tactic. It's kind of like, if you know about SEO. Obviously, if we optimize something and we get a couple of links, we're not expecting a flood of leads after a month, that's crazy. Or even a quarter, it takes time to earn it. Now, if your starting point is one where you have a super mature website and you've got hundreds of thousands of links in all kinds of content and you're just making some technical mistakes, you can fix those things and have great expectations. Same sort of thing in influencer marketing. If you already have really great relationships and credibility with industry influencers, but you're just not activating them in an effective way, we can see that. And then, we can architect an experience for them that will result in the thing that you're actually after. So, it really depends on the goal. It depends on the starting point. But ultimately, no matter where you start, we can get there, right? There's a phased approach that you can take, a maturity escalation that you can follow or a path of escalation and maturity that you can follow that can take you from experimenting to being processed and transactional to be more relationship focused, ultimately, being... having momentum and being fully integrated. Companies that are nailing B2B influencer marketing Kathleen: Now, you mentioned Cherwell as an example of a really successful campaign. Are there other companies or specific campaigns that spring to mind if somebody is listening to this and they want to go out and see a living breathing example of how this was done in the wild? What should they look at? Lee: Absolutely. So, another great example is a SAP has as a Tech Unknown podcast. I mentioned that before. So, just if you Google "TechUnknown" as one word or "SAP Tech Unknown," you'll see season one has been out there and we just crushed it with the downloads or they crushed it with the downloads. And so, Tamara McCleary was the host inviting industry experts from within and with outside the organization and just really talking about topics of interest to their buying audience. Same thing with Dell technologies where Mark Shaffer and Douglas Carr, are the influencer hosts and they're interviewing people within Dell technologies, group of companies as well as outside experts about things that their audience will care about. Also, another podcast example I'd love to share is 3M. 3M publishes the largest study of science on the planet, right? It's the study, State of Science Index study. And as a complement to that, we started a podcast where their chief science evangelist, Jayshree Seth, I'm hoping I'm saying your name right, is the host. And then, she interviews people from astronauts to educators other intellectuals or practitioners in business that work in the field of science to help people understand how science impacts our lives. And again, I think we're on season two of that. So, audio wise it's a great opportunity. Episodic content bodes really well I think for influencer engagement because it creates a platform you to have guests. And it's a very natural metaphor for what people already know to be exposed to different ideas and for you to invite people who can add to your sort of portfolio of influencers. Because when you create that interview experience, the experience can inspire advocacy long after that episode has dropped for that person as they go about talking about things of interest in the industry. We also create a lot of interactive assets. So, the marketing, fitness, the B2B marketing fitness thing that you were part of was a slightly interactive. There was a conference where I... the topic, what was the topic? Break Free of Boring B2B. So, in fact if you search "Break Free Boring B2B," you'll find this. And so, I gave a challenge to my team and our designers came up with a couple of designs and one of them was basically, it would be 150-foot-tall grizzly bear with lasers coming out of his eyes lighting up the city. I was like, "Okay, that sounds great." And so, we used that as the aesthetic for this interactive infographic that featured experts in B2B talking about how to not be boring, how to break free of boring B2B marketing. And we also created a promotional video, which was as or more popular than the actual inner infographic. So, that went over. Well, people talked about it and I could show it on my mobile phone and people are like, "Oh, that's amazing. Can I take a picture of you holding that infographic on your phone." Which turned into new business for us. But that also instigated a series of interviews, which we are publishing twice a week now through January where we interviewed people about the series is called Break Free B2B or Break Free B2B Marketing. So, I mean, what a topic, right? It's universally interesting. How can we break free of status quo? How can we break free of legacy mindsets? How can we break free to greater results? So, there's so many things that we can talk about. So, that one influencer generated infographic initiated an ongoing series of episodic content. And it's really that episodic content that's creating all the momentum. So, I know that's a whole bunch of ideas there. But I think what's common amongst all of them is, one, topic specificity, meaning that we know the brand wants to... they stand for something that the customers care about and we find people who are influential around those ideas that have something of value to contribute. But first, we're creating value for them as a reason to contribute. And all of them are experiential, right? They're experiential at their audio capture, they're interactive if it's static capture or heck, we've even done virtual reality experiences that feature influencers. So, it's something that is experiential for the influencer and it's experiential for the consumer, the audience that you're after. And then, ultimately, because of those meaningful, relevant experiential characteristics, they are productive. They have impact and they deliver on a return on the investment. Kathleen: Those are all great examples. And I'm really actually looking forward to checking them out because I think there are lots of brands that kind of check the box and have a podcast for example. But as a podcaster myself, I've really come to appreciate how much strategy there needs to be behind what you're podcasting about and how that fits in with your broader goals and then how that informs who you have on. Like, there's a lot of work that needs to be done before you sit down in front of the microphone and start talking. And so, can't wait to check a couple of those out and see what they're all about. Repurposing influencer content Lee: Absolutely. And one of the great things about all of this is of course the re-purposing opportunities, because when you are planning to repurpose as part of the content planning itself, atomizing or deconstructing the influencer content into ingredient content is easier. And it gives you a library of a resource to draw from to add to your sort of recipes, if you will, to follow the metaphor of other content types that you're creating. So, if you're contributing an article to an industry publication, you go, "Oh yeah, I talked to Kathleen and she said that really smart thing and I've already got that saved. I'll pop that into that article and contributing to Forbes." And are you going to be disappointed that you show up in Forbes? Probably not. Six months after you actually gave the quote in the first place. So, it's something that is the repurposing opportunity is great because it creates more value from a marketing standpoint. But also, it's a way of showing love to your influencers long after their original contribution and it keeps that love alive, which is super, super important in an organic relationship. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Absolutely. Well, I feel like I could talk about this forever with you because there are so many good nuggets here. But we do not have forever. And so, before we wrap up, there are two questions that I always ask all of my guests. We'd love to hear your answers on these. The first is that on this podcast we do talk a lot about inbound marketing. And I'm curious, having worked with so many different companies, is there one particular company or individual that really stands out who's just killing it with inbound marketing right now? Lee: I think I racked my brain around this a lot. And one company that I think that has had a long view of this and is doing really, really well that we work with is LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. So, about five years ago, Jason Miller, who was at LinkedIn at the time -- now he's at Microsoft, had tasked us with finding and interviewing influencers for a new guide he was putting together called The Sophisticated Marketer's Guide to LinkedIn. That one guide, five years ago, which had a 21,000% ROI, had become a sub-brand for LinkedIn. So, if you Google the expression Sophisticated Marketer's Hub, you will find an index of what that one guide has turned into. eBooks, podcasts, a video show, a print magazine, blog posts, obviously social -- they even repurposed the podcast into an actual book. They have learning courses. They verticalized a lot of this content for other specific industries and they're just... I think they're just doing an amazing job at creating a micro brand around this idea of the Sophisticated Marketer's Guide to fill in the blanks as it relates to LinkedIn as an inbound marketing exercise. Kathleen: It's fascinating how it has blossomed and sort of mushroomed into this other thing entirely over the years. Marketing is changing so quickly. That's the biggest complaint I hear from marketers is they can't keep up with it all. How do you personally stay educated and keep up with the changing landscape? Lee: Oh, that's a secret, Kathleen. I can't really... I'm just kidding. My network is the number one source for sure. Also, my team. One of my great joys in life is getting to meet with my team and talk about challenges and successes that they're having. And I learn an awful lot about that. I'm also afforded the opportunity to experiment with our agency. I'm still very much a marketing practitioner. So, whatever time I can carve out for experimentation is a great learning experience. I also subscribe to different topics, not so much websites but to topics so through social channels, there is content around marketing that surfaces to me. There are some individuals that I'll follow. Obviously, people like Ann Handley as an example. Certainly, I speak at a lot of events and rather than just... dine and dash as it were, I like to come in and I stay and I sit in on sessions. And also, competitive intelligence. I'm a big fan of understanding what the market is doing, not just direct... they're not just other marketing agencies, but also other businesses and really doing a lot of reflection and analysis on what seems to be working for other companies in the industry and creating some lessons at our company. We do quite a bit of knowledge transfer, lunch and learns and other structured learning opportunities. And so, all these sorts of things keep me accountable to sharing knowledge with my team and they are sharing knowledge with me as well, right? So, it's very dynamic situation, very symbiotic in that way. And yet, I still feel like I only know 10% of what I need to know. Kathleen: Oh amen. I have the same problem. There's never enough time. But, yes, it does definitely. I mean, you have an amazing network. And certainly, people like Ann Handley, et cetera, these are people that you can learn so much from. So, I love that idea. But I think for somebody who doesn't have a network, they could probably even approximate what you're doing by putting together a really curated Twitter feed or set of blogs they follow of people that clearly know a lot and absorb it that way as well. So, that's a great strategy. Lee: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I can't underestimate the value of experimentation. And whether you're able to do the experimentation yourself or if you happen to be working with an agency and you can carve out a little budget for experimentation, I highly recommend it. How to connect with Lee Kathleen: Yeah. Now, if someone's listening and they want to learn more about Influencer Marketing or they want to reach out and ask a question or somehow get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to connect with you online? Lee: Well, people can certainly come visit us at toprankmarketing.com. And there, they can find our blog, which has many, many articles over the last five or six, seven years around Influencer Marketing, especially B2B Influencer Marketing. And you can certainly connect with me on the Twitter, L-E-E-O-D-D-E-N on LinkedIn or lee@lee.to. You know what to do next... Kathleen: All right. Great. I will put all those links in the show notes. So, if you would like to learn more or connect with Lee, head over there and you'll find all of those contacts. And if you're listening and you liked what you heard or you learn something new, we always appreciate a five-star review on Apple podcasts so that other people can find the podcast as well. Kathleen: And if you know someone else doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next interview. Thank you so much, Lee. This was a lot of fun and very informative. Lee: Thanks Kathleen.

Episode 5: Penny Townsend Salesforce Career Conversation with ROD. Penny reflects on her journey from Salesforce Programme Manager to Chief Operating Officer of a growing Salesforce Consulting Partner. Lee: So joining me today, is Penny Townsend. Hi Penny, how are you doing mate? Penny: Hi Lee, I'm great thanks. Thanks very much for having me [...] The post Salesforce Career Conversations #5: Penny Townsend appeared first on Resource On Demand.

It's the final week of Pride Month 2019. The guys wish everyone celebrating World Pride in NYC a wonderful time. Jeff talks about being homesick for New York and missing playing hockey. Pose's early season 3 renewal is praised. Will talks about the special Masterwork Experiment happening on The Story Grid Podcast where they are breaking down and analyzing the story structure of Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain. Jeff and author/blogger Lee Wind have an extended interview in which Lee discusses his debut YA novel, Queer as a Five Dollar Bill and how he's become engaged in discovering queer history. They also talk about the YA book blog I'm Here. I'm Queer. What the Hell Do I Read? that Lee began over a decade ago. Lee also recommends a couple of his favorite YA books and the queer history project he's trying to jump start on Instagram. Complete shownotes for episode 194 along with a transcript of the interview are at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. Interview Transcript - Lee Wind This transcript was made possible by our community on Patreon. You can get information on how to join them at patreon.com/biggayfictionpodcast. Jeff: Lee, welcome to the podcast. It is so great to have you here. Lee: Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here, Jeff. Jeff: Now, I recently read your debut novel, "Queer as a Five-Dollar Bill". In fact, I reviewed it back in Episode 189. And absolutely love it. Now, tell people in your own words what this YA novel is about. Lee: So it's all about the fact that I don't have a time machine. When I went...in 2011, I went to a game in summer camp kind of weekend. And there was a guy talking about the letters that Abraham Lincoln wrote Joshua Fry Speed that convinced him that Abraham was in love with Joshua. And I just thought he was full of it. Like how could that have been possibly been true? It's the first time I heard about it. And I went to the library, and I got the letters and I read them and because the emotions Lincoln speaks about are the same emotions I experienced when I was closeted in dating girls and sort of judging it the right thing to do, but not feeling it, I had this moment of sort of goosebumps, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, I think maybe Lincoln was in love with speed." And I thought, "Oh, if I had a time machine and go back and tell my 15-year-old self that the guy on Mount Rushmore, the guy on the $5 bill, the guy on the penny, was maybe in love with another guy, I think it would have changed my whole life. I don't think it would have taken me until I was 25 years old to fully come out. I think it would have been a game changer. But I don't have a time machine. So "Queer as a Five-Dollar Bill" is my paying it forward. I'm a writer, I wanted to write the story about a 15-year-old who's closeted and bullied and dating a girl because he kind of judges it's the right thing to do, but he doesn't feel it. And then he's assigned a book report on Lincoln and he gets the same book that I got from the library, he reads the actual letter, where Lincoln is asking his best friend, after the best friend has gotten married to a woman, "Are you now, in feeling as well as judgment, glad you're married as you are? From anybody but me, this would be an impudent question not to be tolerated, but I know you'll tolerate it for me." And he ends the letter saying, "Please tell me quickly, I feel very impatient to know." And we don't have Joshua's answer, because Mary Todd burned all the letters on that side of the correspondence. But we do know it was only four weeks later that Abraham had married Mary. So to me, it felt like wow, that, like what would happen if a kid today found that out and decided that he wants the world to know? Because everyone loves Abraham Lincoln in our country. And he thought, "Well, okay, so if he tells - the main character, Wyatt - if he tells the whole world that Abraham Lincoln was in love with another guy, he thinks it's going to change how everyone feels about gay people, cue the songbirds and the rainbow and happy ending." I do think if in our culture today if someone was to go really viral with the information that Abraham Lincoln was, wrote these letters and was in love with Joshua Fry Speed, I think there would be a huge conservative backlash and media firestorm. And that's really that what I wanted to show in the novel, how this Wyatt, how Wyatt, this main character makes his way through this incredible maelstrom of fury that he's ignited by just sharing what actually is part of American history. And then to kind of ratchet the stakes up even further, I wanted to make it, like, how was it important for a teenager today? Why is Abraham Lincoln important? So I kind of situated him in Lincolnville, Oregon, a town I kind of made up. His parents own the Lincoln Slept Here Bed & Breakfast. And when the economy of the town kind of starts to tank and they're threatened with losing their business, they bring in a civil rights attorney to help and she has an openly gay son and sparks fly between the two teens. But the main character Wyatt can't do anything about it. Because gay kids saying Lincoln is gay is really different than a straight kid saying Lincoln is gay. And he's faced with his choice, does he follow his heart and see if something might be happening with this guy, Martin? But the cost of that is letting this secret fade back into history, and nothing will ever change in our world. Or does he sort of sacrifice himself and his own happiness, and persist with the story that Lincoln was indeed in love with another guy and see if he can change the world a little bit, even though it won't change for him? So that's the story of "Queer as a Five-Dollar Bill". Jeff: And I feel like even before I read this book that I had heard, you know, some of the rumblings that Lincoln may have had a relationship, may have been gay. So I think it kind of dances around the edge of what some people know, because I can't even begin to tell you where I heard it or anything else, just that it had been kind of back there somewhere in the memory of I don't know, something. Does that even make sense? Lee: Well, it's been a big thing on "Will & Grace", the revived series. They've been doing a whole run on jokes about Jack doing a one-man play called Gaybraham Lincoln, which is sort of all about Lincoln being gay, which I think has been good on the one hand, because it's letting more people know that this is something that people are talking about, but it's also doing so as if it's a farce, as if it's not true at all, and completely made up in a complete flight of fancy on the part of this bigger than life character. When in fact, if you read the letters, it is remarkable how to me it feels so clear that Lincoln was in love with Joshua. Jeff: What was your process for researching the history? Because there's more in here than just the letters themselves. There's a lot of Lincoln history, there's comparisons drawn between Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. In my review, you know, I kind of likened it a little bit, you know, you go see "Hamilton" and you get this big infusion of history, while you're wildly entertained. What was kind of your process around gathering all the pieces you needed? Lee: Well, first of all, thank you for comparing it to "Hamilton." That is like the best compliment ever. I need to embroider that on a pillow or something. I did a lot of research. I started out with the letters and then I realized that I just didn't know enough. I looked around and I live in Southern California. And it turns out in Redlands, California, there is an Abraham Lincoln Memorial shrine and museum. And it's like a three-room edifice that has display cases and a gift shop. And so many of the things that ended up being part of the bed and breakfast that Wyatt's parents own were kind of taken from that real-world experience of going to this place and seeing that they actually had, you know, civil war chess sets. And they had, you know, little teddy bears that were gray or blue. And they had, you know, Confederate Flag and a Union Flag. And that was hugely helpful. And then just starting to dig in deeper to some of the things I discovered there, there's a whole sort of subplot about how Wyatt feels that there's no one he can actually talk to. And so he's developed this strange internal dialogue with this image of a soldier in the background of one of their display cases. And I actually have a photo of it from when I went to this Lincoln shrine. And it was there, it was behind all these ammunitions. And I don't know that my gaydar works 150 some years later, but definitely, there's somebody in that, they're one of the soldiers in that photo does look like he could be gay. And I thought, "Wow, what if this was the only way that Wyatt felt that he could have somebody that recognized who he was, and how sad that was that he didn't really have a friend?" And that was why I was excited to create the character of Martin so he had somebody. Jeff: Were you a history buff all along? Lee: No, I hated history. And I'm sure that they're all these teachers that are like hitting their foreheads in shame right now. But like, honestly, I never had a history teacher that kind of got me excited about the stories of history, because I really feel like the way we teach history today, and my daughter's in 10th grade right now and her history textbook could have been my history textbook from the 1980s, where basically, it's the stories of rich, white, straight, cis-gendered, able-bodied men from Europe. And, you know, history is more than that. There are the stories of disabled people and people of color and women and men who loved men and women who loved women and people who looked outside gender boundaries in history. And I kind of feel like, we have to crack that facade of that false facade of history and let people know that that there's all this amazing light and you can see yourself in history. And, you know, Lincoln and Joshua are just sort of like the tip of the iceberg. There's, you know, Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok, there's Mahatma Gandhi and his love for this German Jewish architect, Hermann Kallenbach. There's the pharaoh Hatshepsut in Egypt, there is Safa, there's so many stories that impact us today. But we don't really know them because they don't get taught, or when they are taught, they're not taught in a sort of, queer inclusive or respectful manner. So I kind of feel like now I love history. And in fact, I wrote this novel, but as I was writing the novel, there was so much history, there was so many things that came up, so many more pieces of evidence, so many more pieces of the pie, things that made me surprised, like, I didn't really know that Lincoln was sort of a racist, even though he's credited with freeing all the slaves, he had this whole plan that he signed off on with Congress at that time to sort of, you know, explore shipping all black people back to Africa. And I didn't know that. And the deeper I dug, when I found a piece of information that kind of contradicted what I knew, I really wanted to find a way to include it in the story. Because I feel like that's what we should be doing when we find things that show that history is complex, and that people are not black and white, that it just makes it all so much more real and so much more relatable. And if we can see reflections of ourselves in the past, like if we know that there were men who love men in the past, then we can believe that we have a place at the table today. And if we know that we have a place at the table today, we can envision a future that is sort of limitless. And I want that for everyone that doesn't feel like their history is included. I want it for all the women and all the people of color and the disabled people and the women who love women and the people who lived outside gender boundaries, too. Because that's, you know, we call it LGBTQAI+ or QUILTBAG or whatever. But really, the job is about being an ally to other people. And me as a gay man, I have to think, "Well, how can I be an ally to everybody else?" And hopefully, they're thinking the same thing. And that's how we start to create societal change. Jeff:: That is wildly profound. And especially, given that this episode of the podcast is dropping in the last week of June, as you know, the queer community celebrates Stonewall 50. Lee: Oh, yeah. Well, you know, I love that we're celebrating Stonewall, I love that the gender non-conforming people that were there, the transgender people, the drag queens are getting some respect now that they were part of that and they were in fact, the leaders of standing up to the police finally. But for many, many years, Stonewall had a banner, the Stonewall Inn had a banner outside that read "Where Pride Began". And I think that's really misleading. And we talk in the queer community in America as if that's where pride began, right. Like, pride, "Hey, we're celebrating 50 years of Stonewall, Hooray." But wait a minute, Karl-Maria Kertbeny came up with the word homosexual 100 years before Stonewall. Right? Like Lincoln and Speed were writing these letters to each other 20 years before that. You know, you can go back thousands and thousands of years and there's this beautiful story from China before China was unified, where the State of Wey that the guy that ruled it, his name was Duke Ling and he had a guy he loved his name is Mizi Xia. And they were walking through the orchard one day and Mizi Xia picks a peach off a tree and starts to eat it. And halfway through, he stops because it's so delicious. He wants to share it and he gives the half eaten peach to the Duke and the Duke makes a really big deal out of it. Like, "I can't believe your love for me is so profound that you would sacrifice your own happiness to give me the peach." And something about that moment captured the imagination of people in that pre-unified China. And for over 1,000 years, the way in Chinese that they said gay love was love of the half-eaten peach. Like we have this amazing, amazing history. And we just need to kind of breakthrough that facade and let all this amazing rainbow light shine through. So that's kind of what I feel my mission is to kind of let people know that we have all this amazing history, and we can start to dive into it. Jeff: Is this all history? Because you mentioned earlier that you're not, you weren't a history buff and you hated history. Have you gathered up all of this new knowledge since you were researching to write "Queer as Five-Dollar Bill"? Lee: Yeah. So while I was writing "Queer as a Five-Dollar Bill," like I mentioned, there was just so much stuff that came up, so much evidence that I was like, "I can't really cram all this into a novel, because at the end of the day, the novel is really about a kid today." And I didn't want it to feel like a historical novel. I wanted it to be this page-turner. So I realized that maybe it was two books, maybe there was the novel. But what if there's a nonfiction book as well that presents the primary source materials, like a popup video thing on MTV or VH1, whatever it was, helps interpret, or at least how I interpret the thing? So like, there's all this talk about Shakespeare's Sonnets, and how, while they're very rarely taught, over 100 of the sonnets, Shakespeare wrote to another guy. And these are love sonnets that include really, really famous lines that we all recognize, like, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day. Thou art more worthy, yet more temperate." That's a line that Shakespeare wrote to another guy. For hundreds of years, they had changed the pronouns of that in one of the folios. So it ended up being that for hundreds of years, people thought that Shakespeare wrote all those poems to a woman, to the Dark Lady. But when "The Riverside Shakespeare" came out, the editor of that section, he talked about how, "Well, we've restored the sonnets to their original, you know, pronouns, but you shouldn't mistake that, you know, the affection men felt for each other in the 1500s was nothing like the homosexual attraction today." He wrote this in 1970s. And I'm like, "Really? Really?" Because, you know, "A man in hue all hues in his controlling, Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth," it sounds pretty romantic to me. So what I realized what I wanted to do is to create a book that wouldn't be just a book about Lincoln and Speed, but it would be a book about the broader thing, about men who love men and women who love women and people who lived outside gender boundaries. So there's 15 chapters. One is about Lincoln and Speed, one is about Shakespeare. And then there's, like, you know, a bunch of other amazing people in history, and it really presents the primary source material. And I'm really excited because today - that we're recording this - is the day that I'm signing the contract for that book with a publisher. Jeff: Oh, that is exciting. Congratulations. Lee: Thank you. It's been a long journey, long and crazy journey. Because the book originally was set up at one of the big five publishers, and I worked on it for a year and a half with them. It was approved, we were talking cover design. And then two weeks after our current president was elected, they canceled the book. I think they were concerned that it was going to be too controversial. They just didn't have the courage to proceed. And that was really devastating. And it took a long time to find a new home for it. There were a lot of shenanigans, a lot of plot twists. The agent I had had at the time turned out to be a criminal who, well, she was telling all her clients she was submitting things and that they were having all these pending book deals. She was lying. And the book was never submitted anywhere. Even after it was returned, the rights were returned to me. And the novel, "Queer as a Five-Dollar Bill" ended up getting crowdfunded because I thought that I was being, well, stonewalled by the children's book industry and they didn't want word to get out about Lincoln and Speed so much so that no one would even respond to the submissions. So I crowdfunded it. I have a blog, I think we're talking about that a little bit later. But I have a bunch of people that know who I am and what I was trying to do, and they all supported me to not just publish the book professionally, but also, what I wanted to do is raise enough money to donate at least 400 copies of the novel to LGBTQ and allied teens, and the Kickstarter funded in six days, it was amazing. And then it went on for another 24 days. So we ultimately raised enough money to give away 910 copies. So that's been really, really gratifying. Jeff: That's incredible. I mean, it's really one of the great things about publishing today is that there's really no more gatekeepers out there. Anybody can publish, get it on Amazon, get an audiobook done, etc, and get their messages out there. Lee: There still is the thing, though, that being with a traditional publisher, you generally can reach more, especially when we're talking about like middle grade, you know, or books, where you go into libraries, which I think that this nonfiction book really is a, you know, hopefully, it'll sell like hotcakes. But also, I do think that to get it adopted more broadly into schools and into libraries, I think that coming from an established publisher is really useful and really helpful. So I'm excited about that. I do think that yeah, that there are many, many fewer boundaries than there used to be - or barriers than there used to be. But at the same time, we have the additional challenge that while access to the marketplace has never been easier, the marketplace has never been bigger. So getting noticed in a marketplace, where there's over a million books that are published every year now in the U.S., is a challenge. And that's why it's so important to have safe places to find out about these things, like your podcast, and my blog. Jeff: Yes, absolutely. To spin back on "Five-Dollar Bill" a little bit and talk a little bit more about it. What were your inspirations for both Wyatt and Martin and the type of teenagers they would be? Lee: When I was growing up, or when I was coming out, I think it felt like you couldn't be gay if you lived anywhere except for one of the big cities like San Francisco or New York. And I really wanted to have a character that felt connected to nature. And that one of the thematic subplots would be, 'Could he be himself where he was? Could he be himself in small town America, in a rural community, was there a way through for him to be successfully himself and authentic?' I feel like I spent so much of my life being inauthentic, that I want to do everything I can to help teens be authentic now. So on the one hand, Wyatt was the study of a kid that was on a journey to be authentic and Martin was the flip side of that. Martin was the character that already was authentic, and was already reaping the benefits of that level of confidence. And you know, as soon as you, for me, when I came out, it was like this huge burden off of me. And suddenly, I realized the weight of it was on everyone else, right? Like, if they had a problem with it, that was their problem. But it wasn't me hiding or holding back, or pretending or acting, which I did for so long. My husband and I have a joke, where when you go to a Starbucks or something, they're always like, "What's your name?" And every time my husband changes his name. Like he just makes up different names every single time. And they ask me and I'm always Lee because it took me 25 years to even start to like myself and to accept myself. And I finally got here. And I'm like, "Yeah, I'm not anybody else. I am me. I am Lee." It's funny. I take a spin class and as a motivational thing the spin instructor does, "Who do you want to be today?" I'm always like, "Me, I want to be me." I spent so long being other people. And then also, it was really cool when I was creating Martin's character, to think about him being African American. And that being an opportunity for me to talk about the complexity of Abraham Lincoln and him not being so perfect and explore those themes a little more. And it's funny because I hear from a lot of people how much they love Martin. And yeah, he's pretty lovable. Jeff: Yeah, I really liked them both in their individual ways. For sure Wyatt...I grew up, I spent like middle school, high school, college in Alabama. So I could totally relate to where Wyatt was in his journey like he knows, but there's no way he's telling anybody. And I didn't have a Martin for a best friend. So I also loved Martin, because he was the ideal friend to have for Wyatt in the moment to show him what could be. Lee: Yeah, exactly. Jeff: What do you hope the audience takes away from this kind of history/fiction mashup? Lee: So I think a lot about words, you know, being a writer, and I think that the word homosexual isn't helping us. I think that if we, because we're so reactive and weird in our culture, in America about sex, and we are obsessed with it, and we don't want to acknowledge it. And especially we don't want to talk about it to teens. So when we talk about homosexual rights and homosexual history, all straight people are hearing, you know, to paint with a broad brush, is they're thinking about sex and that we have sex differently than they do and how do we have sex. And I just don't think that's particularly helpful. And I think that if we talked about love as sort of the binding element that makes me and my husband and our teenage daughter a family, or the love between you and your husband, if we talked about HomoLOVEual rights and HomoLOVEual history, I think we'd have a very different cultural conversation. So what the tagline of my book is, "What if you knew a secret from history that could change the world?" And I love this because it gets a little meta. But it's the challenge that Wyatt faces, right? He finds out the secret about Abraham Lincoln writing these letters and maybe being in love with Joshua Fry Speed. And he decides that he's going to tell the world because it could change the world. And then it's the same challenge that I faced because I knew the secret from history and I thought this drumming sense of responsibility, like I had to share it, I had to get it out in the world. And because I wasn't getting anywhere with traditional publishing, I thought, "Okay, well, I'm going to crowdfund it, I'm going to get it out in the world, myself." And then what I am really excited about is that it's also the challenge that the reader faces. Because when you've read the book, or you even heard me talk about the book, you know that there is something more to the story of Abraham Lincoln that has been taught to you. And it's that first crack in that facade of history. And it makes you think, "Well, wait a minute, when you see the picture of Mount Rushmore, or when you pick your kid up at the Lincoln middle school, or you're driving on Lincoln Boulevard, you know, does it occur to you that, you know, our culture has not shared that part of who Lincoln is? And does it make you feel a little more pride about the fact that you know what, we do have history, queer people, and we need to lean into it? And we have the opportunity to because there are hundreds of years of historians that are going to argue with us and that are going to say, "Yeah, yeah, it's not true. It was very typical for men to share beds on the frontier." Not that Springfield, Illinois was the frontier. But for four years, you know, Abraham and Joshua shared a bed long after Abraham could afford his own bed. "Well, it was cold." Okay, yeah. But they shared a bed for four years. It's not proof. But it's interesting. And I think that as all those things add up, we can all make our own determination of what we think, you know. Is it important for me that I convince the world that Abraham Lincoln was in love with Joshua Fry Speed? No. I think a lot about Anne Lamott, she's a writer, and she writes about writing. She has a beautiful book called "Bird by Bird". And in that book, she talks about lighthouses, and how they don't run all over an island looking for boats to save, they just sort of stand there and they shine. And I think a lot about that. Like, I need to be a lighthouse. Like I found out this amazing, cool stuff about history, and how it relates to today, and how empowering it is. And I just want to shine. And if people are interested, they can come closer to the light. And if they're not interested, no worries, you know, watch out, there's some rocks over there. Jeff: Any chance of a sequel? Because I know I would love to see more of Wyatt and Martin at some point Lee: I haven't really come up with a good angle on a sequel, I had this funny idea for...one of the other pieces of history that really struck me was Mahatma Gandhi and the story of his love for Hermann Kallenbach. And we talk a lot about Gandhi having this sort of breakthrough where he talked about it doesn't matter whether you pray facing left and I pray facing right - I may have that reversed. We're all praying to the same God. Like he had this huge breakthrough, not just in terms of, you know, a peaceful protest, Satyagraha. He changed our world in such profound ways. And at the same time, he was in love with this German Jewish architect named Hermann Kallenbach. And if he was in love with a Jewish guy, like that's actually really interesting and really germane. Like maybe that's why he had that inspiration, that insight about it doesn't matter who you're praying to, because it's, we're all sort of bonded by this sense of spiritual connection. Like, that's really exciting. And I feel like there's so many stories like that, like Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok. Eleanor Roosevelt was the woman that after, you know, her husband died, she went to the UN and became this advocate for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And would she had done that if she didn't have this experience of being in love with another woman, and feeling that sort of outsider status, while at the same time being this empowered woman in our world? History starts to open up like a flower. So I don't have an exact idea for a sequel for Wyatt and Martin, but I will put it in the hopper as ideas. Reason I brought up Hermann Kallenbach and Mahatma Gandhi was that I thought, that would be an interesting thing to talk about a kid finding out about that, and how that would have changed their life. And then about, "Wait, that's the exact same story over again, I don't need to do that. I already wrote that." So for now, I'm going to focus on the nonfiction piece and some other fiction writing that I want to get to that, actually, I'm very inspired by your book too, by the "Codename: Winger" series, because I love the idea of mashing up a gay teen with a sort of spy thriller. Jeff: And I can't wait to read what you might do with that. So please, bring that to the marketplace. Lee: Thank you. I keep thinking, "Is there a way I can get gay history in here somehow?" I haven't figured that either yet. But, you know, I'll work on it. Jeff: You'd mentioned earlier that you've got your blog, which I was so excited to find right around the same time as finding the book. You've been a YA blogger for more than a decade now. I believe you said it'll be 12 years in September. And the blog is called "I'm Here. I'm Queer. What the Hell do I Read?" What led you to starting that? Lee: Thanks. Yeah, there was no safe space to find out what were the books with queer characters for kids and teens. And I remember, there was a review on Amazon for a really sweet picture book called "The Family Book" by Todd Parr. And it's sort of a cartoon-y book. And there's like one page, it says, "Some families look alike." And it's a bunch of dogs that they all have similar features. "Some families look different." And it's a tree with all these different kind of animals in it. "Some families adopt children." And it's a bunch of ducks. And on the back of one duck is a penguin. And then you turn the page and it's, "Some families have two moms or two dads." And it's a picture of two women and two men. And then it continues, and there was a review, pretty high up that said, "If you tear out the page with the two moms and dads, then this is a lovely book on diversity." And I thought, "Wow, way to miss the entire point of what diversity is." And I got so upset and so hurt, you know, because I'm a gay dad. And I thought this was an amazing book for my daughter, but also for all of my daughter's classmates to see and recognize, "Yeah, yeah, you know, some families do have two moms and two dads." And to Amazon, that wasn't hate speech, it didn't violate their terms of service, it was just somebody's opinion. Albeit kind of, you know, nasty, or at least I interpreted as nasty. And it got me thinking about how there really needed to be a safe place online, where a kid could go and find out what are the books that were out there. And when I started, there were maybe 30 books total that were inclusive of LGBTQ characters and themes for kids and teens. And what's happened over the years is that by keeping this curated safe space, where I'm not vetting all the books, but I'm making sure that no nastiness is happening on the site. We have over 500 books now in many, many categories. And it's been really exciting to see that sort of explosion of content. And yet, it's that sort of similar problem again. Like now, suddenly, there's so much content, how do you make your way through it? How do you find the things that you want? So the idea behind it was to post about the books, what's queer about the books, and then let readers add their own reviews. There hasn't been a lot of review, there's just too many places for people to leave reviews these days. So I don't see a lot of that. But I also didn't want to make it, you know, "Lee's favorite book site" because I think that that has a limited value, I thought that there was more value in it being a site that felt really comprehensive. And that's what I aim for. And then it just became a place where I could talk about the stuff that I really care about, that I want queer and allied teens to know about. And over the years, what I've discovered is that the readership is split into thirds. There's about a third, queer teens and queer and allied teens on it. There about a third of librarians and teachers and people that work with LGBTQ teens. And then there's a whole bunch of adults that are sort of reading the books for themselves and sort of healing their inner teen. And I think that there is a healing that happens. Every time I read a queer book that has a happy or even a hopeful ending, there's a healing that happens. And I think maybe that's part of why romance as a genre is so popular. I know Will was saying in a previous episode that people get on his case for like ruining the ending, but it's all romance, you know it's going to be a good ending. And I think maybe that's why people turn to it. So I know how empowering it is for me when I read something where I see a reflection of myself, and it's a positive thing. Because when I was growing up, there was nothing to read, nothing positive. The only queer characters were like evil pedophile villains, it wasn't particularly helpful. Jeff: Yeah, that's, unfortunately, the case in the history that you and I have from that era when we were growing up. In the decade-plus that you've been running the site, other than just more YA, how have you seen it all evolve? Lee: There's more, and there's better and there's deeper, and there's less preachy and there's room for it all. It's funny, there was a kind of push a few years back for...well, maybe we're beyond the coming out story. And I kind of got my dander up a little bit on that. And I felt like, "Well, we're never going to be beyond the first love story when it's, you know, a straight romance. So, Andrew Solomon has this great book that he wrote called "Far From the Tree" and it's a nonfiction piece. And he talks about how, you know, when your identity is...where you're the apple that does fall far from the tree, or falls from the tree and rolls across the, you know, down the hill and across the orchard, when you're queer, most likely your parents were not. And so you have this moment where you have to find your sense of community outside of the family that you grew up in. A lot of other identities, you share that. Like, usually, like me, I was raised Jewish and so I would, you know, my parents were Jewish. So I sort of shared that identity. For all of our identities, we sort of are either sort of close to the tree or far from the tree. And when you're far from the tree, there's more work involved. So coming out, I think is going to continue to be this universal thing. Because just like, you know, my daughter has two dads, but she's straight. So in a funny way, she's going to have to, you know, she had a bit of a coming out where she had to tell us, sort of, you know, abashed, hoping that we'd be okay with it, that she was straight. And we had a good laugh about it. Because it's not that big a deal for us. We just want her to be her authentic self and to be happy. So we do want to have coming out books, and we also want to have books where being gay, like your character Winger, Theo, where it's the least interesting thing about him. I loved when you said that in your interview. Because yeah, we want those stories, too. It's like in acting, right? In improv, the rule is yes/and. So we want these books, and we want those books. We want the fantasy, we want the romance, we want the science fiction, we want all of it because truly, if you look at the numbers of books that are published - traditionally there about 5,000 books published a year for kids and teens. And then, if you look at the world of self-publishing, let's say that 5,000 are doing it really beautifully. And the books are indistinguishable with the quality of that from traditional publishing. That's 10,000 books a year, a year. And you have all those years going back too. So what we want is the opportunity to sort of have all of those books and right now we still only have like 500. So we have a long way to go. We need lots more books, we need lots more voices, we need people writing their own voices, stories, we need more diversity included in everybody's stories because truly, you're not going to have a classroom today that doesn't include someone that's LGBTQ, we need it all. Jeff: That's very true. Given that you had the blog, did you always see yourself eventually writing the YA novel that you did? Or did that just kind of manifest itself because you have the story to tell? Lee: I've always been a writer. I've written...I remember one summer when I was like between 9th and 10th Grade in high school, I was like, "I'm going to write a novel." I sometimes think of those poor characters still trapped in the broken space station that was orbiting the Earth. And I'm like, "Oh man, I have to do something with that someday." I don't think I will. I've always written. I think that for the last 14 years, I've really focused on writing for kids and teens. I also write picture books and middle grade. And when I found out this thing about Lincoln and Speed, it really inspired me to focus on writing that as a novel. I think that the blog has been a way to have my voice heard in a more direct way, and not wait for somebody to tap me on the shoulder and say, "Okay Lee, we're ready for what you have to share." So that's been really empowering. I remember, when I started the blog, there were very few people reading it, and I would get all excited, I'd be like, and I'd tell my husband, "Hey, 15, people went to my blog today." And I was so, so excited. And now, all these years later, we passed 2.6 million page loads. I get between, you know, 15,000 to 25,000 page views a month. It's remarkable, and humbling, and also a really cool responsibility to continue to maintain this safe place. And at the same time, I'm trying to keep writing and work on the new stuff, which has been really a good thing, because balancing the day job and the blogging, there's a lot but I have stories I want to tell. And I'm going to keep trying to tell them. Jeff: Good. Yeah, keep putting it out there. Because we always need more, to be sure. For people who haven't seen the site yet, and we're certainly going to link to it in the show notes. It has an amazing hero image across the top of the superhero. Where did that come from? And where did the name come from? For folks who might question the name too, because I have a pretty good idea where the name came from. But let's hear it from you. Lee: Sure. So "I'm Here. I'm Queer. What the Hell do I read?" is a play on words of something we chanted in Act Up in the '80s and '90s. The chant was "We're here. We're queer. Get used to it." And I thought, well, my issue is a little more "What the hell do I read?" Because I felt so starved for any books that included somebody like me. I mean, you know, I grew up and I really and truly thought I was the only person in the world that felt the way I felt about other guys. And which was super ironic, because I have an older brother, who's five and a half years older, and he's gay too, but we never spoke about it. We are the children of immigrants and when my parents came from Israel, they sort of brought all their homophobia with them. And the American culture at the time was super homophobic, especially where we lived outside Philadelphia. It was not a safe place. And it's so amazing to think that you can grow up and feel like you're the only person and everything I read, I was obsessed with the series by Anne McCaffrey called the Dragonrider series. And there was this super between the lines, sort of thematic thing that you could maybe interpret that there was gay stuff happening in that world, but you had to really stretch for it. And looking back, I think, well, maybe that's why I was so obsessed with that book, with that series, because there was some faint, not even mirror reflection, but like the gleam of a tarnished piece of silverware. I was like, "Wait, wait, maybe that's me." So that's where "I'm Here. I'm Queer. What the Hell do I read?" came from. The image happened a few years later. I had been running the site for about two years, it had been doing really well. And I realized I wanted to have a customized image. And yet, it's a pretty wordy title. So I realized I needed an image that didn't have any additional words to it. So I contacted someone I knew, an artist I knew, Jim DeBartolo. And, I said, "Look, I need an image that says empowerment." And he came up with this sort of superhero moment of like ripping the denim shirt off. And there's this sort of T-shirt underneath with the sort of superhero logo, which is the website, which is leewind.org. And it was funny. We tried to play with the sort of partial face that you see, we tried to, you know, could we make it a person of color? Could we do some things with you, know, the physique? But ultimately, it was sort of an avatar of me, and it took me years to admit it that's sort of what of course it is, it's an avatar of me, but I don't have that good a jawline. But at least in my mind, I think that it's been this sort of symbol of empowerment. And that's really what I hope that people get from visiting the site, from reading anything I write. I want them to feel empowered. Jeff: I like that. That's a great story behind that. Lee: Thanks. Jeff: So relying on your...I'm going to call it a YA expertise because of the site that you run. What are three or four titles of current YA that you would recommend our audience to take a stab at? Lee: Sure. So I have to start with "Carry On" by Rainbow Rowell. I know it's not super recent. But this is the gay Harry Potter book that I wanted so badly. And I was so frustrated that JK Rowling didn't include Dumbledore as being gay in the canon. It sort of was outside the books that that revelation happened and you can go back and sort of, you know, read subtexts and stuff. But I really was hoping that there would be some sort of, you know, on the page, queer love or something, and it didn't happen, there was really nothing. And, you know, Rainbow Rowell, she wrote two books, one about the girl that writes the fan fiction, which is called "Fangirl", which is really good. And then there was this book, which was the fan fiction, that ended up being a huge success on its own, called "Carry On". And I don't want to say too much, but it is absolutely brilliant. And if you are queer, or love queer stories, and you had any connection to Harry Potter, and that sort of world of magic, you've got to go read this. It's just wonderful. Jeff: Excellent. Her books have been on my TBR forever. And I actually need to take the leap and read them. Lee: Read this one first. It's just you will be so happy you did. Jeff: So you mentioned the nonfiction that you've just signed the contract on and other stuff noodling around in your head... anything else you want to shout out that's coming up soon for you? Lee: So there are a bunch of things percolating. But nothing has come to full boil yet. So I will let you all know when it does. Jeff: That is fair. I can't wait to hear what they are. Because I think that, yeah, having read the one book from you, I'm looking forward to reading so much more. So where can people keep up with you? There's leewind.org as we talked about, which is the "I'm Here. I'm Queer. What the Hell do I read?" site. Anyplace else people should be looking for updates? Lee: Yeah. I mean, I'm playing around with Instagram. I'm trying to do this thing. I had the idea that we could do a #queerhistoryiseverywhere. And I wanted people to upload photos of Abraham Lincoln or the word Lincoln wherever they saw it and just start posting it on Instagram. It hasn't exactly caught on yet. But I still like that idea. Jeff: Maybe our podcast listeners will play along with that. Lee: Oh, yeah, that would be really fun. And also, I mean, as, you know, more queer history happens. I was speaking at the Bay Area Book Festival recently and someone came up after my panel and they said, "Did you know that Bābur from the Bāburnāma when he was a teen he was in love with another boy?" I was like, "Really?" Totally, I have sitting on my desk right next to me right now the "Bāburnāma" and indeed, when he was 18, he was in love with this other boy. And it's so exciting to find out this stuff. So I feel like because it's been hidden, the more we can crowdsource this information and share it and then all amplify each other. I think it's very, very exciting. Jeff: Very cool. So we will link to all that stuff, the books we talked about - everything else - in our show notes. And Lee, I'm so glad we got the opportunity to talk, spread the word a little bit more about this book and the website and thank you for all you're doing to get more out there about YA literature too. Lee: Thank you, Jeff. I really want to say thank you to you and to Will. I'm really a fan of the podcast and getting to be on it as a real thrill. So thanks.

