Podcasts about Waldron

Eschatology, is often viewed with little regard. Essentially, that it will “all pan out in the end”. But how the story ends, is just as important, as how it began. Today, we discuss, the end of the age and the return of Christ; with Dr. Sam Waldron, outlining his new book, ‘The Doctrine of Last Things: An optimistic Amillenial view'.PBHB GIVEAWAY: https://www.stayreformed.com/giveawayAdditional References:Dr. Waldron's Book: https://freegracepress.com/products/the-doctrine-of-last-things-an-optimistic-millennial-viewCovenant Baptist Theological Seminary: https://cbtseminary.org/The Second London Baptist Confession (1689): https://founders.org/library-book/1689-confession/https://www.chapellibrary.org/pdf/books/lbcw.pdf?srsltid=AfmBOorAi1b6iCPqv94DjBcMhSSpcDOGwJrb9hXJSlgqxrFSgo9ofc0-Social Media:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@StayReformedTwitter/X: https://twitter.com/stayreformedInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/stayreformed/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stayreformedpodcast/Website: https://www.stayreformed.com/Email: contact@stayreformed.com

Preena: Welcome to the Weinberg in the World Podcast, where we bring stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. My name is Preena Shroff and I'm your student host of this special Weinberg in the World episode. I'm a third year student majoring in neuroscience and global health studies with a minor in data center. Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Natasha Phillips, who graduated from Weinberg College in 2000 with a Bachelor of Arts in sociology and biology. Natasha currently serves as chief marketing officer for GE Healthcare, leading teams that help healthcare providers design treatment plans for their patients. Natasha, thank you so much for being here with us today. Natasha: Thanks for having me, Preena. It's a pleasure. Preena: We are so excited to learn about your work in healthcare marketing, but would love to start out with how your career path was shaped by your time at Northwestern. Maybe you can tell us more about your undergraduate experience, what were some impactful classes, extracurriculars, or mentorships opportunities that you had which impacted your post-graduate career? Natasha: Yeah. You're making me think a little bit, because I got to go back in time. As an undergraduate, I was super lucky, having both a biology and a sociology major, it gave me the ability to see a very wide range of classes. I wasn't 100% sure actually what I wanted to do. I knew I was somewhat interested in the sciences. I didn't actually know I would be that interested in the social sciences, but I took a couple of classes. One in particular was the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity with Charlie Moskos, which actually made me decide to ... That was the reason I became a sociology major. I just got super lucky, I loved that class. It's funny, if I ever had a second life, I always say I would have loved to have gone back and been a sociology professor. But I didn't take that path, I went more with the actual biology side of things. I was weighing, do I want to do research? I actually was really interested in molecular biology, primarily because in the late '90s, which is a very long time ago to our students who are listening, but for me that was a time very formative because they were sequencing the human genome. There was a lot of promise in the space, not only of biology, but more specifically molecular biology and how it is linked to genetics and genomics as we think about the impact on healthcare. That really interested me to the point where I really was considering actually getting my PhD in molecular biology. Some of my favorite classes were the ones in which I had exposure to research, because I got to see the importance of just the impact that research can have. And the ability to be able to find a practical application, even if it's on a very specific question, to really contribute to the body of knowledge. Ultimately ended up being unsure what I wanted to do right after undergrad, so I went into healthcare consulting in which I wanted to be able to figure out, do I want to go towards the more business side of healthcare and thinking about commercializing healthcare and science from the industry side of things? Or to the academic side and actually get my PhD, and think about contributing to science and healthcare in that realm. I did have exposure, both in consulting as well as in research. I started in a research program at the University of Chicago in molecular biology after doing consulting so I could see both sides. And ultimately, actually, that was when I made the decision to focus much more so on the business side of it and to get my MBA, and to move into healthcare marketing. That led me into the career in which I've had today, in which I've been very lucky to have over 15 years working at very large multinational healthcare companies, primarily in sales and marketing roles, bringing innovation in healthcare to people all over the globe. Preena: Absolutely. Wow, yeah. I think your path is actually not only a common path that students seek out, but also something that students might end up finding themselves in, even if they do experience a career switch in their life. That's really interesting to hear about. I have another question for you, more specifically job-oriented. Healthcare is constantly evolving, so maybe you can tell us a little bit about how your marketing approach has changed since you began your career? Natasha: Yeah. I love that question, Preena, because what really is happening is healthcare is evolving and the function of marketing is evolving constantly. I am really lucky that, both in the subject matter that I basically have decided to focus in, which is healthcare and ultimately the innovation around healthcare, but also have a really cool and exciting function that continues to evolve. I was lucky enough during my ... Maybe I'll start with the functional part, I'll start with marketing first, and then I'll talk about healthcare. The basic function of marketing has changed significantly over the past 20 years as I've been a marketer, primarily with the advent of digital and social media. It continues now to evolve, as we think about personalized marketing and AI, and what that's going to do. I would say the main changes that I've seen over time has been from a very I would say structured, one size fits all, if you think about it like mass media type of marketing in which there was a time in which you had one singular message and one singular way of approaching individuals, and not a lot of channels to reach them. To now, moving to almost a fully personalized marketing experience, where you have the ability with technology today to be able to say, even if you have thousands of targets, how do you understand the fine differences. There's got to be some generalization amongst those targets, but there's also some fine differences in how people consume their information, care about interacting with your brand, and want to be able to either become loyal brand advocates or detractors. How do you understand what those insights are to create an ongoing personalized journey that evolves over time with the individual as their media consumption and interest in whatever product you're selling changes? That's been one of the coolest innovations to think about, as we think about the function. If I look at healthcare, I've been