Doctors know that celiac disease is a real medical condition, but too many people treat it like a trendy diet choice. Dr. Z. Jennifer Lee discusses the dangers of gluten exposure in patients with celiac disease.   TRANSCRIPT Intro: MedStar Washington Hospital Center presents Medical Intel where our healthcare team shares health and wellness insights and gives you the inside story on advances in medicine. Host: Thank you for joining us today. We’re talking with Dr. Jennifer Lee, a gastroenterologist at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. Welcome, Dr. Lee. Dr. Jennifer Lee: Hello! Nice to be here. Host: Today we’re talking about treatment options for celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder in which patients suffer intestinal damage after eating gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley and rye. There are currently no effective celiac disease treatments approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but a promising new drug is headed into phase two clinical trial. Dr. Lee, could you give us a brief overview of what celiac disease is and how it affects patients’ quality of life? Dr. Lee: Sure. Celiac disease is a disease process which falls under the spectrum of gluten-related disorders. It is something that we know a lot about. It’s a genetically-based disease. It happens to genetically susceptible individuals where upon intake of gluten, they can get a reaction. It’s an immune mediated reaction. And so, what we used to tell patients, was that they were allergic to gluten. So, as we delve a little bit deeper into the topic today we’ll see that there are other gluten-related disorders that result in symptoms even without the diagnosis of celiac disease. So, another one would be wheat allergy. And another one that is actually quite commonly talked about these days is non-celiac gluten sensitivity. But getting back to celiac disease, the patients can manifest in many different ways--It can be chronic diarrhea, it could be bloating, it can iron deficiency anemia. And so, it needs to be on our minds when we see patients with these possibly non-specific symptoms. Host: Why is the advancement of this drug, Nexvax2®, into phase two clinical trial exciting for the celiac community? Dr. Lee: So, it’s exciting and not. Right now, as you mentioned, there are no medications for celiac disease. We have a very good treatment for celiac disease and it’s dietary--we avoid gluten, and it works for the vast majority of our patients with celiac disease. But, the difficulty is inadvertent gluten intake. Sometimes there’s cross contamination if you’re eating out. It can be an issue, and so I think it would be nice to have some sort of medication that helps with that. It’s also important to remember, though, that this is a phase two trial, and so, again, the majority of drugs that go in to phase two trials actually don’t make it past phase two. So, while it is exciting, I think we have to keep in mind that the most important thing is gluten avoidance. Host: How is it that a disease as common and well-known as celiac disease has no effective treatments? Dr. Lee: I think it’s because it’s a complex disease. It’s a genetically based disease. However, not everybody who has the genetic predisposition gets celiac disease. It’s a very complex thing, and where you have the propensity, genetically, and then you have other factors, and we’re not entirely sure what all those factors are. And so, it’s difficult to pinpoint or target something exactly. The medication that’s in trial now, the target would be a genetic target but, we don’t know with 100 percent clarity what causes it. So, it’s hard to say. Host: How long would a person have to suffer symptoms before they go see a gastroenterologist for a possible celiac diagnosis? Dr. Lee: You know, I’ll be honest with you, I’ve seen the whole spectrum. I’ve seen patients who’ve had diarrhea for many months without a diagnosis and they come and we’ve made the diagnosis at that point. But I’ve also seen patients who don’t really know that they’re anemic and they have iron deficiency anemia and we find that on testing and we’ve been able to make a diagnosis that way. Host: What are some of the common and more uncommon symptoms of celiac disease? Dr. Lee: Within celiac disease, very commonly we’ll have chronic diarrhea, weight loss, joint pains, even headache, rashes. So, as you can see, some of them can be very non-specific. And the important thing to note here is even across the different gluten-related disorders, you can get these types of symptoms. For instance, non-celiac gluten sensitivity and celiac disease can both present with brain fog - that’s a very common complaint that you hear about. So, very important that patients with these symptoms see a gastroenterologist and nail down a diagnosis. Host: How can gastroenterologists help patients understand whether they have celiac disease or another gastrointestinal condition? Dr. Lee: There are significant differences in long-term health consequences, depending on what you are diagnosed with. It’s very important to be diagnosed with celiac disease because, down the road, you need to be monitored for certain things like autoimmune diseases, even certain cancers, down the line. Whereas non-celiac gluten sensitivity and even wheat allergy may not necessarily result in this same long-term sequelity. Host: If a person’s really struggling with these symptoms, what would you recommend as their first action to get care? Dr. Lee: To definitely come see a healthcare professional. Whether that be their primary care doctor or if they want to come straight to a gastroenterologist, that’s...you know, we are happy to see these patients. Diagnosis involves some blood testing, and, in most cases, an upper endoscopy, where we take samples of the small intestine to evaluate for any signs of inflammation. Host: Could you talk a little bit about your patient population? Dr. Lee: Absolutely yes. I would say, when we first started learning about celiac disease, you would think that it was a disease found only in Caucasians or those of European ancestry. But now we’ve learned that really it can be in any population, any race. And, to follow that, it’s in anybody of any age. It’s commonly diagnosed in childhood, but I have made plenty of diagnoses in adulthood. Host: What kind of damage do you see in your patients after years and years of symptoms? Dr. Lee: I think the most dramatic patient I’ve seen, and dramatic being that when I first met him, he was emaciated. I mean, he had lost so much weight. He showed me a picture of his driver’s license and how he was before his symptoms started - and they didn’t start until he was in his 40s. But he looked like a completely different person. The weight loss was very marked. And so, after making the diagnosis and after starting him on a gluten free diet, and seeing him in follow-up afterwards, it was like seeing a brand-new person. It was amazing. I still keep in touch with him, to this day, you know, there’s not much that I need to do for him now that he knows exactly what he can eat, what he can’t eat. He has appropriate follow-up. We check his vitamin levels once in a while. But, I think it’s just...it’s such a great feeling when you see that they have returned to, you know, their normal life. Yes, they need to change the way they eat but it’s possible to feel healthy and to feel like you can go out and have a normal life. There’s data to suggest that, in children, the thought of having celiac disease produces anxiety and reduces quality of life. And so, we know it is something that people think about and worry about so I think, you know, even in the quality of life aspect--eating out, being social--it’s rewarding to see that we can, you know, get someone to that point. Host: How is it that a disease that has genetic components can manifest so late in somebody’s life? Dr. Lee: There’s so much that we still don’t understand about celiac disease. We are not sure why, in one person, it would manifest in childhood and another it manifests in adulthood. Host: What do you say to people who say, “Oh, celiac disease is just a trend and it’s not real.” Dr. Lee: I think I just tell them what we know, based on the evidence that we have. What trials we’ve done. And I explain to them that there IS a spectrum of gluten related disorders - celiac disease, wheat allergy, non-celiac gluten sensitivity. And, you know, it can be a bit of a fad thing. I mean, right now we’re all hearing about a gluten free diet. I would say that many people who are on a gluten free diet don’t have a gluten related disorder. But there are a subset of people who don’t have celiac disease yet feel very poorly on a gluten containing diet. So, these would be the non-celiac gluten sensitivity patients. And, you know, it is a very poorly defined disease but yet, it’s there. There is some evidence to suggest that there may be a little bit of inflammation in these folks as well but we’re very early on in our research in that aspect. You know, all three of these conditions have overlapping features, which is why it can be confusing. So, with the fad diet - of a gluten free diet - it’s, I think, both a good and a bad thing. I love that it allows my celiac patients to have more possibilities, especially going out to eat. Many restaurants offer a gluten free diet now and I think that’s great because before, patients were stuck with very little to eat. They would have to cook at home, stick to maybe like a tiny little space within the grocery store where the gluten free stuff was. But now, you know, the possibilities are much more. However, having said that, because it is a bit of a fad, I think some people tend to maybe roll their eyes at it and say, ‘Oh well, you know, you don’t really have some allergy or sensitivity or whatever, you’re just following this fad diet.’ And so, the danger in that would be that maybe like a restaurant person would not take it as seriously and not take into account the cross contamination that’s possible. I mean, some people with celiac disease really just take that one exposure and they can, you know, throw them into their symptoms. So, it’s both a good and a bad thing. But, again, it’s important, you know, from patient to patient like, to know what it is that you have and what is potentially life threatening and what is not. I just want to bring up another point and that to test positive for celiac disease, you have to be on gluten at the time. So, you have to be eating gluten and so you’re therefore not feeling well, but you need to have that exposure in order for us to pick it up on our testing. Host: You mentioned that there are three main conditions. Could you give us a small recap of each of them? Dr. Lee: Sure. Well, there’s celiac disease and that, we’ve spoken about, it’s in genetically susceptible individuals. They have this proven inflammation in their small intestine resulting in a gamut of symptoms. There’s wheat allergy and that is your typical ‘quote/unquote’ food allergy where you, you know, can potentially get anaphylaxis to it. And then there’s non-celiac gluten sensitivity and that’s the very poorly defined one. But, again, there can be a lot of common symptoms. But, I think that, based on my patients, what I usually hear, is the abdominal pain, the fatigue, and the brain fog. Those are three of the very common ones for gluten sensitivity. Host: Are there any health benefits for going gluten free for people that don’t have a gluten sensitivity or celiac disease? Dr. Lee: That’s a good question and I think it’s going to be a bit of a complex answer. When people tend to take out gluten they do take out a lot of carbs and so, you know, limiting your carb intake can be healthy. But what are you replacing that with? Are you replacing it with, you know, a bread that you’re buying in the gluten free aisle, in which case, that’s actually a heavily processed food item. It can be very high in calories and so it makes a difference what you’re replacing that food with. One thing we do need to think about though is, are there any consequences of going on a gluten free diet. And the answer to that is potentially yes. We do have some studies showing that there can be nutrient or/and micronutrient and vitamin deficiencies, you know, even ten years down the road. And these are based on our celiac patients, but we think it’s due to them being on a gluten free diet for a long period of time. We’ve seen some data showing that patients who have been on a gluten free diet for a prolonged period of time are more obese than patients who have not been on a gluten free diet. And then not to mention the cost. You know, it’s very...it’s not cheap buying the foods from the gluten free section. Host: I’ve noticed that a lot in grocery stores, it seems like any kind of health product seems to be more expensive than the assumed not healthy product. Dr. Lee: And I think part of that is a little bit of marketing preying on consumers. If you’re in the shampoo aisle and you see a shampoo labeled gluten free and it’s three times the price of regular shampoo, people don’t necessarily know that. They just think that gluten is bad, and they may buy the shampoo that’s gluten free, but really that makes no difference. There was one small study suggesting that in adults who follow a gluten free diet, they may be at risk for cardiovascular complications because, the thought process was that they were consuming less whole wheat. But again, very early on in our research regarding this. You know, the most scientific way to go about it would be to remove gluten from your diet and then you’ll notice that you feel better. And when you reintroduce gluten, do it in a blinded fashion. Then introduce something that you may or may not know whether it has gluten or not and see how you feel. Maybe your friend knows, maybe your friend knows which bread is the, you know, gluten free bread and which one’s the regular bread. But, I think mostly, it’s how you feel - how you feel on it, how you feel off of it. Host: Thanks for joining us today, Dr. Lee. Dr. Lee: Oh, you’re very welcome. Thanks for having me. Conclusion: Thanks for listening to Medical Intel with MedStar Washington Hospital Center. Find more podcasts from our healthcare team by visiting medstarwashington.org/podcast or subscribing in iTunes or iHeartRadio.

A new policy change by the Trump administration on May 7th has resulted in thousands of children being separated from their want-to-be-immigrant parents who crossed the U.S. southern border in the wrong location. In this episode, hear from officials in every branch of government involved to learn why this is happening, why it's proving to be so difficult to return the children to their parents, and what we can do to help this situation. Please Support Congressional Dish - Quick Links Click here to contribute a lump sum or set up a monthly contribution via PayPal Click here to support Congressional Dish for each episode via Patreon Send Zelle payments to: Donation@congressionaldish.com Send Venmo payments to: @Jennifer-Briney Use your bank’s online bill pay function to mail contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North Number 4576 Crestview, FL 32536 Please make checks payable to Congressional Dish Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Letter to Representative/Senators Jen's letter that she sent to her members of Congress. You are welcome to use this as you wish!  Additional Reading Report: Trump administration: Migrant families can be detained for more than 20 days by Tanya Ballard Brown, NPR, June 29, 2018. Article: Federal judge enjoins separation of migrant children, orders family reunification by Devlin Barrett, Mike DeBonis, Nick Miroff and Isaac Stanley-Becker, The Washington Post, June 27, 2018. Article: Trump aims to dismantle protections for immigrant kids and radically expand the family detention system by Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept, June 26, 2018. Article: With prosecutions of parents suspended the status quo returns at the border, The Washington Post, June 25, 2018. Article: Separated immigrant children are all over the U.S. now, far from parents who don't know where they are by Maria Sacchetti, Kevin Sieff and Marc Fisher, The Washington Post, June 24, 2018. Article: U.S. officials separated him from his child then he was deported to El Salvador, The Washington Post, June 23, 2018. Article: Yes, Obama separated families at the border, too by Franco Ordonez and Anita Kumar, McClatchy, Jue 21, 2018. Report: Governor orders probe of abuse claims by immigrant children by Michael Bisecker, Jake Pearson and Garance Burke, AP News, June 21, 2018. Report: Migrant children at the border - the facts by Graham Kates, CBS News, June 20, 2018. Report: The facilities that are housing children separated from their parents by Andy Uhler and David Brancaccio, Marketplace, June 20, 2018. Article: How private contractors enable Trump's cruelties at the border by David Dayen, The Nation, June 20, 2018. Article: Separating migrant families is barbaric. It's also what the U.S. has been doing to people of color for hundreds of years. by Shaun King, The Intercept, June 20, 2018. Report: Trump's executive order on family separation: What it does and doesn't do by Richard Gonzales, NPR, June 20, 2018. Report: U.S. announces its withdrawal from U.N. Human Rights Council by Colin Dwyer, NPR, June 19, 2018. Article: Detainees in Oregon say they followed asylum process and were arrested by Conrad Wilson, OPB, June 19, 2018. Report: Fact-checking family separation by Amrit Cheng, ACLU, June 19, 2018. Article: The U.S. has taken more than 3,700 children from their parents - and has no plan for returning them by Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept, June 19, 2018. Article: Exclusive: US officials lost track of nearly 6,000 unaccompanied migrant kids by Franco Ordonez and Anita Kumar, McClatchy, June 19, 2018. Article: The government has no plan for reuniting the immigrant families it is tearing apart by Jonathan Blitzer, The New Yorker, June 18, 2018. Report: U.N. rights chief tells U.S. to stop taking migrant children from parents by Nick Cumming-Bruce, The New York Times, June 18, 2018. Article: Taking migrant children from parents is illegal, U.N. tells U.S. by Nick Cumming-Bruce, The New York Times, June 5, 2018. Article: Parents, children ensnared in 'zero-tolerance' border prosecutions by Curt Prendergast and Perla Trevizo, Arizona Daily Star, May 28, 2018. Statement: By HHS Deputy Secretary on unaccompanied alien children program, HHS Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan, HHS, May 28, 2018. Report: Trump administration using contractors accused of abuse to detain undocumented children by TYT Investigates, TYT Network, May 28, 2018. Testimony: Ronald D. Vitiello on Stopping the daily border caravan: Time to build a policy wall, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, May 22, 2018. Report: ICE has already missed two detention reporting deadlines set by Congress in March, National Immigrant Justice Center, May 17, 2018. Article: As Gaza death toll rises, Israeli tactics face scrutiny by Josef Federman, The Seattle Times, May 15, 2018. News Report: Attorney General Sessions delivers remarks discussing the immigration enforcement actions of the Trump administration, Department of Justice, May 7, 2018. Statement: Steven Wagner of Administration for Children and Families U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, April 26, 2018. Article: Hundreds of immigrant children have been taken from parents at U.S. border by Caitlin Dickerson, The New York Times, April 20, 2018. Article: Trump's first year has been the private prison industry's best by Lauren-Brooke "L.B" Eisen, Brennan Center for Justice, January 15, 2018. Article: Private-prison giant, resurgent in Trump era, gathers at president's resort by Amy Brittain and Drew Harwell, The Washington Post, October 25, 2017. Report: Trump administration warns that U.S. may pull out of U.N. Human Rights Council by Merrit Kennedy, NPR, June 6, 2017. Article: Private prisons were thriving even before Trump was elected by Alice Speri, The Intercept, November 28, 2016. Article: Mexican migrant kids swiftly sent back by Sandra Dibble, San Diego Union Tribune, July 12, 2014. Article: Immigrant surge rooted in law to curb child trafficking by Carl Hulse, The New York Times, July 7, 2014. Resources Agency Details: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services GovTrack: H.R. 4760: Securing America's Future Act of 2018 GovTrack: H.R. 7311 (110th): William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 Human Rights First: The Flores Settlement Publication: Betraying Family Values: How Immigration Policy at the United States Border is Separating Families Snopes.com: Did the U.S. government lose track of 1,475 migrant children? U.S. Department of Homeland Security: Organizational Chart U.S. Customs and Border Protection: Southwest Border Migration FY2018 Sound Clip Sources Hearing: Prescription Drug Supply and Cost, Senate Finance Committee, C-SPAN, June 26, 2018. Witness: - Alex Azar - Health and Human Services Secretary 27:50 Senator Ron Wyden (OR): How many kids who were in your custody because of the zero-tolerance policy have been reunified with a parent or a relative? Alex Azar: So, I believe we have had a high of over 2,300 children that were separated from their parents as a result of the enforcement policy. We now have 2,047. Sen. Wyden: How many have been reunified? Azar: So, they would be unified with either parents or other relatives under our policy, so, of course if the parent remains in detention, unfortunately under rules that are set by Congress and the courts, they can’t be reunified while they’re in detention. Sen. Wyden: So is the answer zero? I mean, you have— Azar: No, no. No, we’ve had hundreds of children who had been separated who are now with—for instance, if there was a parent— Sen. Wyden: I want an— Azar: —parent who’s here in the country, they’d be with that parent. Sen. Wyden: I want to know about the children in your department’s custody. Azar: Yeah. Sen. Wyden: How many of them have been reunified? Azar: Well, that’s exactly what I’m saying. They had been placed with a parent or other relative who’s— Sen. Wyden: How many? Azar: —here in the United States. Sen. Wyden: How many? Azar: Several hundred. Sen. Wyden: Of the 2— Azar: Of the 2,300-plus that— Sen. Wyden: Okay. Azar: —came into our care. Sen. Wyden: How many— Azar: Probably of 2,047. 49:20 Senator Ben Nelson (FL): So, what is the plan to reunite 2,300 children? Alex Azar: Absolutely. So, the first thing we need to do is, for any of the parents, we have to confirm parentage. So that’s part of the process. With any child in our care, we have to ensure—there are traffickers; there are smugglers; there’re, frankly, just some bad people occasionally—we have to ensure that the parentage is confirmed. We have to vet those parents to ensure there’s no criminality or violent history on them. That’s part of the regular process for any placement with an individual. At that point, they’ll be ready to be reconnected to their parents. This is where our very broken immigration laws come into play. We’re not allowed to have a child be with the parent who is in custody of the Department of Homeland Security for more than 20 days, and so until we can get Congress to change that law to—the forcible separation there of the family units—we’ll hold them or place them with another family relative in the United States. But we are working to get all these kids ready to be placed back with their parents, get that all cleared up, as soon as—if Congress passes a change or if those parents complete their immigration proceedings, we can then reunify. 1:11:52 Alex Azar: If Congress doesn’t change the 20-day limit on family unification, then it depends on—the process for any individual parent going through their immigration proceedings, as long as they’re in detention, they can’t be together for more than 20 days—absurdly, but it is the case. 2:03:31 Senator Ron Wyden (OR): You told me a little bit ago that the Department has 2,047 kids in its custody, so— Alex Azar: That are separated. We’ve got about 12,000 unaccompanied minors in our program. Hearing: EB-5 Immigrant Investor Visa Program, C-SPAN, June 19, 2018. Witnesses: Lee Francis Cissna - Director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Department of Homeland Security   17:17 Senator Dianne Feinstein (CA): Citizenship should not be for sale like a commodity on the stock exchange. There are millions—in fact, 4 million—of individuals who are waiting in line to immigrate lawfully to the United States. They have paid their required fees, they are in line, they wait patiently for a day that a visa becomes available, so they can be reunited with their families here in this country. However, because they don’t have a half a million dollars to buy their way in, they will continue to wait, some as long as 24 years. Yet, under the EB-5 system, the wealthy can cut to the front of the line. 49:45 Lee Francis Cissna: I did not play any role in deciding whether there was going to be a zero-tolerance initiative. What I recommended was, since there is one, what we need to do is decide which cases to refer in fulfillment of the zero-tolerance initiative directed by the attorney general, and I suggested that—I and the other officials who were involved in these discussions suggested that we refer all cases. Senator Dick Durbin: All cases. Cissna: Yes. Anybody who violates 8 U.S.C. 1325(a) will be prosecuted. Sen. Durbin: Which is—simply presenting themselves illegally at the border, without legal authorization at our border. Is that what you’re saying? Cissna: Between ports of entry, yes. Sen. Durbin: And you’re not just limiting this to those who may have committed some other crime, involved in some activity dangerous to the United States, but merely presenting themselves at these places is enough for you to believe this administration should treat them as criminals and remove their children. Cissna: I believe anyone crossing the border illegally who is apprehended doing so, whether they’re presenting themselves or not presenting themselves or trying to evade capture, if they are apprehended, they’re violating the law and should be prosecuted. Sen. Durbin: But if a person came to this border, seeking asylum— Cissna: Mm-hmm. Sen. Durbin: —is that person per se a criminal? Cissna: If they cross illegally, yes. Sen. Durbin: The premise was they presented themselves. Cissna: If they present themselves at the port of entry, no. 57:58 Senator Mazie Hirono (HI): So there are two ways that 1325 violations can proceed: either as a civil matter, which is what was happening with the Obama administration, that did not require separating children from their parents; or you can go the criminal route, and this administration have chosen the criminal route. Isn’t that correct? Lee Francis Cissna: Well, I would have to defer to DOJ on the appropriate interpretation of 1325, but as I read it, it looks like a misdemeanor to me, and, therefore, would be a criminal— Sen. Hirono: Well, I’m reading the statute right here, and it says that it can be considered as a civil penalty’s provision; under civil, not criminal. That’s what the plain meaning of that section says to me that I’m reading right now. So, this administration has chosen to follow the criminal route, and that is the excuse, or that is the rationale, being given for why children have to be separated at the border. Now, you did not have to go that route, and in fact, from your testimony, you sound really proud that this administration has a zero-tolerance policy that is resulting in children being separated from their parents. Am I reading you wrong? You think that this is a perfectly—humane route to go to implement Section 1325? Cissna: It’s the law. I’m proud of it, yeah. Sen. Hirono: No, the law, this law allows for a civil process, and you are attributing _____(01:27). Cissna: I’m not sure that interpretation is correct, and I would, again, defer to DOJ for the final answer. 1:10:30 Senator Sheldon Whitehouse: So, asylum seekers. They’re often refugees, correct? Lee Francis Cissna: Asylum seekers fall into the same definition of refugee at 101(a) (42), yeah. Sen. Whitehouse: Yep. And they often have very little in the way of resources, they’re often frightened, correct? Cissna: Yes. Sen. Whitehouse: Very few have legal degrees or are familiar with the United States’ immigration law, correct? Cissna: Yes. Sen. Whitehouse: And so if you’re a lost and frightened refugee and you see the U.S. border and you think, ah, this is my chance to get across to safety—which has long been something that our country’s been associated with—there could be a perfectly innocent reason for crossing the border in that location. And in that circumstance, would it not be perfectly reasonable for immigration officials who intercept them to say, “Ah, you seem to be a legitimate asylum seeker; you’re just in the wrong place. We’ll take you to the port of entry, and you can join the other asylum seekers at the port of entry”? But to arrest them and separate them from their children is a different choice, correct? Cissna: Well, I think if the person is already at that point where they’re apprehended and making their asylum case known, they’ve already crossed into the country illegally. If they’ve already crossed the border and made their asylum claim, they’ve already violated the law. They violated 1325. They’re here illegally. Sen. Whitehouse: Because they crossed in the wrong place. Cissna: Correct. Sen. Whitehouse: And they may not know that it’s illegal to cross in the wrong place, correct? They may simply be coming here because they’re poor and frightened and seeking safety, and for a long time, that’s what the United States has been a symbol of, has it not? Cissna: I cannot get into the minds of the people that are crossing the border illegally, but it seems to be— Sen. Whitehouse: But it is a clear possibility that there could be an innocent explanation for crossing the border as an asylum seeker at a place other than an established port of entry. Cissna: There might be. *Sen. Whitehouse: Okay. There you go. Cissna: Maybe. 1:36:13 Senator Chuck Grassley (IA): Do you think the administration would support repeal of Flores? Lee Francis Cissna: That is indeed one of the things that Secretary Nielsen spoke about yesterday, repeal Flores, but also you need to give ICE enough funds to be able to hold the family units once you’ve repealed Flores. Briefing: White House Daily Briefing, Immigration Official on Border Security and Migrant Family Separation, C-SPAN, June 18, 2018. Hearing: Central American Immigrants and Border Security, House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security, C-SPAN, May 22, 2018. Witnesses: Ronald Vitiello - Acting Deputy Commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection Lee Francis Cissna - Director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services Thomas Homan - Acting Director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement   15:10 Ronald Vitiello: In accordance with the Department of Justice zero-tolerance policy, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen has directed CBP to refer all illegal border crossers for criminal prosecution. CBP will enforce immigration laws set forth by Congress. No classes or categories of aliens are exempt from enforcement. 15:48 Ronald Vitiello: The effort and hours used to detain, process, care for, hold UACs and family units distracts our law-enforcement-officer deployments, shrinks our capability to control the border, and make the arrest of smugglers and drug traffickers and criminals much more difficult. 37:40 Ronald Vitiello: Between the ports, we’re now referring anybody that crosses the border illegally—so, Border Patrol’s referring 100% of the people that cross the border illegally—to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. At the ports, that’s not an illegal act if they come under the same conditions, but the verification of family relationships is essentially the same in both instances. Representative Filemon Vela (TX): So, with this new policy in place, at the point that you’re in a situation where you decide to separate the families, where do the minors go? Vitiello: The decision is to prosecute 100%. If that happens to be a family member, then HHS would then take care of the minor as an unaccompanied child. 39:58 Thomas Homan: As far as the detention capacity, we’re well aware of that. We’re working with U.S. marshals and DOJ on identifying available detention space. I got my staff working on that, along with the department and DOJ, so I think it’ll be addressed. We want to make sure we don’t get back to catch and release, so we’re identifying available beds throughout the country that we can use. As far as the question on HHS, under the Homeland Security Act 2002, we’re required, both the Border Patrol and ICE, to release unaccompanied children to HHS within 72 hours. So, we simply—once they identify within that 72 hours a bed someplace in the country, our job is to get that child to that bed. Then HHS, their responsibility is to reunite that child sometime with a parent and make sure that child gets released to a sponsor that’s being vetted. 41:33 Thomas Homan: If they show up at a port of entry made through asylum claims, they won’t be prosecuted, and they won’t be separated. The department has no policy just to separate families for a deterrence issue. I mean, they’re separating families for two reasons. Number one, they can’t prove the relationship—and we’ve had many cases where children had been trafficked by people that weren’t their parents, and we’re concerned about the child. The other issues are when they’re prosecuted, then they’re separated. 1:39:44 Representative Martha McSally (AZ): To summarize, some of those loopholes that we have been working together with you to close, the first is to raise the standard of the initial asylum interview that happens at the border, which is so low that nearly everybody can make it through. The second is to hold individuals as long as it takes for them to have due process in order to process their claim. The third is to make it inadmissible in our country if you are a serious criminal or gang or a gang member or a terrorist, which I cannot believe isn’t a part of the law, but we actually have to change that law. The fourth is to have a swift removal of you if you are denied in your claim. The fifth is to terminate your asylum, if you were to get it, if you return back to your country without any material change in the conditions there. Clearly, if you’re afraid for your life but you go back to visit, then something’s not right there, so your asylum should be considered for termination. The sixth is that there could be an expeditious return of unaccompanied minors to non-contiguous countries so that we can swiftly return them just like we can to Mexico. And the last is to increase the penalties for false asylum claims in order to deter and hold people accountable if they file for those. Is that a good summary of many of the loopholes we’re talking about today? Ronald Vitiello: Agree. Yes. Rep. McSally: Thank you. These all are in our bill, the Secure America’s Future Act. These are common-sense reforms that will keep our country safe and keep our communities safe, and I just want to encourage—don’t have any members left here—all members on both sides of the aisle, look at our bill, read our bill, study our bill. Hearing: Stopping the Daily Border Caravan: Time to Build a Policy Wall, Border and Maritime Security Subcommittee, Homeland Security Committee, May 22, 2018. Hearing: Homeland Security and Immigration, C-SPAN, May 15, 2018. Witness: Kirstjen Nielsen - Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security   14:00 Kirstjen Nielsen: If you try to enter our country without authorization, you’ve broken the law. The attorney general has declared that we will have zero tolerance for all illegal border crossings, and I stand by that. Anyone crossing the border illegally or filing a fraudulent asylum claim will be detained, referred for criminal prosecution, and removed from the United States, as appropriate. 36:45 Senator John Hoeven (ND): You know, when you do detain, apprehend, unaccompanied children coming across the border, as well as others, what are you doing to try to address the adjudication process, which is such a bottleneck in terms of trying to address this issue? You know, I know you’re short there. What can you do and what are you doing to try to adjudicate these individuals? Kirstjen Nielsen: So, as I continue to find out every day, our immigration process is very complex, as you well know, and involves many, many departments. What we’ve tried to do is look at it from an end-to-end approach. So in the example you just gave, there’s actually about three or four different processes that those groups would undertake. So in some cases we need additional immigration judges—DOJ’s working on that. In some cases we need additional processes and agreements with other parts of the interagency family—we’ve done that, for example, with HHS to make sure that we’re appropriately taking care of UACs in their custody. And then there’s other parts who, depending on if they’re referred for prosecution, we hand them over to the marshals—we want to make sure that that’s a process that works. And then in some cases we use alternates to detention. As you know, rather than detaining them, we will have check-ins; in some cases, ankle bracelets; but other ways to make sure that we have them detained while they’re awaiting their removal proceedings. Sen. Hoeven: Is that working? Nielsen: It does work. It does work. It’s a good combination. We do it on a case-by-case basis. There’s lots of criteria that we look at to determine when that’s appropriate and when that’s not appropriate. But, again, I think it’s some of the opening remarks perhaps the chairman made, if you look at UACs, 66% of those who receive final orders, receive the final orders purely because they never showed up for court. And we find that we’re only able to remove 3.5% of those who should be removed, who a judge has said has a final. So, if we can track them, it’s a much more efficient process while we wait for the final adjudication. 55:58 Senator Kamala Harris (CA): I also asked that I be provided with what training and procedures are being given to CBP officers as it relates to how they are instructed to carry out family separation. I’ve not received that information. Do you have that today? Kirstjen Nielsen: No. You have not asked me for it, so I do not have it, but— Sen. Harris: No, I asked you for it. Nielsen: —I’m happy to give it to you. Sen. Harris: Okay. So, again, by the end of next week, please. Nielsen: Can you explain a little more what you’re looking for? Sen. Harris: Sure. So, your agency will be separating children from their parents, and I would assume— Nielsen: No. What we’ll be doing is prosecuting parents who’ve broken the law, just as we do every day in the United States of America. Sen. Harris: I can appreciate that, but if that parent has a four-year-old child, what do you plan on doing with that child? Nielsen: The child, under law, goes to HHS for care and custody. Sen. Harris: They will be separated from their parent. Answer my question. Nielsen: Just like we do in the United States every day. Sen. Harris: So, they will be separated from their parent. And my question, then, is, when you are separating children from their parents, do you have a protocol in place about how that should be done? And are you training the people who will actually remove a child from their parent on how to do that in the least-traumatic way? I would hope you do train on how to do that. And so the question is, and the request has been, to give us the information about how you are training and what the protocols are for separating a child from their parent. Nielsen: I’m happy to provide you with the training information. Sen. Harris: Thank you. 57:25 Senator Kamala Harris (CA): And what steps are being taken, if you can tell me, to ensure that once separated, parent and child, that there will be an opportunity to at least sustain communication between the parent and their child? Kirstjen Nielsen: The children are at HHS, but I’m happy to work with HHS to get you an answer for that. 1:57:50 Senator Kamala Harris (CA): Regarding detention conditions. Secretary, are you aware that multiple federal oversight bodies, such as the OIG and the GAO, have documented medical negligence of immigrants in the detention system, in particular that ICE has reported 170 deaths in their custody since 2003? Are you familiar with that? Kirstjen Nielsen: No, ma’am. Sen. Harris: Are you aware that they also found that pregnant women in particular receive insufficient medical attention while in custody, resulting in dehydration and even miscarriages? Nielsen: I do not believe that is a current assessment of our detention facilities. Sen. Harris: Okay. Can you please submit to this committee a current assessment? Nielsen: Yeah, I’m happy to. Sen. Harris: On that point? Nielsen: So, we provide neonatal care. We do pregnancy screening from ages 15 to 56. We provide outside specialists should you seek it. We do not detain any women past their third trimester. Once they enter their third trimester, we provide them separate housing. So, yes, we’re happy to detail all of the things we do to take good care of them. Sen. Harris: And did you submit that to the OIG in response to their findings? Nielsen: We have been in—yes, of course—working in conjunction with the OIG. I’m not sure exactly what the date is of the OIG report that you’re referencing, but I will look into it after this. Sen. Harris: Okay. And then also, between fiscal year ’12 and March of 2018, it’s our understanding—before I go on—the OIG report is from December of this past year, 2017. So it’s very recent. Five months ago? Also between FY ’12 and March 2018, ICE received, according to these reports, 1,448 allegations of sexual abuse in detention facilities, and only a small percent of these claims have been investigated by DHS, OIG. Are you familiar with that? Nielsen: I’m not familiar with that number, no. News Report: Raw Video: Sessions Says 'Zero Tolerance' for Illegal Border Crossings, CBS Local San Francisco, May 7, 2018. Attorney General Jeff Sessions Today we are here to send a message to the world: we are not going to let this country be overwhelmed. People are not going to caravan or otherwise stampede our border. We need legality and integrity in the system. That’s why the Department of Homeland Security is now referring 100 percent of illegal Southwest Border crossings to the Department of Justice for prosecution. And the Department of Justice will take up those cases. I have put in place a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal entry on our Southwest border. If you cross this border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you. It’s that simple. Attorney General Jeff Sessions - In order to carry out these important new enforcement policies, I have sent 35 prosecutors to the Southwest and moved 18 immigration judges to the border. These are supervisory judges that don’t have existing caseloads and will be able to function full time on moving these cases. That will be about a 50 percent increase in the number of immigration judges who will be handling the asylum claims." Hearing: Oversight of HHS and DHS Efforts to Protect Unaccompanied Alien Children from Human Trafficking and Abuse, U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, April 26, 2018. Witnesses:  James McCament - Deputy Under Secretary of the Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans at the Dept. of Homeland Security Steven Wagner - Acting Assistant Secratary for Administration for Children and Facilities at the Dept. of Health and Human Services Kathryn Larin - Director of Education, Workforce, and Income Security Team at the U.S. Government Accountability Office   15:47 Senator Rob Portman (OH): In 2015, I learned the story of eight unaccompanied minors from Guatemala who crossed our southern border. A ring of human traffickers had lured them to the United States. They’d actually gone to Guatemala and told their parents that they would provide them education in America and to pay for the children’s smuggling debt. The parents actually gave the traffickers the deeds to their homes. And the traffickers retained those until the children could work off that debt, because they weren’t interested in giving them education, it turned out; they were interested in trafficking them. When the children crossed our border, their status, as defined by federal immigration law, was that of an unaccompanied alien child, or a UAC, so you hear the term UAC used today. The Department of Homeland Security picked them up, and following protocol, transferred them to Department of Health and Human Services. HHS was then supposed to place these children with sponsors who would keep them safe until they could go through the appropriate immigration legal proceedings. That’s practice. That didn’t happen. What did happen is that HHS released these children back into the custody of those human traffickers without vetting them. Let me repeat. HHS actually placed these children back in the hands the traffickers. The traffickers then took them to an egg farm in Marion, Ohio, where these children lived in squalid conditions and were forced to work 12 hours a day, six, seven days a week, for more than a year. The traffickers threatened the children and their families with physical harm and even death if the children didn’t perform these long hours. This subcommittee investigated. We found HHS didn’t do background checks on the sponsors. HHS didn’t respond to red flags that should have alerted them to problems with the sponsors. For example, HHS missed that a group of sponsors were collecting multiple UACs, not just one child but multiple children. HHS didn’t do anything when a social worker provided help for one of those children, or tried to at least, and the sponsor turned the social worker away. During the investigation, we held a hearing in January 2016—so this goes back a couple years—where HHS committed to do better, understanding that this was a major problem. 2016, of course that was during the Obama administration, so this has gone on through two administrations now. HHS committed to clarifying the Department of Homeland Security and HHS responsibilities for protecting these children. HHS and DHS entered into a three-page memorandum of agreement, which said that the agencies recognized they should ensure that these unaccompanied alien children weren’t abused or trafficked. The agreement said the agencies would enter into a detailed joint concept of operations—so an agreement that’d actually lay out their responsibilities—that would spell out what the agencies would do to fix the problems. HHS and DHS gave themselves a deadline of February 2017 to have this joint concept of operations pulled together. That seemed like plenty of time to do it, but it wasn’t done, and that was over a year ago, February 2017. It’s now April 2018. We don’t have that joint concept of operations—so-called JCO—and despite repeated questions from Senator Carper and from me as well as our staffs over the past year, we don’t have any answers about why we don’t have the joint concept of operations. In fact, at a recent meeting a DHS official asked our investigators why we even cared about a JCO, why. And let me be clear: we care about the JCO because we care that we have a plan in place to protect these kids when they are in government custody. We care because the Government Accountability Office has said that DHS has sent children to the wrong facility because of miscommunications with HHS, and because of other concerns. We care because the agencies themselves thought it was important enough to set a deadline for the JCO but then blew past that date. We care because these kids, regardless of immigration status, deserve to be properly treated, not abused or trafficked. We learned at 4 p.m. yesterday that 13 days ago there was an additional memorandum of agreement reached between the two agencies. We requested and finally received a copy of that new agreement at midnight last night. It’s not the JCO that we’ve been waiting for, but it is a more general statement of how information will be shared between the two agencies. Frankly, we had assumed this information was already being shared and maybe it was, and it’s positive that we have this additional memorandum—that’s great. It’s nice that this hearing motivated that to happen, but it’s not the JCO we’ve all been waiting for. 45:05 Kathryn Larin: In 2015, we reported that the interagency process to refer unaccompanied children from DHS to ORR shelters was inefficient and vulnerable to error. We recommended that DHS and HHS develop a joint collaborative process for the referral and placement of unaccompanied children. In response, the agencies recently developed a memorandum of agreement that provides a framework for coordinating responsibilities. However, it is still under review and has not yet been implemented. 1:27:34 Senator Heidi Heitkamp (ND): It’s HHS. This is not a new problem. We’ve been at this a long time. Where are these kids, why don’t we know where they are, and how come after months of investigation by this committee we don’t seem to be getting any better answers, Mr. Wagner? Steven Wagner: The answer to your question depends on what sort of timeframe you’re talking about. If you’re talking about the 30 days after release to a sponsor that we have determined to be qualified to provide for the care and safety and wellbeing of the kid, I think in the vast majority, I think we’re getting pretty close to 100% of those cases we know where they are. When you’re talking about as time goes on, things change. Yes, kids run away. No, we do not have a capacity for tracking down runaway UACs who leave their sponsors. Sen. Heitkamp: What do you think would happen in the IV-E program—the IV-E program is a federally sponsored funding for foster care that the states access to pay for foster-care kids. That’s IV-E. In order to get that money, you have to be a responsible state and know. What would happen, do you think, with IV-E dollars in a state that said, you know, we know where they are. We turned them over to a foster parent. We didn’t do any—I mean, as we know, not a lot of home visits, not a lot of followup. And if they ran away, we don’t know. What do you think you guys would do with the IV-E program in a state that had that kind of response? Wagner: Senator, you’re constructing an additional legal responsibility, which, in our view, does not currently exist with the UAC program. Our legal responsibility is to place these children in suitable households. In the IV-E program— Sen. Heitkamp: And then forget about. Wagner: —it would be a crisis. And there is—every state has a child-protective service agency to deal with those situations. We don’t have that apparatus. Sen. Heitkamp: And so if they—and you have no intention of creating that apparatus. You have no intention of having a database—I do need to understand where you think your lines of jurisdiction are. So you have no intention of ever trying to solve the problem of, here we gave the kid to the guy who said he was her uncle. We gave them to the uncle, and we found that was okay. And now we told the state maybe, or we didn’t tell the state, and good luck to that 15-year-old who went to her uncle. Wagner: I don’t agree with your characterization of the decision-making process. However, you know, this is an expensive program. Our duty is to execute the will of Congress and the president, which we will do faithfully. Sen. Heitkamp: Well, I think our duty is— Wagner: If you tell us you want us to track down— Sen. Heitkamp: I think our duty is a little more humanitarian than that, but can you tell me that in every case you notify the state agency that you have placed a minor in the custody of a suitable sponsor? Wagner: No, Senator. Sen. Heitkamp: Yeah. Wagner: It’s not our procedure to place state— Sen. Heitkamp: But you’re telling me that the backdrop—you’re telling me that the backdrop, the protection for that kid now falls on the state, even though you don’t even give the state the courtesy of telling them where they are. 1:51:28 Senator Rob Portman (OH): Let me back up for a second if I could and talk about what I said at the outset which is this hearing is an opportunity for us to try to get more accountability in the system and to tighten up the loose ends, and we’ve heard so many today, the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. And, of course, the focus has been on this joint concept of operations. Because of that, we’ve been working on this with you all for 26 months, over two years. And, again, you promised in your own memorandum of agreement that you would have that completed over a year ago, and still, as of today, it’s not completed. I appreciate that Mr. Wagner said that—and true, at midnight last night we received this additional memorandum of agreement, and I do think information sharing is a good thing, but what we’re looking for is what I thought you were looking for, which is an understanding of how this is actually going to operate and who’s accountable. Because we don’t know who’s responsible and accountable and what the plans are, it’s impossible for us to do our oversight and for us in the end of the day to be sure that this system is working properly for the kids but also for immigration system. So I would ask you today, it’s been 14 months since you promised it, do you have it with you today? Yes or no. Mr. McCament? James McCament: I do not have it with me, ______(01:11). Sen. Portman: Mr. Wagner. Steven Wagner: No, sir. Sen. Portman: Okay. What’s your commitment to getting this done now? So we’re 26 months into it. We’ve over a year past your previous commitment. What’s your commitment you’re going to make to us today as to when this joint concept of operations agreement will be completed? Mr. McCament. McCament: Mr. Chairman, when—being apprised and learning about the significant amount of time, we will be ready as partnership with HHS. As soon as we look at, receive the draft back, we’ll work as expeditiously as possible. I know that that is not to the extent of a time line, but I will tell you that we are ready, and we want to partner actively. You are correct that the MOA is part of that commitment—it is not all. The JCO memorializes our procedures that we already do, but it does not have them collated in one place. Work as expeditiously as possible _____(02:07). Sen. Portman: You make it sound so simple, and you’re also pointing the finger at your colleague here, which has been our problem. McCament: _____(02:15) Sen. Portman: Mr. Wagner, give me a timeframe. Wagner: Sir, we have to incorporate the new MOA in the draft JCO. Honestly, we are months away, but I promise to work diligently to bring it to a conclusion. 1:57:15 Senator Rob Portman (OH): Okay, we learned this morning that about half, maybe up to 58%, of these kids who are being placed with sponsors don’t show up at the immigration hearings. I mean, they just aren’t showing up. So when a sponsor signs the sponsorship agreement, my understanding is they commit to getting these children to their court proceedings. Is that accurate, Mr. Wagner? Steven Wagner: That is accurate. And in addition, they go through the orientation on responsibilities of custodians. Sen. Portman: So, when a child does not show up, HHS has an agreement with the sponsor that has been violated, and HHS, my understanding, is not even notified if the child fails to show up to the proceedings. Is that accurate? Wagner: That is accurate, Senator. Sen. Portman: So you have an agreement with the sponsor. They have to provide this agreement with you, HHS. The child doesn’t show up, and you’re not even notified. So I would ask you, how could you possibly enforce the commitment that you have, the agreement that you have, with the sponsor if you don’t have that information? Wagner: I think you’re right. We have no mechanism for enforcing the agreement if they fail to show up for the hearing. Hearing: Immigration Court System, Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Border Security, C-SPAN, April 18, 2018. Hearing: Strengthening and Reforming America's Immigration Court System, Subcommittee on Border Security and Immigration, April 18, 2018. Witnesses: James McHenry - Director of the Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review   2:42 Senator John Cornyn (TX): Earlier administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have struggled with how to reduce the case backlogs in the immigration courts. And, unfortunately, Congress has never provided the full extent of immigration judges and support staff truly needed to eliminate the backlogs. As a result, backlogs continue to grow, from 129,000 cases in fiscal 1998 to a staggering 684,000 as of February 2018. 3:27 Senator John Cornyn (TX): Aliens in removal proceedings sometimes wait for years before they ever appear before an immigration judge. For example, as of February 2018 courts in Colorado have the longest time for cases sitting on their docket more than 1,000 days—almost three years. In my home state of Texas, the current wait is 884 days—almost two and a half years. 7:06 Senator Dick Durbin (IL): The Fifth Amendment to the Bill of Rights contains the Constitution’s due-process clause. Let me quote it. “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” This language about due process actually dates its lineage to the Magna Carta. Please note: the due-process clause extends these critical protections to a “person,” not to a citizen. And the Supreme Court has consistently held that its protection—due-process protection—extends to all persons in the United States. The Court said expressly in Plyler v. Doe, “Aliens, even aliens whose presence in this country is unlawful, have long been recognized as ‘persons’ guaranteed due process of law by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.” 9:23 Senator Dick Durbin (IL): Today, 334 immigration judges face 680,000 pending cases. This backlog has grown by 145,000 cases just since President Trump was sworn into office. 28:45 James McHenry: A typical immigration court proceeding has two stages, or two parts. The first is the determination of removability. The Department of Homeland Security brings charges and allegations that an alien has violated the immigration laws. The judge—the immigration judge—first has to determine whether that charge is sustained, and that will be based on the factual allegations that are brought, so the judge will make determinations on that. If there is a finding that the alien is removable, then the case proceeds to a second phase. If the judge finds the alien is not removable, then the case is terminated. At the second phase, the immigration judge gives the alien an opportunity to apply for any protection or relief from removal that he or she may be eligible for under the Immigration and Nationality Act. This will involve the setting of a separate hearing at which the respondent may present evidence, they may present witnesses, they have the right to cross-examine witnesses brought by the department, and they will bring up whatever factual bases there is for their claim of relief or protection. At the end of that hearing, the immigration judge will assess the evidence, will asses the testimony, will look at the law, and will render a decision. The judge may either grant the application, in which case the respondent will get to remain in the United States. The judge may deny the application but give the respondent an opportunity to voluntarily depart at their own expense and sometimes after paying a bond, or the immigration judge may order the alien removed. 41:50 Senator Mike Lee (UT): I believe you recently testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee that it would take about 700 immigration judges in order to be able to address the backlog and address the current case load. Is that correct? James McHenry: Yeah, last fall the president proposed adding additional immigration judges, up to a number of 700. If we can get 700 on board, especially with our performance measures, we could complete over 450,000 cases a year. That would eviscerate the backlog. Sen. Lee: So, 700 would do it. McHenry: Based on the current numbers, it would certainly go a very long way toward eliminating it, yes. Sen. Lee: How many do you have right now? McHenry: We have 334 on board. Currently, we’re authorized, based on the recent omnibus spending bill, for up to 484. Even getting to that number would allow us to begin completing more cases than new receipts that we have in. Sen. Lee: How long does that normally take? My understanding is that between 2011 and 2016 it was taking about two years to hire a typical immigration judge. Is that still the case? McHenry: No. We have reduced that average. The attorney general issued a new hiring process memo to streamline the process last April. In using that process, we’ve put out five advertisements since the end of June for up to 84 positions in total. The first of those advertisements closed at the end of June last year. We expect to bring on the first judges from that advertisement in May, which will be right at approximately 10 months, and we anticipate bringing on the rest of them in July, which will be right at one year. And we think we can get to a stage where we are bringing on judges in eight months, 10 months, 12 months—a year at the most. Community Suggestions See more Community Suggestions HERE. Cover Art Design by Only Child Imaginations Music Presented in This Episode Intro & Exit: Tired of Being Lied To by David Ippolito (found on Music Alley by mevio)  

March 22: Last Night at the Spur-Last Night for LeeThe decision has been made to fire Lee after tonight's gig. It's a sad but necessary thing. After some discussion, it is determined that it is Dave's turn to fire the drummer (John fired Bob, Kevin Fired Jesse). Dave has recently gone through some assertiveness training at work and feels this will be a nice “final exam” to his training. We all look forward to a band without Lee, but no one enjoys hurting Lee (well maybe John ha ha).The band sets up in record time. It's nice to be able to sit down for a full 45 minutes before we play. As usual, it's cold in the Spur, and Lee sits apart from the band. The first two sets are tight, and sounding good. This has one fan Geoff Rowlands greeting the band in between sets. It's Geoff's birthday and he came to the Tangled Spur because he knew we were going to be here. He is ON FIRE about the band. He has his picture taken with the band (a slight hint of irony as it will soon be outdated). He tells Dave how he came in a few weeks ago, and when he saw that we weren't there, he turned around and walked out. At one point Geoff takes a flyer and notices that Seth's name is missing (old flyer design was mistakenly given to the Spur). Upon filling in the missing blanks on the flyer, Geoff walks into the bathroom. While Geoff is still in listening distance Lee blurts out, “What a Freak!” (Nice!). That's right Lee, the one thing we don't want is people who REALLY THINK WE KICK ASS. Geoff hands Seth his address and wants to be put our mailing list (mental note to Dave - start mailing list).The drumming is all over the place. Lee stops the song Little Rock for the second week in a row in the wrong place. His playing has been taking a steady decline for the past few months regardless of any comments from the band (slow down - in slow songs). With this kind of playing, he's going to make tonight's dismissal easy.By the third set, the band's batteries start to go low. A few slip ups here and there. Dave goes into “la la” land during Ain't going Down ‘till the Sun Comes Up. Dave also gets distracted as Kris decides to dance with a scum bag. John draws a blank in My Maria. My Maria goes over very well at this bar (after kind of falling flat at Cappy's). John's wife Rhonda surprises us all as she jumps up on stage an sings back up on Mercury Blues. Erin Tippin's biggest fan is at the bar tonight so the band pulls Ain't Nothing Wrong with the Radio and Workin Man's Ph.D. out of their butt. The crowd is much more rock-oriented and wants to hear Sweet Home Alabama or any Lynard Skynard tunes. We probably should learn one frickin Skynard tune. We have groups of drunken men who are blitzed strutting their drunkenness on the dance floor. One guy actually performs the “Watermelon Crawl.” At the end of the evening, many people stop to tell us how good we are- cool.The band rips down in record time and gets back to the house. A dark cloud looms over the house.In the basement, the band distributes the $275 that they made at the Tangled Spur. The band has perched themselves on miscellaneous speakers and such. They all stare at the floor. It's time for Dave to fire Lee. A brief pause. Then Dave starts his speech. He wants to avoid any arguing. He doesn't want to hurt Lee (but knows this will). Rather than tell him he sucks, Dave decides to focus that he just doesn't “fit” in with the band's vision. When he open's his mouth, this is what comes out:Dave: “Well we do have some band news, to talk over here, and basically Lee it deals mainly with you.Um, the fact the you used to beat us here to practice... and that time is no more. (Lee nods in agreement).There was a time, in all honesty, that you knew songs better than Me and Kevin and John, who had been playing them for months, - that time is no more.Lee: “Uh, huh.”There was time when, uh, you know... your attitude ... you're ... you're a lot happier to be in this band than some of us were. And I don't know, lately it just doesn't seem that way... and then ...... it's like lately ..... the last couple of weeks... especially last week...I know you said that one thing to that one customer about you know, “You better get on your knees and pray for a fuckin' miracle if we're gonna learn a new song.” And yet you were the one that months ago I heard out of your mouth say... you know, that, “This is a business and we have to treat it like a business” ........so ........We thought about this a lot. We talked it over as a band, and you're a good drummer and you're gonna to fit, but basically, we just don't think we can move forward with, with your attitude - and not so much your attitude- your..your. just......... a difference of opinion on how to...to run the band and ...and..basically we want to basically divide up the drum set give you your cymbals and..and thank you for the time you've been here. Um,,,,,”Lee: “You give me my drum heads too then?”Dave: “Well the heads you basically wore out.”Lee: “Oh,”Dave: “I mean you're basically leaving the drum set the way you found it.. is how we want to do that.”Lee: “Whatever.”Dave: “Um...You know it's like I said,...your..your just the.. the direction we want to go, we just don't think that's where you want to go...from your actions and things like that...so...........with that .....(long pause).....”Lee: “So in other words, I'm terminated.”Dave: “Pretty much, yeah.”Lee: “All right, well...”It turns out that Lee has the band's cymbals at his house. While we had hoped to make this the last interaction with Lee, there will be one more. A swapping of equipment. This will happen this week sometime.Lee goes upstairs. A silence fills the air. The four remaining members stare at each other. It's over.The band is slightly puzzled at the lack of fight. It made things easy. Lee didn't offer one - not one- excuse, plead, anything. He uttered the typical drummer response to getting fired: “Whatever.”January 15, 1996:Kevin explains how it's not due to a lack of talent, but just a difference of opinion in how the band should sound. Jesse responds with, “Whatever. Do what you want.”Upstairs the band discusses the actions taken with Maria and Kris. Dave had recorded the firing (again the assertiveness training) and thought if it went bad he could use it as a learning tool. We all feel bad. More for the fact that Lee is kind of used to being fired (he's gone through a quite a few jobs during his stay). The band tries to make themselves feel better by reminding it was Lee's actions that he CHOSE to do, (repeatedly) that lead us to fire him. The lack of rebellion in his response leads everyone to believe that he really didn't want to be in this band.We recall some of his biggest blunders (again possibly trying to make ourselves feel better). We talk about the fact that Ron (the awesome drummer from a few weeks back) has turned us down. He has given us a number of a high school student (NOT!). Dave will be in touch with Jack Beam this week. Kevin will be getting a number for the drummer of the band “Little Country” who has recently quit. We have a few leads, so we're not too worried. We know in the long run, this will be for the best. With a glimpse of Ron, we also know how much better we can become.We're all glad to have a break. This will give us a chance to rework the song list. Scout the competition and bars, and get ready for our next move. Our next gig is May 31 for some outdoor festival. We will also have to start planning for Kevin's departure later this Summer.March 25: Jack Beam Comes to JamJack comes over to audition for a temporary position. His attitude is awesome, as is his playing. He is just a talented as Ron. With Jack's position being “I want to be temporary” it makes no real sense for him to join at this point. We still have time to find a drummer. It's too bad he couldn't join for real.The band has to put out an extra 22 bucks for drum gear (Sticks and a high hat clutch) to replace the stuff the Lee “forgot” to leave behind.Later in the week ,Lee calls Kevin to again stress how he wants his heads back. Kevin tells him to call John. John basically says that Lee STOLE our clutch, and that we will call it even. This should be the last we hear of Lee.

No one really knows what Donald Trump plans to do as US Commander in Chief, but the United States' most influential war mongers have a plan. In this episode, hear the highlights from a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing - a hearing that was kept off of C-SPAN and had no one in attendance - and get some insight into the advice our next President will be given to direct our nation at war. Please support Congressional Dish: Click here to contribute with PayPal or Bitcoin; click the PayPal "Make it Monthly" checkbox to create a monthly subscription Click here to support Congressional Dish for each episode via Patreon Mail Contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North #4576 Crestview, FL 32536 Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Hearing Highlighted in this Episode Emerging U.S. Defense Challenges and Worldwide Threats, Senate Armed Services Committee, December 6, 2016 Witnesses Robert Kagan Served in the State Department in the Reagan administration Co-founder of the Project for a New American Century, a think tank that laid out a plan for the United States to use our massive military to force a global order centered around American control. Served on the 25 member State Department Foreign Affairs Policy Board under Hillary Clinton & John Kerry. Current: Senior Fellow, Project on International Order and Strategy, The Brookings Institution Current: Board of Directors for the Foreign Policy Initiative Family: "First Family of Military Interventionists” Married to Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State, European & Eurasian Affairs in the Obama administration Father: Donald Kagan, Yale professor and co-chairman of the Project for a New American Century report outlining the global dominance plan Brother: Frederick Kagan, military historian & author, member of the American Enterprise Institute and Project for a New American Century. Was co-architect of the surge (with General Keane) Sister in law: Kimberly Kagan, President at the Institute for the Study of War General Jack Keane Chairman, Institute for the Study of War Former Vice Chief of Staff of the Army during the key Bush years, 1999-2003. Board of Directors at General Dynamics Shawn Brimley Executive Vice President and Director of Studies, the Center for a New American Century National Security Council from Feb 2011-October 2012 Research Associate at CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) from April 2005-Feb 2007 Columnist at War on the Rocks Council on Foreign Relations member *Clip transcripts below Sound Clip Sources YouTube: Julian Assange tells RT that the Russian government was not the source of Clinton campaign emails, posted November 5, 2016. YouTube: Julian Assange on Dutch television program Nieuwsuur to talk about the danger to their sources and the murder of Seth Rich, posted August 9, 2016. Local News Story: 27-Year-Old DNC Staffer Seth Rich Shot, Killed in Northwest DC by Pat Collins and Andrea Swalec, NBC Washington DC, July 11, 2016. Additional Reading Book: The Pentagon's New Map by Thomas P.M. Barnett, May 2005. Article: Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House by Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima, and Greg Miller, December 9, 2016. Article: Army accelerates Active Protection Systems technology by Kris Osborn, Defense Systems, October 13, 2016. Press Release: Artis announces Army APS contract award, Business Wire (Berkshire Hathaway), September 28, 2016. Article: Seth Rich: Inside the Killing of the DNC Staffer by Jeff Stein, Newsweek, August 20, 2106. Twitter: Wikileaks offers $20,000 reward for information about Seth Rich's murder Article: Debbie Wasserman Shultz to Resign D.N.C. Post by Jonathan Martin and Alan Rappeport, New York Times, July 24, 2016. Article: Wasserman Shultz immediately joins Clinton campaign after resignation by Victor Morton, The Washington Times, July 24, 2016. Article: Army Pushes Missile Defense For Tanks: MAPS by Sydney Freedberg, Breaking Defense, April 25, 2016. Article: How Hillary Clinton Became a Hawk by Mark Landler, New York Times, April 21, 2016. Email: John Podesta & Staff email his username & password, Wikileaks document, February 9, 2015 Blog post: Iron Curtain: Active Protective System (APS), by the editors of RicardCYoung.com, May 30, 2013. Miscellaneous Sources Webpage: Federal Spending: Where Does the Money Go Recommended Podcast Episodes CD108: Regime Change CD102: The World Trade Organization: COOL? CD093: Our Future in War Jen's appearance on The Sea Hawkers Podcast, November 16, 2016. Hearing Clip Transcipts {18:30} Chairman John McCain: Our next president will take office as the U.S. confronts the most diverse and complex array of global security challenges since the end of the Second World War. Great power competition, once thought a casualty of the end of history, has returned as Russia and China have each challenged the rules-based order that is the foundation of our security and prosperity. Rogue states like North Korea and Iran are undermining regional stability while developing advanced military capabilities that threaten the United States and our allies. Radical Islamist terrorism continues to pose a challenging threat to our security at home and our interests abroad, and the chaos that has spread across the Middle East, and on which our terrorist enemies thrive, has torn apart nations; destroyed families; killed hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children; and sent millions more running for their lives. But today—today—President Obama will deliver a speech in Florida, touting his counter-terrorism successes. I’m not making that up. Ugh. Yet, even a glimpse at the chaos enveloping the Middle East and spreading throughout the world reveals the delusion and sophistry of this president and his failed policies. In short, when our next president is inaugurated, just six weeks from now, he will look out on a world on fire and have several consequential strategic choices to make: how to address Russian or Chinese aggression, how to confront threats from North Korean, whether to alter our relationship with Iran, how to improve and quicken our campaign against ISIL, how to counter the instability radiating from Syria, how to ensure a victory in the war in Afghanistan, and I could go on, not to mention the overwhelming challenge of cybersecurity. Our next president will not have the benefit of time and cautious deliberation to set a new strategic course for the nation; that work begins with a series of decisions that will present themselves immediately on day one. That’s why it’s so important to get these things right from the outset. As we ponder these strategic questions, we must also consider our military posture around the world. We must decide the appropriate military presence in Europe and reverse reductions made by the Obama administration under the assumption that Russia was a partner. We also need a fresh look at further steps to enhance U.S. presence in the Asia-Pacific region. We need to uphold our commitments to allies and partners, including by finally providing lethal assistance to Ukraine and standing by the opposition in Syria. We need to push back against the spread of Iranian malign influence in the Middle East. This starts in Iraq where the eventual liberation of Mosul will intensify the sectarian struggle for power and identity. We need to finally give our troops in Afghanistan what they need to succeed—permanent and flexible authorities to engage the enemy and troop levels based on security conditions on the ground. Here at home we need to return to a strategy-based defense budget. Our next president would need more than $100 billion over and above the Budget Control Act caps just to execute our current defense strategy, which is insufficient since it predates Russian invasion of Ukraine and ISIL’s rampage across Syria and Iraq. This will require our next president to negotiate a broad bipartisan agreement on the budget that brings an end to the dangerous and misguided Budget Control Act. {30:50} General Jack Keane: I’m delighted to be here with Dr. Kagan, a good friend, and let me just say something about Dr. Kagan here and his family. His father, himself, his wife, his brother, and his sister-in-law all made— Sen. John McCain?: All have exceeded—Keane: —a great contribution to this country, believe me. {35:45} Gen. Jack Keane: The reality is we need more combat brigades. The reality is we need more ships. The reality is we need more aircraft. It’s indisputable. {37:20} Gen. Jack Keane: The United States has not fielded a single active protection system on a tank yet or any other combat vehic— But your committee has mandated they do it, and you put some money in there for them to do it. Now, listen, if you don’t know what active protection system is, let me take you through it for a second. You put sensors on a vehicle that track an incoming round to the vehicle, and as the round is about to hit the vehicle, you actually have a kill system on the vehicle that kills the round before it hits. Brilliant technology. Where do we get all of that from? Private sector. It has to do with microchip technology and incredible software programs. Out there on a private sector, smart guys, small-business guys, got it; DARPA had a program over ten years ago to look at this; technology’s proven, and the United States military ground forces still haven’t put it on anything. What’s wrong with that? It has nothing to do with money. It doesn’t have anything to do with the White House. It doesn’t have anything to do with Congress. It doesn’t have anything to do with OSD. You know what it is? It’s the damn bureaucracy inside the Army. They push back on new technology because they want to design it themselves because you give them money to do it. These are the laboratories and the tech bases. It’s the acquisition bureaucracy that stalls this. When I was vice chief of staff for the Army, I had no idea about all of that, and it took me a year or two to figure out what I was really dealing with—bureaucrats and technocrats that were stalling the advance of a great army. That’s out there, and you’ve got to bore into that with this committee. The military and Defense Department needs help to break down that bureaucracy. {43:20} Gen. Jack Keane: Let me just say something about the DOD business side of the House. Certainly, we are the best fighting force in the world; we are first rate at that. But we’re absolutely third rate at running the business-like functions of DOD because we’re not good at it; we don’t know enough to be good at it. We’re managing huge real estate portfolios. We’re managing huge lodging capabilities. We’re one of the biggest motel owners in the United States. We’re managing the largest healthcare enterprise in the world. The amount of maintenance that we’re doing from a pistol to an aircraft carrier is staggering. Those are all business functions. Business functions. They’re all non-core functions. And we’re also managing new product design and new product development, using business terms, and we don’t do well at this, and there’s a ton of money involved in it. We’ve got to get after that money, and we’ve got to do better at it. And I think we should bring in, as a number-two guy in the Department of Defense, a CEO from a Fortune 500 company in the last five years that’s done a major turnaround of a large organization. We need business people to help us do this. We need a CFO, not a comptroller, in DOD. That CFO has the background that’s necessary to look at business practices in the DOD, where cost-basis analysis and performance, internal-controlled auditing, rigorous financial reviews, cost efficiency, and dealing with waste, those are the kinds of things we need—desperately need them because the money is there. You want to do so much more—some of that money is sitting right there in the budget. {46:55} Gen. Jack Keane: ISIS is the most successful terrorist organization that’s ever been put together. We’re making progress against them in Iraq, to be sure. We do not have an effective strategy to defeat them in Syria, because we don’t have an effective ground force. And we have no strategy to deal with the spread of ISIS to thirty-five other countries. I’m not suggesting for a minute that we’re involved in all of that, but I think we can tangibly help the people who are. {47:35} Gen. Jack Keane: In Iraq, we will retake Mosul. How long will depend on how much ISIS wants to resist; they didn’t resist in Fallujah and Ramadi that much. But after we take Mosul, if we have sectarian strife in Mosul, where we do not have unity of governance and unity of security, then that is going to contaminate the political unity and the country as a whole, which is so desperately needed. And that is a major issue for us. The major geopolitical issue for the United States and Iraq is political unity with their government and diminishing Iran’s strategic influence on Iraq. That is what we should be working on. {48:52} Gen. Jack Keane: The Syrian civil war, a major human catastrophe, to be sure, is a tractable problem, I think as any of us have had to deal with. The reality is we squandered the opportunities to change the momentum against the regime—I won’t list them all, and you’re aware of it—but right in front of us, I still believe we could put safe zones in there to safe guard some of those humans up near the Jordanian and Turkish border and that de facto would be a no-fly zone. I think it would also aid the Syrian moderates and likely attract some others to that movement. {49:49} Gen. Jack Keane: Afghanistan—let me just say, the war is not winnable under the current policy. We cannot win. And that’s the reality of it. We’ve got sanctuaries in Pakistan. No insurgency’s ever been defeated with sanctuaries outside the conflict area. Pakistani-Afghan national security forces do not have the enablers they need to be able to overcome the Taliban, who have resurged. {55:55} Robert Kagan: I want to talk about a subject that we don’t like to talk about in polite company, and it’s called world order. We naturally focus on threats to the homeland and our borders, and we talk about terrorism, as we must, as something that is obviously of utmost importance, has to be a top priority to protect the homeland. But as we look across the whole panoply of threats that we face in the world, I worry that it’s too easy to lose sight of what, to my mind, represent the greatest threats that we face over the medium- and long term and possibly even sooner than we may think, and that is the threat posed by the two great powers in the international system, the two great revisionist powers international system—Russia and China, because what they threaten is something that is in a way more profound, which is this world order that the United States created after the end of World War II—a global security order, a global economic order, and a global political order. This is not something the United States did as a favor to the rest of the world. It’s not something we did out of an act of generosity, although on historical terms it was a rather remarkable act of generosity. It was done based on what Americans learned in the first half of the twentieth century, which was that if there was not a power—whether it was Britain or, as it turned out, it had to be the United States—willing and able to maintain this kind of decent world order, you did not have some smooth ride into something else. What you had was catastrophe. What you had was the rise of aggressive powers, the rise of hostile powers that were hostile to liberal values. We saw it. We all know what happened with two world wars in the first half of the twentieth century and what those who were present at the creation, so to speak, after World War II wanted to create was an international system that would not permit those kinds of horrors to be repeated, and because the understanding was that while Americans believed very deeply in the 1920s and ’30s that they could be immune from whatever horrors happened out there in the world that it didn’t matter to them who ran Europe or who ran Asia or who did what to whom as long as we were safe, they discovered that that was not true and that ultimately the collapse of world order would come back and strike the United States in fundamental ways. And so Americans decided to take on an unusual and burdensome role of maintaining world order because the United States was the only power in the world that could do it, and the critical element of maintaining that world order was to maintain peace and stability in the two big cockpits of conflict that had destroyed the world and had produced repeated conflicts from the late nineteenth century onward, and that was Europe and Asia. The United States accomplished something that no other power had been able to accomplish before. It essentially put a cork in two areas that had been known for the constant warfare, put an end to an endless cycle of war between France and Germany, between Japan and China; and that was the stable world order that was created after World War II, that America gradually thrived in, that produced the greatest era of great-power peace that has been known in history, the greatest period of prosperity, the greatest period of the spread of democracy. {1:01:24} Robert Kagan We especially cannot take our eye off what I believe is ultimately the main game, which is managing these two revisionist powers and understanding what they seek. We cannot be under any illusions about Russia and China. We will find areas of cooperation with them—they both partake and benefit from and, in some case, sort of feed off of the liberal world order the United States has created—but let us never imagine that they are content with this order, that they do not seek fundamentally eventually upend this order, especially on the security side, to create a situation which they think ought to be the natural situation which is they being hegemonic in their own region. China has a historical memory of being hegemonic, dominant in its region. Russia has a historical memory, which Putin has expressed on numerous occasions, of restoring its empire, which stretched right into the heart of Central Europe. As far as they are concerned, the order that the United States has created is unfair, disadvantageous to them, temporary, and ought to be overturned. And I can only say that in the process of overturning that the history teaches that overturning does not occur peacefully. And so it should be our task both to prevent them from overturning it and to prevent them in a way that does not produce another catastrophic war. {1:04:00} Robert Kagan: It’s unfortunate that after these eight years in which this signal has been sent that during this political campaign, the president-elect comments during the campaign as well as those of his surrogates have only reinforced the impression that the United States is out of the world-order business—comments about whether the United States really should support NATO allies; comments about Estonia being in the suburbs of St. Petersburg; complaints about the need to defend Japan and is that an equitable thing; the fact that both candidates came out against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is really, in my eyes, a strategic deal more than a trade deal, designed to pull the United States and its Asian partners together. All the elements of this campaign have only sent even greater shockwaves throughout the world about what the United States stands for. So, in a certain sense, yes, the next administration has a big hole to dig out of; it also has to dig out of a hole, to some extent, of its own making. And so we need to see, in the early stages, in the very early stages, I would say, a clear repudiation of all that rhetoric; some clear signs that this new administration understands the importance not only of reassuring allies but a willingness to bolster our commitment to those allies, because after all, the challenge from the revisionist powers is increasing; therefore it’s not enough to say we’re committed to the defensive allies; we have to show that our capacities are increasing along with those of the increasing threat which, of course, gets to the defense budget, which I don’t have to talk to this committee about. {1:22:00} Robert Kagan: I’m very dubious that unless you actually increase the top line that you’re going to get what you need, because I just think, you know, you can only squeeze so far and be as brilliant as you can be. Brilliant is never going to be your answer, so I think the answer is there’s going to have to be more spending, and, you know, I’m not a budget expert at large either, but I would say we have to do whatever we need to do. We have to—if we need to raise taxes or we need to have some package that does that, if we need to find other ways of, you know, dealing problems like entitlement spending to do it, we have to do it. I mean, I lived through the Reagan years. There were increases in defense budget, which were offset by political bargains of one kind or another that required increases in domestic spending which led to increased defense budgets. We survived the—I mean, in overall deficits. We survived the deficits and won the Cold War. So I would say we are going to have to, as a nation, take this seriously enough to pay for it. {1:46:45} Senator Angus King: So selection of leaders is a crucial element, looking for innovative and willingness to move. Let me— Gen. Jack Keane: You’ve got to force the R&D effort, and you’ve got to talk to civilian—you’ve got to talk to defense industry on a regular basis because the defense industry is spending their time thinking about your function. They’re all also spending research dollars on it. You have to have regular communication with them. Let them know where you’re trying to go, bring them into it to help contribute to it, drive your own people to work with them as well. We can accelerate this process rather dramatically. King: And I would suggest that we have to. {1:50:00} Senator Joni Ernst: I would like to get your thoughts on ISIS in Southeast Asia because I do think it’s something that we haven’t spent a lot of time focusing on—we’re not talking about it nearly enough—and Islamic extremist groups in Southeast Asia, like the Abu Sayyaf group, they are all coming together under the flag of ISIS, and it’s a bit concerning. {1:52:20} Shawn Brimley: One of the tangible second-order benefits that we get from forward deploying our troops and capabilities overseas is we have that daily connectivity, and we have that daily deterrent prowess in places around the region. One of the debates that you see and hear inside the Pentagon, or one of the debates that we had inside the Pentagon as pertains to, say, the Marines in Darwin, for instance, is, you know, you start to break apart these larger entities, like a Marine Air-Ground Task Force, for instance, and you start to put a company here in Southern Philippines and put a task force of some kind in Australia. And there’s a tradeoff between doing that, which gives you that kind of daily interaction with local communities, the ability to do a counter-terrorism operations, for instance. But there is some risk that it becomes more difficult to quickly bring those capabilities back together for a larger threat, responding to a larger threat. And that’s the balance that DOD, particularly OSD, has to grapple with every day. {1:53:50} Senator Joni Ernst: General Keane, could you talk a little bit more about militarily what we could be doing in that region and the use of forces? * General Jack Keane*: Yeah, absolutely. And ISIS has expanded into 35 countries, and we don’t really have a strategy to deal with any of that. We’re focused on the territory that they took, certainly in Iraq and Syria, and I’m not saying that’s not appropriate—that should be a priority—but commensurate with that priority, we should be addressing these other areas as well. And a lot of the identification with ISIS is aspirational but they also have affiliates in these countries—this is one of them—and with an affiliate, they actually sign a document together to abide by certain ISIS principles and rules. And in some cases they direct, some cases they provide aid, but in most cases there’s no direction, and that’s largely the case here. But I believe what the United States can do with its allies is, you know, we’ve been at war with organizations like this now for 15 years, and our reservoir of knowledge and capability here is pretty significant, and it far exceeds anybody else in the world, but we have allies that are participating with us. There’s much we can do with them in sharing intelligence and helping them with training and also helping them with technology—not expensive technology, but things that can truly make a difference with those troops, and I don’t think we necessarily have to be directly involved in fighting these forces ourselves, but aiding and supporting these forces and having a strategy to do that— {1:57:55} Senator Jeanne Shaheen: You also talked about taking retaliatory action against Russia for what they’re doing. What kinds of efforts would you suggest we look at in terms of trying to retaliate or respond to what Russia’s doing in the United States? Robert Kagan: Well, I’m sure there’re people better equipped to answer that question than I am, but I would, you know, publish the Swiss bank accounts of all the oligarchs around. I mean, there are all kinds of things that you could do that would cause— Shaheen: Yeah, keep, keep saying a few— Kagan: Well, I mean— Shaheen: A few more of those because I think those are helpful. Kagan: You know, you could talk about all the ways in which you could reveal stuff about the way Putin has manipulated his own elections. I mean, there’s all kinds of stuff out there, which, if you were of a mind to do it, you could do that would be embarrassing of one kind or another. I mean, these people have money stashed all over the world. They have dachas, they have villas, etc. This is a kind of a Mafia organization where part of the game is everybody holding together. There are ways to create divisions and difficulties. I mean, I’m sure, as I say, there are people who could, if you put them to the task—and for all I know they have been put to the task—you could come up with a whole list of things. And, by the way, I wouldn’t make an announcement of it; they would understand what had happened. But until we do something like that, it’s just open season for them to do this, and so I think we need to treat this like any other weapons system that’s being deployed, because they are treating it like a weapons system. {2:00:32} Sen. Jeanne Shaheen: One of the things, General Keane, that you pointed out is that there is a predilection to try and kill some of the innovative programs so that the Pentagon can actually do those themselves. We had this experience with the Small Business Innovation Research program as we’re going into this NDAA because the initial effort was to try and increase the amount of money that DOD is making available to small businesses to do innovation, and I think we’ve heard from a number of panelists previously that this is one of the best research programs that still exists within—for small businesses to produce innovation that’s used by the Department of Defense. So, is this the kind of initiative that you’re talking about that there may be, for whatever reason, efforts to try and keep it from putting more money into that small-business effort to produce innovation?* Gen. Jack Keane*: I certainly encourage that. You know, the active protection system that I was talking about and that when DARPA made a call to the people to come forward and they knew that this would be an advanced technology that could actually change warfare, the contractor that the United States Army has gone to is a small-business contractor. So here’s this small-business contractor, conceptualized this capability themselves, and it will revolutionize combat warfare as we go forward. They also have technology, interesting enough, and they’ve brought military leaders out to see it, they can stop a bullet. In other words, a 50-caliber bullet, they can kill a bullet. And it’s all because of everything—all of this is available in the private sector. Microchip technology, as I mentioned, and unbelievable software apply to that technology. Well, that’s revolutionary technology that I just mentioned to you. It changes warfare. And so that is something we should be investing in. We should put money behind this. I have no affiliation with this organization—let’s get that straight. {2:05:27} Senator Mike Lee: For several decades, Congress, quite regrettably in my opinion, has deliberately abdicated many of its constitutional responsibilities, and it’s just sort of handed it over to the executive branch, being willing to take a backseat role—a backseat role, at best—in determining America’s role around the world and how we’re going to combat threats that face us. The result ends up being a foreign policy that is made primarily within the executive-branch bureaucracy and Washington-insider circles, informed, as they tend to be, by the interests and the aspirations of the so-called international community. This is a circle that increasingly becomes untethered from any clear lines of accountability, connecting policy, policy makers, and the American people. For instance, the U.S. military is currently operating in the Middle East under a very broad, I believe irresponsibly broad, interpretation of a 15-year-old authorization for the use of military force, using it as justification to engage in a pretty-broad range of actions, from intervening in two separate civil wars to propping up a failing Afghan government. Meanwhile, the executive branch seems increasingly inclined to choose and identify and engage threats through covert actions, and that further helps the executive branch to avoid the scrutiny that would be available if stronger Congressional oversight existed, and they avoid that kind of scrutiny and public accountability. This may be convenient for members of Congress who want nothing more than to just have someone else to blame for decisions that turn out to be unpopular or unsuccessful, but it’s an affront to the Constitution. And it’s more than that; it’s more than just an affront to a 229-year-old document—it’s an affront to the system of representative government that we have dedicated ourselves to as Americans, and I think it’s an insult to the American people who are losing patience with a foreign policy that they feel increasingly and very justifiably disconnected from, notwithstanding the fact that they’re still asked from time to time to send their sons and daughters into harm’s way to defend it. So as we discuss these emerging threats to our national security, I’d encourage this committee and all of my colleagues to prioritize the threat that will inevitably come to us if we continue to preserve this status quo and to exclude the American people and their elected representatives, in many cases ourselves, from the process. So I have a question for our panelists. One of the focuses of this committee has been on the readiness crisis within the military, brought about by the conflicts we’re facing in the Middle East and by a reduction in the amount of money that the Pentagon has access to. The easy answer to this is often, well, let’s just increase spending. That’s not to say that that’s not necessary now or in other circumstances in particular, but setting aside that, that is one approach that people often come up with. But another option that I think has to be considered, and perhaps ought to be considered first, is to reexamine the tasks and the priorities that we’re giving to our military leaders and to ask whether these purposes that we’re seeking readiness for are truly in the interest of the American people, those we’re representing, those who are paying the bill for this, and those who are asked to send their sons and daughters into harm’s way. * Sen. John McCain: Senator’s time has expired. *Lee: So,-- McCain: Senator’s time has expired. Lee: Could I just ask a one-sentence question, Mr. Chairman, to— McCain: Yes, but I would appreciate courtesy to the other members that have—make one long opening statement, it does not leave time for questions. Senator’s recognized for question. Lee: Okay. Do you believe that the Congress, the White House, and the executive branch agencies have done an adequate job in reaching consensus on what the American people’s interests are and on calibrating the military and diplomatic means to appropriate ends? {2:10:43} Robert Kagan: I don’t accept this dichotomy that you posited between what the Congress and the President do and what the American people want. I mean, when I think of some of the—first of all, historically, the executive has always had tremendous influence on foreign policy—whatever the Constitution may say, although the Constitution did give the executive tremendous power to make foreign policy. If you go back to Jefferson, the willingness to deploy force without Congressional approval, you can go all the way through 200 years of history, I’m not sure it’s substantially different, but in any case, that’s been the general prejudice. The Founders wanted energy in the executive and particularly in the conduct of foreign policy. That was the lesson of the Revolutionary War. That’s why they created a Constitution which particularly gave power to the executive. But also, I just don’t believe that the American people are constantly having things foisted on them that they didn’t approve of. So one of the most controversial things that’s happened, obviously, in recent decade that people talk about all the time is the Iraq war, which was voted on; debated at length in Congress; 72 to 28, I think was the vote, or something like that. The American people, public opinion, was in favor of it, just as the American people was in favor of World War I, the Spanish-American War later. These wars turn out to be bad or badly handled, the American people decide that it was a terrible idea, and then people start saying, well, who did this? And the American people want to find somebody to blame for doing these things; they don’t want to take responsibility for their own decisions. I don’t believe we have a fundamentally undemocratic way of making foreign-policy decisions; I think it’s complicated, I think mistakes are made. Foreign policy’s all about failure. People don’t want to acknowledge that failure is the norm in foreign policy, and then they want to blame people for failure. But I think the American people are participants in this process. {2:22:26} Senator Lindsay Graham: We’re talking about important things to an empty room. Just look. Just look. So, Iran with a nuke. Number one—I’m going to ask, like, 45 questions in five minutes. Give brief answers if you can. If you can’t, don’t say a word. Do you believe that the Iranians in the past have been trying to develop a nuclear weapon, not a nuclear power plant, for peaceful purposes? Shawn Brimley: Yes. Gen. Jack Keane: Nuclear weapon, yes. Graham: All right, three for three. Do you believe that’s their long-term goal, in spite of what they say is to have a nuclear weapon? Keane: Yes. Brimley: [nods] Robert Kagan: [thumbs up] Graham: Okay. Do you believe that’d be one of the most destabilizing things in the world? Brimley: Yes. Graham: Do you believe the Arabs will get one of their own? Brimley: Yes. Kagan: [nods] Graham: Do you believe the Iranians might actually use the weapon if they’d gotten one, the Ayatollah? Brimley: [nods] Keane: Well, I think that—before I answer that, I think there’s just as great a chance that the Arabs would use their weapon as a first right to take it away. Graham: Okay, then, so, we don’t know—well, let’s have— Bob, you shook your head. If you’re Israel, what bet would you make? Kagan: [speaks, but mic is not on] Graham: Okay, but what if he wants to die and he doesn’t mind taking you with him? What does he want? Does he want to destroy Israel, or is he just giddy? Kagan: [speaks, but mic is not on] Graham: When the Ayatollah says he wants to wipe Israel out, so it’s just all talk? Kagan: I don’t know if it’s all talk, and I don’t blame people for being nervous. We lived under—the United States, we all lived under the shadow of a possible nuclear war for 50 years. Graham: Yeah, but, you know, on their worst day the Russians didn’t have a religious doctrine that wanted to destroy everybody. Do you believe he’s a religious Nazi at his heart, or you don’t know? And the answer may be you don’t know. Kagan: I believe that he clearly is the—believes in a fanatical religion, but— Graham: Here’s what I believe. Kagan: I’m not—okay, go. Graham: Okay, I believe that you ought to take him seriously, based on their behavior. Number one— Keane: I think we should take him seriously. Whether they’re religious fanatics or not, I don’t think is that relevant. Clearly, their geopolitical goals to dominate the Middle East strategically, to destroy the state of Israel, and to drive the United States out of the Middle East, they’ve talked about it every single year— Graham: Well, do you think that’s their goal?Keane: Yes. Graham: Okay, so do you- Keane: Of course it’s their goal. And not only is it their goal, but they’re succeeding at it. Graham: Do you think we should deny them that goal. Graham: Good. North Korea—why are they trying to build an ICBM? Are they trying to send a North Korean in space? What are they trying to do? Brimley: They’re trying to threaten us. Kagan: To put a nuclear weapon on it— Graham: Do you believe it should be the policy of the United States Congress and the next president to deny them that capability? Brimley: I believe so. Graham: Would you support an authorization to use military force that would stop the ability of the North Koreans to develop a missile that could reach the United States? Do you think Congress would be wise to do that? Brimley: I think Congress should debate it. I remember distinctly the op-ed that Secretary William Perry and Ashton Carter— Graham: I’m going to introduce one. Would you vote for it if you were here? Kagan: Only if Congress was willing to do what was necessary to a followup—Graham: Well, do you think Congress should be willing to authorize any president, regardless of party, to stop North Korea from developing a missile that can hit the homeland? Kagan: Only if Congress is willing to follow up with what might be required, depending on North Korea’s response. Graham: Well, what might be required is to stop their nuclear program through military force; that’s why you would authorize it. Kagan: No, but I’m saying that if I’m—the answer is yes, but then you also have to be willing, if North Korea launched—Graham: Would you advise me— Kagan: —that you’d have to be willing to— Sen. John McCain: You have to let the witness. Graham: Yeah, but he’s not giving an answer, so here’s the question. Kagan: Oh, I thought I— Graham: Do you support Congress—everybody’s talking about Congress sitting on the sidelines. I think a North Korean missile program is designed to threaten the homeland; I don’t think they’re going to send somebody in space. So if I’m willing, along with some other colleagues, to give the president the authority—he doesn’t have to use it—but we’re all on board for using military force to stop this program from maturing, does that make sense to you, given the threats we face? Keane: I don’t believe that North Korea is going to build an ICBM, weaponize it, and shoot it at the United States. Graham: Okay, then, you wouldn’t need the authorization to use military force. Keane: Right. And the reason for that is— Graham: That’s fine. Keane: The reason—Senator, the reason they have nuclear weapons is one reason: to preserve their regime. They know when you have nuclear weapons we’re not going to conduct an invasion of North Korea. South Korea’s not going to do it; we’re not going to do it. Graham: Why are they trying to build ICBM? Keane: They want to weaponize it. Graham: And do what with it? Keane: I don’t bel— Kagan: Preserve their regime. Graham: Okay, all right. So, you would be okay with letting them build a missile? Kagan: No, but— Graham: Would you, General Keane? Keane: They’re already building a missile. Graham: Well, would you be willing to stop them? Keane: I would stop them from using it, yes. Graham: Okay. Keane: I’m not going to stop them from— Graham: Assad—final question. Do all of you agree that leaving Assad in power is a serious mistake? Brimley: Yes. Keane: Yes, absolutely. Graham: Finally, do you believe four percent of GDP should be the goal that Congress seeks because it’s been the historical average of what we spend on defense since World War II?Kagan: Pretty close. Graham: Thanks. Music Presented in This Episode Intro & Exit: Tired of Being Lied To by David Ippolito (found on Music Alley by mevio) Cover Art Design by Only Child Imaginations

Lee: Hi, Dot, welcome to the show, thank you so much for joining me. How are you? Dot O’Shea: I am well, Lee, thank you for having me. Lee: I feel like I’m talking to a TV star. Dot O’Shea: Oh, shucks. I’m blushing. Lee: So, for those, I think a lot of people who […] The post The Colon Cancer Podcast (http://thecoloncancerpodcast.com) .