lucky enough to see innovation across a variety of different segments within healthcare. I'd seen the advent of biologics. If we think about innovation from a healthcare point of view, in basically the last 20 years or so, we've seen drugs like Humira, which started the biologic class and has now exploded into one of the largest categories or segments within healthcare. And the significant impact that that has had on millions of patients, and has changed diseases all the way from skin conditions to much more serious autoimmune type of conditions. I've been lucky enough to see innovation on the diagnostic side, in which I've seen the advent of brand new technologies, including things like multi-plexing. Of taking a single sample, and instead of wanting to get one answer, you can get anywhere from 25 to 30 answers of which virus of which disease somebody has. And the impact that that has had not only on just healthcare, but on infectious disease and vaccines in other parts. For me, what has actually kept me so motivated in healthcare for so long is it isn't just an idea. I get to be part of the teams, and it's a cross-functional team that includes everybody from scientists, research and developers, operations, medical affairs, clinical affairs, marketers, salespeople, finance people, and everybody, I'm sure I'm forgetting some functions. It is such a complex effort to bring innovation like this to market and sometimes can take 10 to 15 years, but when it happens you actually see significant change in healthcare. For me, that's the ability to think even 30, 40 years from now, some of the either diagnostics, devices, or drugs that I've helped to bring to market will really have an impact. Either because it continues to improve healthcare or it was the precursor of future innovation that's going to continue to come because we've paved the way for it, so it's really cool. Preena: Absolutely. That's really incredible. And the way you're able to work with people of many different fields and backgrounds, and then learn from them as well is a really incredible experience, and I hope defines a lot of students' careers in the future as well. Natasha: Yeah. I think just to add to that, the one thing to really keep in mind is I love the interdisciplinary approach that a really good college in arts and sciences like Weinberg does. Because for me, that kind of thinking, although I didn't understand it at the time because I was just a student and I had no clue what I was actually going to do, is something that to this day in my career I think back to and I leverage. It's helped to make me successful, especially in a very large matrix cross-functional organization. It's something that, as all of you who are students potentially listening to this and are thinking, "What might I do in the future?" Really leverage the opportunities that you have to do that kind of interdisciplinary type of work because it will make you much stronger in whatever field you decide to do. Preena: Yeah, absolutely. Going off of that, a bit in the other direction, but what is a common misconception about working in the healthcare marketing industry? Natasha: That is a great question. This is maybe a little controversial, but I'm going to say it. I think there is this perception of big, bad pharma and big, bad healthcare. I think it's something that is an understandable point of view and one which requires probably much more dialogue than what we can answer here. But I'll just leave people with this one thought. Which is if you think about most of the major innovations that have come to healthcare over the last 30 years, whether it's drugs to treat high blood pressure or hypertension, or innovations in diagnostics as I mentioned to be able to not just understand what's happening from blood count, but to be able to look at the molecular and cellular level to treat rare diseases and everything in the middle. Much of that innovation, while it is funded and founded in the basic research that happens at academic and other institutions, has really been driven by the industry. Whether it's the pharmaceutical industry, the med device industry, the diagnostic industry. That requires significant investment and significant time. It also requires a very high failure rate. In some cases, if you have 100 compounds or 100 ideas that you're bringing through, less than 1% of them will sometimes make it to market. There is a significant amount of investment that needs to happen. While there's always optimizations that could happen, I always implore people to think about the fact that the drug that your mother or father is taking today, or that your brother or sister is taking for asthma, didn't exist probably even 20 or 30 years ago because we didn't have the funding and innovation that was coming necessarily maybe from companies that has been pushing that forward. While there is a lot of discussion to be had about healthcare and the rights to healthcare, I think companies like mine, whether it's my current company or previous company, have played a very important role in really helping to improve overall health and healthcare as we think about the impact on people's lives. I just ask people to be open to the fact that there's always a variety of different vantage points and it's always a great healthy dialogue to have. Preena: Of course, yeah. From what you said, it sounds like it's a bit of a trade-off and it's really important to discover where you fit in within that sphere, and learn how to interpret your work and your path in that direction as well. Just realizing what impact you're making and picturing that longterm. Natasha: Yeah, exactly. Preena: Okay. Then, I was also going to ask you about the student perspective, thinking about students today. How would you recommend students cultivate a personal brand? A lot of times people say networking. How do students network authentically, both online and in-person so that they can find the right opportunities or even the right opportunities can find them? Natasha: Yeah, I think it's a really great question. I very much will reiterate the importance of networking because I think that's foundational and fundamental to everything that we do today. In fact, many of you who got into very competitive colleges probably had to figure that out as you were even thinking about how to get into the school that you're in today. That thought process needs to continue as you think about getting your first job, or maybe you're getting your next pre-professional school that you're focused on. I would take that networking to the next step to say I think some of the most effective networking has two really good components. I find this, because I have a lot of people who maybe reach out to me, either through my network or because they're looking for learning about marketing or healthcare, or other topics that maybe I've had some experience with. The first of those two things is really having a genuine brand, and one in which you really own and feel passionate about. The most interesting and coolest networking that I do, even with students today, are the ones in which people are very purposeful about what they are interested in, what they care about, what their brand is. It's probably hard to even think about me as a college student, what is my brand? But you have a brand. You may not know it yet, but you definitely have and can develop a brand. That brand should be whatever you feel truly passionate and genuinely interested in, because that will only I