Dr. Martin Lee. Photo courtesy of Prolacta Bioscience. Episode 4 features Dr. Martin Lee, Vice President of Clinical Research and Development at Prolacta Bioscience. During this episode, Dr. Lee provides a comprehensive overview of a 100% or exclusive human milk diet in the prevention of NEC in extremely premature babies, those weighing less than 1250 grams (2 pounds 12 ounces) and who have the greatest risk for developing the disease. He discusses: * His transition from the blood industry to Prolacta, which developed of the world’s first human milk-based human milk fortifier * What constitutes a 100% or exclusive human milk diet * The clinical evidence showing a 70% reduction in NEC, an 8-fold reduction in surgical NEC, and a 4-fold reduction in mortality through the use of exclusive human milk diet * The importance of safety in the breast milk industry, including Prolacta’s rigorous product testing and donor safety profiles which parallel blood industry standards. Copyright © 2015 The Morgan Leary Vaughan Fund, Inc. This episode was produced in part by the TeacherCast Educational Broadcasting Network. [powerpress] STEPHANIE VAUGHAN, HOST: Welcome to Episode 4 of Speaking of NEC—a free, audio podcast series about Necrotizing Enterocolitis. Produced by The Morgan Leary Vaughan Fund, and funded by The Petit Family Foundation, Speaking of NEC is a series of one-on-one conversations with relevant NEC experts—neonatologists, clinicians and researchers—that highlights current prevention, diagnosis, and treatment strategies for NEC, and the search for a cure. For more information about this podcast series or The Morgan Leary Vaughan Fund, visit our website at morgansfund.org. Hello, my name is Stephanie Vaughan. Welcome to the show. I’m the Co-founder and President of The Morgan Leary Vaughan Fund. Today, my guest will be Dr. Martin Lee, Vice President of Clinical Research and Development at Prolacta Bioscience, which “creates specialty formulations made from human milk for the nutritional needs of premature infants in neonatal intensive care units.” Last October (2014), while attending the annual Preemie Parent Summit in Phoenix, Arizona, I had the pleasure of meeting Prolacta’s Chief Executive Officer Scott Elster. During our conversation, I was invited on a tour of the company. A few weeks later, along with a group of representatives from various preemie organizations throughout the country, I flew out California to tour Prolacta’s human milk processing facility, and to learn more about the people and research behind the company. I was highly impressed by all aspects of Prolacta from the manufacturing plant itself to the rigorous testing their products undergo throughout their processing. Even more impressive to me is the fact that everyone that we met at Prolacta has a personal connection to prematurity. The CEO himself is the parent of twins born prematurely. And, I was shocked to learn that one of the key reasons the company was formed, and their products developed, was to reduce the incidence Necrotizing Enterocolitis. The company’s reason for existing is the prevention of NEC. And the research presented to us by Dr. Lee was stunning. So when we began producing this series, it was only fitting to invite Dr. Lee to share the benefits of an exclusive human milk diet to premature infants and the clinical research supporting its use. With that in mind, let me introduce my guest today. This is Dr. Martin Lee from Prolacta Bioscience. And I’m so glad you could be with me here today. How are you? MARTIN LEE, GUEST: Good. How are you doing Stephanie? STEPHANIE: Good, good. So in previous podcasts, we’ve talked to doctors that are attending neonatologists and researchers. So I would like to give you the opportunity to give a little bit of your background and how you got involved with research in NEC. DR. LEE: OK. Absolutely. Well, I spent probably most of my career doing clinical research with various types of pharmaceutical and biotech products. I started with a company you’ve probably heard of called Baxter approximately 35 years ago, and I spent a good number of years working with them. And how that’s relevant to our discussion today is I was working with their group that manufactures blood products, and obviously blood is a significant human fluid, has many of the same issues with regards to safety that we have with breast milk. And so I learned a lot about some of the testing that needs to be done, some of the safety factors that we need to consider. And then I would say about 15 years ago, I met someone who was talking about forming a company who basically wanted to bring breast milk and breast milk products to premature infants so that they would have the benefit of receiving 100% human milk diet, particularly the smallest of the small premature infants. So together we started the company Prolacta. And the whole idea of course in starting the company was to put it‚…I think the most important thing was to put it on a firm clinical scientific basis. And that meant doing really important well-designed clinical trials to evaluate the most important morbidities like NEC, in particular, and even mortality in premature infants, infants certainly that had a high risk of both of those consequences of prematurity. STEPHANIE: OK. Maybe not all of the people that will be listening fully understand…what is an exclusively human milk-based diet? Can you get into that a little bit? DR. LEE: Absolutely. So obviously we know‚…we meaning pretty much the world understands that the best thing a newborn baby can be fed is mother’s milk. And for term babies, that is obviously going to be sufficient. They’re born at the right time and usually at a sufficient weight and mother’s milk has all the good things in it that help the baby to grow, help their immune system to develop, help their organs to develop, importantly it helps their brain to grow at the right rate. But a premature baby by definition is born too soon. And we specialize‚…the work that we’ve done at Prolacta,…specializes in the infants that are born as much as 27 weeks or 12 weeks premature so 27 weeks since the time of gestation. When those babies are born, they have a lot of problems obviously because they’ve come out of the womb way too early. And one of the things that of course they are is way too small. The average baby that we’ve studied in our research trials is less than a thousand grams. That’s around two pounds. Now most people know that the average baby is 6-7-8 pounds. And so they’re born so small that what happens is that mother’s milk which of course comes in when the baby’s born‚…nature didn’t intend mother’s milk to be able to feed these type of babies. This is an unfortunate consequence of something that happened with the mother, something that‚…injury, genetics, whatever it is that would cause a baby to be born premature, the milk comes in, but it cannot feed that baby well enough. And what I mean by that is the baby needs to grow. He needs to grow a lot. The baby needs to have their immune system protected by the mom’s milk, and so on and so forth. So obviously we always talk about mother’s milk being the thing for a newborn baby. It’s not enough for these premature infants. So what they need is what we call a fortifier, something with a little extra kick to the baby. And there are fortifiers that have been on the market for a long time. They’re made by the formula companies. And naturally these fortifiers are made from cow’s milk. And cow’s milk is not the best thing for a premature infant. It may not be the best thing for babies in general, but besides the point, it’s certainly not the best thing for a premature infant. So when we’re talking about 100% or exclusive human milk diet, we’re talking about mom’s milk; we’re talking about a fortifier which is necessary for the baby to grow and to be protected from infection and so on and so forth. That comes from human milk. And what Prolacta did was develop the world’s first human-milk human milk fortifier. And in fact, it sounds like a mouthful because when we talk about human milk fortifier, general people realize or may not realize that that’s a cow’s milk-based fortifier. We make the one from human milk. So that’s what we mean by 100% diet. And then one other thing just to add to that, Stephanie, is sometimes mom’s milk doesn’t come in enough or the baby wants it or needs to eat more, get more milk, so then there’s donor milk involved too. And that’s another aspect of the 100% diet. And of course donor milk is coming from other moms, which again provides the additional nutrition that the baby needs. And there you have the entire spectrum of what we mean by 100% human milk diet. STEPHANIE: OK. Thank you. Yeah, I know that there’s probably a bit of confusion amongst parents new to the NICU that human milk fortifier is a fortifier put into human milk, and not necessarily made with human milk. So I know that that does tend to cause a little confusion. DR. LEE: Right. STEPHANIE: So thank you for clarifying that. DR. LEE: Sure. STEPHANIE: So I guess I’ll ask you to go into a little bit of the research because I find it fascinating. As you know, we were out to your facility in November and I thought that this is a fabulous company. I was not aware of it when our babies were in the NICU and I will just make a tiny note that I know you’ve got significant statistics showing the benefit of human milk and exclusive human milk. Unfortunately for Morgan, he fell in to that other small percentage that I did pump. But he developed NEC so rapidly at four days old being born at 28 weeks. At four days old he developed NEC and I don’t think he had two feedings. So there are babies that get it even when all attempts are made to have an exclusive human milk diet. DR. LEE: Sure. STEPHANIE: And I also know that my other son, Shaymus, his milk was fortified, and to be honest, I’m sure it probably wasn’t with an exclusive human milk fortifier. So just some things to sort of give everyone background. And again, that was, you know, four years ago, 2010-2011. DR. LEE: Sure. I hope…I assume they’re doing OK today, right? STEPHANIE: Yes, yes. Everybody’s doing very well today… DR. LEE: Excellent. Excellent. STEPHANIE: which I think is why I’m so personally‚…my personal opinion is that your products are wonderful and, you know, things being what they were then versus now, I would definitely advocate for 100% human milk diet and advocate for this if I was a parent in the NICU now. So I think it’s great to get this information out to people. DR. LEE: Sure. Absolutely. So your question concerned the type of studies we did. Well, as I said to begin our conversation, we recognized that the only way that people‚…the medical community, both neonatologists, nurses, lactation people‚…would appreciate and realize the importance of what 100% human milk diet does and helps as far as the baby is concerned is to do proper research. As I said earlier, my experience is in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries where doing formal randomized controlled all the kinds of bells and whistles that need to be done when you need to license a drug or a biologic for marketing in this country and other places in the world as well. That’s standard stuff. So when we set out to do these studies, we said what we’re doing here is just as important, just as the need for rigor has to be here as it would be in any other kind of situation where you’re testing a new medical intervention. And that’s what this is. So we decided right off the bat we would get together the best of the best as far as the neonatologists in this country are concerned, and we brought them together and we set up a protocol. And basically the protocol was based on a very simple premise. It is 100% human milk diet better than feeding a baby mom’s milk fortifying then with standard human milk fortifier and then if all else fails or at least maybe not be sufficient than using formula. That’s standard practice for premature infants in this country. It was in 2007 when we started this trial and to a large extent it still is today. So it’s 100% human milk diet standard of care which includes cow’s milk based fortifier and formula. Babies in this study were randomized which is‚…you know, it’s a fairly simple term, but just to make sure everybody understands what I mean by that, the decision when a parent agreed to have their baby be participating in the study which group they get into, the Prolacta or the 100% diet versus standard of care was essentially a coin flip, not literally of course, but that’s the basis. Now why do you do that? Because that’s the best way to design studies. It provides an unbiased approach to making the decision of treatment of nutritional treatment, taking it out of the hands of anybody and putting it in the hands of strictly chance. So you randomize babies. There was a sufficient number of babies in the first study we did. There was over 200 babies that were randomized and I think it was 12 centers around the country. And what we were looking for in this study was whether or not they develop NEC and that was the most significant endpoint of the study. There were other things that we looked at. We looked at how much parenteral nutrition they received. We looked at other things. We looked at sepsis. We looked at‚…which is essentially bacterial infection that circulates in the bloodstream. We looked at hospital days. We looked at days on a respirator/ventilator and so on and so forth. But the main endpoint in this study was Necrotizing Enterocolitis. Now, the babies, by the way, that we used in this study or the babies that constituted the population of the study were babies under 1250 grams (2 pounds 12 ounces) down to 500 grams (1 pound 1 ounce). Very simple reason for that. I think many of the people listening will know that there’s a classification of premature infancy called very low birth weight. And that’s babies under 1500 grams (3 pounds 4.91 ounces). But we said, you know, we want to get the babies that have the highest risk of NEC. So we didn’t use, if you will, the heaviest babies in that weight category because they have, it turns out, the lowest risk of NEC out of all very low birth weight babies. So we took away that 1250-gram group. We also didn’t go below 500 grams because unfortunately, babies born less than 500 grams which is really about a pound or less have unfortunately not a high chance of either succeeding in life really and survival or they have a lot of other problems that make it very difficult to evaluate then. So it was 500 to 1250. That’s basically, I think, the most important aspect. And like I said, they were randomized. We followed them for a period of 90 days, maximum 90 days. Babies could have gotten off the study earlier if they got on to mostly oral nutrition which of course hopefully babies all do because they start off with what’s called parenteral nutrition which means they get their feed essentially through intravenous feeding. They then transition off of that onto enteral feeding which is typically a tube that goes either through their nose or directly through their mouth into their stomach. And that’s called enteral feeding. And then they go to oral feeding. So babies who are on for 90 days or if they got to oral feeding sooner, then they were off the study. Very simply, just to summarize what constitutes a fairly complex study to manage, we found a magnificent reduction in Necrotizing Enterocolitis. The babies in the standard of care group had a NEC rate of about 16%. Or put simply, that one in every six babies develop NEC that got some sort of cow’s milk protein or cow’s milk diet. The babies who got 100% diet was less than 6%. That 16 to 6 is about 70% reduction, and that is phenomenal. We’ve had some of the really very famous neonatologists told us that they don’t see‚…you don’t see that kind of reduction with really any intervention that they’re used to seeing. You just don’t see that. You see incremental things. But now all of a sudden we cut NEC by 70% by doing this. And it even gets more impressive when you consider that the majority of babies or at least half the babies who develop NEC have to go on to have surgery. STEPHANIE: Right. DR. LEE: And that is a really serious consequence not only just from the fact that a premature infant has to go on to major surgery and they take out part of their digestive tract. But even worse, they have a reasonably high mortality rate. So in this study, the rate of NEC surgery of all those babies that were in the two groups, it was at 11% in the standard of care arm and only just over 1% in the Prolacta arm. We reduced the rate of NEC surgery by eight fold, I mean just an incredible difference. Virtually wiped out NEC surgery in this study. STEPHANIE: That’s amazing. DR. LEE: Yeah. I mean, we expected to see something really good. We didn’t expect‚…I guess you could say well we should have expected‚…but it was beyond our expectations, wildest dreams to show this kind of effect. Now a lot of people have looked at this data and said well that’s interesting, and maybe that’s real. But can you‚…you know, can you do it again? And the answer is yeah. We did it again because that first study that I just described, these were only babies who were getting‚… which are most babies‚… who were getting some breast milk from their mom. But there are a small cohort of‚… I don’t know quite what the percentage is in this country, but there’s a percentage of babies who don’t get any breast milk. There’s various reasons. Mom is sick. Mom’s not available. So on and so forth. So we also did a second study in which we only treated babies or fed babies who had to get their nutrition either one of two ways. Since breast milk wasn’t available, they got formula. Soon as they were able to get enteral feeding, in other words the tube feeding, they got formula. That’s one group. The 100% arm, same thing, except here, instead of getting mom’s milk, they got donor milk, and then they got the fortified. So it was a real stark comparison. Only human milk, only formula. And it was a very small study. It was only‚…that first study, I don’t know if I mentioned or made clear, that was a 200-baby study. Pretty big study. STEPHANIE: Yes. Um-hmm. DR LEE: This study was only 53 babies partly because it was very, very hard to find these babies. I mean, we would sign up a mom, they would agree to put their baby on, and then they realized gee, I really want to feed my baby. I really want to give them breast milk. And of course, that’s fine. That’s great. STEPHANIE: Right, right. DR LEE: But they can’t participate in the study. STEPHANIE: Right. DR LEE: So we had a hard time finding. But we eventually did it. Took us three years to find 53 babies, but we did, and you know what? We found the same significant difference, particularly in the surgical NEC. There were‚…in the control arm, there were 24 babies, and four of them had to go on to surgery for NEC. That’s one in six. So about 16%. In the Prolacta arm, in the 100% milk arm, nothing, no surgeries, nothing. One case in NEC overall, but no surgery. So that turned out to be wow. That’s the kicker. Two separate studies, two different classes of babies, breast milk, no breast milk, doesn’t matter. When you give a baby that’s born premature like this, this weight category, less than 1250 grams, and you feed them with only human milk, they’re going to do better. And it even turns out when you start putting all the data together an extra‚…I hate to call it a bonus‚…but an extra important key outcome was that mortality was reduced. Mortality fortunately in this baby population is pretty low. It’s about 8% overall because of the prematurity, of course. We reduced that to 2%. So a four-fold reduction in mortality. So now when you put it all together, what do you have? You have prevention of the major morbidity‚…that is NEC‚…of prematurity, and you prevent mortality. And how can you really ask for anything more from a nutritional approach to these really fragile infants. STEPHANIE: Right. Right. No, I totally agree. And as I said before, my personal opinion, you know, as the mother of a surgical NEC survivor, I would advocate for this if we had to do it again. It’s definitely phenomenal. DR. LEE: Yeah, it’s almost this kind of effect you would expect to see if this was a pharmaceutical breakthrough or some new wonder drug or some sort of biotechnologically-produced intervention. But all it is is feeding the babies properly. I mean it’s such a fundamentally sound, logical‚…this is what nature wanted these babies to get. STEPHANIE: Right, right. DR. LEE: Babies should get human milk, nothing else. STEPHANIE: Now you had mentioned previously the difference between donor milk and then your human milk nutritional products. Can you‚…when I hear conversations, I sort of always think it’s like comparing apples and oranges. You know, it’s almost two different things. So can you clarify what the difference is with donor milk and your products? DR. LEE: Well, again, I’m sorry to be maybe not entirely clear. We make a donor milk product. Essentially, all our products are made from donor milk, both the fortifier, of course, and we make a simple donor milk product that is formulated to have 20 calories per ounce which is what doctors and nurses and dieticians believe they’re giving the baby when they feed the baby either mom’s milk or milk from another person. So donor milk is essentially the equivalent of mom’s milk other than the fact, of course, it comes from another mom. But however‚…and in fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics has said the best thing for a baby is mom’s milk. But if mom’s milk is not available, then donor milk is good. STEPHANIE: Right. DR. LEE: But the problem, of course, and one of the I guess you could say‚…I’m trying to think of the right word. Bad things that people associate with donor milk is well it comes from somebody else, and how do I know that person is the right person to provide milk for my baby? And that’s one of the key things that we had at the center of what we did at Prolacta from the beginning, which was to have a safety profile that was beyond reproach. I mean, we do things as far as testing the moms, testing the milk, that nobody else who ever handles breast milk does pure and simple. I’ll give you some examples. One of the things that I thought of very early on is because, again, remember I told you I came from the blood industry and they test blood and they test donors obviously every which way you can think of. But there’s one additional problem that donors who provide milk have in a sense that blood donors don’t. When you take blood from a donor, you’re seeing the person and it’s blood coming out of their vein and it’s coming right into a bag and you know whose it is. But a milk donor, she donates at home, pumps at home, puts it into containers, and then sends it wherever the donor, the milk bank, might be. In our case, it’s here at Prolacta. They’ll send it to us, and here’s the problem. How do we know it’s that person’s milk? STEPHANIE: Right. DR. LEE: How do we know it’s the person who we screened and did all the blood testing on to start with, that it’s her milk. So we do something very, very unique. We actually have the mom provide a DNA sample, they do a little cheek swab, they put a little stick essentially in there, and scrape off a little tissue from inside their cheek, send it to us so we have a profile. Now she sends us her milk, and when she sends us her milk, we can actually match it up. And now we know it’s that safe mom’s milk, all right? Now you might ask what’s the point? I mean what self-respecting individual is going to send somebody else’s milk to you? And the answer is nobody, for the most part I can say almost universally, will do that intentionally. But there are mistakes. I mean one of the things we’ve seen is moms that are lactating, sometimes there’s a couple of women in a neighborhood, and they’re all doing the same thing. And somebody’s freezer will become full with milk, and they’ll say to their neighbor, “Can I put my milk in your freezer?” And they said, “Sure, no problem.” And she’s got her own milk in there. And then they go to ship milk and lo and behold, there’s somebody else’s in there. We love that‚…we love the moms, but we have to be sure that every mom that donates is a mom that’s free of all of the nasty things that could be in blood because those things could be in milk as well like AIDS and hepatitis and syphilis and all those kinds of things that we should be concerned about. Even as an adult you certainly want to get blood from someone like that. You certainly don’t want to give that to this fragile premature infant. STEPHANIE: Right, right. DR. LEE: So going back to your original question about what we do versus donor milk, that’s all one in the same, I think you could safely say. Everything is based on the concept of donors and the milk that they provide and the safety of that milk supply being tested from any way you can think of so that every product that’s made from human milk is as safe as possible based on all of the different protocols that are used. And that includes other things besides DNA testing. It includes drug testing; it includes testing for whether the mom smokes because they may tell you they don’t smoke, but we’ve seen that instance where there’s byproducts of nicotine in the milk, and that’s not good for a baby. So we do that kind of testing. It’s just a laundry list of things to make that as safe as possible. STEPHANIE: Right. And I guess‚…I’m sorry‚…I guess to clarify my original question, I was speaking specifically about your fortifiers versus human milk. If you could explain a little bit the difference of that‚…I mean this was a very good‚…I can’t think of the word‚…a very good deviation, but yeah. When I was saying apples and oranges, I meant donor milk versus fortifier. DR. LEE: OK. I’m sorry. STEPHANIE: No, that’s OK. DR. LEE: The fortifier essentially‚…if you want to keep it very simple, the fortifier is just very concentrated milk. STEPHANIE: OK. DR. LEE: So essentially, what you do to make the fortifier is you take milk, you filter it to get rid of a lot of the fluid so that you concentrate the protein, you concentrate some of the other important nutrients in there. And that way the baby can get extra, like we say, protein, extra other nutrients in a very, very small volume. So for example, in our typical fortifier which we call Prolact +4, if you add that to mother’s milk in a ratio 80% mother’s milk to 20% fortifier, assuming mother’s milk is about 20 calories per ounce, you’re going to add 4 additional calories for that baby in that small volume which is a lot. So then we can actually do even more than that. We can do a +6, six calories, we can do +8 and even +10. That kind of product is for the babies that are the most fluid restricted. They can get 30 calories per ounce in the same volume that milk that originally was 20 calories per ounce was. So that’s really important for those babies, for example, that have heart defects who can’t take in a lot of fluid or babies for whatever reason are fluid restricted. STEPHANIE: OK. Thank you. DR. LEE: Sure. STEPHANIE: Yeah, that was‚… I think it’s important for parents and family members that might be in the NICU to be able to have a conversation with their doctor and fully understand what’s being given to their baby and be able to ask the right questions. So would there be anything else that you would want to add if you were talking to a parent who’s got a baby in the NICU right now for them to be able to advocate best practices for their baby? DR. LEE: I think that the simple issue for a parent under these circumstances is to ask the doctor based on all of the evidence that’s out there, clinical evidence,…and that’s how doctors make decisions. We talk about evidence-based medicine. This is based on the best evidence that the doctor is aware of, what’s the best way to feed my baby? And having said that, you know, the evidence that we’ve discussed here today is for those smallest of the small. For a larger baby, this is not necessarily‚…it’s not that it’s wrong. It may not be necessary, but when you’re dealing with the smallest babies and the ones that are struggling to survive and grow and thrive and get to where you want all babies to get to, to childhood and so on, then you have to ask the doctor the question what is the best way that our baby can get out of that NICU, that Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, and get home and be with his or her parents. That’s really, I think, the fundamental question. And the doctors should be able to answer that question based on the evidence that exists for the diet that the baby should be fed. STEPHANIE: Right. Thank you. Yeah, I think this is a really great conversation for any parent in the NICU, especially those, like you said, the smallest that are at the highest risk for developing NEC and as you said, other issues as well. And it’s‚…it can only be a benefit in my opinion. DR. LEE: Absolutely. And just to add to that, they should also ask the question‚…because there are other sources of nutrition, and there are other places from which milk can be attained we know about, for instance, women sharing milk on the Internet, milk sharing sites. You’ve got to be extremely careful. You’ve got to ask the question not only what’s best for my baby from the point of view of effectiveness, but also what’s the safest for my baby. And you want to be sure that the source, where that milk is coming from, where those products are coming from, comes from a place where you can say everything possible based on modern technology has been done to protect that milk, protect the safety of that milk. And I think that’s really critical. I think there was a story the other day‚…I forget which show, where it came up in one newspaper or another‚…about‚…oh, I know what it was. It was an article that was published that basically looked at milk samples. They actually collected milk on one of these sharing sites, and they found a large percentage of them had nicotine in the milk, had other things, other bad things that you don’t want a baby to have in that milk. So you’ve really got to ask that question what’s the best? What’s the safest for my baby as well? STEPHANIE: Right. Right. And Prolacta has provided us some material, some reference materials for sharing. So I will say that we’re going to be posting those on our website and will have them in the show notes as well. And I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me today. If there’s anything else at all that you would like to add, please feel free. DR. LEE: Well, I just want to thank you for the opportunity to let obviously the parents out there know that we’re here for one very, very simple reason. I mean I know it may sound kind of corny, but we said from the day we opened the doors at Prolacta that we’re here to save babies, and I think we’ve done our job in that regard. And we’ve proven that that’s the case. So I’m really‚…I’ve worked, as you heard me say, for 35 years doing clinical and medical research, and I’m very, very proud to say that this is, I think, my best story to tell out of all that long career. STEPHANIE: Right. And as I said, I was out in the facility, took the tour in November, and we were very impressed with your company. And like I said, if I had to do it all over again, I would certainly be asking these questions and in my opinion, I think this is a phenomenal company. And your rigor in testing and your facility are top notch. So thank you. LEE: Well, thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate that, and it means an awful lot to me and to obviously everybody that works at Prolacta. STEPHANIE: Right. So thank you for joining us. And hopefully we’ll talk again soon. LEE: Alright. Thanks so much, Steph. STEPHANIE: In closing, I’d like to share a few thoughts about today’s conversation with Dr. Lee. Recently, I’ve seen a lot written about the use of donor milk, human milk products, and the emerging breast milk industry. Often times, the opinions expressed about Prolacta are solely related to cost: the expensive of Prolacta’s products versus those coming from nonprofit donor milk banks. In my opinion, the cost of using Prolacta’s human milk-based human milk fortifier far outweighs the potential risks of not using it, and any discussion about cost needs to be framed within the context of total cost of care. As Dr. Lee mentioned, Prolacta’s human milk-based nutritional products are intended for extremely premature infants who weigh less than 1250 grams (2 pounds 12 ounces) at birth. My son Morgan weighed 2 pounds 5.5 ounces at birth; my son Shaymus weighed 2 pounds 7 ounces. Prolacta openly shares that the typical cost of using their human milk-based human milk fortifier for these babies is $10,000. That, however, is only a fraction of Morgan’s and Shaymus’ total cost of care. Each of whose exceeded $1 million. In actual numbers, the cost of an exclusive human milk diet using Prolacta’s human milk-based human milk fortifier would have been less than one percent of Morgan’s total cost of care, and less than one percent of Shaymus’ total cost of care. And while Morgan’s case shows that no current preventative strategy for NEC is 100% effective, research shows that access to, and the use of, an exclusive human milk diet significantly reduces the risk of NEC in the majority of extremely premature infants. Show your support for our smallest and most fragile babies, those who have the greatest risk for developing NEC. Show your support for continued research in NEC. And join our effort to raise awareness about, and funds for research in NEC by making a donation to Morgan’s Fund at morgansfund.org. If you’ve had a personal experience with NEC and would like to share your story, or have a question or topic that you’d like to hear addressed on our show, e-mail us at feedback@morgansfund.org. We’d love to hear from you! Additional resources: Prolacta Bioscience, Inc. What Is Necrotizing Enterocolitis? N.p.: Prolacta Bioscience, 2015. Print. Prolacta Bioscience, Inc. 100% Human Milk: The Best Nutrition. N.p.: Prolacta Bioscience, 2014. Print. Prolacta Bioscience, Inc. Nutrition for Premature Babies. N.p.: Prolacta Bioscience, 2014. Print. Prolacta Bioscience. Premature Babies: What to Expect. N.p.: Prolacta Bioscience, 2014. Print. Copyright © 2015 The Morgan Leary Vaughan Fund, Inc. The opinions expressed in Speaking of NEC: Necrotizing Enterocolitis (the Podcast series) and by The Morgan Leary Vaughan Fund are published for educational and informational purposes only, and are not intended as a diagnosis, treatment or as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis and treatment. Please consult a local physician or other health care professional for your specific health care and/or medical needs or concerns. The Podcast series does not endorse or recommend any commercial products, medical treatments, pharmaceuticals, brand names, processes, or services, or the use of any trade, firm, or corporation name is for the information and education of the viewing public, and the mention of any of the above on the Site does not constitute an endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by The Morgan Leary Vaughan Fund.

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: NCWIT Entrepreneurial Heroes Lee Kennedy: Hi, this is Lee Kennedy. I'm the CEO of Bolder Search and a board member for the National Center for Women & Information Technology or NCWIT. This is part of a series of interviews that we are having with fabulous entrepreneurs. They're women who have started IT companies in a variety of sectors, all of whom have just fabulous stories to tell us about being entrepreneurs. With me today is Larry Nelson from w3w3.com. Hey, Larry. Larry Nelson: Hey, I'm excited about this interview, certainly a person with a tremendous amount of experience. Wow, I can't wait to get into this and we know we have lot of firm executives and young people that are looking into becoming an entrepreneur and getting into the high tech arena who are listeners. So, I'm really looking forward to this interview. Lee: Super. So, today we are interviewing Sukhinder Singh Cassidy. She is a leading Internet and media executive with a touch over 18 years of leadership in working with early stage companies including Google, Amazon, Yodlee and Polyvore, which is a leading global fashion community site. So, why don't I go ahead and interview Sukhinder. We are so happy to have you today. Sukhinder Singh Cassidy: Thank you. Lee: Larry, I think we'll just jump into things. Larry: All right. I'm going to ask you a question that Lucy Sanders always likes us to ask and that is how did you first get involved in the technology business and what technologies do you think are cool today? Sukhinder: I actually first got involved in the technology business probably 13 or 14 years ago in 1997, actually, late '96, early '97. Prior to that, I had been working in New York, in London in media and that investment banking. I stayed in Merrill Lynch for several years and then I went on to market BSkyB, which is the leading satellite broadcast at that time. So, actually, kind of a technology company but more of a media company. I moved to the Bay area on fundamentally I guess on thesis that I wanted to be close to entrepreneurs and one day be an entrepreneur myself. I did not know what I wanted to do but I did know there were smart motivated people in the Bay area. I had traveled out to San Francisco to visit friends and fell in love with the Bay area. So, I took a leap of faith. I moved from London, sold everything I had in London. Bought a car for $10, 000 in LA and drove up the Coast to San Francisco and found my first job. Larry: Wow. Lee: I have to say it is not too dissimilar to my background. I moved out to the Bay area and it's kind of hard not to get into technology. Sukhinder: Absolutely. So, I did not want to be an entrepreneur. But it was that classic, I didn't have an idea. So I thought the next best thing was to put myself close to smart people, working on interesting problems and being entrepreneurs themselves, somehow that path would be a positive one. Larry: Of all the different things that you've been involved with the technology, which ones do you think are cool today? Sukhinder: There are some I had been lucky enough to be involved with and some less so that I just admire from afar a bit. Probably, two of my favorites I'll say as consumer there's something you got to see these businesses built at Google. One, I mean the technology I just to love today, are anything that you would of think as geo or location based. So, my first job at Google was helping to launch Google maps and Google logo and the idea that your location is a pretty important indicator. Where you are relative to your friends in the case of Foursquare or where you are on a map and where you are trying to get to go and having driving directions on your iPhone, forgoing the traditional, heavy-duty MAPS systems that are sitting in cars or something; lightweight but just as revolutionary. So, I love anything geo where as a user my location has something to do and some relevance to play in what I want to do next. And I think we see geo now as a layer on top of many technologies. The second thing I love is of course cloud-based applications. For me, it is actually very simple. As a consumer, the idea that I no longer have to be stuck to one PC to access my contact list, to access my emails, to access documents. I mean today we have apps of every kind based on the cloud; business apps, enterprise apps, consumer apps. But I think of Google really as introducing that concept in a pretty revolutionary way with Gmail and now of course its very standard. I just love cloud based apps because they truly make me mobile. And the last thing, it's hard not to love the iPhone, now the iPad but if you think about the iPhone as just an incredible tool but more importantly an incredible statement instead of just ability to use that hardware and software. To have a pretty revolutionary consumer design and that the integration of hardware and software still matters. And owning both, which was Apple's proprietary focus and goal. And long after people forgot about hardware, Apple believed that innovation was still possible in hardware, right? And the group did this to all by fundamentally changing the way we communicate with the iPhone. Lee: I'll have to have an offline discussion about the iPhone versus Android GP and you being a former Google employee. Sukhinder: Yes and it means like I said like the Android OS and then the non proprietary system and that is amazing being able to boot application development to many different phone and the fundamental thesis for Google creating an OS and then integrating with third party hardware and redesigning hardware. Instead of working a new age phone that showcase the power software. So, I guess my point is that long after people have forgotten about hard ware and all the software, lo and behold Apple app and hardware. Lee: I know that's the jobs. Sukhinder: Application development layer and in Droid continues on that screen stream.  Larry: Well, I just want to let you know that I have something in common with you. We moved from Copenhagen to the Bay area a number of years ago. Lee: Are you trying to warn me up Larry? OK. All that said about your background and the technologies you think are cool. Tell us why entrepreneurship turns you on? What are you an entrepreneur? Sukhinder: I think there are probably three things I just love about it. Number one is obviously the building that create an author and that is every level. Yes, you are creating a business model on a product but also to go and author your team. Who you get to work with, how you want to work, the culture you want to create. I think that there are people who love to build stuff. I happen to love to build stuff. I think authorship and creation except for some people is a drag and I think I really enjoy the process. I think the second think is I'm sort of a gratification junkie. I like to put in work and get back feedback quickly and then iterate like progress to me is best measure in those increments and that is also how I motivate myself and I think entrepreneurship is really suited to this iteration cycles, right? You get to put out something out there, see the results, see what works, see what doesn't, try it, try something else. And I think that fast cycle times really feels and considers me and probably my own kind of cycle which I work and I think that is fundamentally one of the reasons that it gives me so much excitement. So, I think authorship and the ability to create the kind of quick iteration and feedback loop in entrepreneurship those are things that resonates really, really highly with me. Larry: Sukhinder, with all the things that you done in the different organizations, it's really phenomenal. But let me ask you this, along the way, who supported you in your career path or your role model or your mentor? Sukhinder: Well, first of all, it is interesting. I don't believe in a single role model. I feel like for different parts of my career, depending on the things I have to learn, there were different mentors to me and role models along the way. First and foremost, my father. He was a doctor and loves to be a doctor. He loves running the practice like the business of running the practice. My first job was doing tax returns when I was 15 years old. My father taught me balance sheets and income statements because he was fascinated and he was thinking of different ways to optimize his business and he share the same with me. My second job was in his office as secretary but he was clearly passionate about the job he was doing. The content of his job which was medicine and also entrepreneurship and running the business. He was from very young age clears want to work for yourself. I would say more recently, I think my role models and mentors have really been at some point of time very relevant to what I have to learn to ramp sure ramp, Google and obviously very notable angel come valley. Before that was the CEO of Jungly, my first copy in the Valley that was acquired by Amazon and I had a pleasure to work with the man. And he was an investor in Yodeli, the company that I joined as a co-founder and then ultimately was also involved with Google where I joined next. From Rome, I learned great skills and I also just learned how important it is to match a great business team with a great product team and Rome as an angel has been very successful in helping to find and integrate entrepreneurs. Rome was certainly one. I think Henry Ryan, one of the founders of Jungali, first company that I joined in the Valley. He is a serial entrepreneur. He is in a company five and he has calm, stability, successful exit, diversity and experience and it turned operating CEO so when I have current issues, I call him and I think about my route in Google. Certainly my boss Kurt Estani who was the chief revenue officer at Google and he was probably employed 13 or something like that build Google's revenue from zero to 23 billion. For me, certainly, I just add what I learn, the skill associated with being a great relationship daughter and a great manager not to say I was but I think I learned from him the important of their skills and he is just the ultimate consistent builder and relationship manager. And also, someday he was able to hire greatly skilled people and let them run. Stan Standberg is now running Facebook, Armstrong is running AOL. These people are on the team and I give credit for figuring out how to hire us, mentor us, harness us and still let us run and build. So, I think the different people are the different points of my career to some of them. Lee: Sukhinder, you have been super fortunate at least from my viewpoint to have such phenomenal mentors. That is really exciting. Sukhinder: Yeah, I certainly felt privilege to get to work with these people. So, I guess my point is it is not just one mentor but there are people you learn different skills and I think at different point of my career, I feel like I had the opportunity to work with these people and certainly some of them go and instilled to them. I go for different type of advice when I think there is something they have to offer me. Lee: So, on to something a little more tough, what is the toughest thing you've had to do in your career? Sukhinder: I think of very tough business challenges, but then I think of the challenges that take their toll on you emotionally. This is often a question I ask others when I'm interviewing them, when I'm interviewing executives to join my team. I often just say, "What's the biggest career mistake you've made?" Which is another way of asking the same question. But I think the things that take the hardest emotional toll on you are not the decision or strategy vantage point perspective you called wrong, because you can two or three or four different paths in a different strategy, and maybe you chose the wrong path, but smart people can have different answers. But the ones that're really tough, honestly, are the ones that surround people, right? Awful, making a decision that someone's not a fit. I think those are the most personally taxing and tough things to do in my career. You know, at Yodelly, certainly, we went through to Boston , we had to lay off people, and it was my first time laying off people. You dissolve a relationship with people, you feel a huge amount of responsibility for people's career and career choices when you bring them into a company, I do. Lee: Yeah. Larry: Oh, sure. Sukhinder: Some of that was recession-driven, but there're other times where it's actually not a function of the recession. Often in cases outside of those extraordinary circumstances, like the Boston 2002, the Internet dark days. It's really actually just about culture set, because the people you hire are, by and large, exceptionally competent. It's whether or not they're a fit with the organization, and it's a place that allows them to thrive. When you see that for whatever reason it's not working, learning to make that decision or call quickly or expediently, expeditiously, is important. Because the cost of not doing it well or quickly is high for everyone. It's high for the organization, it's hard for the person who feels like they're, for whatever reason, not able to get it done. They're feeling frustrated. But it's very hard to bring that conversation to a head, and I've been on both sides of it, right? I've certainly had to make the call when someone wasn't a fit, so I just think that whenever you have people decisions, your own decision to move on from something, or managing someone for whom you need to negotiate whether or not they're going to move on. Those are always the most difficult decisions, because they involve people's lives and careers and you want to do them with the right amount of diligence and care and conscientiousness, but also in a way that is expeditious for everyone. So everybody can move on. Larry: All right, well let's move on, and we're going to lighten this one up a little bit. Let's pretend, right now, you are sitting at your desk or around a table. You had a young person who thinking about becoming an entrepreneur. What advice would you give them? Sukhinder: Well let's see, I think there're tons of bits of advice you can give to young entrepreneurs, and I'm sure you have, in all of these interviews you've done, many greater nuggets than what I have to offer, but...I think if there were two things, and one may be obvious but I don't know if people truly accept it. So clearly one of the key things is to iterate in very quick cycles. I think a lot of times I spent, like, perfecting the business idea in PowerPoint. But the reality is, it's not substitute for customer feedback. As quickly as possible, and as cheaply as possible. So I think before you go out and raise money or create too many PowerPoints, you want to find a quick way to test and iterate on your idea at low cost. And keep trying until you find the nugget that seems to resonate with the consumer. Particularly true in Internet business, right? We're consumer Internet businesses. We can't quite predict how the online consumer is going to react, and what they're going to love, and what they're not going to love. It's not always just rational, right? Some of the web stuff companies weren't built of rational need. They just were launched and tested and iterated on, and they found some resonance with the consumer. So that's one, and it's probably fairly obvious. I think the second one, I think a lot of people say they're self-aware. But honestly, I think as an entrepreneur, you have to become incredible self-aware, and I think that's for a couple reasons. First of all, I think self-awareness revolves around understanding what's your own trademark strength, and what do you excel at, right? And part of building a great company, obviously, is figuring out how you fit and how to do what you're great at. If you can build an entire company around it, around your trademark strength, that's amazing. But quite often, building a great company is bringing into the building and, bringing in a diverse set of experiences. Often that means self-awareness about what you're also not great at, right? Where can you attract and surround yourself with people who have other strong skills that are complementary to your own. If you really want to win, and you really want to grow a company of some scale, I think it starts with self-awareness. Playing to your own trademark strength, and then being very quick. I would say in some ways open to building a company of great, strong, diverse talent that helps complement the skills you have. But it takes both parts, right? Playing to your own strengths, but also being, being pretty clear on your weaknesses, and certainly if you want to scale a company beyond a certain size. It is about recruiting incredible talent to your vision, but with complementary skills. Lee: I have to totally agree with you on that. Larry: Mm-hmm. Lee: I'm going to follow along and ask you, what do you excel at that's made you a fabulous entrepreneur? Sukhinder: Well I think first of all, I think most people who know me would consider me high energy and intensity. I think an entrepreneur for many years, it's about being your own best evangelist, right? Not for you, but for your company's vision. I think that requires a lot of energy. Then you have to be able to do that, and have a surplus of energy, if possible, to give to your team, right? To motivate and bolster them, and let them know it's possible. Again, most entrepreneurs, there's not always a rational need for what they're doing. They're often thinking to where the market is going, right. That requires evangelism. It requires a certain energy and intensity to come to work every day, and when the market's not yet there, or investors don't believe, that you believe, and you're able to convey that belief and conviction to others, with energy. So I think that's one piece. You know, I know how to sell. I spent most of my early career in sales. My college jobs, were summer jobs, were in sales. Then when I arrived in the valley, my functional specialty, if you could call it that, was business development. Business development in every company I've ever worked at correlated with sales. It was revenue-producing. As an entrepreneur, you kind of have to sell. And so I think having core skills that are functional set in sales and being very comfortable with that, has been helpful. And then roughly, I mean, I would circle back to the self-awareness piece. I'm certainly very, very flawed. But I think over the years, being in a variety of leadership situations and having to scale through both successful and failed experiences, I have the benefit of a lot of feedback. And I know what I'm good at and I know what I'm not good at. While I work at what I'm not good at, I try to play to my strengths and find a place where they can be accelerants, to a business or a team, and where they're not, I don't, I guess, pretend to believe that I'm going to become perfect. But I think I'm pretty clear on the areas I need to surround myself with to actually have a fully embodied and diverse team that's capable of getting it done. And so I think years and years, instead of repeated feedback on the same issues has yielded a lot of self-awareness. I think at this stage that what am I good at, and where is it that I need to bring in a strong and talented team to really create, and as I said, some things a team together can win. Larry: Well I like that. Let me throw a little curve ball at you. Now, with all that stuff that you're doing, you've mentioned everything from high-energy and intensity, how to sell, being self-aware, and everything else, how do you bring balance into your personal and professional lives? Sukhinder: Well, first of all, I guess let me start by saying I'm not a believer in balance in the typical way that people talk about it, which is just this ... I have this thesis that people imagine this perfect day, right, where you wake up at six, and you work out for an hour, and then you play with your kids. And then you have a great breakfast filled with protein and carbs, and you work perfectly from nine to six, and you come home and you feed your children and you have wonderful family time, and then you do two hours of email, and you get ... early, this is thesis of what balance looks like and I just don't believe it. I don't believe it, at least for me. I think balance has to be measured in cycles that are far longer than a day, often months and years. Because I think that to do anything well requires a certain amount of energy and focus. To be a great parent requires energy and focus and intensity. To be a great manager requires it, to be great manager requires it. To be a great entrepreneur. To be great at sports. And so, when you think about trying to do things well simultaneously, I'm a believer that kind of the best it gets is that there are going to be periods of your life which are all about work. There are going to be periods which may be all about family. And I measure balance in my life by cycles, there are cycles of time, often measured in months or years, where I know I'm going to have to give a lot of focus or priority to something. And then the best you can do in that situation, is really trying to manage very clearly expectations, which I think of as the multiple shareholders in your life, right. Your husband expects something from you. Your children expect something from you. Your team expects something from you. Inside constituencies. Boards you serve on expect something from you. And the most you can do is actually manage expectations very clearly, like hey, I'm going into a period that's going to require a lot of travel. What are we going to do about it. In the case of managing expectations, what I would say instead of negotiating with your family. There would be other times that you negotiate with work. And you say I'm about to have my third child. I'm going out on maternity leave, but I know we're trying to close a big deal. How are we going to get it done. And so, I guess I don't believe in balance, as by the standard definition. I believe instead, of cycles in your life. And managing expectations with an increasing number of constituencies as your life goes on. And hoping that when you look back on your life, as measured in months or years, maybe it was equally divided between all the things that are important to you, or at least divided between the one or two things that are important to you, in a way that you feel good about. But it's measured in a much longer cycle. And in between, you manage expectations, and you learn to live with a lot of guilt. Lee: Well, thank you for that honest answer. Suhkinder, it's clear you've achieved a lot. And we have thoroughly enjoyed hearing your answers to our questions, and last but not least, we're curious what's next for you. Sukhinder: It's a good question. I don't know. I mean, I think in the spirit of what we chatted about, which is, you want to play to your trademark strengths. For me, it's about working with great teams at high intensity and high RPMs, and feeling honestly that I could move to a place where I could make my maximum impact, and that's about finding a place where my skills are a great fit. And I think it could be pure entrepreneurship, and founding something, or it could be operating at significant scale and complexity. But where the trajectory for a company is high, and navigating it with a smart group of people is important. Both to them and to me. Lee: Well, we wish you great success in your next. Larry: Yes, and we're going to follow up on you too. Lee: So thank you so much for spending this time with us. Larry: You listeners out there, pass this interview along to others that you know would be interested, you can listen to it at w3.w3.com and ncwit.org 24/7, look at our blog, it will be in our podcast directory too. Lee: Thank you so much. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Sukhinder Singh CassidyInterview Summary: Sukhinder Singh Cassidy has worked at companies large and small in their early stages, including Google, News Corp., Amazon, Polyvore, and Yodlee. But before she got into the tech industry, she did the taxes for her father, a doctor. In this interview she gives some great advice about the energy and intensity she thinks are vital to being a successful entrepreneur, as well as the importance of knowing how to sell, and how to be self-aware. Release Date: January 30, 2011Interview Subject: Sukhinder Singh CassidyInterviewer(s): Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 22:10

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Amanda Steinberg CEO and Co-founder, Daily Worth and Soapbxx Date: December 13, 2010 NCWIT Entrepreneurial Heroes [intro music] Lee Kennedy: Hi, this is Lee Kennedy. I'm a board member for the National Center for Women & Information Technology or NCWIT and I also started Bolder Search. And today, we are here to do yet another interview as part of series of interviews that we are having with just fabulous female entrepreneurs. And they're women who have started IT companies in a variety of sectors, all of whom just have fabulous stories to tell us. With me, here today, is Larry Nelson from w3w3. Hey, Larry. Larry Nelson: Hey, I'm happy to be here. This has been a wonderful series. We host all the interviews not only in the NCWIT.org website but also w3w3.com and we get very heavy traffic and that makes us feel good. Lee: Super. And also today, we are interviewing Amanda Steinberg, whose professional experience spans entrepreneurship, website and software development, business development, and online community development. So, Amanda is one busy gal and she's had two really interesting ventures going on now. She's CEO and co-founder of Soapbxx. Did I say that right, Amanda? Amanda Steinberg: Yes, you did. Lee: OK. Well, welcome Amanda. We are really excited to have you today. Just a little more about Soapbxx, and Amanda you can expound if I leave anything out, it's a Web 2.0 consultancy firm. Tell me a little more about it, because I'm probably just going to mess it all up. Amanda: No problem. So, yes, I run two companies and I have two children under the age of four. Larry: Wow. [laughter] Lee: Yeah, as parents of three and five kids here, we know what you're up against. Amanda: Yeah, definitely. It gets exhausting but I love every second of all of it. So, yes, I run two companies right now and I'll talk about the management structure of each and how I am able to run two companies in the limited work day that I do have. So, Soapbox is a website consultancy. We are most specifically focused on online fundraising and marketing strategies for nonprofit organizations. I was previously the Internet director for the American Civil Liberties Union and I was able to take that experience from back in 2004/2005 and bring it into a consulting environment. And we have been serving many other national nonprofits in the same capacity of what I did for the ACLU. Lee: Cool. Larry: Yeah, that's fantastic. Now, tell us about the other company. Amanda: DailyWorth.com is a long-time dream of mine coming to fruition. DailyWorth is very simple actually. It is a daily email, a free daily email, that teaches women about basic finance. We currently serve 50,000 members and it's growing quite rapidly. And having run Internet consultancies of one form or another for 10 years, I really was drawn to the "low overhead, high margin" nature of a daily email, daily newsletter company. Lee: Wow, I love it. Larry: Yeah, fantastic. Lee: I'm signing up. Larry: Yeah, my four daughters are, too. Amanda: Fantastic. Larry: Yeah. Lee: So Amanda, we just love to hear about how you really got into technology, and today, what are some of the coolest technologies you think are out there? Amanda: Well, I got into technology, funny enough -- my mother, back in college in 1964, majored in math and minored in computer science. The industry had just come to fruition. Lee: Trailblazer. Amanda: And I think she was the only woman in her class doing this. Lee: That is so cool. Amanda: And then when I was three or four years old, she got her MBA in Management Information Systems. So whereas most kids were doing arts and crafts, my mom plunked me down in front of the computer. And I think I really got into technology. You know, I actually was following a career path of politics, but through many convoluted means I got an administrative position in college where I graduated into doing BB scripting for databases. And despite my leanings -- my extroverted leanings towards politics -- I actually really fell in love with technology in college and realized, "Hey, my brain actually kind of works this way. I think I'm going to do this as a career." Lee: And that is such a cool story because how many of us had mothers that we learned from, at least the technology side. So it's very cool. Amanda: Yeah, it is very rare. It's a very rare situation, indeed. Lee: Yeah. Larry: So, what are some of the technologies that you think today are very cool? Amanda: I'm such an Apple geek these days. I mean, lately, I'm just amazed at how connected I feel to my iPhone, much to my husband's some sadness at times. My latest and favorite technology right now is -- I guess I'll talk about two things. The first is something called HeyTell, H-E-Y-T-E-L-L. It's an iPhone app that turns my phone into a walkie-talkie. So I'm able to have these kind of intermittent conversations with all sorts of people in my life -- anyone that I've convinced to download it. And it is much better than voicemail, but it's more personal than an instant message and I'm really encouraging everyone to try it out. The other thing, from a work context, is that I'm just getting into Skype Group Video Chat. I have probably 12 employees and contractors reporting to me now across two companies and no one is in a central location. So we all talk as a team throughout the day, and I really appreciate the group video technology that enables that. Lee: So glad that you brought that up because it is such a... Well, I should say "underused technology," but so many people are starting to use it and it is so cool. Larry: Yes. I use it from time to time, also. We have clients overseas and that really is handy then. Amanda: Really. Yeah, and the fact that we can all save time and money and a commute, and I can hire my director of marketing in Bozeman, and be coached by my mentor in LA, and I'm based out of Philadelphia. You know, it really just makes all of that so much more fluid. Larry: Yeah, that's fantastic. Lucy Sanders really likes us to ask this question. Why are you an entrepreneur today? Amanda: Oh! How could I not be an entrepreneur? I spent -- in the two years that I spent at the ALCU, which I loved, by 11:00 a.m. I was kind of banging my head against the table because I need to have my hands... I did not like being "siloed" in the IT department. I wanted to be involved in strategy, and I wanted to be involved in creative, and I wanted to... As much as I was in a leadership role there, it just felt segmented for me, and I know that would be the case for me in any corporate environment. And the reality is, is that I really thrived as an entrepreneur. I was the managing director of a website consultancy when I was 22, and I was the top-selling manager there. And I realized that because I'm able to generate business and because I do have certain leadership attributes that I have to be an entrepreneur, it's just not even a choice for me. Larry: Excellent. Well, then what is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick? I know you hit a number of points, but is there anything else? Amanda: I just really enjoy setting big goals and working toward them, and building teams and building networks. Despite the fact that I'm a home-based mother entrepreneur, I'm highly extroverted and need to be constantly connecting and interacting with people. So, I'm not sure if that's entrepreneurship that's making me tick or if it is the way that I tick that feeds into the fact that I'm an entrepreneur. But it's kind of this... I love kind of wild chaos towards big goals and seeing things come to fruition. And especially with DailyWorth, as we've grown to 50,000 members and we've signed on sponsors including ING Direct and H&R Block, and we have a pipeline of advertising revenue that makes my heart sing. After two years of constant endless workdays into the wee hours of the morning, I'm really seeing it come to fruition, and it's just -- I can't imagine doing anything else. Lee: I think you've summed up being an entrepreneur. Larry: Yeah, you got it. Lee: It's wild, chaotic, and thriving on it. Amanda: Yes, for sure. Lee: So, you had mentioned earlier that your mom was a big influence that really opened your eyes to the whole IT world. Who would you say have been other role models or mentors? Amanda: I have so many. It's really impossible to summarize. I think everyone I've worked for and worked with, I've learned something in some way. But I guess I'll talk about two in particular that have really helped me as of late. The first is a gentleman by the name of David Ronick. He runs something called upstartbootcamp.com. When I had my idea for DailyWorth two years ago, he was the one who really said, "OK, you need a business model. You need to understand your inflection points. You need to understand the revenue and the funds that you have to raise." And he really helped me put this -- what seemed like a wildly complex business model, spreadsheet together at the time, that now is really the blueprint of how I'm growing the company. So, he's been critical. I recommend that everyone has an MBA to lean on. And then the second person who's really, really transformed my world is a woman by the name of Jen Boulden. She is based in LA. I talk to her... It was twice a day. I think now it's probably three times a week as I've matured. She built the company called Ideal Bite which she successfully sold to Disney two years ago, using a very similar email newsletter model that I'm using. So she, as I joked, she's actually not very nice to me -- she is very nice to me, but she's not there to be nice to me. She's there to hold me to very high standards and point out all of my shortcomings and I've grown so much as a result of having her. I owe so much to her. Larry: Yeah. Boy, that's fantastic. You have two young children. You have two companies that you are running. What is the toughest thing you've ever had to do in your career? Amanda: The toughest thing I had to do in my career, no doubt, was back in 2001, after 9/11. As I mentioned, I was the managing director of a different website consultancy and we had grown to about 20 people and the sales just were not there to support the office. We had really high overhead and it was extremely painful. And I was responsible for laying off five people in a single go at the same time. I know you hear stories about people being fired and how horrible that is and it is absolutely excruciating. It was definitely, probably one of the worst days of my life, when I had to deliver those words to a group of people at once. Lee: I have to say that's probably about 95 percent of the other gals that we've interviewed have said. It seems to be unanimous, almost. Larry: You bet. Lee: So, Amanda, one of the things we'd like to do is have you give your advice about being an entrepreneur. We have a lot of young people, and people that are just starting to think about being an entrepreneur, so what advice would you give them? Amanda: The advice I would give them is that I find a lot of entrepreneurs that are really interested in coming up with their idea, their big money idea. And what I found is that I'm not so particularly interested in entrepreneur's ideas. I'm more interested in their business models, and how those models make money. Because I have seen countless times, amazing ideas fall flat because there wasn't the revenue or the scale to support them. And at the same time, I've seen some businesses entering crowded markets that don't seem so innovative that are really successful because they're simply improving upon one or two things that the rest of the market isn't. So, I would say, look at the businesses that really interest you. What is it about the operations of that business that are really exciting? And then, figure out your idea. That's what I did, and I can't tell you how happy I am that I took that path. Lee: That's great because it's probably a little-known fact that most of the most successful businesses out there weren't started with the actual idea. It morphed and changed along the way to find something that was really successful and a niche in the market at that time. Larry: Yeah. Amanda: Absolutely. Both of my businesses look nothing like what they were when they started. Larry: [laughs] Amanda, what are the personal characteristics, I know you've hit on some as we've gone through this but, that has given you the advantage of being an entrepreneur? Amanda: The first thing is I think I'm a little bit crazy. I don't seek balance in my life. I love to work. Work is very much enmeshed in my life. I am very ambitious, and I think you really kind of need that manic optimism to be successful, because it can just be so hard, so hard on so many levels. So, I think that's been helpful, honestly. I've definitely met other entrepreneurs who I think mirror those traits, and we often kind of laugh about how crazy we feel and yet how instrumental that is in being successful as an entrepreneur. The second thing is just being highly extroverted. I love nothing more than being dropped in a room with a thousand people I don't know. So much of building a business is about building a team and building the people to support you, not necessarily about what you can do on your own. So, I collect people as a hobby. I love -- I'm just genuinely interested in other people, and I think that's absolutely critical to any business as well. Lee: That's cool. Well, you kind of put me in a conundrum here because our next question is how do you bring balance into your...? Amanda: I did that on purpose. [laughter] Lee: So, obviously, you don't bring balance. But how do you survive? Maybe that's the better question. Amanda: You know, it was 11:00 last night, and I was making my son's and my daughter's egg salad sandwich for their lunch, and I was thinking about this slide I needed to update for my investor presentation at 9:00 a.m. this morning, and I really was cross-eyed. I was thinking "Oh, my God! I am in the depths of darkness right now. I am so tired. All I want to do is go to sleep." But somehow, I am able to survive. This is not my long-term plan -- to be living like this -- but I think if you have a certain level of ambition, you have to match it with that energy, and you have to make some sacrifices. I'd say my day is 95 percent energizing and five percent exhausting when I reach the darkness of 11:00 and the lunches still aren't packed, and I still haven't done the laundry to get their socks ready for the next day. So, I'll take that 95 percent positive, five percent pain point for what I look forward to in the future. Larry: Wow. Well, Amanda, you've got two companies that you're working and running right now. You've had successes in the past. Amanda: I've had a lot of failures, too. I've had so many failures. Larry: Oh, I'm so happy to hear that, yes. My wife and I, we started 12 companies and some were learning experiences. Amanda: Yeah. I've started probably seven to date, so, yes. Larry: Wow. Well, what's next for you? Amanda: What's next for me? Well, DailyWorth is really interesting because it's about empowering women in the area of finance. We have 50,000 members, and I know that it's applicable to reach millions of members. So, what's next for me is I'm raising around about 750,000 in Angel capital which will enable me to take my amazing DailyWorth team full time, and work toward our goal -- which is to reach 300,000 by the end of next year, and then a million over the next four years. So, that's really what I'm focused on. Larry: Excellent, that is super. Boy, I want to say that I am so happy that we had this opportunity to interview you. This interview will be heard by many people, many managers, entrepreneurs, and a number of young people who are looking into technology and entrepreneurship, so thank you for all your ideas. Lee: Thanks so much, Amanda. Amanda: My pleasure, and if I could just invite everyone to check out DailyWorth.com. For all the women interested in finance, I invite you to sign up. For anyone in the nonprofit world, Soapbxx -- spelled S-O-A-P-B-X-X -- .com is a great solution provider in the nonprofit space. Thank you. [laughs] Larry: That's excellent, and yes, we will. We'll also put it on our website so that people can link right to it if they hadn't taken that down. They can listen to this 24/7 at w3w3.com and ncwit.org. Lee: Thanks so much, Amanda. Amanda: Thank you. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Amanda SteinbergInterview Summary: Like many women, Amanda Steinberg came to a tech career through a back door. But when she realized that it interested her and she was good at it, she used it to kick-start her career as an entrepreneur. Release Date: December 13, 2010Interview Subject: Amanda SteinbergInterviewer(s): Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 16:13

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Saman Dias Co-founder, AIM Computer Training Date: October 28, 2010 Larry Nelson: This is Larry Nelson with NCWIT, the National Center for Women & Information Technology. And, we are very excited about this series of interviews. We're talking with fabulous female entrepreneurs and women who have started IT companies in a variety of sectors all of whom have had fabulous stories to tell us about being an entrepreneur. With me today is Lee Kennedy who is also a serial entrepreneur and founder of Bolder Search. Welcome. Lee Kennedy: Thanks, Larry, it's great to be here. Larry: Yes, this is really excellent. I am excited. My wife and I have started 12 companies over the years. Lee: Only 12. Larry: Only 12, and we really have enjoyed these various interviews. And, today we're interviewing Saman Dias who's an award winning entrepreneur who recognized the value of enterprise scale business technical training when she founded AIM Computer Training. Now, that's the global company which was acquired in 2004. And, Saman went on to lead other successful entrepreneurial efforts in real estate and social networking. She is currently staying quite busy as, among other things, an advisor to entrepreneurs, I can't wait to hear about that, at different companies including ASEAN Incubator. We're really happy to have you here today, Saman. Saman Dias: Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. That was a fabulous introduction, thank you. I'm delighted to be here. Larry: You've got a great reputation. So, let's get into the questions. Saman, could you tell us how did you first get into technology, and as part of a carry on to that is what technologies today do you think are cool? Saman: Yes. It's kind of an interesting way that I got into technology. I'm sure this happens to many folks. But, I originally studied to becoming a doctor and I was studying for the medical college entrance exam. I'm not sure if that's familiar to the U.S. entrepreneurs, but I'm originally from Sri Lanka and that's normally the process before you get accepted to the medical school. And, I had a hard time passing my entrance exam. And, I was getting frustrated and I found that my sisters would be going to college and I would be, too, studying for the medical college exam. And, my uncle said how about computers? And, I had no idea what it meant. This was in the early 1980's. And, I said, "Sign me up." And, that's how I got into technology. Lee: That is so interesting. Well, the follow along question is that's how you got into technology, why is it that you're an entrepreneur and what is it about being an entrepreneur that you find so exciting and makes you tick? Saman: Yes, why are you an entrepreneur? I feel that you can create your own destiny. It gives you the independence. It gives you the opportunity to create wealth and be your own boss. And so, I love that. Larry: Those ideas, I think, would turn a lot of people on. Saman: And, what about entrepreneurship makes you tick I think is the follow on question you asked? Today, looking back, it makes you tick I feel like you can really make a difference. You feel like you contribute and make a difference, not only for yourself, but also to the community, to the company. And from there, taking that, you make a difference to the world because you are helping to create work, you are helping to create jobs, you're helping to create a new innovation. So, that really is huge as far as feeling that you are making a difference in a meaningful way. Lee: So true. Larry: Absolutely. Along the way you've done a number of different things. Who are some of the people who influenced or supported you, in fact, maybe a role model or mentor? Saman: You know, originally it was my father. He gave the freedom to the limit and I think he paved the path to help me to, example, come to a place like the United States and to achieve what I have achieved today. But, I was not really fortunate to have a mentor. And, that's part of the reason that I am today helping many other young women entrepreneurs to get there. I learn really on my own. But, perhaps, following other success stories such as Bill Gates, Pierre Omidyar, Meg Whitman, [indecipherable 05:12] , some of those stories were inspiring to me, but constantly following other successful entrepreneurs and learning from all of those people has helped me. Lee: That's wonderful. Well, you know, we all know and have heard the story being an entrepreneur is not exactly easy. So, if you think back about your career, what was the toughest thing you had to do? Saman: I think the toughest thing getting started was taking that risk. Taking the risk of perhaps leaving a full time job that you had your comfort zone and walking away from something and then starting a business with no revenue and living off of your credit card to get you off the ground and build your revenue. And then, along the way, doing the business and running the business, one of the toughest things I had to do was sometimes walking away from a client who's either giving revenue to you or wanted to give revenue and that you felt it wasn't thing for the company. That was difficult. Lee: Yeah, I can definitely see that. And, yeah, the first point you made about the risk of leaving a secure job or employment, I think that is one of the toughest things. You've got a great job and to be an entrepreneur, like you say, you're leaving all that behind and with no money coming in and putting stuff on your credit card. Saman: Yep. And, I think many entrepreneurs can relate to that because there's a huge risk factor. And, entrepreneurs are you have to be risk takers, not just when you first started the company, but as you grow the business, every step of the way there's a risk element that you take. That is the hardest thing is take that risk and make that decision to move to the next step. Lee: Exactly. Larry: Well, with your background and experience, and if you were sitting down right now at the table or over your desk and there's a person who's talking about entrepreneurship and looking into it, what advice would you give them? Saman: I would give them follow your passion. Follow your heart. If you have a passion or an idea for any business, take that and follow your passion. But, do know and understand that when you become an entrepreneur, there is putting in hard work. And, you can continue to keep working hard and making your business successful if your passion is about what you're doing. Then, it doesn't become a chore. It doesn't become oh, I don't want to get up in the morning and go to work. You will do everything that you can possibly do to achieve that dream if you're excited about it. Lee: It's so true because if you're excited about what you're doing, it makes all the difference. Saman: Yes. And, entrepreneurship is hard. Starting a business is hard. Keeping it together is hard. There are a lot of obstacles that you have to go through, but then at the end you have tremendous reward. And, you're not going to see that reward right away. And, once you make that decision, there's no way of going back. You want to keep going forward, and you can do that if you have something that you're very excited about. Lee: I agree. Now, earlier we were talking about being an entrepreneur, there's a lot of risk involved, and other characteristics. What would you say are the personal characteristics that you have that have given you advantages as an entrepreneur? Saman: Yeah. For me personally, I'm really creative. Some of my staff used to say that Saman always sees windows and not walls. In other words, I will always find a way to get from A to Z than giving up. And, I think that has tremendously helped me to succeed that you are creative and I don't take a no for an answer. And, I'll always figure out a way to get it down or a way to make it happen or a way to hire somebody or a way to get through to a customer. So, I have been able to take advantage of that particular character that I have. Larry: Well, let me ask this question. You've done a lot, you're doing a lot and you're working with other people helping them along the way. How do you bring balance into your personal and professional lives? Saman: I bring balance by not only working and running a business, but really getting involved with activities. I love different types of competitive sports. Specifically, I play tennis and I compete. I play for the USDA tennis team. And, I'm always constantly learning a new sport. Recently, I started learning how to do stand up paddle boarding and I can barely swim. So, I'm learning how to swim and doing paddle boarding in the ocean in Hawaii. So, I constantly look for outside activities that involve either a competitive sport, as well as I do a lot of work related to giving back and helping others. And so, that also brings a balance because it allows you to give back your knowledge and share your knowledge, as well as learn from others. Lee: That's wonderful. And Saman, it's clear you've given back, you've achieved so much in your career so far. What do you think is next for you down the road? Saman: Right now that's really a good question. Next for me down the road I see myself being involved in advising start up entrepreneurs and helping them to grow their business and be really involved in that process. I've never had that opportunity. So, I'd really enjoy being able to share my knowledge either in a advisory capacity or as a board member and keeping my eyes and ears open for something creative, another business, a business idea that may come along, or perhaps to lead another company as an executive down the line. Larry: I have a feeling you're going to do a marvelous job with a bunch of companies. Saman: Yes, I love that. I love that. Larry: Well, I'm going to thank you, Saman, for joining us today. Lee Kennedy and I have enjoyed this. We always like talking to the successful entrepreneurs. Lee: Thank you so much, Saman. Saman: Thank you so much Larry: And by the way, you listeners out there, you know you can go to ncwit.org or w3w3.com and listen to this interview and other NCWIT interviews 24/7 it's on a podcast. And, pass this interview along to others that you know would be interested. Saman: I will definitely do that. Thank you so much. Lee: Thank you. Saman: Goodbye. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Saman DiasInterview Summary: Saman Dias is a person who "sees windows, not walls." She thinks her success as an entrepreneur has been due in part to an unwillingness to take no for an answer, and her ability to always find a way to get from A to Z. Release Date: October 28, 2010Interview Subject: Saman DiasInterviewer(s): Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 12:37

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Julia Hartz Co-Founder & President, Eventbrite Date: July 12, 2010 NCWIT Entrepreneurial Heroes [music] Lee Kennedy: Hi this is Lee Kennedy, board member for the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT. And we're here today as a part of a series of interviews that we're doing with extremely interesting entrepreneurs. These are women who have started IT companies in just a complete variety of sectors, and they all have just very cool stories to tell us. Today with me is Larry Nelson. And Larry is from w3w3.com. Hi, Larry. Larry Nelson: Hi, I really am happy to be on this show. And by the way there are so many parents and so many managers and leaders that listen to this show. So that's why we're tapping into all these great entrepreneurs and leaders. Lee: Great. And we also have Lucy Sanders who is the CEO for NCWIT. Thanks for joining us Lucy. Lucy Sanders: Hi Lee. Very happy to be here. And I wanted to mention that very often our entrepreneurs that we interview for this series are showing up more and more on the top 10. To watch the top 10 there, the most in this region, so the women we're interviewing are just top five entrepreneurs. Larry: You bet. Lee: Cool. Just to get right to it today we're interviewing Julia Hartz. And Julia is the co-founder and President of EventBrite. And EventBrite is the leading provider of online event management and ticketing services. Is just a really cool company, and Julia has brought the creative and energy of the entertainment business. She was at MTV formerly. Lucy: Oh wow.  Lee: Welcome Julia. Thanks for coming here today. We're looking forward to talking with you about entrepreneurship. Julia Hartz: Thank you. I'm really honored to be here. Lee: Wonderful. So can you tell us a little bit about what's going on at EventBrite lately? Julia: Oh goodness, a whole lot. Well, we were originally founded in 2006 by my husband and I and our third co-founder Renaud Visage, our CTO. And since that we bootstrapped the company. We were just three people for two years, very product focused. But I'm happy to report that we are now nearing 60 employees. So it's quite a different company today than it was even back in 2008. On the topic side we're just really focused on making life simpler for the organizers, and delighting our customers through innovations of simple tools they can use to publish event pages, promote their events to a wider audience, and sell out their events. So sell more tickets to their events. And we're also now looking at our relationship with ticket buyers. Now that we've helped event holders host over 200, 000 events, obviously that there is a larger accumulation of attendees that are now coming back to EventBrite to find out about more events that they want to attend. So that's a current feature trend that we're seeing. Lee: Well you know NCWIT runs events, so we could well be one of your future customers. Julia: [laughs] I'll give you the sales pitch. Lee: All right. [laughs] Julia: On a different time maybe. [laughs] Lee: Yeah. I would love to hear more. We find that running events can be very time consuming. So it sounds like EventBrite is on to something. So Julia, the first question is about technology. And first of all, how you became interested in technology? And also really interesting technologies that might you see on the horizon that would interest our listeners. Julia: All right. So my career as you said it before began in television. I was a development executive at MTV, and I worked the first season and the first movie of a little project called Jackass. Sorry, I'm not sure if I can say that on radio. And then I went on to FX Networks, and I worked on shows like Nip/Tuck, The Shield, and Rescue Me. So my career there was really high in creativity, and it was definitely pushing me up a little as they were in cable television, and the projects they worked on. But it was very well in technological innovation. So we found it very hard to break the traditional distribution mold as well as the traditional advertising mold for that matter. So my last year at FX I spent a lot of time on product placement, which was sort of a thankless job, trying to make sure that the label of the beer can was pointed in the right direction at all times in a scene. I started to get the inkling that there was something out there that would make me feel fulfilled, and I was lucky enough to meet Kevin about two years before I left television. I was able to see him start a company from inception. I was sold. Two years later I was ready to leave my traditional career and take the leap. So that's how I first got into technology. I felt like it would be something I would feel, I wanted to be ahead of the curve instead of trying to chasing trends, which I felt like we were doing in television at the time that I was working at MTV and FX. Technologies that I think are cool? Kevin is an avid angel investor and adviser. By virtue of that we were really lucky to be involved in a lot of different companies and see a lot of great trends come out of those companies, and very bright people. I always say that what I feel like is cool right now for me personally is not exactly original. But it is in the way of communication and information dissemination and I'll give you an example of how that applies to me and why I think it's cool. We were recently on a trip and our trip itinerary was shared with our family and anybody else who needed no know where we were through TripIt. We were not in touch with our family during the trip so I posted mobile photos of our two-year-old on Facebook so that my mom would know how she was doing at all times. In our company we share information through Yammer and we also share expenses through Blippy. Then, on the social side oftentimes, I'm checking in through Yelp to let people know where I am in case they're in the same area. We live in the city so it's not so large. So that idea that I can instantly broadcast and disseminate information easily and with no friction is really huge for me today being an entrepreneur and a mom. Larry: Well, entrepreneur and a mom, and you got this "techie" background, why are you an entrepreneur? Also tying in with that, what is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick? Julia: I'm an entrepreneur because I believe that I can change an industry. I also love helping to build something that people want and that's extremely valuable. I feel day-to-day glee in making a difference, in working on projects that are both very large scale and very small scale. I also feel like being an entrepreneur, for me, I feel like I'm part owner in a movement. So I think if I were to sum it up, being an entrepreneur and being a parent, I feel equally about both. [laughs] So EventBrite is very much our baby and there is just something inherently satisfying about working on something that you feel such ownership and passion about. That's what entrepreneurship means to me. That's what excites me about it. Lucy: That's great. So Julia, who would you say influenced you or was a role model or mentor along the way to get into being an entrepreneur? Julia: The reason why I took the leap and didn't hesitate was because of Kevin. Entrepreneurship comes like second nature to Kevin, and he had founded two companies before that. So I really believed that everything would be OK [laughs] and that somehow, someway we would succeed. So for him there was just no question that he wanted to always be an entrepreneur and it was almost like, "Why not? Why not come work for free with me and see what we can do and how we can change the world?" So really he's the one that influenced me first and foremost. Our families really support us along the way. They're very unconditional about everything we do. As far as role models go, we have mentors in Michael and Xochi Birch who are a married couple who founded a few companies. But most notably and recently Bebo, they founded together. They gave us some great advice in the beginning, which was divide and conquer. As a married couple if you're working together never work on the same thing at the same time. Not only is that sort of a recipe for disaster if you're behind the same spreadsheet in trying to share them out, but also you get from point A to point B two times as faster, even maybe faster, because you have complementary skills. And that very much applies to Kevin and I. We divide and conquer in everything we do. At this point in the game we work on very different aspects of the business, and actually get to catch up at the end of the day. And ask each other how each others day went. And my parents are role models because just everything that they've done they've done with a lot of grace. And finally, two-year-old daughter Emma is a huge role model to both of us. Because I think, for me it's because she never backs down from wanting to know why. She doesn't settle for an answer that she can't completely believe. She can definitely be a role model for us in many different aspects. Lucy: Well, I certainly think parenting has taught me up. That's for sure. She probably got a double dose of entrepreneurship. We'll have to see what she ends up starting. Lee: Or determination. Lucy: Or determination for sure. So Julia along the way you've been encouraged, you started a company, you've worked in entertainment, you've had a great career so far. What's the toughest thing in your professional career you've ever had to do? Julia: The only thing that I dread and the toughest part of this gig is coming to the realization that a team member is not a right fit, and having to let them go. And for us it's been, we haven't had to let go many people, and that's great. But it's really hard when you're building a team, because you feel like this is your family. And for me, I feel like each person on our team is like an athlete. I have to keep them like well-feed and you know hydrated, and well, and out of the tabloids. [laughs] I want to take care of everyone who works at EventBrite. And to have to part ways with somebody is by far the toughest part of this gig. Secondly, I think making decisions that I feel like are going to maybe not sit well with our customers. And our interests have been extremely aligned with our customers since the inception of EventBrite. And we really built EventBrite through having a dialogue with our customers and understanding event organizers' pain-points, and how can we alleviate them through technology. But making decisions like pricing changes it's totally agonizing. And we have a story where we went from a freemium service to offering a free service and paid service, to just a completely paid service. And we fretted over it for months. And when we finally reached the decision and pulled that cord, not only did we not see the turn that we had expected, but we saw our conversion go up. Because people who were coming to the site going to have to make that decision over or whether not to sign for the free or paid service. So these kinds of decisions are really tough for us. And I feel like one thing we could have done better is not fret so much over it, and believe in our product, and our ability to delight our customers. Larry: That's great advice. So one of the things we wonder about and always ask and that is if you were sitting down right now with a person who's considering becoming an entrepreneur or just starting to be an entrepreneur what advice would you give them? Julia: I think that if you're going to do it you have to jump in. I mean I feel like when I visualized the leap that I took from a corporate secure job to running EventBrite and working on this project, I envisioned myself jumping in with my eyes closed, head first and all hands and feet in. I mean I don't think that it's possible to have success without completely committing yourself. So whether that is committing yourself completely mentally, or if it's mentally, logistically and financially you really have to put all your skin in the game to actually have a chance. Most start-ups don't' succeed and I think that it's for obviously a variety of reasons. But first and foremost, if you're going to choose entrepreneurship, you have to commit in every fiber of your body. Lee: The word devotion comes to mind. Lucy: Yeah. Julia: It takes a lot of devotion. You can't have one put in and one put out. It doesn't work very well. Lee: So, on the same note what it takes to be an entrepreneur, there's certain personal characteristic that everyone thinks of that makes us entrepreneur successful. What would you say are your personal characteristics that have given you the advantage as an entrepreneur? Julia: So, me personally, I feel like I have a very strong willingness to pitch in. Now, that we are 60 people and our roles as founder, I feel like at this point I do not get in the way of greatness. We hire very, very smart, capable, talented people and we need to let them have their freedom to really change this industry. But on the flip side, I am always willing to pitch in and help so whether that be any sort of mundane task. It is not mundane to me because it contributes towards the success of the EventBrite, of my baby. So, that willingness to pitch in is key. I also have an ability to be objective. So, because of my first start up, I'm not very dated and everything is very new. I try to just come about it and to have a fresh perspective and being very objective about everything that is happening and not ever feeling like we have to be status quo. We are actually trying to disrupt an industry, the ticketing industry, and so to look at it from a fresh perspective is an advantage in many different aspects of running a start up. And, finally I feel like I'm a 110 percent committed. I mean I feel extreme honors over EventBrite in a way of like I really care about it and I care about everybody who works on changing the world with us. And so, commitment and then accountability really being accountable for the bad things and the good things. I think that makes a big difference. Lucy: Julia, you've mentioned that you travel and you mentioned your family and you mentioned your devotion to EventBrite. So, we're curious. We always ask this question. How do successful entrepreneurs bring balance into both their personal and their professional lives? Julia: Right. So, first of all you have to prioritize and you have to perhaps write it down on a white board. What is most important to you and then write everything up. I mean we talk a lot about [inaudible 15:15] optimization here and I kind of feel the same way about balancing your life. For us, it is an interesting talent because EventBrite is very much our first baby and we have and I who is a part of this process. So, instead of dividing them into two things, we feel like we are in it together. Sort of cliché to say but it is very true. It takes a village and for me personally, I have to find my vortex of happiness so that for me is being a great mom and being a great entrepreneur. I have to be confident enough to ask for and receive help from our village of family and friends. And I have to prioritize. And so, I have to note that if push come to shove, what would I do in each scenario and how do that emergency sort of exit plan. That is also very applicable to working with your spouse. And so, I feel like for us, our family and our friends and our daughter, they are in it with us and so they feel invested and understand what's going on as well. Larry: Well, you have already achieved a great deal. You are doing a lot. You are young. You are building a family. What's next for you? Julia: My goal for EventBrite is to grow the service and to the only place you would ever go to buy a ticket for any event you would ever attend. And then secondly, I want to have more kids. Lucy: There you go. Julia: It gets a little bit harder to scale for some reason I don't know. I look at it and I'm like, I am pretty sure one plus one doesn't equal to so we'll see. [laughs] Larry: Well, I've got five kids and my wife and I are in business together so it works. Lucy: I have three. Julia: I need to sit down and pick your brain. Lee: Well, thank you so much Julia for talking to us. We really appreciate it. I want to remind our listeners where they can find this interview. w3w3.com and NCWIT.org and please do pass this along to other people who would be interested in listening to it. Thanks very much Julia. Julia: Thanks so much for having me.  Larry: Thanks, Julia. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Julia HartzInterview Summary: Julia is a reformed Television Network Executive and comes to Eventbrite by way of FX Networks and MTV. "I'm an entrepreneur because I think I can change an industry. I also love helping to build something that people want. Being an entrepreneur, for me, I feel like I'm part owner in a movement and there is just something inherently satisfying about working on something you feel such ownership and passion about." Release Date: July 12, 2010Interview Subject: Julia HartzInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 17:20