would say help you have much more successful networking and much more genuine connections with the people that you are trying to connect with. Even if that individual maybe doesn't understand or isn't that maybe close to the topic, you'd be shocked how just that genuine authenticity is going to help drive really stronger connections in networking that are going to help both you, as well as the network that you're creating, as you think about the fact that one day you're going to have a network and you're going to want to be able to pay it forward to students the way maybe people are helping you with your decisions and career today. The second one as you think about networking is a lot of times, networking and finding a good fit, whether it's a company or your next pre-professional program, or what you even want to do, is based on having a shared purpose with whoever you're networking with or whatever that institution is. I find the people who come and are most prepared for interviews, in addition to feeling very genuine and knowing what their brand is, are the people who are very clear on what my purpose, either as an institution is, or whatever group I'm part of. They understand that and it is very much akin to who they are, what they're looking for, what makes them passionate. That sense of shared purpose in networking I think is another way in which you can more successfully think about how do you take your decisions or whatever you're going to do next in your career path and be more successful in terms of what you want to do. Then the last thing I would say is don't feel super ... I know everybody's pressured to feel like they know exactly what they want to do and I understand that. I'm sure many of the people who are listening to this are very high performing, have always been very successful in life, have known exactly what they want to do. But there's a lot of benefit to maybe giving yourself the luxury of knowing you have a very long marathon ahead of you, as you think about the decision making in your career choices that you're going to make. If there's ever a time to be open to it, it's probably earlier in your career when you're maybe more willing to not only take some risks, but also be true to what you actually think will be interesting to you over a longterm career. Don't be afraid if it's not going to be a straight line. It might be a really curvy, cool path. At the time, it might feel a little discouraging, but don't be discouraged. Because I would argue, if I look back, some of my coolest decisions were the ones in which it wasn't this straight line, very clear path of what I wanted to do. But rather, I was either more open because of external circumstances or internal motivation to being a little bit more flexible and not so purposeful, and everything must be this in this timeframe. I think if you have some openness to that, it will really help you and probably put a lot less pressure on you as you're thinking about your career. Preena: Right. Yeah, that's really great advice. In terms of winding paths, switching over to your career and more of your day-to-day role, what would say is a challenge or challenges that you often find or encounter in your day-to-day role and how do you approach those? Natasha: That's a good question. My challenges in my day-to-day role. I'm fortunate in which I lead a functional team, so I have the benefit of having an amazing team that I work with every day across a variety of brands and products, across a very diverse portfolio. I've been lucky enough to do that at this current company, which is GE Healthcare, and the previous company I was at which is Abbott. Many times, if I think about the biggest challenges in my day-to-day, it really is around I would say three big areas. The first one is when you are such a large matrix company that is so dependent on your other functional teams, to ensure that you are all very clear on what the goal is, what you're all trying to accomplish, and that you're all rowing in the same direction, and have shared purpose and goals. Often times in our day-to-day, even in companies where you think everybody's on the same team, you can often find that there's actually sometimes a bit of misalignment or competing priorities. Sometimes that's because we're different functions or groups, sometimes it's because we're different segments. Sometimes it's just because we don't understand that shared goal. It's keeping everybody aligned to the mission, strategy, and vision. I would say as marketers actually, I feel like we are big drivers of that in an organization. It's something I always feel very responsible for and want to help my team feel very responsible for. That's the first one. The second one is we work in a very complex landscape. We're highly regulated here in healthcare. We want to do the right thing. Actually, I always tell people I'm so glad that we're highly regulated because the decisions we make actually impact life or death. It's actually for all the right reasons that we have very strict regulatory and approval processes, and then ongoing monitoring of all of our activities from our quality processes to our commercial processes and everything in between. But that can bring a lot of complexity. You've got to navigate a lot of sometimes tough legal and compliance discussions. But at the end of the day, the way we navigate them successfully as a team is really by reminding ourselves that the reason these regulations exist is to keep patients, our own family members who are consuming healthcare every day safe. We're able to do that. I feel we, despite sometimes difficult discussions, always get to the best answer in doing what's right for the patient and what's right for healthcare. Then the third thing, which is I think sometimes hard, is we all come to work every day because we actually care about healthcare and saving lives. That's sometimes really hard to remember when you get stuck in your day-to-day. You can be at a tough meeting, or a really hard strategy review, or a really hard finance review, or maybe you're missing your number in this sales goal. But at the end of the day, those hard days are really worth it because of what ultimately we're bringing to patients all over the globe. Again, there are these challenges, but over a long career I've been able to figure out how to successfully navigate them. So that I feel that even the challenges motivate me to come to work, and figure it out, and be better tomorrow. Better today and tomorrow than I was yesterday and in the past. I try to motivate my teams to think about that in the same way. Preena: Absolutely. Oh, yeah, that was very insightful. I think a lot of these can be applied to any fields, because a lot of times, in healthcare specifically, there is definitely life and death impacts. Then in other fields, people can have those same hard conversations and still need to have that resilience and build up that resilience to come back from that. Natasha: Very true. Very, very true. Probably very similar, just maybe different categories, but very similar discussions that would happen- Preena: Absolutely. Natasha: ... outside of healthcare, too. Preena: Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you very much for sharing this with us and thank you for joining us today. That is all the questions I have. We really value your time, and for coming on and speaking to all of our students. Thank you very much. Natasha: Thank you for having me. It was pleasure to talk to you.  