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Candace Fleming CEO and Co-founder, Crimson Hexagon Date: April 19, 2010 Entrepreneurial Heroes Interview with Candace Fleming [music] Lee: Hi, this is Lee Kennedy. I am a board member for the National Center for Women and Information Technology, or NCWIT, and I'm also the CEO of Boulder Search. This is part of a series of interviews that we are having with fabulous entrepreneurs, they are women who have started IT companies in a variety of sectors, all of whom have just fabulous stories to tell us about being entrepreneurs, and with me today is Larry Nelson from W3W3. Hey Larry. Larry Nelson: I'm very happy to be here, and this is a wonderful so reason and you make sure you pass these interviews along to others that you know would be interested and they can give it here at NCWIT.org or W3W3.com. Lee: Great, and I also have Lucy Sanders, who is the CEO of NCWIT. Hi Lucy. Lucy Sanders: Hello. Lee: Great to have you. Well, and just to get right to it, we are interviewing Candace Fleming. Candace is the CEO and co-founder of Crimson Hexagon. Crimson Hexagon's technology analyzes the vast social Internet, so blog posts, forum messages, tweets et cetera, and it's done by identifying statistical patterns in the words used to express opinions on different topics. And the product is called Foxtrot, and it helps you to develop your listening approach to many different Internet channels. So without further ado, I would love to introduce Candace, and have her tell us a little bit about her background and experience. Candace, welcome. Candace Fleming: Thank you, it is great to be here, I am excited about this opportunity to share. Lee: Well, if you could tell us just little bit about Crimson Hexagon, that would be great. Candace: At a very high level, what Crimson Hexagon does is, we have technology that goes out and find millions and millions of blogs and forums and tweets, product reviews and things that are probably available on Facebook, and reads them all everyday and can summarize opinions that are being expressed. So in some ways it's a little bit like an automatic opinion poll, but you are not actually asking a poll question because you are really just harvesting values from conversations that are already happening. Lee: Wow. Candace: And we are a 15% company based here in Boston. Lee: So basically, you have got bots or robots that go out and hit all of these different social sites and pull back the data and then analyze it, is that kind of a nutshell for our novice technology listeners? [laughter] Candace: It is that idea where we get data from lot of different sources, we license some data streams, we also do our own call link, but it is not so much the data collection that is special about what we do, it is really in the content analysis of what we do. So if you imagine, I think a lot of your listeners are familiar with Google Alert, were you can very efficiently and very quickly use keywords, and every day multiple times a day, you will get an email in your in-box with the links to mention of those words. But the problem is, when you start to build a large brand or you have a large company, there are so many mentions that it is nearly impossible to stay on top of them. We end up speaking with marketers and brand managers or PR agencies who sit down with a list of 30,000 links and they say, "How do I make meaning out of all this?" So our technology really allows you... It quantifies for you in that list of 30,000 links, what percentage of people are saying they like a specific feature of your product or what percent of people are saying they actually like your competitor's product better or really getting down to the opinions of what's being said. Lee: So we could use it to figure out what people are saying about Larry. Larry: Uh oh. Candace: Exactly. That's right. Larry: That's a different dinner gig. Lee: I'm liking this more and more. Candace: The only limitation is that people have to actually be talking about the topic. Lee: Oh don't worry, we've got plenty of info, don't worry. Lucy: So Candace, back to you. We'd love to hear about how you first got into technology. Candace: Ever since I was little, I have been noticing how technology improves our lives every day. My dad was an electrical engineering professor, and so we were always talking about science and technology and new innovations and seeing how the world progressed. And so, I've been thinking about it from a very early age, and went on to get an engineering degree in college and have always done work in my professional career around technology and algorithms and the application of technology. Larry: Oh. Lucy: So as a little add on, what technologies do you think are cool today? Candace: Well, of course our technology. Lee: Of course, you want a list. Candace: I could be honest, that I'm very biased about that. Actually I think there are a couple of things, I think there are some really neat consumer electronics coming out like they talk about 3-D TV or the Nexus One phone. But even maybe a little bit less mainstream, I heard about a technology that a Harvard biologist named Pete Gergen developed in microbial fuel cells, and it sounds like a lot of big words, but essentially what he's developed is a way to harness energy as microbes that decompose organic matter. And what that means is you can basically take a bucket of trash, stick one of his apparati into it and have light, or have enough to charge a cell phone. Stuff like that, if you think about the implications of that for third world countries or differences parts of our lives, I think it's incredible. So there's a lot of good stuff laying around. Larry: Yeah. Wow. I'm ordering one of each. Candace, let me ask this. What is it about being an entrepreneur that turns you on? Talk about that. Candace: I think for me it was all about this particular opportunity. I didn't set out to one day start a company of my own necessarily, and so in this instance I saw a huge opportunity that was so exciting that I wanted to literally drop everything and get this off the ground. I think in general, nothing is more exciting for me than pulling together a team and seeing what we can collectively accomplish. And I think in small companies, you really can see the impact of that. Where I walk into our conference room for a team meeting, and a year and a half ago these people didn't even know each other, and now they're doing things for big brands and big name companies, and really doing things that even the people on their team never knew they could accomplish. Lee: Well and forming those teams and forming something from nothing is really an exciting part of entrepreneurship. Now Candace, you mentioned that your father from a very early age was talking about technology, talking about engineering, and we find that that's very typical, especially for women. That their father or mother played a role in their early sort of sense of technology. Can you tell us a bit more about who else influenced or supported you in your career paths, or role models or mentors? Candace: So I would have to say that number one on that list is actually my husband. Lee: Yay husbands! Lucy: Yay! Candace: His name is Lee Fleming. And you know I was at a breakfast on Friday and there was a female entrepreneur who said, "Well you know, everyone knows the saying 'Behind every good man is a good woman,'" and I say the exact opposite is true as well, especially as it applies to start-ups. Behind every entrepreneur, especially if it's one who is a family, there's got to be a supportive spouse there." And so I think my husband wanted me to do this even more than I did. And so even before day one, when I heard about this opportunity, he's been helping me every step of the way. Quite literally, because he happens to be a professor at Harvard Business School, and he teaches a class on commercializing technologies and innovations, so I get some good coaching over the dinner table. Lucy: That's pretty handy! Candace: Very handy! Other than my parents, of course, who have been so supportive along the way, my co-founder, actually, who is also a professor at Harvard, his name is Gary King. He's the one who invented the algorithms that we've commercialized. So, from day one, he has said, "I think you're the one who should grow this company, I think you can make this happen and I want to work with you to do this." So having someone who believes in you so completely, and stands by you every step of the way, and is so fantastic to work with is a great gift. Lucy: That is really exciting. Lee: I downloaded his paper to read. Candace: Did you read it? Lee: Not yet, it was a little long for me, but I downloaded it for plane reading. Lucy: We just had interviewed somebody about advisory boards, and I'm thinking you've got these great built-in advisory boards. So to switch topics just a smidge from all these wonderful things, what's the toughest thing you've had to do in your career? Candace: It's actually what I'm doing now, but more specifically, starting and growing a successful company. Basically, in 2008 which is when we had the worst economic meltdown since the Depression, is by far the hardest thing that I've ever had to do. Or, at least chosen to do. But, as I'm sitting here, we just finished putting together our financial plan for the year, and I think it's going to be a great year. I feel like we've made it through and we have a lot of momentum. But, the economy has not been necessarily the friend of any entrepreneur, I think, in the last 18 to 24 months. Lee: You're right. Lucy: That's the truth. Lee: It hasn't been good to anyone. Larry: Yeah, well, boy, that's an interesting lead-in to the question I'm going to ask, and that is: If you were sitting down right now with an entrepreneur and you were going to give them some advice, what advice would you give them today? Candace: That's a great question. I would say maybe three things. First, and I mean this both perhaps literally and figuratively, eat your broccoli. Eat your broccoli because it's good for you, and it will make you healthy. But, figuratively, I mean being an entrepreneur, there are a lot of things that you need to do that are good for you even though you may not want to do them. They're good for the company, they're good for your own personal growth, and so I would say don't shy away from those things. The second thing, also I mean both literally and figuratively is to play team sports. I think, literally, go out there and play volleyball and basketball, soccer, because I think playing in a team is actually very much like working in a small company. You have the same small team environment, you need to give and take and you have rules in a company just like you do on a sports team. Learning about leadership and teamwork, I think sports is an incredible way to learn that. And then the last thing is again, both figuratively and literally, put things to bed earlier than you want to. [laughter] By that, I mean definitely get more sleep than you want to get, but metaphorically, don't set perfection as the bar for everything. I think that in many, many cases good is enough. And if I had learned earlier, I think I would have saved myself a lot of time and stress. Lucy: Well, so, my next question is about the characteristics that make you a great entrepreneur. What we just saw in that last answer was one of them is wisdom. [laughter] Lucy: So, perhaps you can, other things that come to your mind when you think about yourself and entrepreneurship. Those characteristics that you think give you an edge. Candace: I think that I'm an optimist. I think entrepreneurs have to be willing to look reality in the face and convince themselves to see the rosy side of it, perhaps. [laughs] You need to say you can be so focused and drive for something even though there are going to be a lot of obstacles in your way. The second thing is I'm not scared of hard work. That's something that I think is crucial to being able to get a company off the ground. I think the last thing is I'm fairly direct and honest. I think when you're working in a small company environment, there's - somewhat thankfully from my perspective - there's not as much politics. You sit in a room with people, you decide things and you get things done. There's not ten layers of approvals. So, I think being straightforward with people and being honest with people really carries you a long way in being successful, particularly in a small group. Lucy: I have to agree with all of the above. When you have that small group, you just have to be really direct and honest. Candace: Limit to cycles. Lucy: Yeah. Candace: That's it. Lucy: It really does. So, Candace, one of our favorite questions is with building start-ups and being an entrepreneur, as you'd mentioned earlier, it's a ton of work. So, how do you bring balance into your personal and professional life? Candace: Yeah, I think this is a great question. As I thought about this, I have, perhaps, an ironic take on this. And, that is I view my family as an enabler of my professional success. I think that I have a fantastic husband, I mentioned earlier. I have two little kids. I have a two-year-old and a six-year-old. I actually started Crimson Hexagon when my two-year-old was two weeks. Lucy: Oh, my goodness! Lee: Oh, my God! Candace: There is no better way to give you perspective back in life than when you come home from a hard day of work and you get tackle-hugged by these two little people before you can even put your briefcase down. [laughs] So, I actually think that, by having a family, it allows me to be successful at work. Because I work just as hard as the next person and just as many hours. But, I think the trick is, even if it's 15 minutes that you sit down and talk with them in a day, you make that time. And, that time gets paid back to you in a thousand different ways that help you in the rest of your life. So, I just think you have to make sure that you spend time on each, even if the time is very little. But, mentally, it's what keeps me balanced. Lucy: Absolutely the case. Those are great ages for kids, just great, full of energy. So, Candace, you've already achieved a lot. What's next for you? Candace: I have achieved some good things, but I don't view myself as being done here. [laughs] I plan to continue running and growing small companies. I think that what we're doing here at Crimson Hexagon is so exciting. This type of activity is something I want to do for a long, long time. Lucy: Crimson Hexagon is exciting. That is just a cool company. And, I feel like I want to make a plug for a Boulder-based company that's one of your partners. Because we have a lot of Boulder listeners here. Room 214 is a partner of Crimson Hexagon. So, we're just excited about that. If you come out here to Boulder, you need to stop by. It would be great to have you. Thank you so much, Candace. We all appreciate your time. I want to remind listeners where they can find this interview. Larry: At W3W3.com as well as NCWIT.org. Lucy: All right. Thank you very much, Candace. We appreciate it. Lee: Yes. Candace: Thank you. Larry: Bye-bye. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Candace FlemingInterview Summary: Data is abundant on the web, and information is free. But meaning is what matters, and uncovering it requires a good deal more than counting keyword mentions across the social web. Crimson Hexagon's technology – based on groundbreaking work conducted at Harvard University’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science – distills meaning about brands, products, services, markets and competitors from the online conversation. Release Date: April 19, 2010Interview Subject: Candace FlemingInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 16:28

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Gail Goodman President, Chair, and CEO, Constant Contact Date: March 16, 2010 Entrepreneurial Heroes Interview with Gail Goodman [intro music] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders and I'm the CEO of National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT. This is our next podcast interview in a series of interviews with women who have started IT companies and/or who are CEOs of start-up companies and the technology spaces. And today, we have Lee Kennedy with us, who is a serial entrepreneur and right now with Bolder Search and also with NCWIT Board of Directors. And Larry Nelson from W3W3 who has just informed us that tomorrow is his eleventh year of his Internet... Larry Nelson: ... Talk radio show. Lucy: Yeah, absolutely. Lee Kennedy: Congratulations, Larry. Larry: Thanks. Lucy: Well, in this interview is very exciting for all of us who send mail out and who know about Constant Contact. We are interviewing Gail Goodman, who is the President, Chairman, and CEO of Constant Contact. And she has done so much, both personally and through her company to really revolutionize the way that businesses reach out and send mail to their stake holders. And really since she's doing Constant Contact, the number of customers has just skyrocketing. NCWIT is a customer. We use it for our newsletters and our campaigns and everything else. So, welcome, Gail, it's good to have you with us. Gail Goodman: Great to be here and thank you for your business. Lucy: Well, you're welcome. Well, we are really eager to hear first, before we start into our entrepreneurial questions a little bit about what's going on with Constant Contact lately? Catch our listeners up a little bit. Gail: Right, for those of you who don't know Constant Contact: Constant Contact is 100 percent focused on helping small businesses, non-profits associations who look great. That's staying connected to customers, clients, members. So, we started with email marketing and that's absolutely our kind of flagship product. But, over the last couple of years, in addition to growing how many customers use Constant Contact, we also added two new products. Event marketing, so to help people run complete closed moved event registration, take money for the event and that whole community advice for business. Lucy: Of course. Gail: And an online survey tool to help people hear back from their customers or members with feedback and learn more about who those folks are, true demographic questions. Today, we have over 325,000 customers around the world who count on our service to stay connected to their most important audiences. And we are just immensely grateful to that group for their business. Lucy: Well, I didn't really know you had an event marketing tool. So, we have events. Gail: That's fabulous. Lucy: I'm going to have to go take a look at it. Gail, you're the CEO of a Tech company, an obviously you're immersed in Tech every day as you think about what Constant Contact is going to be doing in the future. What is it about technology that really interests you and how did you get into a technology company? Gail: Well, I have to say that I had the technology bug pretty darned early. I started using a computer when I was in high school, which to many of the listeners may seem obvious, but when I was in high school, they didn't have personal computers. You had to actually go find a big computer and something that looked like a refrigerator box and actually program on paper tapes and now I'm starting to sound like a dinosaur. Lucy: No, Gail, you're sounding just like Lucy and Larry. [laughter] Gail: But, I just love technology pretty early on and what excited me as I went through my career was not the technology itself, but the problems that it could solve for real people and real businesses. And so, as my career matured, it was all about solving customer problems and that really is what still excites me and makes me get all into the new and emerging technologies. How can this solve a problem that couldn't be solved with a mainframe, with a laptop and now that we have the Internet and mobile devices and it all creates new opportunities to solve problems. Lucy: Well, as you look at technology today, do you have specific technologies that you think are really leading the charge in terms of being innovative. What technologies interest you the most? Gail: As a business person thinking about what we do for our customers. The technology that interests me the most are the social networks and mobile. As a consumer, I'm really interested in the convergence of the smart phone with identity geo targeting and all that that brings together. I think it's consumers, we're just getting so empowered with the iPhone in our hands to do things so dramatically differently. It's like trying to go back and forth with trying to be a consumer and then thinking about what does that means for our business customers, how can they take advantage of that. Lucy: That's definitely the way that you have to think even in your business because your business is all about how consumers use your product. So, if we switch back to you, you started off as a techie and you loved solving problems. What moved you into being an entrepreneur and what is it about entrepreneurship that you love? Gail: The thing that moved me into entrepreneurship was really this combination of wanting to solve customer problems and really feeling like I was ready to earn my own destiny. I had spent a career working for others, sort of frustrated at the pace of what I could do with a pace of change, with the pace of innovation and it just got to the point where it was time to put my money where my mouth was and see if I could do it better than all the people I was thinking I could do it better than. Lucy: Obviously being in a start up that pace is fast enough for you right? Gail: Yeah, and the very interesting challenge for me now is, I joined Constant Contact in '99, there were six people. But, the place was definitely fast enough. Today, we are 625. Lucy: Wow. Gail: And I could hardly call us a start up anymore and how do we just keep that pace of innovation going? How do we keep internal entrepreneurship going? How do we make it easy for people to get things done and make decisions? And I am increasingly challenged to keep solving the same problems I came here to solve. Lucy: That's in interesting topic. You know, we have another interview series called "The Toolbox Series" where I think this idea of, how do you take a startup that has grown to some significant size and keep that innovation, start moving? That would be a very interesting topic. Larry: Yeah, it certainly would. Lee: And that's amazing that you've been there. It'll be 11 years, this year? Gail: Eleven years in April. Lee: Wow. Gail: Me and Larry, we're both doing our 11 year anniversary. [laughter] Larry: Yeah, I'll tell you. I was thinking that, wow. Lucy: Wow. Larry: You know, along the way I'm sure that you had either mentors or role models, or people who helped you out along the way. Well, who would that be that you would pick out that has influenced and supported you in your career path? Gail: I'm going to go with two answers here. Larry: OK. Gail: And one seems just a tiny bit trite. But, my parents really were huge influences here and I think the thing they did for me that is pretty unique, for their generation for women, is they really gave me a huge belief in myself and the confidence that I could do or try anything. And that was really a huge piece of what gave me the confidence to step out from under, you know, the corporate safety net and go alone. Lee: That's wonderful. Larry: Yeah, great. Gail: And then, along the way, you know, my best role models have been my CEO peer mentoring group. So, when I was about two years into this adventure, I joined a group of other venture-backed tech CEOs, who sat down together for a day-and-a-half a quarter and really talked about what we were doing to grow our businesses. You know, the role of the CEO, how to manage the board, how to raise more money. And we helped each other grow into our CEO roles. And so, I would say all of them were role models and I learned something from each and every one of them, because we each brought unique backgrounds and experience sets to the table and created an environment where we could be completely open about the issues and challenges we were facing in our business. Lee: And you sat down each quarter for a day-and-a-half solid? Gail: -huh. Lee: Wow. Lucy: Wow, well, that's pretty intense networking. Lee: Yeah. Lucy: That's awesome. Well, you know, and your statement about your parents, we see that time and time again at NCWIT, that, in fact, encouragement of parents, especially to women, young women, who are interested in technology. As you said, you were interested in computing in high school, at a time when there really wasn't... It was hard to be interested in computing in high school. And that encouragement from your parents, I think, is quite a factor. So, switching gears just a bit, from the encouragement of parents, to something maybe not quite so pleasant. We always like to ask the people we interview the hardest thing they've ever had to do in their career. So, why don't you tell us the most difficult thing? You mentioned working for others and then you started Constant Contact as an entrepreneur; what's the toughest thing you've had to do? Gail: Well, I think the toughest thing I had to do was, you know, really face the fact that Constant Contact might not make it. So, we were venture-backed, the good news is we got some money before the Internet bubble burst. But then, we needed some money after the bubble burst, and money was pretty darn hard to come by. And so, as the cash balance was dwindling and I was counting down how many payrolls I could make, while I was frantically running around the world hat in hand, I needed to write a shutdown plan. And we got within 10 days of pulling the trigger on that. Lucy: Oh! Lee: Wow! And you got funding? Gail: You know, get the executive team in a room, tell them the plan. Tell them we're... You know, at that point, it looked more likely than not, that we were going to shut this thing down. And I think it was... You know, the full employee base never knew how close we got. But, looking around the table at the team who had been working hard every day and saying, "Guys, I think it's over," was the hardest thing I had to do. Larry: How many employees did you have at that time? Gail: More than we should have. [laughter] Lee: Oh, no! Lucy: Wow. Lee: Well, that's a great story. Right? And that it turned out happily ever after this. Larry: Yeah. Lee: So, Gail, we have a lot of young people listening to our podcasts and we would love for you to... If you were sitting here with them, what advice would you give them about entrepreneurship? Gail: Well, the thing I would say, is get a good solid foundation before you strike out on your own. So, get some experience first working for a company, and be very observant about what works and what doesn't work. Leadership style, management style. You know, it is very difficult to be figuring these things out for the first time in an environment where you are, you know, absolutely supposed to be running the place. And as you think about those first sets of jobs, be very thoughtful about the set of experiences you want to get. And I would say, get as close to the customer and the value delivery point as you can. So, if you're in a professional services company, you know, get into the client engagements. If you're in a software product company, get into product management. So, you see how the sausage factory produces a product. And not everything you're going to learn there, you're going to want to take with you, but get some stripes somewhere else. Not only will it give you an experience and guide to your own leadership and management style, I think it'll make you much more fundable, if you're going into a business where you're going to need some other people to vote for you and give you their money. Larry: You listeners out there pay attention to that reply, because I wish I had heard that, before I started my first company. But... Lee: That is. That's sage advice. Larry: So, Gale, you talked about your parents, the CEO mentoring group, and so on. Getting right into you, what are some personal characteristics of yours that have made you a successful entrepreneur? Gail: So, I'll highlight four that I think are pretty important. And I'll start with tenacity. I just refuse to fail. [laughter] Gail: Every obstacle was a challenge to be taken on. The second kind of directly relates to that which is I am an analytic animal. So, when I see challenges I don't react to them emotionally, I react to them analytically. Let's diagnose it. Let's do the root cause analysis. And let's fix it. The third thing is that I am a continuous learner. I understand that I don't know what I don't know, and I'm not afraid to get help from others. Talk, you know, peers... One of my first reactions to a problem we would have in the business is who might have solved this problem already? And how do I get access to them to figure out how they solved it? So, I'm always reading books. I am always talking to others. I am always trying to pick people's brains. And the final piece and probably the hardest piece, for me, because it wasn't natural, is I think it's important as an entrepreneur that you be immensely open to the feedback of others and recognize the weaknesses in yourself so you can complement them with the team. And so I ask for, and on a good day listen to a lot of feedback. Lucy: Well, and I think that, I'd add a fifth characteristic that you didn't mention. You have a great sense of humor. A great laugh, I have to think that that helps get through the day as well. Gail: If you start taking yourself too seriously you're in deep trouble. Larry: Yep. Lucy: Yeah. We think so too. We don't take Larry seriously. [laughter] Larry: We'll talk offline, Gail. Lucy: So speaking of your day. You have a lot of work in your day obviously running a successful company like Constant Contact. And yet you have a personal life too. We like to ask how people bring balance into their life knowing full well that perhaps most people are totally unbalanced when they're in the situation that you're in. But, we find that they amazingly have coping strategies so they do have a personal life as well. So, why don't you tell us about how you bring balance there? Gail: Yeah. Just a couple of things. I have so many interests outside of work that I have been unwilling to give up because of that tenacity. So, that's really helped. So, I happen to be a tennis addict as a player and watcher. The good thing about tennis is you've got to schedule it. So, you've got a bunch of other people waiting for you on a court, you don't blow it off. So, it happened to be a very good hobby because other people were waiting for me. To all the tennis players out, all I need to say is doubles with three people is really not as much fun. And I never said, wow, I'm not going to have that much time for that this quarter. I'm not going to sign up for the contract with the ladies. I just did it. And so that formed some anchors of things that got me out of the office and got me moving and fun. The second thing is I have always prioritized the people who mean the most to me. My family, my friends, you cannot let those relationships go. They are the most valuable thing in your life. Someone once told me that story, just think about the world from, sitting on your porch in your 80s, looking back on your life. Very few people are going to say I wish I had spent more time working. The number one thing you hear is that I wish I had spent more time with my family. And you never get a chance to go back and do that. So, I've always been very clear that while on a given day a work priority might overwhelm a family thing. As I look at weeks and months, I can't let that happen more than occasionally. Lucy: So, it's an integration process as opposed to this perfect idea of balance. Larry: Yes. Lucy: Yes. Gail: Yeah. You never get the perfect idea of balance. But you've got to keep the priorities in place. Lucy: Absolutely. Well, Gail, we have loved talking to you, and it's been so interesting. We have one last question. You've achieved so much. Give us a little insight into what's next? What's next with you? What's next with Constant Contact? Gail: So, we at Constant Contact feel like we are just getting started. We are thrilled to serve 325,000 customers. There are 27 million small businesses in the US. And when you add non profits and trade associations, the number gets up to 40 million. And we think those small organizations succeed based on customer intimacy and relationships. And our vision is nothing less than to help them revolutionize that success formula. And so we are on the march to a million, and just unbelievably excited about it because small business is the backbone of the American economy. It employs half of the private workforce and has typically been the very first to hire coming out of recession. So, literally our mission for this year is to re-energize America's small business and pull the United States out of the recession. Lucy: We're behind you. Lee: Hallelujah. Lucy: We're behind you. Larry: Wow. Gail, I just wanted to thank you for joining us today. Gail Goodman of Constant Contact. And this is Lucy, Lee, and Larry. You know the three Ls. It's really our pleasure. Your interview will be up on ncwit.org. It will also be on w3w3.com. And we'll have it on a podcast, a blog, and that social networking stuff you were talking about. So, thanks for joining us today. Gail: That's great. See you all on Twitter. Lucy: All right. Thank you Gail. Gail: Bye-bye. Lucy: Bye. Lee: Bye Gail. [exit music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Gail GoodmanInterview Summary: Gail Goodman joined Constant Contact in 1999, when the company had six employees. Today it has 625 employees, with more than 300,000 customers worldwide. Release Date: April 16, 2010Interview Subject: Gail GoodmanInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 20:02

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Lena West CEO, xynoMedia Technology Date: November 17, 2008 Lena West: xynoMedia Lee Kennedy: Hi, this is Lee Kennedy, board member for National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT and co-founder of Tricalyx. And this is part of a series of interviews that we are having with fabulous entrepreneurs, women who have started IT companies and a variety of sectors. All of whom have great stories to tell us about being entrepreneurs. And with me is Larry Nelson from w3w3.com. Hi Larry. Larry Nelson: Hi, I'm glad here to be today because the topic that we are discussing is something of high interest for us. w3w3.com, we are an Internet based radio show. We started in 1998 and we really like to look into all of the new areas. And I have a feeling that Lena will really take us into that direction. Lee: We'll great and just to get right to it, we are interviewing Lena West. Lena is the CEO and chief strategist of xynoMedia technology. It is a New York based firm that helps high growth company leverage the power of social media, blogs, podcasts and online communities. She is a real expert in social networking, very active blogger and she is involved in NCWIT entrepreneurial lines and regularly gives back to society. So welcome Lena. Lena West: Thank you so much. Good to be here. Lee: Great. Well, Lena, why don't you take a few minutes and tell us a little bit about xynoMedia. Lena: As you mentioned, we are a social media strategy and development company. And I will favor that fancy terminology for. We hoped companies to just try to make sense of everything that they are hearing about social media and really take it down or not and relate it to the brand and to their company and figure out what is the best way to actually use the tool to meet our business and marketing objective and we take it a step further, we don't just provide the strategy. Once the client determines that "Hey, that's brought them on to podcasts" or "it is better to launch an online community and start a vicinity network." We actually build those plans and tools, so we build online community, so we build blinded blogs. That in essence is what we do. Larry: Well, I tell you what, I'm really curious. I know there are all kinds of cool things out there, soft ware wise, and technology wise. How did you first and when did you first get into technology? Lena: [laughs] Oh boy, this is... Look, it's a cool story that almost involved me getting tossed out of my parents' house, actually [laughs]. You wouldn't know to look at that lovely head shot of me that I was in college when I decided that college just wasn't going to work for me; this is after my parents paid the tuition for the year [laughs]. And I left college and I went to work. I was in a pre law program in school and I actually left college and my parents just part of it, and I went to work at a law firm and that just added insult to the wound. But while I was at the law firm, this was pre Windows days and I know that all the paralegals and secretaries would come to me and they would always ask me to help them find their lost file, because I was the only one who could ever remember the dot.form in the dot command. And I said to myself at that time that this is really a good skill and I was too young to really know what to do with it. But I knew that this technology thing, I am good at it. And to make it shorter, I ended up working as secretary at IBM because I figured I'd rather be a secretary in IBM rather than working in law. Because being in IBM will get me closer to technology and one day something went wrong with my computer and they sent out a technician and it was a woman and I asked her "Hey, how did you get this job?" and she told me "Well, you got to know this, and you got to know that." So I went to this company and I registered to be a consultant and, you know, made a couple of... I was very generous with my experience and took some creative license with experience on my application. One thing led to another, and I started doing technical support. And then I realized there was more money to be made being a consultant. And once I became a consultant, I realized there was more money to be made in the long term being a business owner. And here we have it. Lee: Well, that is a great story. Lena: Yeah, but when I left college, my parents were really not happy. [laughs] Lee: Yeah, I can imagine. Well, you know, you are not the only successful entrepreneur though that's left college. You have got Bill Gates and Michael Dell, that, you are following in their footsteps. Lena: Hey! Lee: So Lena, tell us, it was clear that you liked technology, but why are you an entrepreneur, and what is it about being an entrepreneur that makes you tick? Lena: The reason that I am an entrepreneur, I would say, is bit of a sad story. My grandmother, when I was in that first year of college... my grandmother, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and she ultimately ended up losing her battle to that that same year that she was diagnosed. My mother is a retired medical professional. And I saw, even how working in the medical field, she couldn't get the time off that she needed to go and visit my grandmother. My grandparents lived in another state. I mean, it was just hard for her to go visit. My mother really struggled with that and, I think, till this day, she had some bad feelings about that. And, she just couldn't spend as much time as she liked because she had a full time job. And even at the age of 18, first year in college, I said to myself... I said, you know, "I am going to build the kind of life and the kind of business where I don't have to worry about whether I am going to work or whether I am going to tend to my family's needs. I am never going to ever have to make that choice. The choice is always going to be up to me, not up to some someone else." And that's really why I became an entrepreneur. Because, I figured, if my family ever needed me, I wanted to be able to pack up my business and go. And that's what I did. Larry: Fantastic. Well, now, here we have almost a lawyer to a techie, and I would guess along the way there has been many people who have a big influence on you, and maybe, even mentored you. Who would be somebody that really was the turning point in your career path? Lena: You know, I would have to say that it was before my career even got started. Although, you know, don't get me wrong, there have been many, many, many women that have just really taken me under their wing and have given me advice - Adrian Lopez, Karen Wilson; I mean you name it. But I would have to say it was... I think it was maybe my ninth grade teacher, social studies teacher, a woman named Barbra Deller. I will never forget. I was always very smart, very intelligent; always did well. I noticed that when I went to my first year in high school, which where I come from it was ninth grade, I noticed that I had really started to take my intelligence for granted, and I started to act out in order to be cool. As a result my grades started to suffer. And I remember Miss Deller pulling me aside one day after class, and she said, "You know, Lena..." She says, "Its OK for you to be smart. Being smart is cool too." And I really thought about that. That impacted me. And so I said, "Yeah, being smart is cool." And I think that was the turning point. I think had she not said that to me...maybe someone would have taken the time to rein me in and say, "Hey, you are too smart to be acting a little nutty like this." But it was then that I thought about, "Wow, you know, I am going to blow up my whole high school deal here because I want to be cool with my friends." Lee: Boy, it's so great to hear stories like that, that teachers have made such an impact on your life. Lena: Oh, yeah. I mean, every time I look back on my life, I think... it was Dr. Phil that says: "You have seven critical decisions in your life." And I think that was one of them, to listen to her and recognize that, "Hey, I am smart. I aced all these tests. I am really good at school, and I don't want to mess that up for myself." Lee: So when we take a look at all the things you have done in your career, what would you look back and say was probably the toughest thing you had to do? Lena: Wow, that's a good question - the toughest thing that I had to do? Probably, I would have to say was take my company and really go full time with it. I ran this company part time for many number of years before I went full time with the company. And it was really hard to take that leap of faith and get out there and say to the world, "I am going to probably eat a lot of Ramen noodles. I am probably not going to be able afford to do a lot of things. But this is my vision and this is what I want." And those were tough times and those were lean times. I mean, I remember them well. Not fondly, but well. Lee: And that's good for people, for our listeners, to hear that because so many people that are just starting their careers or just starting to open up a new business... you know, you hear so many success stories, but a lot of people that have made it had to put in a lot of hard hours and, it didn't come quickly or easily. Lena: It's not easy, because ultimately everything rides on you. And if you are not... I have always had the spirit where I am just like, "Whatever it takes, let's make it happen". And if that's not who you are, then being an entrepreneur may not be for you. There are tough times. I mean there are choices between: Do I pay the electric pay or do I pay my car insurance, so that I can go meet clients. It's really tough. But those tough times, they build character. I know that's cheesy and cliche, but they do. And they make you grateful for the good times that come. If you are doing the work that you love and you are following your heart, and you are passionate about what you do... I mean I would get up every single day and talk to people about social media in the streets for free. Lee: Wow! Larry: Wow. Boy, that's a great segue into our next question here. Right now, if you are sitting face-to-face with someone who said, "I want to be an entrepreneur" what advise would you give them? Lena: Understand that it's not just about the service that you are providing. There is a distinct and huge chasm between understanding the service that you provide and being able to do that task really, really well, or understanding your product and understanding your product really, really well and running a business. Two totally different things. You have to be able to run a business. Lee: That is great advice. Because in the end, if you don't run the business well, it doesn't matter how good your product is. Lena: Well, the business runs... you get behind on your paperwork. Set up your systems, you know, find a good bookkeeper; find a good accountant; find a good lawyer, and really understand the business side of business. Lee: So Lena, probably the toughest question we have, because just being an entrepreneur is all encompassing, it's a 7x24x365 job. How do you bring balance in your personal life and professional life? Lena: You know it's so funny; it's really hard to do that, especially because I work in social media. And I am very, very clear. There is a very clear line for me between my home life and my professional life. And I was just telling someone, I was on a conference call earlier, and I said there are probably eight people in the world who know where I live. And that's on purpose. Because I do want to have a line. And it's difficult when your business is to be social. But, it's a matter of setting priorities. It's a matter of understanding that if you are not well, nothing happens. If you are not happy, the business doesn't move. It's a matter of understanding your own personal energy. I mean, I will give a quick forward example: I am really an introvert. And if you were to meet me, you would say "Wow, she's friendly, she's personable," people seem to like her and people tell me I'm friendly. Lee: Oh get out of here! Lena: But I am really an introvert. I don't' get my energy from spending time with other people. I get my energy from being at home. And when I first learned that, I realized, oh OK, being in groups I like it. But it's a source of stress for who I really am. So I make sure I build in alone time. And I take four vacations a year. Larry: that's fantastic. Lee: I like your schedule. And Larry and I were just saying we are both introverts. So we get it. We both can be outgoing and sociable, but I get drained with too many social activities. Lena: And I take a silent retreat once a year. Every year for my birthday. Lee: Wow. Larry: A Silent retreat. Lena: I am working up my way to two weeks. Wish me luck. Larry: Fantastic. Now I have to say Lena, I know you are heavy in a social media, or should I have said xynoMedia. But nonetheless, let me ask this question, what's next? What are you going to go after in this next round? Lee: What's next for me personally is that I am writing a book. And I would say what's next for the company is we are at the tail end of probably a two and a half year process of rebranding the company. So we are going to be launching a new brand soon. It's going to be very, very exciting. It's something that we've waited a long time for. My team has been absolutely very patient. And we are looking forward to taking the next decade with a new outlook and a fresh perspective. Larry: That's fantastic. And I'm just finished a book also. We are in the final editing stage, hopefully. And it's called "Mastering Change." And that has taken me more than two years, so you mentioned the time frame for your rebranding. Lena: Yeah, I think one of the things that you have to understand as an entrepreneur is that things are going to take the time that they take. Aside from you being complacent, it does you no good to try to rush the schedule. I mean I wanted to rush this rebrand. I really wanted to get it done. And I kept talking about and talking about it. And eventually I got tired hearing myself talk about it so I didn't even mention it anymore it. It was just; it became just a source of stress. And things just take their time. And as long as - my friend said this to me, this is so fabulous and I live by this-as long as you make a measurable amount of progress in a reasonable amount of time, that's it. Larry: Very good. Lee: Thank you Lena. Lena: Get off the treadmill of trying to push and get things done and beat the competition. Things take as long as they are supposed to take. Lee: They do. Larry: That's right. Lee: Well Lena thank you so much for interviewing with us today. We've enjoyed it. Larry: I think this is fantastic. And by the way, this interview will be available not only in the form of a podcast but also go to ncwitt.org or w3w3.com. Listen 24/7 and please pass this interview along to others that you think would be interested. Lena: Great, thanks I appreciate the interview. [music] Transcription by CastingWords Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Lena WestInterview Summary: From blogging to Facebook, Lena West, CEO of xynoMedia, helps hi-growth companies make sense of everything they're hearing about social media and the best ways to use these online outlets to their advantage. Release Date: November 17, 2008Interview Subject: Lena WestInterviewer(s): Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 17:11