In this episode of the Weinberg in the World podcast, Aimee Resnick '26 interviews Priscilla Vail-Caldwell '85, founder of Vail-Caldwell Projects. Priscilla shares her undergraduate experiences at Northwestern, including impactful classes and internships that shaped her career in the arts. She discusses her current role as an advisor and curator, helping clients build art collections with a focus on research and quality. Aimee: Welcome to the Weinberg in the World Podcast, where we bring you stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. My name is Aimee Resnick and I am your student host of the special podcast episode. I'm a senior studying social policy at Northwestern University who plans to pursue public administration in my home state of Colorado. Today, I'm very excited to be speaking with Priscilla Vail-Caldwell, who is the founder of the consulting firm, Vail-Caldwell Projects. Thank you, Priscilla for taking the time to speak with me today. Priscilla: Thank you, Aimee, for having me. Aimee: Of course. To start us off today, we were wondering if you can just tell us a little bit more about your time at Northwestern as an undergraduate in terms of what did you study and what were the impactful experiences you had at Northwestern that led you to your current career? Priscilla: I think one thing to note is that I came to Northwestern following a year of study abroad in France. As a senior, I studied in France, and then I came to Northwestern with an idea that I wanted to be at a big university near a city. Logistics had something to do with actually my choice of university, and I think it had to do with the fact that I had this experience that had really kind of opened my mind up about the world, essentially. There was that, and for some reason I declared an art history major very early on in my time at Northwestern. I think as a freshman, I had already decided that that was what I was going to do. You had asked what was one of the transformative experiences that I had at school, and I was thinking that ironically, in a way, I think it may have been a studio art class that I took because it was very rigorous and I enjoyed it, and I had a lot of respect for the other students in the class who I thought were gifted than I was. And I then realized that that wasn't really what I should be doing, but I still wanted to be involved in the arts, and I wanted to be involved in art history and working with objects. I always enjoyed those big introductory courses, sort of identifying paintings, and it seemed like a game to me, really. And I enjoyed that. And then frankly, learning about history through the lens of art. That was always something that kind of compelled me. I think another thing that I did while I was on campus, and I do think this is something that big universities offer, especially ones like Northwestern that are near a city like Chicago, are the opportunities to work in different situations outside of the university campus. I always worked, while I was at Northwestern, I waitressed, I did all sorts of things in order to earn extra money, and I found a job at a gallery downtown in Chicago called Frumkin & Struve. It's no longer in existence, but at the time, it was one of the big galleries downtown. And I worked there every Saturday. And then I had time in my schedule during the week, and I would work there usually one day during the week as well. And Bill and Debbie Struve were the principals of the gallery, and they gave me a lot... I mean, for a college student, they gave me a lot of responsibility, and they really brought me into the fold in a sense. So, I was included in all sorts of things, and the dinners for the artists, and I got to meet a lot of the artists that they were working with. And it was exciting and engaging, and I thought that that seemed like the kind of life I wanted to lead. I enjoyed the interaction with the artists primarily. Aimee: Oh, I totally empathize with your studio art experience, I'm taking painting right now, and there are some incredible painters in that class. But I also wanted to just say, I think that your experience having a really meaningful internship in Chicago is a good reminder to students to look outside the Northwestern bubble for opportunities as they're going through school. And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about what you do at Vail-Caldwell Projects now that you're in New York. Priscilla: Well, I'm an advisor and a curator, and I've had my own advisory business now for the last... I think it's been about eight years. I've always been in the professional... I've always been in the commercial art world, but in this iteration, I advise private people who are building collections on acquiring works of art for the collection. We're building things oftentimes from the ground up. Oftentimes, I will start working on a project with somebody and there will be nothing essentially, and we will work on that together and build something that is meaningful and very specific in every single case with every client that I work with. All my projects are very, very different. There are clients that I work with who buy only the work of one artist. There are clients that I work with who focus very specifically on certain kinds of movements in, for instance, the California Light and Space Movement. There are people who are interested in collecting works by female artists. It all ends up having very different kinds of focuses. Each one of the projects allows me to apply my research skills and learn a lot alongside whoever it is that I'm advising, oftentimes about different aspects of the art world. I see what I do, as always, very research-based and obviously sort of a search for quality and also to include different voices in any kind of project that I work on. I also have a very strong background in modern American painting. I have this kind of hybrid experience where I oftentimes advise people on the purchase of work by contemporary and emerging artists, but I have a strong background in historic American painting. Many of my curatorial projects have been focused on the works of some of the seminal painters of the 20th century. I've done a series of exhibitions at Paul Kasmin Gallery on the work of Stuart Davis. I worked with Kasmin on a number of projects. Another one was a exhibition of sculptures by Elie Nadelman, who is artist who came to the United States from Europe and is considered part of the canon of modern American painting or sculpture, really. He's not a painter, he is a sculptor. I've also done projects with smaller galleries where I've curated relevant shows of young, relatively unknown artists. And that's always fun. I enjoy doing that. That's really a wonderful way for me to dive in and learn about what's going on out there amongst a group of recent graduates. So that's always exciting and I enjoy that kind of work very, very much. And currently, I think one of the things that I've just started working on is a collaboration with a gallery in London called Pi Artworks and an artist who they represent, whose name is Jyll Bradley. So I also advise the estate of Stuart Davis. Aimee: Yes, it does. And I have a related question, which is that you mentioned having worked with a lot of different genres and periods and different artists in this realm of art history. And while you were going through your education in your early career, was there a certain artist or movement that was particularly influential or touching to you? Priscilla: I'm going to answer that question by giving you a little bit more of my background. I left Northwestern, I moved to New York, and I took a job at a small gallery. And that year of working there were like three people on staff. That was an experience that taught me that I wanted to go back to school and learn to become more expert on something. I wasn't sure exactly what that was going to be, but I needed more skills actually in order to have the sort of job in the art world that I envisioned. I was accepted at Williams, which a small... Everybody's always confused because it's a college, but it has two graduate programs, and one of them is an art history program that's associated with the Clark Art Institute. I was one of 12 students in that following year, entering in to a two-year program. I had the good fortune of... Linda Nochlin was the visiting professor at the time who, if you're not familiar with Linda Nochlin, she was, she died a few years ago, one of the great feminist revisionist art historians of her time. And so studying with Linda, I began to look into the histories of certain artists like Eva Hesse and Jackie Winsor. Eva Hesse, of course, has been dead for many, many years. Jackie Winsor just died recently. At that moment in time, and I'm still very moved by the work and very interested in it, but I was very much focused on the work of minimalist and post-minimalist female sculptors to be extremely specific. That experience studying with Linda and looking into the histories of these women and the difficulties that they faced in a world that discriminates against women was eye-opening for me. And it's informed everything that I've probably done since. Aimee: Well, that's very interesting. And I think it's fascinating how some of these formative pieces of art really brought your eye into the future and your current work. And I know at the Block Museum on campus, we've had several exhibits that kind of follow in line with the types of art that you've just described in terms of the revisionist view of art history, the modernism with their Arabic art exhibit not too long ago. And I'm going to transition us to that because you're currently a member of the Block Museum Advisory Committee, and I just want to hear more about the work that you do there and then how you use that as a way to bring volunteerism and philanthropy into your professional career. Priscilla: I have always felt that volunteering my time to certain organizations in the art world is as important as the work that I do professionally. The idea of giving back, which I think frankly is something that either is kind of... For me, it's something that was ingrained in me as a young person. I try to only align myself with organizations whose missions I agree with. And that kind of mission usually includes a sort of mentorship for young artists so that there's a teaching element, which I think is really important. And also this sense of inclusion and diversity in institutions at every level. It's not just the artists that you're showing, but also in integration into the organization itself so that it represents the world in a sense. I mean, that's kind of big, but I think you get the gist of what I'm saying. I sit on the advisory board, and I mean, I think that I help in a number of different ways, but I have a feeling that my experience in the commercial art world and my interaction with lots of different artists and different galleries helps the director and the curatorial department in different ways. I can shed some insight sometimes that is useful. And of course, there are other people on the advisory board, not just me, who have similar experiences. My colleague Steve Henry, who is a classmate of mine, is one of the directors, one of the partners, not directors at Paula Cooper Gallery here in New York, so he sits on the advisory board with me as well. I think Lisa has been very wise in the way that she's chosen the members of her board, where we all contribute important things in different ways. Aimee: Absolutely. And I'm curious, outside of the Block, what other organizations do you volunteer your time to? Priscilla: Right now, the Block is my focus, but I was for a long time on the board of an organization here in New York. It's actually on Long Island City called Sculpture Center, which is a Kunsthalle and a place that essentially acts as an exhibition space oftentimes for artists who live outside the United States to have their first museum exhibition here in the US. It's a place of discovery, I think for a lot of people. It's a place that is very research-based, and they have a very knowledgeable curatorial staff that is very involved in the international art world. They do that. And then they also do a very, what I think is a really important annual exhibition that is an open call to artists that is directed at younger emerging artists, again, who haven't exhibited in an institutional space. And there are funds provided and mentorship provided. And it's a kind of learning lab for a group of artists who then create a group show. There's also a curator who's hired from outside who comes up with a theme for the show, and then they work together to put on these annual exhibitions. And they're amazing shows, and they do great work, and it's a very rich environment. Aimee: Next time I'm in New York, I'd love to come see the gallery. That is so interesting. Priscilla: It's a beautiful space. It's a beautiful, beautiful space in Long Island City. I would be happy to take you there, so let's do that. Aimee: Thank you. Priscilla: Yeah. Aimee: I think we're going to pivot a little bit from your specific career more to the field of art history on the whole, and a big part of being in art history is curating relationships with your clients, which you mentioned previously. What is your advice for students who are looking to foster quick relationships with other people, be it interviewers, co-workers, anyone in the professional world that they need to have a really strong bond with? Priscilla: Well, I