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Jessica Jackley Co-Founder, kiva.org Date: September 29, 2008 Jessica Jackley: Kiva Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO for the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT. This is one in a continuing series of interviews that we are doing with women who have started either IT companies or organizations that are based on information technology. We are very excited that we have Jessica Flannery here today from Kiva to talk to us. Also with me is Larry Nelson, from w3w3.com. Hi, Larry. Larry Nelson: It's really a pleasure to be here and I must say we are getting tremendous feedback from not only adults who are having their children listen to some of these interviews, but some of the employers that are looking for more women and more technical people to get into the business which is sometimes a very good step to becoming an entrepreneur. Lucy: Also with me today is Lee Kennedy who is a Director of NCWIT and a serial entrepreneur herself. Right now, her current company is called Tricalix. Hi Lee. How are you? Lee Kennedy: Hi Lucy. Hi Larry. It is so good to be here. Larry: It is. We are the three L's, right? Lucy, Lee and Larry or something. Lucy: Or something. Welcome Jessica. We are very happy to have you with us today and the topic that we are going to talk about, I mean, you're fabulous social entrepreneur, and I think that this whole area of micro-finance and what Kiva is doing is just fascinating. And as part of this interview, we all went and spent time on the Kiva site and just really got lost in all the wonderful stories that are our there. So welcome. Jessica Flannery: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. Lucy: Well, for our listeners, I'm sure everybody knows but it bears repeating that Kiva is the first peer to peer micro loan website. It really demonstrates how the Internet can be used to facilitate these meaningful types of connections between people who want to lend money and entrepreneurs all over the world especially in developing countries, how we can all help each other really move the economies ahead. It's a really fascinating website. So Jessica, why don't you just spend a minute and tell us a bit about Kiva. Jessica: Sure. You said it very, very well and very concisely. We are the world's first person to person micro lending website so anybody in the world can go onto the site, browse business profiles and entrepreneur profiles really I should say. Whether that person is a farmer or selling small goods in their village or a seamstress or a restaurant owner, there are all different kinds of small business. And you can lend as little as $25 to that entrepreneur and over time you get updates on that business and then you get paid back. Larry: Wow! Lucy: Well, and Kiva is a fairly young organization. I read someplace that you started a bit of a hobby website and it just exploded. Jessica: Yeah. It's been a very, very busy last four years. Four years ago, I learned about micro-finance and decided that's what I want to do. I quit another job and I went to East Africa for a few months to see it up close and personal. While I was there it was impossible not to be deeply moved by the stories of success of people that I was meeting. People who had used often just a $100 to change their lives and lifted their families out of poverty. So, I became really excited about these stories and wanted to share them with my own friends and family. And as I did that, my husband Matt and I kept asking not just "Oh, this is great. Micro-finance works, but wow, how do we, and our friends and family, how do we enable people to lend money directly to these individuals we're meeting?" So, it started out with a very specific way, very specific context with individuals who we had met face to face in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda who we wanted to help. We wanted to participate in their amazing stories, and we wanted to see them get to the next level. So what we did was basically Matt came to visit me during his time in East Africa, and then he went back home, built our website. We emailed our friends and family and said "Hey, we have seven businesses in Uganda that we'd like to lend a total of $3,000 to. Do you want to pitch in?" Then overnight that money came in and we sent that along to Uganda. We had a six month kind of beta round with these seven entrepreneurs in Uganda. After the six months they had repaid, we took the word beta off of our website and that launched us. And that was just in October of '05, so not even quite three years ago. Our first year was $500,000 a month, the second year was $13.5 million more, and today we're just around $45 million, and we haven't even finished our third year. So it's grown very rapidly. Lucy: And you have an incredible payback on the loans, incredible payback percent. Jessica: Yeah, it's in a high 90 percentage. That's representative of a micro finance alone, not just our site. Lucy: But wow, that's just and incredible history and such a good cause as well. One of the things that I noticed there was a Soft-tech video on YouTube that I watched that I thought was very interesting. Where you mentioned that you all created the tool that Kiva uses really to match lenders and entrepreneurs without really knowing how the world would use it to your previous story. This gets us to our first question which is around technology, and I thought you would have a really interesting spin on this. You know, how in general do you see technology helping missions like those of Kiva? Slightly different than potentially a four-profit business but you have incredibly interesting uses of technology. So what do you see in the future? Jessica: Kiva does a lot of different things, but our mission is to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. The real key there is to connect people. The money transfer is very interesting, and technology obviously helps that happened, but what really we care about is this connectivity. Loans happen to be a great tool for poverty alleviation as well as connectivity. I mean, if you lend me something and I have it and I'm fully giving it back to you, you're going to pay a little bit more attention usually, than if you just donate something and I tell you how that's going forever and ever. That back and forth communication is obviously free or a lot less expensive. It's quick. It's real time. You can see on the other side of the planet how this person is waiting right now today for that $200 that's going to allow them to start their business. So there are all these elements, but then technology makes it faster, more efficient, less expensive and just overall easier to have that human connection happen. Very specifically while I said the money is not the point, it's a great tool for a lot of things. For example, we've had a lot of help from great technology leaders out there that we've been able to leverage. So PayPal, we're the first non-profit to have PayPal generously agree to provide free payment transactions. So we have literally zero variable costs for sending these little bits of money back and forth all around the planet every day. Lucy: Well, one thing too, I'm a technologist so I'll get off this question in just a minute. I know Larry and Lee are looking at me like "Let's move off the technology." But I do have one more thing to observe here, because this is a different kind of interview than we've done. There is a whole growing area called ICT for D which is Information and Communication Technology for Developing World and one of the things that I have read that you either have done or will do is you make an offline browser so that people can conserve power on their computer, sort of a low energy kind of browser so they don't have to be always plugged in. That's an example of the type of technology around ICT for D that you have to start thinking about the climates and the situation and the resources that people have all around the world. Jessica: It's been very, very interesting for us to see, even how sometimes we'll have really wonderful generous lenders say, "Hey, I also want to donate financially or otherwise." And let's say they send a great batch of brand new video cameras for us to send out to the field. Well, sometimes actually a lower tech solution is better, because of the technology that's available in the field. So maybe we don't need the highest quality photos, the highest res photos, maybe a lower tech solution is better. That's been interesting to watch, just figuring out really what's the best and what's the most appropriate tools to get the job done. Lee: That's exactly right. Lucy: So, we normally ask what it is that you love about being an entrepreneur, but since you're working with entrepreneurs it would be great to hear about the stories from the entrepreneurs out of Kiva, as well as what it is that love about this whole environment and the entrepreneurship. Jessica: OK. This is a really good question. What I found is the idea of being an entrepreneur, I think that's really attractive to a lot of people. I think there are some, I don't want to put value judgments on it, good or bad, better or worse, but I think sometimes it has to do with freedom or this idea of being your own boss, or something like that. For me, my introduction to business and my entrepreneurship at all was in Africa seeing people who were gold hunters, or subsistence farmers, or fishermen, or people who were basically entrepreneurship to them was doing what they needed to do every day to survive. It was definitely not an option. They had to do the next thing, figure out the next step to get closer and closer to their goal to find food, and they could survive that day. It was very hand-to-mouth sort of entrepreneurship. It wasn't what we usually think of in Silicon Valley as entrepreneurship being super innovated perhaps or anything like that, but in context it was as innovative as anything else in Silicon Valley would have been, and as much entrepreneurship as anything else that you would see in other places of the world. For me, it's funny. I guess yet that it's true, when you look back at what we've done in Kiva the last four years, great! We have been social entrepreneurs, but we didn't go out thinking, I definitely thought over the years, over the last few years, "Oh, social entrepreneurship. How great! I want to do something like that." Then what happened is you have to get specific. You have to start with something specific. So, we started to do Kiva, a very, very specific mission of Kiva, and then retroactively we're like, "Oh, yeah. I guess that's what we're doing. It's pretty entrepreneurial, isn't it?" It came down to, "We have this mission, and we're going to do whatever we need to do everyday to make it happen. We're going to be scrappy if we need to. We're going to iterate. We're going to put things out there that maybe aren't even perfect. We're going to keep moving, and everyday say, 'What can we do next to meet our goals?'" That's what it felt like to me to be entrepreneurial. I think it's really been informed by the people that originally inspired us in the first place, and these micro-entrepreneurs all over the world. Lucy: You know what? That's just what entrepreneurs do. Everyday they're looking around, trying to figure out what they can do better. Do you have a story or two that you can share with some of the entrepreneurs that have taken loans and been successful, and then paid the loans off? Jessica: Sure. I mean there are so, so many. It's actually one of the hardest questions I get, because really I mean every one of them is amazing. If you want an amazing success story, I can tell you for example there was a woman that really was one of the very first people I ever met in East Africa. She did such amazing stuff. She had started one business, like a charcoal selling business. She had gotten them $800. For that initial business, she did like the equivalent of what a multi-national corporation would do, like all the principals were there. She started the one business, and then she diversified. Then she expanded, not from her local market, she went to markets in other trading centers and other villages. She extended beyond her geographic region. She started five other small businesses of all different types. I mean really things that you really wouldn't think would be related. What she did was she got practice, and then she got very good at seeing market needs and seeing opportunities. So, she had the capitol after time, and she was able to say, "Huh." I think of a very small caring business that you could start with $200 or $300. I think that's what made it. So she did that, and she did the next thing, and the next thing. She just blew me away, because you knew that had she just been dealing in another environment with bigger numbers, she would be the head of a huge multi-national corporation that was doing all sorts of different things really well. So, people like that just always blow me away. I would say truly, it sounds like a bit of a cheesy answer, but the real truth is any story that you read on the Kiva site, there's something to learn, there's something to appreciate, and there's something good. I think say, "Hey! Good job there, " to the entrepreneurs for doing it, because each person is taking a risk even just in accepting a loan, and putting themselves out there and saying, "I'm going to try. I'm going to try to do things differently. I'm going to try and make my life better, and life for my family better." Just taking advantage of that opportunity is something I think should really be applauded, and in and of itself is really a triumph and a great thing, a great thing to see happen. So, that's the hardest question to answer, because all of the entrepreneurs that you can see, I truly find inspirational in something. Lucy: Well, thank you for sharing that. That really is inspirational. Lee: Well, the other thing, and I'm sure somebody has already tumbled to this, there's a business book in this. When you said that she was making all the right entrepreneurial business moves, there's got to be a lot of nuggets of wisdom in there. Larry: You had mentioned offline Jessica, that you are involved with Ashoka? Jessica: Well, yes. I mean, I have found a lot of inspiration in Ashoka over the years, and sort of been introducing the idea of social entrepreneurship through Ashoka. Additionally, he has been honored with the Ashoka Fellowship very recently. We're really excited to be part of that community. Larry: Congratulations! Let me get on with another question here. Who has been either a role model or a mentor in your career, in your life? Jessica: Oh, my goodness! Now, that's the hardest question. I feel like I have been so blessed and so surrounded by encouragers. I mean, can I say like my top five? Larry: OK. Jessica: My parents first and foremost have always given me... Actually, it was really funny. I watched the Emmys last night. I actually don't have a television, but I was with and brother and sister-in-law in L.A., and we were watching the Emmys a little bit. She was saying something funny. She was like, "Thanks to my mom and dad for giving me confidence, that was to the portion that was my looks and ability." It was like "that's what my parents said." My parents first and foremost made it without question an obvious thing, that I could do anything I wanted to in the world. So, that was kind of the foundational piece in a very supportive family. There's been a few others. When I heard Dr. Hamadias speak, his story spoke to me like no others had at that point. That's what propelled me to quit my job and go off and try to figure out micro-finance for myself, and try to do something like what he did, like walk around meet people, listen to their needs, and help. So, he gave me a huge inspiration. Then I guess, the other person I'll mention is Brian Reynolds actually gave me that opportunity to go. He is the Founder and Executive Director of a really great organization called "Village Enterprise Fund." They give $100 grants to entrepreneurs for business creation. They really start people on the very first string of the economic ladder. These are actually folks who are doing such risky things like their systems filing that "If it doesn't rain, everything is lost." Really, really small businesses, who their commissioners wouldn't take a loan probably because they would be not in the right position to do so. Their organization is amazing. I basically met with Brian right around the time I decided I was going to figure out a way to work in micro-finance. He really gave me that opportunity. He listened to me, kind of met me where I was and said, "Hey." Even though I had no skills that I could really name. I had studied philosophy and poetry undergrad. I had done event planning, and administrative things in my job. I really didn't have a lot to go on to say "look, this is why you should hire me, and let me go do micro-finance," but he gave me that chance. On that trip. out to East Africa with Village Enterprise Fund, that's what changed my life, and that's where we had the ideas for Kiva. So, I am absolutely grateful for him, among many, many other in my life over the last decade. There's a lot of people. Lee: Well, that's the good thing about entrepreneurship as well that there are lots of other good people around to encourage you, and to offer wisdom. One piece of wisdom that we've been getting lots of interesting answers too on this particular interview series is the toughest thing you've ever had to do. So, we're curious. What is the toughest thing so far, that you've had to do in your career? Jessica: That is a really good question. I would say without a doubt that it has been...really tough to... you know when you do something that you care about so much, and also something that is like with the social mission I think, it becomes your baby. It becomes like your...I don't know there all these analogies, your right arm, you just feel so attached. It has been a challenge I think to do the work life balance thing in any way because you just feel so driven, so consumed by it, and you want to spend all your waking hours on it, but that can be unhealthy and actually lead to burn out and that sort of thing. So finding the right balance has been probably the biggest challenge and also being removed enough to make objective decisions. You know, it's always a challenge when you are so in love with the work that you get to do. Lee: So speaking of personal and professional balance what do you do to bring balance with all the entrepreneurs you're trying to help, and the changes on the website, how do you manage that? Jessica: Well, I think it's just about kind of knowing what your priorities are and knowing what your boundaries are of what you can control and what you can't and then just working away. I think it is just a daily reminding and daily recalibration saying, "OK, here is what we are about. Here's what we can do. Here's what we can't do and let's just keep moving forward." I think another trick too is just checking yourself often to make sure you are not making decisions others fear or panic in any way. We haven't really... we're an interesting state where we haven't had a competitors per se really, and we don't even think that way. But if we were forced to look at other kind of collaborative organizations out there as competitors, even if we saw them as such, I think it would be the wrong move to be driven to make any sort of decisions, or move to out of the place of fear. Just like it is in life, just kind of knowing who you are, and what you're about, knowing who you're not and just doing that, like the trying to respond to what else is out there or what someone else is doing. I think staying true and pure to your own mission is what it is about. It will make you stay sane. Larry: You have actually kind of covered part of the question I was going to ask you and that is, you've done so many things Jessica and you work with all kinds of people around the world but if you were right now sitting down in front of a young potential entrepreneur, what advice would you give them? Jessica: OK, I have the privilege of getting to do this quite a bit. This is the number one thing I would say, two things. Follow whatever you are really passionate about. It can be something that doesn't make a lot of sense like what do you do when we were passionate about the stories, how do you follow that? We loved them, we celebrated them, we read them ourselves, we laughed, we cried, we just got into those stories and then by sharing those stories, the thing that we are passionate about with the people that we were passionate about, our friends and family, that led to some really great stuff. So just follow as best you can, the stuff that you are passionate about would be number one. Two, if you're going to do something and start something and you really believe that's kind of what you were meant to do next, I would say don't be afraid to start small. In fact, that is really the only way to begin. I just finished my MBA at Stanford. I can't say enough good things about that place and that community. It was amazing. Additionally, it's a place where it is easy to think big very quickly and say "let's go change the world in these huge huge ways and let's have..." you know you don't want to start something unless it's scalable and unless it is going to touch three million people in its first two years or whatever. Easy to say think big or go home and what's your plan for scalability? You need to know that right now. I would say to a budding entrepreneur, don't be afraid, to be very, very specific about what you want to do, and how you want to begin. You should definitely think long term, too. But goodness, it's not a bad thing to start small, and in fact I really really believe that is kind of the way you have to do it and just do a little plug. There's a wonderful man who I would consider a mentor and certainly someone I have looked up to and learned a lot from. His name is Paul Polak, and he wrote a book called "Out of Poverty." He really talks a lot about being in contact like designing whatever you are designing, particularly if it's a program, or a service, or a product to serve the poor, go be with the people that you want to serve. Go get to know them as individuals and design things for individuals not this group of statistic of statistics or the masses. Go meet real people, design for them, start with the, serve them, and then see how you can grow things. That would be my recommendation, don't be afraid to start small and be really passionate about what you are doing because that's the way good things happen. Lucy: Dare I say that that I am old and wizened woman but you know your advice about starting small and don't be afraid to do that, it feels a lot like something I've come to view as being true. You just often don't know what the next turn is going to be. You have to live it a while, and see how things change and mature, and then be opportunistic about which way things are going to go because you often don't see the end. Jessica: Oh, yes and you can't. Lucy: You can't. Jessica: You actually probably sometimes cannot see the next step. It is totally impossible until you make the first one. Lucy: That's fine and that's actually part of the fun, isn't it? Larry: It is part of the fun. It's also by the way a big part of the book that I'm just finishing. Lucy: Oh, you had to plug your book. Larry: "Master and change," yes. Lucy: You had to plug your book. Larry: Oh well. Lucy: Well so I think we have a book here. So I have to ask you though, is there such a big about entrepreneurism and Kiva about teaching the basic elements of entrepreneurship? Jessica: No, not yet, but I think there are about 20 books we can write with them, different angles, different experiences, Web 2.0, the power of connecting people, what have we learned about business from the entrepreneurs out there? There's a lot of potential. Lucy: Oh, absolutely. I look forward to it. Jessica: Yeah, me too. Lucy: You've already really achieved a lot. It's quite inspirational to talk to you and kiva is just such a great organization. What's next for you? We just talked about how sometimes you can't see around the corner, do you have any long term vision that you want to share with our listeners about what's next? Jessica: No, I don't, but I will say that something that's been crazy is just this feeling that... I mean this is like my life dream. You read my favorite business school. I would say it was from three years ago. I would say it was basically someday maybe maybe I will get to be a part of something like this. I feel like the luckiest person in the world and to think that there could be other things in the future just blows my mind. I feel overwhelmed even thinking about it but overall in the most positive way because I already feel like this is my life. If my life ended tomorrow, I would be very a really thankful, happy person because I feel like I've gotten to see my dream kind of come true. Everything else is icing on the cake. What I am trying to do is to stay open to possibility, and learn, and read, and talk to people, and stay open to observing what is going on out there. I am thankful for kiva, and I am thankful for whatever the future hold, but yeah I'll let you know when I know. Larry: All right. Lucy: That has to be the most inspirational thing I have ever heard. I mean just to hear the passion in your voice and the excitement, it gives me goose bumps. I'm happy for you. I hope other people benefit from all the work that you are doing. Jessica: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I just feel very very lucky. Larry: Wow, Jessica I want to thank you for joining us today. This was marvelous plus. Jessica: Thank you. Man 1: By the way you listeners out there, would you pass this interview along to others who you think would be interested. We will make sure that we have a website link to kiva. Say your website. Jessica: It's www.kiva.org. Larry: Sounds wonderful. This has just been great here we are with the National Center for Women and Information Technology. You are doing some great stuff by bringing these messages out for people who are doing wonderful things. Thanks. Lucy: Well thanks and listeners can find these interviews at www.ncwit.org and at w3w3.com. Larry: You bet. Lucy: So thank you very much. Larry: Thank you. Transcription by CastingWords Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Jessica JackleyInterview Summary: Jessica is a remarkable social entrepreneur who is Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer of www.kiva.org -- the first peer-to-peer micro-lending website. Kiva connects lenders with entrepreneurs from the developing world, empowering them to rise out of poverty. Release Date: September 29, 2008Interview Subject: Jessica JackleyInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 25:02

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Bambi Francisco Co-founder and CEO, Vator.tv Date: October 26, 2007 NCWIT Interview with Bambi Francisco BIO: Bambi Francisco is a co-founder and CEO of Vator.tv, the professional network for launching ideas and innovation. Vator.tv is a web platform for anyone, across all industries, at any stage, to share ideas, products, services and businesses with the rest of the world, mainly through video. People use Vator.tv to get their ideas or needs discovered or to find, discover and connect with others in networks of interest. Bambi is a veteran editor, columnist, and correspondent, covering the technology and Internet industries for 15 years. Her newsletters reached 400,000 subscribers interested in her thoughts on Internet trends and investing across public and private companies. She's appeared on Fox News, CNBC, and CBS as a commentator on the Internet. She was also the morning business anchor for KPIX, the CBS San Francisco affiliate. She was a founding producer at CNNfn, where she created business programming including programs on new ideas and innovation. She was named to the "blue-chip" financial reporting all-star team in 2000 by The Journal of Financial Reporters, the business news industry's leading organization. She was also named the top 10 most influential journalists on the Web by Adweek. She blogs at http://www.bambi.blogs.com/. Larry Nelson: This is Larry Nelson for w3w3.com, the community source for unique and valuable resources. We're here today with NCWIT, the National Center for Women and Information Technology. And I must say this is one of the most exciting series that we've been involved with. We have with us Lee Kennedy. She's the co‑founder of Tricalyx. And she's also on the board of directors of NCWIT. This is really an exciting series, so pay attention. Lee Kennedy: Thanks Larry, it's good to be here. Larry: Lee has been doing a wonderful job connecting with a number of people. And, of course, we're also lucky enough to have with us Lucy Sanders, who is the Director and co‑founder of NCWIT. So, welcome. Lucy Sanders: Thank you. Larry: And our special guest today is Bambi Francisco. She is the CEO of Vator.TV. Bambi, welcome to the show. Bambi Francisco: Thanks for having me, Larry. Larry: We are very excited about this. We've all been around your website and seen some fascinating things, as well as some people that we know from earlier times. Bambi: Yes, and it's been really fun watching the site grow. We launched June 6th, and we have over 1,000 innovators and hundreds of new ideas popping up every month. So it's exciting to see that there's just a lot of innovation happening. Not just here in Silicon Valley, because of course there's always tons of innovation happening here, but around the world. So we're seeing a lot of new ideas. Lucy: I think that the genesis for Vator.TV is pretty interesting, and dates back to your days as a columnist and a correspondence for "MarketWatch". Why don't you give us an insight as to how you came up with the idea for Vator.TV? Bambi: At "MarketWatch", I was a columnist and correspondent for publicly traded companies, mostly publicly traded companies. And I had focused on Internet companies, mostly Google and Yahoo!, the big companies. And what I've always tried to bring to my audience of public investors was what was innovating, and who were the innovators. And those were the leading Internet companies. But I started looking at a lot of the emerging companies, because they seem to be really innovating around the fringes. And they were the ones who would come up with disruptive technologies, which would inevitably change the landscape for a lot of these public companies. So I started writing a lot about startups. And before I knew it, I had people pitching me, from the public company sector, to the private company sector. And I just really didn't have enough bandwidth to learn about all of them, and write about all them. And so I created a utility for me, which was basically a repository, a place where the companies pitching me could create their pitches and videos. And what I wanted to do was at least showcase them. If I didn't have enough time to learn about them, I wanted other people to at least learn about them, in the event that they found them to be interesting. And I used it to rediscover new ideas. And also to just give exposure to the other ideas that I would invariably overlook. And so I created this little tiny platform and showed it to a friend of mine, Peter Teals, who said, "Wow, I think I could use this for investing as well." Because, again, I was trying to find the top companies to write about and he thought maybe we could use this utility as a way to vet companies that he would invest in. And so that's sort of the early days of Vator.TV, which at that point was called MyElevatorPitch.TV for lack of a better name at the time. Lucy: Well, Vator, I read, is short for "innovator" and "elevator". Bambi: Exactly, it was for "Elevator Pitch" initially, and pretty soon we realized (my partner and I‑‑Roland Vogl also helped found the company) and the two of us brainstormed on this idea. And he said, "We also stand for innovator." And I said, "Yeah, well, we are looking for innovators to give their elevator pitch." And so "Vator" sort of was a shared, obviously, part of both those words. And so we thought, well, we couldn't really stay with MyElevatorPitch.TV. So we shortened it to Vator.TV. Lee: I think the names of companies are just so interesting. Remember Mebo? Where they came up with that name? In the California Pizza Kitchen? So we want to know where did you get the name Vator. Were you in the California Pizza Kitchen? Bambi: Yes, well, Vator came from MyElevatorPitch.TV. And again it was just too long, and we wanted to shorten it. So Vator, actually, was taken by another company, a Finnish speedboat company. And so we thought, well, you know it's in Finland and so there was really no copyright problems there. So we just took the name Vator. And we actually now are named as Vator, Inc. We have the name here in the US. Lee: Well, so from columnist and correspondent to CEO and co‑founder of a high tech company, how did you decide to get into technology? And what technologies do you see on the horizon as being particularly important? Bambi: Well, I got into technology as a producer as CNN FM. And I started following a lot of initial public offerings. I launched and created a show called capital ideas, which was to look at new emerging companies that were at least ready to go public. So they weren't conceptual ideas. These were companies that were already in the pipeline to go public. And in ‘96, there were a number of companies we know today, including Yahoo!, Lycos, Excite. They were going public. And in ‘97, Amazon went public. So I really started following Internet companies around that time. So that was more than a decade ago. As far as technologies I think that are cool, I do have an I‑Phone. I think that's kind of cool. And we use Skype at work. I think widgets, the new widgets that are proliferating on the web where you can have your own personal store wherever you are, or where you could just create your own marketing and research materials through a widget. I like those widgets, any type of services or products with a widget component. I love Artifice. I think that's been a great technology. I do like the new services that enable people to create and share their content. And especially in my area, the video uploading companies. And Vator, of course, allows you to do that. But, of course you know the YouTubes, and a number of others and two dozen others, that really let people kind of mash up whether it's their video or audio or websites, and really create something special, and just share it with the world. Those get me really excited. Lee: There is. There is such neat technology on the web. It seems like every day there's a new widget that comes out. Bambi: The other kind of new services out there that I think are really interesting that I have started seeing on the horizon are really the ones that try to aggravate the influencers. Lucy: Hmm. Bambi: You know we've seen it 10 years ago where you had all this information and you had the early pioneers organizing the information and directories, then Google coming on about seven years ago and really helping you to just search or whatever it is that you want. Now with billions and billions of pages I think there is all this crop ‑ and probably in the last two years ‑ of companies that are really trying to mine the data for or mine all the content or helping people make decisions about which movie they should watch or which products they should buy. For instance, Aggregate Knowledge is a great company that does that where it aggregates behavior and offers up a recommendation or recommended item. Wise is another company that goes out and aggregates all of these consumers' opinions and reviews and comes up with a rating system that shows you which item may be best for you. So there are a number of companies that are really just trying to help you make a better decision and aggregate all that information, which I think is fairly new. Lucy: Bambi, talking about all these startups and entrepreneurs and innovation and elevator pitches and IPOs, early in your career you were covering all this. What made you decide to make the leap to become an entrepreneur yourself? We would love to hear what it is about being an entrepreneur that makes you tick. Bambi: As I said earlier in the interview with regards to how this came to be, I really created a utility for myself. I realized that it was turning into something that was of value to others, namely my initial investors. So that's the reason why I decided to put all my eggs in one basket and leave journalism and start focusing on building a product. Now that I have left, in the last six months one of the things that really makes me happy with my site is really hearing anecdotes from the users ‑ I don't call them customers ‑ when they either make a connection, whether they found an investor, whether they have gotten some exposure through Vader. So I guess you could say it is happy customers that really make me excited that I'm creating a product that's useful. So for myself, I think it's the opportunity to be creative and also to build a better mousetrap or a nice alternative to the way we innovate today. That really is just bringing people together and having their ideas showcased and either inspiring or motivating others to innovate, or helping the innovators on the site really connect with other people who can either partner with them or be employed by them or help distribute their products, or even be a source of funding for them. Larry: Let me ask you a two‑part question here Bambi. Were there some people along the way that helped support career path? And as you got into things, did you acquire or have any mentors? Bambi: I guess when I think about mentors, I definitely think about the people who really helped in the formation of my career as a journalist. That's really what I have been for the greater part of my professional career. So I'll start with my former boss at CNN. That's Lou Dobbs, because I worked there for six years at CNN. He really inspired me to really look hard at news and really be somewhat critical and really how to spot news or even how to create news. At CNN I also learned how to write. So it was really through a lot of his guidance and just his news judgment and how he delivered the news. I worked really closely with him. So I think he is one. Then I worked at MarketWatch for eight years. So I would say Larry Kramer, who was the founder of MarketWatch ‑ he also hired me after a three hour dinner. Then him, as well as Tom Calandra and David Callaway, Tom Calandra and Dave being both executive editors at MarketWatch. They really supported me and they really encouraged me to go out there and be very innovative when it came to how you package news. At the time that I started at MarketWatch in 2000, a lot of this convergence of news, whether it is radio, television, print and online was all coming together. They really encouraged me to try to use all those mediums and package them in a way that somebody could read my story, watch me deliver the story, hear me on radio and see it in print. They gave me a lot of freedom to be creative. So they gave me guidance, but they also gave me a lot of freedom. So I would say those really are my bosses. Unfortunately there are no women as far as mentors, but they were just the ones who just kind of shaped me. I guess one last person as far as a mentor would be Peter [Teal]. He is my early investor and he is also a great friend. One of the reasons I like Peter is because I like his management style. He is really fair, really generous. As is, by the way my boss Larry Kramer. He allows people to do what they do best. Actually back to Peter ‑ Peter is also very generous with money. So in terms of the capital formation of the company, Peter definitely guided me in terms of what's best for all my employees and me and investors. He's just a good manager. So I look to him a lot. Lucy: Well, sometimes when people talk about mentors, the rule of thumb is they can't be your boss. But I totally disagree with that. I think that your story is another piece of evidence of that. I think bosses can be just great mentors. They are certainly in a position where they can help you in your career and tell you and encourage you around things you are doing well, but also help you through some of the challenges that you have. That gets us to our next question, the toughest thing that you have ever had to do in your career. Bambi: I think the toughest thing that I had to do in my career was back in April, when I had to break away from my roots as a journalist and leave a really comfortable and well established job and leave the people and my mentors, who were at the time David Callaway and focus on something that really was still a concept. So breaking away from a company that I had been with for eight years is tough. I think it's tough for many entrepreneurs with whom I have spoken when I have asked them. Oh, you know, they started it when they were working as an employee. I think that everybody finds it really, really tough to take the leap. So I would say that, at least at this point in my career, that was the biggest and toughest decision so far. Lucy: That's surely understandable. Lucy: Yes, it's definitely tough leaving something that you're really good at and comfortable. And doing something brand new with lots of risk. Bambi: You know, I do have some female role models who I feel have really shaped my character, my professional character. Maybe they've not formed my career, but they've shaped who I want to be. Lucy: And who would they be? Bambi: Well, as a writer, I've always looked up to Peggy Newman. She's this conservative columnist. She'd worked for the "Wall Street Journal". She was also a former Reagan speechwriter. I like her because she's very insightful and thoughtful. But she's not snarky. And she really just offers very constructive criticism. And she's a bit maternal in her writing. But I like her gentleness. And she's also a great writer. And a couple of other people who I think are great writers that are able to take very esoteric messages, distill them down, and really reach out, and have an influence on a lot of people ‑ and one would be C.S. Lewis. And he's an author and Oxford scholar. I've always loved his books. He writes children's books, and he writes other books as well. But he has a great way with words. And Milton Freedman who is an economist I've written about, saying that he's an economic entrepreneur, because I think he's really a very much independent thinker. But if you read his stuff, and if you've ever interviewed him, he can take esoteric topics and really help you understand them. And so I think that's a gift. And then one last person, and I'm sure a lot of people will actually mention her (or these two), Madonna and The Rolling Stones. And one of the reasons why I like them is because they really know how to reinvent themselves and make themselves relevant. Lee: That's a really good point. Larry: That's interesting. Lucy: Well, so if we switch gears, we've just been talking about people that have influenced you or have given you advice along the way. What advice would you give if you had some young people sitting here? What advice about entrepreneurship and what might help them along the way? Bambi: I'd say one: do something that you truly love and build a really useful product. And the rewards will follow. I'd also say to trust your instincts, or trust your gut. And typically you end up finding yourself in among advisors and just people along the way. And everyone has their opinion. And I think this is mostly like a Steve Jobs thing. He definitely trusts his instinct. And so sometimes you can get really lost, because you're trying to form a consensus. But at the end of the day, it also loses everybody else. And you really need to provide direction. So I think trusting your instinct is a good one. Think along the lines of Andy Grove's, "be paranoid". I would say, "Don't leave any stone unturned." And that means, if there is something out there, I would definitely try to uncover what it is. If you feel like that they might be competitor, try to get as much information as you can. And maybe try to work with them. Or, actually, really try to work with them. And then, finally, I would say that I've learned a lot as an entrepreneur, and I think this is what I've spotted in other entrepreneurs as well, who do a good job leading, is that in order to lead, you really have to serve. And so I like to be able to do everything that I ask all my team members to do. And at the very least, is to be able to show them how to do it. So, it's to delegate it. But I think it's also good to be able to do everything that you ask other people to do. Larry: Well, it's certainly sounds like you do a lot in your 36‑hour day. So I have to ask the question, how do you bring balance to your personal and your professional lives? Bambi: Can I get back to you on that? No. Lucy: Still working on that, huh? Larry: We've got a class on procrastination. Bambi: I've perfected bringing imbalance to my personal and professional lives. No. I am still working on that. This is all pretty new to me. But I say the one thing that I try to do is really stay healthy; because one thing that I've realized is that you need energy. You need energy to sit down with each one of your team members, and go out there and share your story, and do your work. So if I don't try to eat well, or try to get my run in, or bike ride in, or do some things that keeps me healthy then I'm not a service to anybody in my personal or my professional life. Lee: And that's really important that personal health and taking time to take care of yourself. That's a theme we've heard, I think, through a lot of these interviews as being something very important to people who are very busy and passionate about what they're doing. We always want to ask people what what's next for them in these interviews, and I think that we know in some ways what's next for you. You've got a brand new company. You're going to put a lot of love and time into making that company successful. But what is next for you? What are your hopes and dreams for Vator.TV? Where do you see it going? Bambi: Well, I want to make some entrepreneurs successful. So I'm going to see this through over the next several years to make sure that we create the tools to enable them to connect with one another. And hopefully make it easier for them to really build upon their ideas and collaborate around their ideas online. I would hope that we could make connections that I'm already seeing with people who are from around the world (about 40 percent of our pitches for our innovators are from outside the US). And many from the Midwest and all these places that just don't have the access to investors or financial advisors or anyone who really knows what the value of an idea is. And so I hope to make those connections, or help people make those connections. And I hope to get a lot of female entrepreneurs out there. Lee: Yea! Bambi: Yeah, and hopefully they'll make themselves known by going onto Vator, and putting their pitch up, and contacting me or other people at Vator, so that we can help them and work with them. The nice thing is that people do connect with me once they are on the site. And it's really fun learning some of the obstacles that they go through, and how to help them. For instance, I think naturally we attract a lot of new media companies. And so we're, in the next month or so, launching another contest. And this one is going to be highlighting new media companies. And so that's one way that I hope to help them get some exposure. Lee: I think that Vator.TV is a great concept. And it's going to give people a way to make their ideas visible who heretofore really haven't had a platform or known how to do it. I did want to tell you I spent some time in your FAQ section on the site. And maybe this is a great way to end the interview, because I thought that the FAQ section was some of the best advice for entrepreneurs that I had seen. So, for example, a question like this: "What makes a compelling idea, or business, or productive video pitch for Vator.TV?" That's a great FAQ, right, for Vator.TV, isn't it? No more than three minutes, be original, demonstrate your value proposition, make it fun and entertaining, explain the market size, tell us what keeps you up at night, and I guess some of the best advice I've heard yet for entrepreneurs. Larry: Excellent. I love it. Lee: So, Bambi thanks very much for spending time with us. We really appreciate it, and wish you the best of luck with your new endeavor. We'll be paying close attention to you, and wish very much for your success. Bambi: Thank you so much for having me. Lee: And I want to remind listeners where they can find these podcasts. They can find them at w3w3.com and also NCWIT.org. So thanks very much everybody! Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Bambi FranciscoInterview Summary: As a journalist, Bambi Francisco has always loved being at the intersection of innovation, information, technology, and media. Release Date: October 26, 2007Interview Subject: Bambi FranciscoInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 22:05

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Jeanette Symons Founder and CEO, Industrious Kid Date: October 19, 2007 NCWIT Interview with Jeanette Symons BIO: Jeanette Symons was the founder, Chief Executive Officer of Industrious Kid, and mother of two. Prior to founding Industrious Kid, Ms. Symons co-founded Zhone Technologies, a telecommunications company that builds "last mile" access solutions, where she served as the company's Chief Technology Officer and Vice President, Engineering. Prior to Zhone, Ms. Symons was Chief Technical Officer and Executive Vice President of Ascend Communications, Inc, which Ms. Symons co-founded, from January 1989 until June 1999 when the company was purchased by Lucent Technologies. In addition, Ms. Symons was a software engineer at Hayes Microcomputer, a modem manufacturer, where she developed and managed its ISDN program. Ms. Symons holds a B.S. in Systems Engineering from the University of California at Los Angeles. We are deeply saddened by Jeanette's tragic death in a small plane crash on Friday, February 1, 2008. She was a true technology pioneer and we hope her life will continue to inspire others. Lee Kennedy: Hi, this is Lee Kennedy, a board member for the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT. This is part of a series of interviews that we are having with fabulous entrepreneurs, women who have started IT companies in a variety of sectors and all of whom have just great stories to tell us about being entrepreneurs. With me I have Larry Nelson from w3w3.com. Hi, Larry. Larry Nelson: Hi. Boy, it's really great to be here today. Lee: So tell us a little bit about w3w3.com. Larry: Well, we are a web‑based Internet radio show. We really started in '96 with full time in '98. This has been probably the most exciting series that we have had, so many neat entrepreneurs going through all different types of things. I have a feeling that Jeanette is going to have a great story today, too. Lee: Great. And we also have with us Lucy Sanders who is the CEO for NCWIT. Hi, Lucy. Lucy Sanders: Hello. How are you? Lee: Great. So, why don't we go ahead and just get right to it. Today we are interviewing Jeanette Symons. Jeanette is the Co‑founder and CEO of Industrious Kid. Hi, Jeanette. Jeanette Symons: Hi. Thanks for having me today. Lee: Sure. So, Jeanette, why don't you start off and tell us a little bit about Industrious Kid? Jeanette: Industrious Kid was actually started to develop web sites for kids. What happened was a couple of years ago my daughter, who is seven, actually came home and said, "Mom, I want to make a MySpace profile." Needless to say, I panicked and ended up setting up a server where they had my kids and the neighbors had their own social network in my closet, literally. We went from there to actually creating a social network for kids where they could have the same safety on the Internet that we actually provided in the closet at the time. Lucy: Wow. I'd say that's one special kid that gets to come home and tell mom what kind of company to start next. Jeanette: It's gone to their heads a little bit. Lucy: That's pretty special. Lee: And also imbee.com; that's your social networking site? Jeanette: That's correct. The social networking site itself is imbee.com, and Industrious Kid is the name of the company. Lee: OK. And I see imbee.com won a Web 2.0 award this year. Jeanette: Absolutely. It's exciting. We are really making these strides and have kids interact with each other and learn to use the Internet in a positive way. We are really enjoying it. This is a company that we started because we wanted to, because it was fun and it's really been exciting all the way along. Lee: Great. Lucy: Well, so now maybe you all think I'm a kid and sometimes I am a kid at heart, but I went over to imbee.com, started playing around, making a baseball card, doing the things that I wanted to do. As a technologist I had to wonder about the technology that you are employing on that site. It is very sophisticated. Jeanette: Well, thanks. It is interesting. I have been building the infrastructure for the Internet for over 20 years now and really hadn't done anything in the way of card sense since the very early days. It's fun. We actually built on open source. We built on Drupal which you can actually go to, download and have a social networking site up in a matter of days. From there we've just added more and more kid centered features to it. It's fun and it's very incremental and dynamic. Lucy: It is a lot of fun. On that note and getting to the first question around technology, as a technologist what technologies do you see on the horizon as being particularly important? Jeanette: I think the biggest thing that's driven us for at least for about 20 years if not longer and then I think will for at least the next 20 years if not longer ‑ it's all about communication. It's what's changing the most and what's driving the most. We talk about the simple evolutions of the telephone and the way we are using them, but what's so amazing to me when I watch is how differently the next generation communicates than we do, even electronically. As adults, we tend to communicate via electronic mail, via personal or group communications that are relatively structured. When I look at the next generation, they're not patient enough for email; they look at me like I'm crazy to waste my time sending them an email message they may not look at till tonight. They want a text message or an instant message. If they want to say something to a group of friends, that just post it on their profile. So the way in which we communicate is changing over time and changing generation to generation. And that's what's really neat. I don't know where it'll be another five or 10 years from now, but it is fun to watch. Lucy: That's really interesting when you think about it, because it's just a cross‑generational difference in the way people are communicating. Larry: That's right. One of the things that we're also curious about ‑ we have a number of young people that are listening to the shows, sometimes their parents tell them about it, because it's so interesting hearing how people like you, an entrepreneur, does what you do. But we kind of wanted to know: why did you become an entrepreneur, and what is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick? Jeanette: Well, I think the why is because, a long time ago, when I was relatively young, I thought I could do it better. I didn't want to work for someone else. I thought I could do it better. My ideas were better. I could do something better. I think, after a lot of hard work and a lot of years as an entrepreneur, I realize that it's not that easy to do a better job. I really learned how hard it is to do better than average. But it's really fun trying. What do I really love, and why do I keep doing it ‑ this is my third company, and I doubt it's my last ‑ is because there's no greater feeling than creating something from nothing. And that's the products you create. It's watching the people grow. It's creating value within the company. You're really, as an entrepreneur, making something from nothing in so many different ways, and I think that's what makes it really exciting. Lucy: So, Jeanette, that kind of brings us to the next question. When you think about getting into technology and the career path you took, who influenced you, or who were your role models or mentors? Jeanette: I think I got started in technology, really, because I got offered a job writing software that paid $1,000 a month, which was more than I could get with anything else as a student. I had no idea how to do it. I didn't try to get into technology. It was just a lot of money for me at the time. Lucy: That's great. Jeanette: It wasn't a big plan. I always loved math. I always loved science. I had no idea about computers and technology at that point in time. So I really got into it then. And I think it's no different than the excitement of starting a company. As an engineer, it's that sense of creating. It's that sense that you made something that you can put your name on that you can be proud of. And it really is one project at a time ‑ one company, one project, one thing at a time ‑ where you really get to create something. And I think that's what really hooked me, once I got started. Lucy: Were there any role models or mentors along the way? Jeanette: I think one of the most frustrating things, for me, is that I kept looking for a role model and looking for a mentor and looking for someone, especially as I started to become more successful, and I really struggled with it. I was younger than many of the other people starting companies at the time. There were very few women involved in starting companies at the time and having had been successful at it. And I really spent a long time being really frustrated that there weren't people that I thought I could go and emulate. It took me, actually, quite a while to kind of accept that, "Hey, it doesn't matter. You're not going to copy anybody. Get on with life and do what's fun." But it took me a long time to accept that I had to do what I wanted to do and not worry about copying somebody or emulating somebody. Lucy: I think that's a great answer. And I want to also kind of link it back to something you said a minute ago around that it's often very hard to do something better, to have that great entrepreneurial idea and push it across the finish line, and along the way, there are challenges to overcome. And so we'd really like to know the toughest thing that you've ever done in your career, and why it was so hard. Jeanette: I think, unfortunately, that's the easiest answer...The hardest thing to ever do in building a company, in any way, is to lay people off. As with grown companies, even really successful companies, there's a time you've got to lay people off because of the business cycle or whatever. And no matter what the circumstances is, that, I think, is one of the hardest things to do. The second hardest thing: while I started three companies, one of them, I'd say, I walked away from before I was done. The company still was in a growing and struggling phase, and I felt it was time to move on and walk away from the company. And I think that was probably, emotionally, one of the hardest things I've ever done. Larry: I must say, that's probably one of the most common mistakes that many founding people do is they keep on long after they should have left. That's really a strength on your part. Jeanette: Well, thank you. It didn't feel like it at the time. Larry: I bet not. Lucy: That is a hard judgment, though. When is it time to leave? Larry: Mmhmm. It is. Jeanette: Exactly. And we always want to be the one. It's so tempting, especially when you start something, to feel like you need to be the one to finish it, that you need to almost be the hero that makes it successful. Accepting that you're not is just so tough. It's one of those very lonely decisions. Larry: I think you're wonderful. I'm proud you. Now, speaking of that type of thing, if you were, right now, sitting down with a young potential entrepreneur, what kind of advice would you give them about entrepreneurship? Jeanette: I think the real answer ‑ and it's easy to say, it's harder to do. And that is that you've really got to follow what you believe. You can learn from others. You can listen to others. You're going to get a lot of advice, a lot of suggestions, people telling you to do things, how you're doing them, telling you to do differently. But at the end of the day, you've got to do exactly what you believe in. And you won't succeed in creating something great and something that you're really proud of unless you stick to what you know are your core values. And there are so many people that want to push you in different directions, want to change the company, change the product, and change the financing. You've got to really stick with what you know and you believe. Lucy: That's really good advice. Larry: Yeah. Lucy: Sort of along that note, earlier in the interview, you said that you thought you could do things better and you liked creating and building things. So, when you think about getting through all the tough times, what personal characteristics do you think have given you the advantages as an entrepreneur? Jeanette: I think one of the most important things to really get to success is that you've got to have a willingness to fail. You've got to accept that, you know what? Everything you do isn't going to be perfect. You're going to make mistakes. You've got to be able to say, "Oops, I made a mistake" and move forward. You've got to be willing to let little things fail, big things fail, and all sorts of things, in the big picture, to get to success. If you're not willing to take the risk that you're willing to fall through on, you're not going to ever get the big win. So you've got to really be willing to kind of accept that this time might not be it, but there will be a time that will be. Lucy: And do you have examples that happened in your career when there was failure that happened and you guys learned a ton, maybe one of those moments; that was a big turning point in the company? Jeanette: Now, there's so many that it's hard to pick one out. But I think one of the things that we've done a couple of times is we've built the product, we've stood behind it, we've been proud of it, and then realized that, oops, it's not the way people want it. And being willing to do that, and then stop and say, "You know what? We're going to do the right thing going forward." We've lost investors in those decisions a couple of times. They used to say they've regretted it each time... Lucy: I love that. Larry: Yeah. Jeanette: I mean, I remember, 20 years ago, when we changed our company from being a digital telephony company to deciding to build infrastructure for this weird thing called the Internet, we fought tooth and nail. Nobody, none of our investors wanted to back it. They thought it was silly. How would this Internet thing work? There was so much more revenue if you stuck to traditional things. We lost supporters along the way. We're pleased to say those supporters are eating their words. The Internet grew. We had to take a big risk ‑ that now, of course, seems obvious, in hindsight, but at the time, didn't‑‑to say, "We're going to drop what we're doing. We'll see the growth. We're going to take a risk and build something new and different." Larry: Yeah. I'm sitting here kind of groaning because, internally, Pat and I, we had a terrestrial radio show, "Business Talk, " and I made, in 1996, the prediction that the Internet was a fad and would go away soon. So I wish I had known you. Jeanette: You were right. You just have to wait about another 100 years. You have to be patient, Larry. Larry: Yeah. Lucy: Your timing was wrong. Larry: Yeah, timing... Lee: You're still right. Lucy: Yeah, you're still right. Larry: Now, you're a mother of two. You fly in your own Lear jet, from time to time, to conferences and so on. And then, of course, the other thing is that, between your children, your family, and your growing business, how do you bring about kind of the balance to all of this? Jeanette: The answer to that is kids take care of it for me. Larry: Whoa! Jeanette: I was told before I had kids that I was not at all good at balance and I was workaholic that didn't do enough different things. I don't think that's true, but my friends all think it's true. It's just so great and so much fun to do things with my kids, that they keep me home on the weekends. They keep me doing things and being outside and being active. So for me, my kids are my solution, and it's just a lot of fun. Lucy: Well, we've got a nice little airport here by Boulder. You could come see us. Jeanette: I could. I do have that advantage. People go, "Oh, so you just love to fly." And I've got to say, I do. It's one of the most just relaxing things there are. But what it really is ‑ and people make fun of me - is if you go into my airplane, it looks a lot more like a minivan, stacked with stickers and snacks and books and activities and such in the back. The beauty of flying a plane is that it gives me and my family incredible freedom. So I can be in any city in the country in a meeting on Friday morning and home playing with my kids Friday night. Lucy: It's an important thing to balance. Larry: You got it. Wow. Jeanette: We got it. So everybody needs a plane. Lucy: I believe that you're our first pilot that we have interviewed. Well, you have started three companies. You've said that you doubt this one is your last. So, why don't you tell us what you see in the future? What's next for you? Give us some top‑secret stuff. Jeanette: Oh, gosh. You know what? I don't know. I will tell you that, for a very long time, I worried so much about, "OK, now that I'm successful, what am I supposed to do?" Almost like there has to be a road map: "Build successful company, go do blank." And I worried so much that I was doing the right thing next. It's amazing how stressful that became. There has to be an answer. Where do I find the answer? And I finally got it licked. I do what I enjoy. I love building the company I'm building. I love where I'm at today. I have no idea what's next. I have no idea whether we'll be building this company for another five years, another 10 years, another 20 years. I don't know what's next. But I know it'll be interesting, it'll be fun, and if not, then it won't last long and we'll move on. Lucy: That's a great answer. Larry: Yeah, I'll say. Hat's off to Imbee and Lear jets. Lucy: Well, thank you very much, Jeanette. We really appreciated talking to you. Lee: Thanks so much. Jeanette: Thank you. Larry: Thank you. This was great. And by the way, you listeners out there, make sure you pass this interview along, because they can listen to it 24/7, download it as a podcast, and what else could we ask? Lucy: Well, we should remind everybody what site to go to for the podcast. You can get them at w3w3.com or at ncwit.org. Larry: There you go. Thanks, Jeanette. Lucy: Thank you, Jeanette. Jeanette: Thank you. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Jeanette SymonsInterview Summary: NOTE: We are deeply saddened by Jeanette's tragic death in a small plane crash on Friday, February 1, 2008. She was a true technology pioneer and we hope her life will continue to inspire others. For Jeanette Symons, motherhood proved to be good for business. Her kids helped her come up with the idea for her award-winning social networking site, imbee.com. Release Date: October 19, 2007Interview Subject: Jeanette SymonsInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 17:16