will say that when... I did a lot of research on people before I meet them, so that at least I understand what it is that they do, what some of their interests might be. I feel like... I mean, in any case, in any field, if you're going into an interview, if you're meeting somebody for the first time, if it's an important engagement of any sort, it's really good to know who it is, who you're talking to. I think first of all, I would say do your research and figure out, find some interesting things to talk about that will interest the person who you are meeting with. And also will give them a sense that you actually know who they are. I think that's always... That's just flattering for one thing, and it also makes you look like you've paid attention. I used to take every opportunity to go out and do things, and I mean, I go to a lot of openings. I get myself into situations where I will meet people. I think that it can be uncomfortable. You might not know anybody where you're going. You could feel sort of nervous and shy, but I think you have to push yourself to be in situations where you might not feel comfortable, but something will come out of it almost inevitably, and you'll walk away knowing somebody who you didn't know before, and you never know where that's going to lead you. I'm a big believer in that, and I sort of feel like I have two personas. I have the person who doesn't like to do those sorts of things, and then I have the person who has to get up in the morning and go to work and for whom it's a requirement. I think those are two bits of advice that I would have. I mean, for students at Northwestern, of course, if they're looking to create networks for themselves, I mean, they have one, right? I mean, you all have an amazing network through the university, and you have professors who want to support and help you. Again, even though I think sometimes it's difficult to push yourself to go in and talk to your professors, they are there for that reason and they want to support the student body and see them be successful and help you to find things outside of the university that will engage you and also perhaps end up being a path towards a career. I don't know if all of that necessarily answers your question, but you've got... I think sometimes you wake up in the morning and you think that you don't have the tools at your fingertips, but you do and you just have to press the button. Aimee: That's good advice. I think a lot of times students at Northwestern are too timid to take advantage of many of those resources. That's really good advice. I have a little bit of background for this last question, which is that I, myself, was an artist history major for two years, dropping the major because I realized I was never going to get a job in art history because I don't necessarily have a family background or the connections to leverage to get a job in art history. And I was just curious, understanding that art history enrollment is rapidly declining. The cover story of the Nation magazine in early April was about how art history enrollment is declining. What advice would you offer to people who might not traditionally undertake a career in art history who are interested in becoming art historians or people in the art world? Priscilla: I think that oftentimes when people approach the idea of being an art historian or being in the art world, that they don't think broadly enough about all of the different things that happen in the art world. Of course, the glamorous jobs are to be a curator at a museum and to be a director or a principal at a gallery. And frankly, not everybody... I mean, as far as gallery work is concerned, really... I mean, there's curation going on, but it's sales primarily. So that might not be for everybody for one thing. Sales is not exactly the job that everybody wants to have. But what I've been thinking about a lot recently, and certainly a lot of the people in the art world who I rely very, very heavily on and whose expertise is impressive are there are registrarial departments at galleries and museums. Those are people who work with the objects and who have to deal with whether it's insurance or packing or moving objects from one country to another. And all of these things, while it may sound less glamorous, are still very interesting and complicated. And so those are jobs, I think that certainly registrarial departments, we depend on them. They're extremely important. And they have their own networks as well, by the way. There's also art restoration and working directly with objects, which is an interesting kind of combination of the scientific and the art historical. Especially for people who are interested in the sciences, there's an application for that in the art world. And there's a lot of ways of... There's all sorts of things that happen like carbon dating and various different X-ray techniques and all sorts of things that help to say define an object isn't really what I mean. But you have to understand organic chemistry in order to be a painting conservator. I think that we should think maybe differently about the art world a little bit than we do sometimes. And art history will inform all of those things. I mean, all of those people who are working in those different departments need to understand art history. They probably wouldn't even be doing that work unless they did. But you can come at it from a different angle. And I think that that's something that should probably be more emphasized. We need more art conservators out there. We really do. And there are a lot of objects to work on. Aimee: Definitely. Definitely. And I have one more follow-up question on that, which is my worst job I ever worked was at the American Museum of Western Art. I love the museum. I think it's a beautiful museum. I love pictures of cowboys, my favorite genre, but at the same time, it was just scanning documents all day as an unpaid internship. And I think that finances are often a really big barrier to entry for people in art history, given the precedence of unpaid internships, years long fellowships where you're not compensated. I'm just going to narrow in on my question, which is what advice would you give to people from non-traditional backgrounds who want to pursue a job in art history at all? Priscilla: Well, a lot of graduate programs now are fully funded, so that might be something to explore a little bit. I know that for instance, Williams, there are a lot of... I don't know that every single one of them, but many of those students are fully funded and also receive help with living expenses, health insurance, all of their expenses are accounted for. That isn't exactly what you're asking me. But I do think that it's good to... If art history is something that you're serious about, and frankly, if something you're serious about an advanced degree is something to consider, there are programs that will essentially fully fund you to study. So that's one potential way. The art world's a little hard actually in terms of entry-level jobs, and people aren't really paid a living wage. And I would like to know a way around that, too. It's a funny thing. It does prevent a lot of people who are gifted and able and should have access to the field, it probably prevents them from entering the field and that's our loss really. Aimee: I totally agree. And hopefully, we'll see some change in that arena during our lifetimes. Priscilla: I hope so. Yeah. I wish I had a better answer to your question, but also I think that when people go in for interviews, sometimes you are hesitant to be realistic about what you need. And I do think that there's no harm in being forthright about that. That's just a practicality, and you should expect it. Aimee: Yes, self-advocacy is very important. And I think that leads us to our very last question. This is our closeout question we ask every interviewee, which is what advice would you give to a senior in college who is about to graduate? From any field, from any major, what advice do you have for young people in this transitional moment? Priscilla: Well, try not to be discouraged. The world is in upheaval right now, but it won't remain that way. Or I think that we hope that it won't, and we've got to believe that it won't. And that it's funny. This is a kind of big question right now, Aimee. Also, don't close yourself off to opportunities that may not fit exactly into the vision of what you have for yourself. I mean, we do meander sometimes, and I think that it's actually important to because you learn a lot about yourself when you sort of take a fork in the road that you didn't expect that you might. I guess proceed without fear if it's possible, and have confidence in yourself. I mean, anybody who's graduating from Northwestern has done an amazing... They're capable. You're able. You can go out there and get it done. So yeah, I guess we all just remain... I know it sounds sort of like trite, but be positive. Aimee: Absolutely. That's all we can do. All we can do is control our own- Priscilla: Yeah. And fight and stand up for the things that you believe in. Give me the opportunity. Say it, say it out loud. Say what you mean. Don't be scared that somebody might disagree with you. Aimee: Absolutely. It's tough to keep that in mind with the current challenges the university is facing, but that is very good advice. I just want to say in general, thank you so much for your great advice and for chatting with us today. I think this podcast will be so helpful to many students who are interested in either going into art history or just looking at the state of the world right now. So thank you for being with us. Priscilla: Aimee, thank you. You're a very impressive young woman, I appreciate the invitation and it was fun talking to you. Aimee: Thank you. So to all of our listeners, thank you for listening to this special episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast. We hope you have a great day and go Cats.

April: Welcome to the Weinberg in the World Podcast where we bring stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. My name is April and I'm your student host of this special episode of the podcast. I'm a second year student studying physics and integrated science, and I'm looking forward to learning more about our guest's career. Today, I'm excited to be speaking with Rachel Pike who graduated from Northwestern in 2006 and is now COO at Modern Treasury. Thank you, Rachel, for taking the time to speak with me today. Rachel: Nice to be here. Nice to meet you April. April: You too. To start us off today, I was wondering if you could tell us more about your time at Northwestern as an undergrad. What did you study? And how did you get to your current career path? Rachel: Oh, man, two different parts. The easy part is to say what I did at Northwestern, so I majored in chemistry, physical chemistry specifically. I had a minor in African studies through the center or program for African Studies. And I did my honors chemistry work with Franz Geiger, Professor Franz Geiger in the chemistry department. So that's sort of the what. My major extracurricular was Fusion Dance Company. That's where I spent a lot of my time. How I went from there to here is such a circuitous, crazy path. It is not direct. I left Northwestern and did a Gates scholarship, I did a PhD in chemistry at Cambridge. Loved it, but I was not meant to be a professor. You could ask John Pyle or Franz Geiger, both of whom advised me. It's just it takes a very certain wonderful mindset, but it's not me, to be a lifelong academic. So I left academics and got an amazing role in venture capital and got to learn all about startups from the investing side. Did that for just over four years. And in my last couple years, started getting really close to one of our companies and operating with them and ended up launching products for them and got the bug. Realized that that was a better calling, a better match for me, which we can talk more about what I mean by that. And moved into operating, so then I worked for a health tech healthcare software company and then I moved here into FinTech. So it sort of couldn't be more random, but also each step made sense only as one step. It's just as a sum, they lead you very far from where you were. Not normal in any sense, but in the end I just don't think anything is normal. All paths turn out to be good as you make these accumulation of small decisions. April: Yeah, okay. What are the most challenging and rewarding aspects of your current job then? Rachel: There's a lot. The hardest thing in a startup, there's so many things that are hard about startups, growing startups, but prioritization and focus is one of the hardest things. And you have to actually prioritize not doing things you want to do, which is very antithetical to what it's like to be a driven, hungry person and be in a company of 200 driven, hungry people. You want to do everything that you see that seems like a big opportunity and a challenge that we need to fix, but you can't. There just literally is not enough time in the day and there's opportunity cost to lack of focus. So I think the hardest thing is, the phrase I always use with my teams is you have to let that fire burn. You just have to pick things that you know are broken that you're not going to fix, that it's not the highest priority thing to fix or things you want to work on that you know we just can't go work on that thing right now, we have to work on this other thing. So it's very counterintuitive and I would