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Heidi Roizen Managing Director, Mobius Venture Capital Date: August 15, 2007 NCWIT Interview with Heidi Roizen BIO: Heidi Roizen has spent her entire life in the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Silicon Valley, first as an entrepreneur and ultimately as a venture capitalist helping other entrepreneurs build the great companies of tomorrow. She is currently a Managing Director of Mobius Venture Capital, a venture fund with over $2 billion under management. In that capacity, Heidi serves on the Boards of Directors of Reactrix, Ecast, Perpetual Entertainment and AuctionDrop. Heidi began her career in 1983 by co-founding T/Maker Company, a software publisher and developer for early personal computers including the IBM PC and the original Macintosh. As CEO, Heidi led the company for over a decade, raised two rounds of venture capital and ultimately consummated a successful acquisition of T/Maker by Deluxe Corporation. In 1996, she joined Apple Computer as VP of Worldwide Developer Relations. After one year at Apple, Heidi decided to return to her entrepreneurial roots, this time as a Mentor Capitalist and ultimately a Venture Capitalist. Heidi has also been actively involved in the trade associations critical to the Valley. She is a past president of the Software Publishers Association and served on its board from 1987 to 1994. She also represented the venture industry as a member of the Board of Directors of the National Venture Capital Association from 2003 to 2007. She also served on the board of Great Plains Software from 1997 until its acquisition by Microsoft in 2001, and is a past Public Governor of the Pacific Exchange. She is also a frequent guest lecturer at Stanford as well as a speaker at conferences for technologists, entrepreneurs, or women executives. Heidi holds a BA and an MBA from Stanford University. She is married to orthopedic surgeon David Mohler and has two daughters. Lee Kennedy: Hi. This is Lee Kennedy, board member of the National Center for Women and Information Technology, or NCWIT. And this is part of a series of interviews that we're having with fabulous entrepreneurs, women who have started IT companies in a variety of sectors, all of whom had insightful stories to tell us about being entrepreneurs. With me, I have Larry Nelson, from w3w3.com. Hi, Larry. How are you doing? Larry Nelson: Oh, great. It's wonderful to be here again. And one of the things that is so exciting for us at w3w3.com is that we are helping support, I think, the most fabulous program that we've experienced since we got in the radio business in '98, and the idea that we're helping inspire young women, girls, getting into IT, looking into that, as well as being an entrepreneur. But now, we're also getting phone calls from business leaders, people in schools, who say, "This is such a great program. We'd like to help promote it, too." Lee: Well, that's wonderful. Larry: One of the interesting things that we have here that's a little bit of a twist is that we're interviewing an entrepreneur who became a venture capitalist, and also, of course, then, therefore works and helps support entrepreneurs. And we're very pleased that we're interviewing Heidi Roizen, who is a managing director of Mobius Venture Capital. And we've got a little bit of a twist here. Lee and I are here in Colorado, and Lucy Sanders, the CEO and founder of NCWIT, is in California, at Heidi's home base. So, Lucy, let's get started. Lucy Sanders: All right. Hi, everyone. I'm sitting here with Heidi in her beautiful home in Atherton. I've been here a few times, and I just think it's so much fun to be here and interview you here in your office. Heidi Roizen: Well, thank you. I hope the dogs don't participate. Lucy: Or they might. They might have something profound to say. Heidi: They often do. Lucy: One of the things that makes it so exciting to interview you is that when I think, about Silicon Valley, I think, about you. And I think that you're synonymous with Silicon Valley. You've done a lot, as Larry mentioned. You've started companies. You're in venture capital. You were educated here at Stanford. You're a part of the community... Heidi: I was actually born at the Stanford Hospital, which I think, I'm probably the only one in Silicon Valley... Lucy: And why don't you spend a minute or two bringing us up to speed about what you've been doing lately? Heidi: Well, I am currently serving on four boards. They keep me very busy. They are all companies that are definitely not in their "two guys and a dog and a laptop" stage any longer, but they're all still companies that aren't through to the end of the road yet. So, lots of interesting challenges in terms of recruiting, customer acquisition, strategic business development, and all the normal things one goes through in startup land. So, I'm working on those companies, and then I'm working on a few entrepreneurial ventures on the side, helping out some friends. I always love having my fingers in the very, very early stages, and so I like having a few of those to work on as well. Lucy: Well, and I happen to know you're very generous with your time for nonprofits and for Stanford students. Heidi: Yeah. Lucy: The last time I was here, we had a great dinner, where you brought them back to your home. And I think, you're going to have some great advice for us, so why don't we just get right to the interview? Heidi: OK. Lee: Well, Heidi, I'll jump in and ask our first question, and that's: how did you first get into technology? Was it when you were a child or in college? And then, what technologies do you think are really cool today? Heidi: OK. Well, the first question is one that I think, if you're born and raised in Silicon Valley, at this time ‑ born in 1958, graduated from Stanford, undergrad in 1980 ‑ you couldn't help but apply for a job and end up at a tech company. So, even though I was not a technologist ‑ in fact, my undergraduate degree is in creative writing ‑ I ended up as the editor of the company newsletter for a little startup called Tandem Computers. Lee: Wow. Heidi: And that's really where I got my first inkling that there was something really exciting about the computer industry. What I realized, at that time, was I kind of looked around, and everybody getting ahead either had an engineering degree or an MBA. And it was a little late for me to go get an engineering degree, I thought, but I figured the MBA thing looked like a pretty good idea. So, I went back to Stanford and got that, and really fell in love with personal computing at the time. It's hard for people... I mean, I sound like such an old geezer when I say this. But, I was the class of 1983, and there were only three people ‑ I was one of them ‑ who owned their own personal computer at school. And now, can you imagine being a graduate student and not having a personal computer? You'd be hopeless. So, started my company right out of school and just never looked back. I had the good fortune to have a brilliant programmer as a brother, who really didn't like the business side, and I loved the business side. And the thing I like to tell people, often, who are non‑technologists, who wonder about being in the technology field, I tell them, "You know, need a mix of people." I don't have to know how to build a car to drive one. And in fact, I'd say, particularly in my early times working with my brother, who was the genius programmer, sometimes he'd build features that were so genius that only he could use them, and they weren't very practical. So, I think, sometimes it's good to be the petunia in the onion patch, as I used to call it in the development hall. Lucy: Tell us a little bit about the technology that you're thinking about as being the next wave of technical, cool gadgets. Heidi: I think, gadgets is always a slippery slope, because there are gadgets that I just love. I mean, we're investors in Sidekick and Sling, so we definitely have some gadgets companies out there. If any of you have seen a Reatrix system in the malls and in the theaters, and the Reactive television systems, or an Ecast jukebox ‑ we've got tons of portfolio companies I can tell you about that all have exciting gadgets and technologies. To me, where I'm focused right now is I've been thinking a lot about the demographic that is me ‑ the woman who still wants to look good and feel good, who has more free time, who has more money, who, however, still has family obligations, has a career. We're hitting 50, and when our parents hit 50, we thought they were pretty much close to death... Heidi: Now, we are shocked to find that we are 50. And I think, what's interesting is that the Silicon Valley ‑ and it's a little bit like Hollywood ‑ get so focused on youth and the youth culture and the spending money that youths have and advertising to youths. And while I've got nothing against young people, I think that the people my age and women my age have been an underserved demographic, when it comes to utilizing the web as a medium for exchange, as a community, as an outlet for all sorts of things and a place to go learn about things. And I'm seeing more and more activities around that, and I can't tell you how many times... this is probably hitting all of my same‑age brethren entrepreneurs, but we're all sort of getting up and saying, "I don't really want to start the next teen cell phone. I really want to start something that my friends and I could use." And so I'm seeing a lot of really interesting companies come about, a lot that combine community with some of the really innovative things that can be done online. Lucy: Give it some time. Heidi: Yeah. Lucy: Give it some time. Larry: Yeah, you bet. I'm not that old yet. But, anyhow... Lee: That's right, Larry. Larry: They're laughing... Heidi: Somebody once asked me to predict the future of venture investing, and I said, "Just about the time we finally invest in the ultimate weight‑loss pill and the instant‑tan pill, culture will change so that it's not cool to be thin and it's not cool to be tan, and we'll lose again." Larry: Oh, boy. My personal friend, Mark Twain, said, "Youth is wasted on the young." Heidi: That's right. Larry: Anyhow. I can't help but ask this, Heidi. Many people don't look at venture capitalists as entrepreneurs, but anybody who is a managing director, believe me, they are entrepreneur. But, of course, Heidi has the background and experience of being an entrepreneur. She's now continuing to support and work with entrepreneurs. What is it about you that makes this all happen? And what makes it tick, in terms of an entrepreneur? Heidi: Well, there are so many answers. And I've had the pleasure to listen to many of your wonderful speakers on this series before myself, and I think, a lot of things have been mentioned about tenacity and creativity and mission and a passion about what you're doing. There are so many things that I can think of. And of course, if you look me up on LinkedIn, I refer to myself as a "recovering entrepreneur," which is a little bit of an inside joke at Mobius. We're recovering entrepreneurs. Heidi: I think, what I had to learn, going from being an entrepreneur to being a venture capitalist, is it's like being the quarterback and then being the coach. When you're a venture capitalist, you do work behind the scene, you do help a lot. But, they're sort of not your losses, and they're not your victories. And if you're doing your job right, the entrepreneur is on the cover of "Time" magazine, not you. When you're an entrepreneur, the buck stops here. It's funny. I just went on a walk with a fellow entrepreneur of mine, and he was talking about a friend who used to be a vice president of a big company and is now the CEO of a small company, and one of the things he was saying to her is, "Now you understand how the buck really stops here." Heidi: And I think, for me, what really defines an entrepreneur is something that somebody said to me once. When I was running T/Maker, we had this product line called ClickArt, which is still around today, and it's basically electronic clip art. But, you have to remember, when we did that product in 1984, there were no scanners; there was no PostScript; there was no anything. We were literally sitting artists down, at 128K max. We didn't even have a stylus. They were drawing with the mouse in 72 DPI to create electronic clip art. I mean, that's as basic as it was. And when we shipped that product, I remember staying at a trade show, and I can't remember how many people came up to me and said, "Wow! You know, I thought of that, too." Right? And in the back of my mind, I thought, "Yeah, you thought of it. But, we did it." Heidi: And I think, for most of these things, it's that "one percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration." There are so many ideas that just die on the vine because a person doesn't go out and try to actually do them. They think they're a cool idea, but other things get in the way and they don't really work hard at it. And not only do they not work hard at the creative process, but the process I'll loosely call is the destructive process. With entrepreneurs, one of the things I respect the most is, when you come up with an idea, that instead of working on it for the first five days about how you're going to accomplish it, you spend five days trying to prove that it's already been done or it's not doable ‑ not because you're being pessimistic, but before you engage in the creative process, sometimes you have to go and say, "What else is already out there?" And one of my pet peeves as a venture capitalist is when somebody comes and pitches me an idea, and I say, "Have you ever heard about blahblah.com?" And they go, "What's that?" And I get on and I show them, and it's the exact company they were talking about building, but it already exists. My feeling is, today, particularly with Google and other search engines and the Internet, you can find a lot of this stuff out there, and you need to go out and look. But, I do think, ultimately, a long and winding answer, but the short answer is it's like Nike, man. It's "just do it." If you just do it, that's the only way to be an entrepreneur. If you're not willing to just do it, you're never going to be an entrepreneur. Lee: That is such great advice, Heidi, because so many people, even when they just go out and do it, it's not that first idea that they even end up doing sometimes. It's just having the guts to get out there and start the business and get in that industry and figure out what it is. Heidi: That's right. And ask a lot of questions and meet a lot of people and kiss a lot of frogs. Larry: Yeah. Heidi: It's always easy, in retrospect, to say, "Why did I take that meeting with that person?" But you don't know because, just as likely, you could take a meeting with another person. And I just had something happen this weekend, where I was helping someone on a music project. And we were talking to someone who was totally unrelated, and they just said, "Oh, what are you up to?" Totally unrelated to the music industry. And we told him what we were doing, and he said, "Hey, I'm good friends with..." And I won't name the names because it's all proprietary, but let's just say one of the most Grammy‑winning artists in the world. And he said, "I'll give him a call tomorrow and see if he's interested in helping you with this." So, it's like one of those random, like that's not what we were even there to talk about. But, that's how the conversation ended up going, and it could take us in a really exciting direction. You just never know when that kind of serendipitous stuff is going to occur. Lucy: Your remark about 1984, when you were doing T/Maker and you had to have the ClickArt, I just have to go back to that for a moment and say, in 1984, we were trying to draw things in P‑Roth inside... Lucy: That's not revolutionary. Heidi: Yeah, yeah. I remember the first time I showed my husband QuickTime, whenever it came out ‑ 1989, whatever. And I'd bring home my file, because we were under nondisclosure with Apple. And I'd show him this postage‑sized, grainy thing, and he goes, "Wow. I am really underwhelmed." Heidi: For me, as a computer geek, it was so exciting to see television on a computer. And for him, he was like, "Uh, honey? Have you looked at our TV set? It's like a lot better than this." Lucy: Because I know you, I think that one of the things that makes you a great entrepreneur is, in fact, you see potential, and you're willing to take the risk to develop the potential. Heidi: Yeah. It does make one quite dangerous. It's that joke about the person who buys houses because they see the good in every house. And I tend to be a person who sees the upside in things. Which I think, again, in order to be an entrepreneur, you have to be an optimist. You have to believe things are going to work out your way. But, you have to be realistic. And that's where I, again, for lack of a better word, call it the destructive process ‑ testing your idea, going out and thinking about the boundary cases: "What's the worse that could happen here? What's the worse that could happen here? How am I going to prepare for it?" And also going out and really combing the markets to make sure that what you're doing is unique, or, if not unique, that you're going to be the best somehow. Lucy: Well, along the way ‑ you've been here in Silicon Valley. You were born here. Heidi: Yeah. Lucy: And you've got a great network. And we are really curious to also understand who helped you the most. Who would you look to as being your mentor? Heidi: I was very fortunate to be born into a family where entrepreneurship was not a bad thing. I think, it's one of the things that makes California such a great place and will play a continuing role in the world economy is because we are just a culture, for 150‑plus years, of people striking out and doing something on their own, and failure not meaning social failure. You can be a business failure and still hold your head up and go to your kids' school and not be embarrassed about it. Lucy: "I failed today." Heidi: "I failed today." It's part of the process. I think that, for me, my father was a great role model for me because he was an entrepreneur. He was always thinking. He would say things to me like, "Today is the best day of my life because I have every day before today that I can draw on what I learned to apply to today." So, he was just that kind of person. And he wasn't like Mr. Rogers. I mean, he was just a great role model about how one could look for the opportunity in everything. And he was a very poor immigrant. I think, he graduated from high school. I'm not really sure. His dad died when he was 12, and he had to make money for the family to make ends meet. I mean, he had one of those really hard upbringings that made him very grateful and thankful, and very creative and resourceful. And he treated me like one of the boys. He never said to me, "Oh, you're a girl. You shouldn't do this," or "You can't go to graduate school," or "You can't do anything." In fact, if I said I couldn't do something because of being a woman, he would scoff at me. And my brothers joke that I'm the most like him... Heidi: So, he actually made me in his image, not my brothers. But, I was very lucky about that. I was very lucky, also, just to be in the computer industry in the late '70s and early '80s, because I really did get to grow up with the people who are the leaders in the industry. And so somebody said to me, "Wow! How did you get to be friends with Bill Gates?" And it's like, "Well, started 25 years ago." [laughs] Heidi: He was easier to get to then. But, it's things like that, that I think, I just had the great fortune to have a front‑row seat and be a participant in an industry that I really believe has changed the world. So, it gave me a lot of opportunities to learn from other people and have mentors and role models. Lee: So, Heidi, when you think about all you've done in your career ‑ building your own companies, being an investor ‑ what has been the toughest thing you've had to do in your career? Heidi: You know, you face so many tough challenges when you are the CEO and "the buck stops here." Someone once said to me, "Gosh, you're so lucky. You're the CEO. You have so much freedom." And I laughed, and I said, "You don't understand that when you're the CEO, you have the least freedom, because you can't just quit." I raised that money. I hired every one of these people. I gave those venture capitalists my commitment that I was going to bring it home for them. I'm not just going to walk out the door. I remember walking into my company every day. We had about 100 employees. And I would count the cars in the parking lot, and I would think about the car payments and the mortgage payments... Heidi: Everything that was dependent on this company. And so I would say, still, to this day, that the hardest thing you have to do is lay people off. I mean, the hardest thing you have to do is downsize your firm. It's not as hard to fire someone. This is an interesting thing. I would much rather terminate somebody for cause than lay people off because we can't afford it. When you terminate someone for cause ‑ and "for cause" is a real legal term. I don't want to use the legal definition of that. But, what I really mean is, when somebody's not a good fit for the job they're in, I find that it's really in their best interest to tell them and get them to move on to something else. And while that is sometimes hard, I think, it's the right thing to do, and I think, it's the right thing to do for the person. And I've often found that you check in with them a couple years later, they're better off where they are, even though this can be very difficult. I do think, going through the dot‑com bust and having to lay people off, knowing that there wasn't going to be another job they could just waltz into, was a really, really hard thing to do. To me, those were the hardest things I ever had to do. In fact, my T/Maker employees still joke about this time where we had our first loss ever and we had to lay off some people, and it was Christmas. I was about four‑months pregnant. I said to my husband, "I've got to do it myself. I hired all these people. I'm going to do it myself. I'm going to give each one of them the news." So I'm in my office, and they're coming in, or I'm going to their offices. And I'm pregnant, and so the hormones coursing through my veins. So, I am sobbing through these terminations, and they are comforting me. Heidi: They feel sorry for me. But, I have to lay them off. Sobbing, sobbing, sobbing. And I say to my husband, "This is the worst business day of my life, where I'm terminating some people who've been with me five, six years, and I just feel terrible. And it's Christmas, and I had to tell them, 'No bonuses for you guys, and you're getting laid off.'" I said, "Please go to Blockbuster and rent a funny movie so that when I get home, I can take my mind off of it." So, I come home, and what had he rented, but Chevy Chase's "Christmas Vacation." Heidi: And I don't know if you guys have seen this, but of course, the whole story is about a guy who believes he's getting a Christmas bonus and builds a swimming pool or something, and then he doesn't get the bonus, and he ends up kidnapping his boss. Heidi: It was just one of those moments: I just didn't know whether to laugh. I'll never forget that moment. I still cry when I see that show. It was on TV last Christmas, and I'm like crying through it. My kids are looking at me. They're like, "Mom, it's a comedy." Not for me. Lucy: Not for me. In fact, my answer to this question is the same. I think that laying people off is clearly one of the hardest things that I've ever had to do. Heidi: Absolutely. Lucy: We've heard a lot of great advice so far in this interview from you about entrepreneurship, and the Nike "just do it," and who cares if you've thought about it? Just get it done. Heidi: Yeah. Lucy: And other types of advice around doing your homework and seeing the potential. If you were sitting right here with a young person and you were giving them advice about entrepreneurship, what else would you tell them? And one of the things that comes to mind is a conversation we had sometime about networking. Heidi: Yeah. Lucy: And I thought you had some of the best advice about networking that I've ever heard. Heidi: Well, I have a ton of advice about networking. I'm a little typecast as a networking speaker because Harvard did a case on me a number of years ago that really is about my philosophy of networking. And when they approached me to do the case, I said, "Why would anyone want a case on this? It's all just common sense." It's kind of like that book: "Everything I needed to know about networking, I learned in the second grade." But, it's just commonsense and practical and courtesy. And so, they did do this case, and I do speak on the case a lot. And my fundamental belief is that it's very rare that anything happens as a singular effort. Yeah, you can go climb ‑ well, even climbing Mount Everest, it's a team, right? And entrepreneurship is a team sport with very many lonely moments. So, you have to be the one. I'm working on this project with someone. I got up at four o'clock in the morning a couple of days ago because I thought of something, and I knew if I waited till morning, it wasn't going to be the same. So, I had to get up and come down here and sit at the computer for an hour and write up my thoughts while they were fresh. I think, there are a lot of times when you're just singularly approaching something, but I think, you have to know how to ask for help, and how to give help. Students say this to me all the time, they say, "Well, I don't have anything to give." You always have something to give, everyone has something to give. Good lord, you can come and talk to me and baby‑sit my children while you're talking me. I had one guy who traded me, I would talk to him about his business and he was a personal trainer, so he would train me while I was talking to him about his business. Heidi: And I think that one of the errors that people make in networking is they try to hard to gather business cards, and they don't think about "What is my connection with this other person, and what do I have to give them? What in return am I going to ask them for?" Again, I will bring it back to this other comment, a lot of times you don't know how the other person is going to help you, and you're not quite sure always how you're going to help them. Sometimes, it's quite surprising, but if you put yourself open to that, and you use some of the modern tools ‑ like I've become a real LinkedIn convert, because I love being able to get on LinkedIn and see who my friends know that I might want to talk to about industries completely foreign to me and vice versa. If somebody has a good friend from college who now wants to do something in the out of home advertising market and sees I'm on the board of Aventure and would like to talk to me. I don't mind doing that stuff because I sort of feel like there's this great, you know, we all help each other in this community and I'm a little bit of a believer in that kind of pay it forward. It's interesting right now because in Aventure I'm working closely on, I have to reach out and ask for a lot of favors, and I've been very aware that for a lot of my current roles in life I'm the one that asks for the favors than asked. Now that I'm doing the asking it's interesting, I'm uncomfortable. I'd much rather do a favor for someone else than ask somebody for a favor. It's my nature, and it's the nature of many people. But, I think that you have to get good at understanding "What am I asking for? Is it appropriate for me to ask it? Is the person capable of delivering it? Is it an appropriate amount of time for them to send and do something for me? And what could I possibly do for them?" I always try to make sure that people know I'm quite open to doing something for you in exchange, and by the way, no is a perfectly good answer, too. If I ask you a favor and the answer is no, just tell me no. I'm very comfortable with that. Lucy: That's great advice because so many people they really are either afraid to network, or don't know how to network, and that just makes it really clear. Heidi: Networking is also very awkward; somebody from Stanford called me up once and said, "Can I network with you?" What is that is that like my pen pal or something? Lucy: Just network. Heidi: Let's say you want to meet someone, and I guess, with the powers of Google and the Internet and all that, you might want to meet some important person. If you have no context, it's going to be a very fruitless conversation. But, every one of them, their kids go to school, they are on a charitable board, they may enjoy a certain kind of athletic activity. I'm not saying become a stalker, but generally, for example, if you want to get to know a person and they happen to be on the board of a charitable organization go find out what the annual fundraiser is on that charitable organization and volunteer to work at it. Chances are you're going to be able to meet that person over time if you get involved in something like that. And, by the way, you're doing something good too. That's again, one of the powers of Silicon Valley ‑ both good and bad ‑ you've got to be careful, you've got to find out if other moms and dads on the soccer sidelines have MBAs because everybody's kind of in this business. Heidi: It is interesting that you have so many different places where you meet and run into people, and so many people I do business with are friends of mine in other context. Lucy: So Heidi, you had talked earlier in the interview about different characteristics that you thought were really important to help entrepreneurs grow and build companies, but when you think about yourself, what are some of your personal characteristics that you have that have helped you to be successful as an entrepreneur? Heidi: Certainly tenacity. I mean, I'm very tenacious about... you put me on something I'm on a mission and I'm not going to let it go. I like to learn new things, so I like to push myself and try to learn something new. I think, when you're constantly learning it helps you get a better job, [laughs] and in so many areas. I'm definitely a people person, I love talking with people, I love meeting people. I'm very comfortable asking people for their opinions and I think, I'm a pretty good listener. So, I think that that also helps me be an entrepreneur, because you learn from other people, you gather opinions, you mold what you're doing. Frankly, it helps you in terms of going back to asking for favors, giving favors, recruiting people. People generally want to work with people they like and people they respect, which is another thing. My belief is that I'm going to be in this world for, I hope, a pretty long time. One thing I've learned being almost 50 and being in the Valley all this time is that you run into the same people over and over and over again. So, don't burn a bridge unless you've decided that's the best course of action. I like to sleep at night. I don't like to do bad deals, and I don't like to squeeze the last nickel out of somebody just because I have the upper hand. I like to live that way. While there's always different opinions about anything you do, I try to test everything. Does this match my ethics? Can I sleep at night? If my husband or my kids knew I did this, would they think less of me as a person? I like to live that way. I think, an entrepreneurship is not a zero sum game. Your gain doesn't have to come out of somebody else's loss. Larry: Boy, I'll say. You know, Heidi, one thing I've learned to do is that I'm going to call you "Coach" from now on. I just want to clarify one little thing. You said something earlier about kissing the frogs, or was it kissing your dogs? Heidi: Yeah, kissing frogs. Although frogs wish it was kissing dogs. Larry: Yeah. And you also just mentioned that you should ask for help. Do you want to introduce me to Bill Gates? Heidi: No. Larry: No. OK. Heidi: That's a good one you bring up, because it is one of those, how do you manage a relationship towards a person who's very important or famous? One thing I had to decide early on is, I just set certain rules. And I've gotten very comfortable saying "No" to people. So, people will say to me, "Can you introduce me to Bill Gates?" And the answer is, "No, I can't," because if I did that for everybody, they would.... And the hardest part is people thinking, "I have the best charity in the world. I have something that would be so interesting to the Foundation. Please help me get to the right person. Can you please send this to Bill and Melinda?" And I say no. One of the things that gives me comfort in saying no is that I say, "Look my own husband runs a charitable organization called Refugee Relief that does medical assistance in countries under conflict. He'd be a perfect candidate, and he hasn't even asked Bill and Melinda for money." One of the things I try to do is live by my own rules. The other thing I try to do is, for example, when I sold a company from my portfolio to Microsoft I didn't even talk to Bill about it. I'm not going to mention, "Hey, I'm selling one of my portfolio companies" to him. It's not relevant. I really try to respect that, particularly people who are in positions like Bill where everyone's approaching you all of the time, you need to be respectful of the pressures on that person's time. I think, that's one of the reasons why Bill and Melinda and I have a good and long‑standing relationship. They know that I respect that there needs to be boundaries there, because they don't have the luxury of living normal lives. Larry: Yeah, that's fact. By the way, of course, you know I was just saying that to.... Heidi: Oh, I know. Larry: However, last week we interviewed Brad Feld and he did say, "Hi to Heidi." Heidi: Oh, that's so sweet. I adore Brad. Larry: All right. Let me ask you this question. In your approach to your professional life, you do so many things. How do you bring about balance? Heidi: That's an excellent question. If you'd like I can bring my 12 and 14 year olds in here right now to continue the counterpoint to that. Larry: oh. Heidi: I do try to set limits. In my house, although we have wireless access, I'm not the person who walks around with my laptop and uses it everywhere. We certainly have a "no laptop in the bedroom" rule. I don't tend to watch TV and do email at the same time. I have a home office that I come in to do my work and then I try to leave it. I also try to have a commitment with my kids. If I say, "I'm going to stop working at seven," then I'm going to stop working at seven. I mix business and pleasure a lot. I have a lot of social engagements with people. I have a lot of people over for dinner. I try to engage my kids in some of that, because luckily at their ages they find some of that very interesting. In one of the projects I'm working on right now, I ask them for advice a lot. I've been able to pick their brains a lot about it. And they've been really great. I tell them, you know, if I'm having a bad day, you know I had a bad day about a legal contract I was working on. And because it didn't get done I missed a window of production for something. And I said to them, they said you know, "Why are you in such a bad mood?" And instead of saying something like, "Well, I had a bad day at work." I said, "Well, let me explain to you. This company needs a piece of paperwork before we can contract this production facility. We didn't get the piece of paperwork. Now because this production facility can only do things in, you know, they have another client the next three weeks that pushed me out a month. So, here's a one day delay on a contract that's going to cost me a three week delay on the production. And that's why I'm so mad about this today." And so that what is the thing? A teachable moment right? You know, I try to bring them in to the things that I'm doing. But, it is important sometimes to just close the door and say, "I'm sorry I'm not going to do this." I try very hard not to schedule meetings on the weekends. I try very hard not to schedule meetings at night. I try to really limit my travel because it is very disruptive to my family when I travel. And so, I try to make accommodations. Lucy: Well, and your daughters are wonderful. And having seen them at a couple of dinners. I mean the integration works really well. Heidi: They're pretty cute. Yeah. Lucy: They're pretty cute. It works really well because they get to see a lot of different people over here. Heidi: Yes they do. Lucy: That they wouldn't ordinarily see. They lead unusual lives. Heidi: We had a nice conversation about Norwegian and other things this morning. So, it was very good. Lucy: They were very funny. Heidi: And they do provide very funny moments. One time actually, Bill and Melinda were coming over for dinner. And Nicky was playing on her Xbox. And she knew Bill was coming over and said like "Can I have him sign my Xbox?" "Oh, I guess, you can ask him to sign your Xbox." Which she didn't ultimately do when he came over because she was too embarrassed. But, she said to me, "Microsoft, yeah, they make the Xbox. Do they make any other products?" And I just had to laugh. Heidi: You know, the eyes of a thirteen year old is like all they make is the Xbox. Lucy: Well you really have achieved a lot. And you have front row seats to a lot. And I have no doubt, fifty or not, that you are going to be on the front row for many, many years. Heidi: Not done yet. Lucy: Not done yet. So, tell us what's next for you. Heidi: Oh, I'm so excited about what I'm doing. But, I can't tell you. Sorry. Lucy: I'm going to jump across the desk and strangle her. Heidi: I know. I know. I am. You know I'm continuing to do my work with Mobee and then a company that we work on. And Brad and Jake my partners there. I mean, you know, we have a great relationship and I'm enjoying that. But, I am definitely an entrepreneur at heart. In fact I've been thinking, at some point on my link and profile. Right now, it says venture capitalist and recovering entrepreneur. And someday soon it's going to say "Relapsed entrepreneur and venture capitalist" because I just can't help myself. Heidi: So, I just started a little company. I actually funded it yesterday. I'm fortunate enough to have provided my own seed capital. I joke to my husband. I said, "It's very important tonight because we're having cocktails with my lead investor," which of course was me. [laughter] So, we laughed about that. So, I have a little start up that I'm working on, which I will hope to tell you all about really soon. But, it's not quite baked enough yet. So, you'll just have to wait. Lucy: I just hope it's about fifty year old women. Heidi: You will, you will buy one of these products. Well, I'm going to give you one. And Lucy. Larry Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Heidi RoizenInterview Summary: Born and raised in Silicon Valley, Heidi spent the first part of her career founding and growing tech companies. Now she enjoys helping entrepreneurs build companies as a coach instead of a player. Release Date: August 15, 2007Interview Subject: Heidi RoizenInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 34:33

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Selina Tobaccowala Senior VP of Product and Technology, Ticketmaster Europe Date: July 30, 2007 Lee Kennedy: Hi, this is Lee Kennedy and I am on the Board of Directors for the National Center of Women and Information Technology or NCWIT and this is part of a series of interviews that we are having with fabulous entrepreneurs. Women who have started IT companies in a variety of sectors all of whom have just fabulous stories to tell us about being entrepreneurs. With me is Larry Nelson from W3W3.com. Hi Larry, How are you.? Larry Nelson: I'm fantastic, and I'm real excited. Again this is another wonderful interview you guys have lined up. That's super. And W3W3.com we're a web‑based Internet radio show. We podcast and blog and everything else, and this is right up our alley. Lee: Great, and just to get right with it we are interviewing Selina Tobaccowala. Selina has a really interesting background. Selina was a Stanford grad and right out of school started Evite, which I think everybody in the universe knows about, and if you've ever been invited to a party or an event. She is currently working at Ticketmaster. So Selina why don't you start and tell us a little bit about your background and what brought you to be in technology and an entrepreneur. Selina Tobaccowala: Thank you Lee and Larry. From my standpoint from entrepreneur and how I got into technology, it's very much being surrounded by technology my whole life. My father was in computers as well and started doing the initial punch card programming in the 70s and eventually got into management and so forth. And then going on to Standford where you are surrounded by technology everywhere. I mean, I graduated in 1998 and in that time frame there was Yahoo, Excite, and Apple. Everything was around us and everything was started by Stanford entrepreneurs. So being in computer science at Standford there was just so much opportunity to go and do something in technology, which was very exciting. Lee: Great. Larry: I can't help but ask this. You've kind of led into it already. Just for a little clarity, you were one of the co founders of Evite. Selina: Yes. Larry: And that is how you ended up where you're at now. Because I kind of went and checked you out online. You've got a very interesting product that you're working on there at Ticketmaster. I can't wait to see where you're going to be going next. [laughter] Larry: How did you first, you mentioned your father. I can remember punch cards. I was doing some work at a University back in Wisconsin. I dropped the basket, oh boy. What was that transition in terms of what you think is really cool today going on in technology? Selina: In terms of technology today, some of the stuff I find cool possibly being in Ticketmaster and being surrounded by music is all the conversions in devices especially around music. So just looking at the iPod and what it's been able to do, and some of the products surrounding that from iTunes to iLike is something that actually Ticketmaster has invested in. And it's just a great convergence of taking new music, all the new web technologies as far as taking consumer data, and being able to help you discover new music. But it's all really from a standpoint; those are some of the things that I find really interesting in today's pace. And it is really tying together all the devices if you look at Google Maps tying into the GPS on your phone so you always know where you are, and driving those things together. I just feel like right now we're in another interesting time where the hardware has been able to catch up with what people can do from the software perspective. And being on the software side, obviously I find that very exciting. Lee: So it sounds like you really love being on the leading edge of technology and integrating all the latest and greatest devices. When you think about your role as an entrepreneur, what is it that makes you enjoy being an entrepreneur? What about being an entrepreneur really makes you tick? Selina: I think the key for me, based on my personality. I like to really dig in and solve problems and looking out there in terms of business opportunities and then using technology or consumer problems that people actually have and then using technology to take advantage of them. When you look at everything in my history, it's all about consumer products and making it easier, using the web to make your life easier in an off line way. So whether that's sending invitations so you don't have to try and coordinate thirty people via phone and email to actually organize an event, and actually make that event happen. Or having people very easily get to a live show and at a fair price. From my perspective it's really about taking technology to make the consumer life easier, and I like that. And there is so many opportunities as technologies get better, consumers always have problems. Larry: Yeah it is. Let me ask this. Kind of going back in history because we're trying to get a feel of what really makes an entrepreneur and how this all comes about, one of the things that we've noticed that you and others have mentioned is people that are mentors to you, roll models. Who would somebody like that be in your life? Selina: I think I already mentioned a little bit, but definitely my father. He and my mom came over to the U.S. probably with not that many resources or opportunities that I had. And my dad started doing basic computer technology and in the end was managing quite a bit at EAS and then jumped into a startup, then did two startups after that. And watching, he jumped into a start up actually a year before I did at Evite and watching that and saying, I think I can do that too, and then encouraging me to do so. And graduating from Standford and seeing people take jobs at general consulting firms and saying don't worry about it. Take a risk, now's the time. To me that was really important to have that around. And again, just through silicon valley there are so many different mentors around, and people encouraging you to just try and jump into businesses and take a risk, and that it's OK to fail. Which I think is one of the key things about being an entrepreneur is that you're going to try things that are not going to work, whether it's a product that you're going to put out there. We had four products before we launched Evite and we tried a product and it didn't work. We built a new product and it didn't work, and it's a matter of testing what consumers respond to, then putting something out on the market that actually works. And I think that the U.S. And Silicon Valley specifically completely encourages that. Lee: It's really cool that your dad was one of your key mentors in life. I have to say that some of the other women that we interviewed talk about how their father was either an entrepreneur or technical or an engineer and how that played a big influence in their life. Selina: I think that if you're surrounded by it. One of the things I think is great about the National Center for Women is if you're surrounded by it and get involved in it early, you really have the likelihood to see the value in technology and bring it out there whether for consumers or businesses. Lee: So thinking about everything you've done in the last ten years or more. Starting a new company from scratch and now doing amazing things where you're at. What do you think is the toughest thing that you've had to do in your career? Selina: One of the things as an entrepreneur is that you're not always going to succeed in the way you want to succeed. And that's part of taking the risk and that's part of the excitement but at the same time it's not going to work out. Evite we did a lot of things right and we sold our product and people still use it. But we did hit the downturn in the 2001 time frame, and we had to downsize. That's something as a leader is really hard, because you put your time, and investment, and people, and they give their time and ideas and thoughts back to you and to the organization. And that always is one of the toughest things is that you know, fundamentally, if your business doesn't succeed to the degree, sometimes you need to let go parts of the team, and that's always going to be the toughest thing in any business. Larry: Yes. I have to tell our listeners, off‑line, just before we started, I asked Selina, "How come I only got three Evites this week?" And I said, "Was it a slow week?" She said, "Well, either that, or you have to get more friends." [laughs] Selina: [laughs] Larry: So anyhow, Selina, if you were sitting in front, right now, of a young person who was contemplating whether or not they wanted to become an entrepreneur, what advice would you give them? Selina: I mean, from my standpoint, as cheesy as it sounds, definitely go for it. [laughs] Larry: [laughs] Selina: But definitely, after that, it's really what I was saying a little bit before, which is you need to take risks. From my standpoint, it's prototype something as quickly in the marketplace as you can, see what's working, see what's not working; especially when you look at new technologies and web technologies. You can track everything. You can test everything. So you can get stats, see results, and then tweak, tweak, tweak. So it's very easy to sort of weed out stuff that's not working, try new things, and get it working and build a sustainable product. So, in terms of, again, that's more based on web technologies. It's harder to do if you're talking about hardware or physical goods. But the principle; being of prototype, get it out, market test it, and then keep building; is still the right thing. Larry: Great advice. Lucy Sanders: Well, Selina, one of the questions that we're always eager to ask is, with all the amazing things you've done, when you think about yourself, what personal characteristics do you think have given you any advantages as an entrepreneur? Selina: I actually would ask somebody else. [laughs] But I would say that, from my perspective, one of the keys is, actually, I'm not a very patient person. And although that might not be seen as a general advantage, it is sort of an impatience with the status quo, with what's out there, and being able to be curious and question and say, "Why are things working this way? How are things working?" So we constantly try to think about how to make it better: "How can I improve on what's there?" Whether that's in a small way, from a product perspective or a feature perspective, to actually say, "Is there a full business opportunity here?" It is probably, for me, the largest thing, from a personal characteristic standpoint. But I don't think there's anything that different in terms of besides the willingness to be able to take a risk. Lucy: Mm‑hmm. Great. Larry: Well put. Well put. I must say, being a serial entrepreneur myself, I can relate to that. Here's kind of a tricky thing. You're a hard worker. You love what you do. And of course, that's the good side. Well, you're a hard worker, and you like to do what do you do. How do you bring about the personal and professional balance in your life? Selina: [laughs] Larry: [laughs] Selina: A bad question when I'm at work at 7:15 at night. [laughs] [laughter] Selina: No. I'd say there's a couple of things, which is, even doing Evite, and we've been working intense hours‑‑every Friday, at least, Friday evening and Saturday, spending time with friends and being able to say, "I'm going to take out X time, and no matter what else is going on, spend time with other people." Because it does actually reinvigorate you, give you new ideas. And then another thing, for me, is I absolutely love to travel. And so it's really saying that taking, even if it's just one week out every year, but it is taking that time and actually going and seeing someplace new, because, again, I feel like really taking some time out to just go do that. And it does bring on new ideas, you do relax to a different degree, and your mind sort of refreshes. And I think that that's very important. And I'd say the last thing is I love to read, and every night, before I go to bed. It's like it takes your mind to a different space and does give that relaxation that you need. Lucy: Gosh, I think that's the best advice I've heard yet from anybody on how they get balanced. Yeah. Larry: Yeah. I love it. Yeah. Lucy: Because being an entrepreneur requires so much creativity, because you're always faced with new challenges... Selina: Yeah. And the thing is, if you don't get away from the day‑to‑day ever‑‑I live in London now, and one of the things is, no matter what else, I walk to work every morning. And it takes me about 35, 40 minutes, but it's like I'm walking through a park, and it's like it lets you actually think through everything. Even if it's just an hour here or there, taking the time out to refresh yourself, because you end up actually thinking through things more clearly and being more productive. Larry: You brought up London, and I have to ask this. Here we are, sitting in Boulder, Colorado... Selina: [laughs] Larry: Sunny skies, 80 degrees, gorgeous outside... Lucy: You rubbing it in, Larry? Larry: Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry. Selina: [laughs] Larry: And I know it's evening there now, but what was it like earlier today in London? Selina: Well, actually, today was absolutely beautiful. [laughs] Lucy: We caught you on a good day! Larry: Oh, wow. What a setup! What a setup! Selina: Yes, it was. The summer months are generally just beautiful here. And as I said, I walk through the park with wildflowers... Lucy: Oh. Selina: And I was in Germany for work yesterday, so it's very easy to see new places. [laughs] Lucy: Well, the last question we have for you is‑‑you've already achieved so much at such a young age. What's next for you? Selina: As Larry said, the whole serial entrepreneur. One of the things, Evite got bought by the parent company, IAC. And I've been doing, to a certain degree, startups within IAC‑‑started a group at Ticketmaster first, then went on and started an online organization for Entertainment.com, and now came to Ticketmaster and doing European products and technology. But I think the next thing for me is I will get back that itch to do a startup from scratch, [laughs] and coming up that idea and finding the next thing. And for me, I love what I'm doing now. We're doing great things in terms of new products and launching it through the different European marketplaces. But I'd say, after Ticketmaster, it's definitely jumping back into a small organization. Larry: Oh, we just have to ask this. With your experience, and now your worldwide travels and involvement and all, what do you see, technology‑wise, that's coming down the pike that's going to make a big, sweeping difference to all of us? Selina: Oh, wow. That's a tough one. [laughs] But again, I don't see any single technology. And I think that that's the way I think. I don't see that, all of a sudden, everything's going to migrate to mobile phones, or there's going to be any single device or any single technology that's going to sort of change everything completely. I mean, there's a few of those that come up occasionally, like, obviously, adding search to the web changed it dramatically. But I do see that what you have today is finally, as I was saying before, the ability to suddenly drive everything to the web, from, rightly, with software applications that used to could only sit on your computer. I think, all of a sudden, you can be connected from everywhere, and you can get to everything from everywhere. And I think that just changes the mindset in terms of continually and always being able to access your information and, to a certain degree now, other people being able to access your information. And it changes the whole how anonymous you can be within an everyday life, and everybody's more connected and the web connects people, and so I do feel that more and more technologies are taking advantage of that. But it will change how people interact. Lucy: Yeah. There's definitely some exciting things. Larry: Are we going to follow up on this, Selina, or not? We can tell you're going to have a super, super career, and we definitely will follow you. Selina: Well, thank you. Thank you for taking your time as well. Lucy: Well, Selina, thank you so much. It's been wonderful learning more about you today. Remember, these podcasts will be on www.ncwit.org, as well as www.w3w3.com. Larry: That's it. Selina: Great. Lucy: Thanks, and pass these on to a friend. Selina: Thank you so much. Larry: See you soon. Lucy: Bye‑bye. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Selina TobaccowalaInterview Summary: When Selina Tobaccowala co-founded a little web company called Evite as a junior at Stanford, she was one of just 18 women majoring in computer science. Release Date: July 30, 2007Interview Subject: Selina TobaccowalaInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 16:05