say that's the hardest thing to learn when you enter startups, how to get through that kind of mindset. April: Yeah, prioritization is pretty hard when there's so many options. Rachel: Yeah. Yeah, when there's so many options and when you're hungry and you feel like a small startup is always up against big Goliaths, so there's a billion things you can do to go after companies that are bigger. So I would say that's the hardest in terms of not the content of what we do is the wrong word, but what Modern Treasury builds and how we bring it and sell it in the market and how we run the company. Letting fires burn and ruthless prioritization is the most unnatural part of working for a startup, I would say. On the interpersonal part, so not what we do, but how we do it, like in every stage of life and everywhere I've been, the hardest part of anything is getting really good at giving and receiving feedback. And that is a lifelong, you have to dedicate your life to it and using that to make decisions with people. April: Could you talk a little bit more about what your company does and what your role is? Rachel: Yeah, sure. So I'm chief operating officer of Modern Treasury. Modern Treasury is a payment operations software platform. So we help companies of all sizes, from other startups to huge big public companies, manage their money movement. And it sort of sounds like a back office thing, but really, we actually mostly get bought by product and engineering teams. And those product and engineering teams that are our customers want to do payment stuff. They want to build a digital wallet or embed payments in their application. Or we also serve non-tech companies, so you're buying a house and you need to pay the real estate agent or you're buying a house and you have to go through the title and escrow process on that home purchase. A lot of money moves around in those businesses. In fact, it's core to all of those products to move and manage and track money. So we build the software for that. Complex payment systems get built on top of us and complex payment products. We have an engineering database product called Ledgers, which is how you, with high performance and perfect fidelity, track balances, which is a really hard computer science problem, although it seems that it should be easy. It's a very hard computer science problem. And then you can imagine that as we grow and have more and more data and understanding, we're building more and more AI into our platform, so teams can run in a safe way with AI helping them. So anyway, yeah, it's a complicated thing that we do, but we help companies move and manage their money movement. April: Okay, cool. So how well did college prepare you for this career, do you think? Or what was the most important skill that you learned from college? Rachel: There's so many things that you learn in college as you sort of separate from home life and become your own person. I think there's soft skills and hard skills. I obviously don't use the traditional academic knowledge that I got in my undergrad and graduate experiences in chemistry, not a chemist anymore. But I don't think there's anything that can replace scientific training in how to think and pursue questions and how to separate how to go through a research process and understand and also understand the limits of your knowledge. That is a very profound experience the more advanced you get in science. I didn't even get that advanced. But in understanding the boundaries of what the community of scientists knows and what personally and how to ask questions, build a hypothesis, and go again. And I know that the hypothesis process is something you learn in like second grade or fourth grade or whatever, you go to school, but truly, that process is very hard, like holding yourself to a standard of making a rigorous, very thought out hypothesis and understanding what would prove or disprove that. In a scientific setting in a lab, sometimes it's a little easier to go through that process. Hey, if this experiment works, I'll see X. In a business environment, that's actually very hard. How do you measure? Is that metric actually counting that? What else is getting conflated into these signals and systems? And then almost everything, unless it's something like website clicks or latency or something that's directly measurable, almost all the signal that you get is mediated through people. So not only do you have to go through this process of trying to constantly get to truth, everything that you're trying to pursue is going through people. So I would say academically, that's the longest lasting impression for me. My team gets annoyed because I say things like rate-limiting step all the time, which is a chemistry phrase. So it taught me how to think. I think another very impactful part of my college, two other very impactful parts of my college experience, Fusion was just getting started, I was one of the people that helped get it started. And starting a club that is, very proud to say it's long-standing and I could never audition and get accepted today, is a lot like starting any organization. How do you run things? What is governance like? How do you navigate people? What are the expectations? How do you communicate that? How do you do things excellently? Starting and building a club is very similar to starting and building an organization, it's just we get a lot more complicated with time. So I learned a lot in that process and running rehearsals and putting on a show and what it's like to run an audition process. I have very fond memories of that. And lastly, I would say is I studied abroad for all of junior year. And I don't know if this is true, but someone along the way of me, because chemistry has so many sequential requirements, and it was very hard for me to figure out how to do those requirements and still be away for a year, someone along the way told me I was the only chemistry major who was ever away for a year then. It's probably not true now. I also don't know if that's true, speaking of rigorous hypotheses, so that's an aside. But the experience of being abroad, I was in Tanzania, was obviously profoundly eye-opening. And being in multiple cultural contexts, not just for travel, but for a long period of time with real life, day-to-day life, it just changed my whole perspective on the world. And then same thing, I lived abroad again for my PhD, so I was abroad on and off again for about like five out of six years. It really changed my perspective on the world, my perspective on people, and I only got that opportunity because of college. April: Yeah, college is a great time to study abroad and do those things. Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. April: [inaudible 00:09:31] possibilities, yeah. Also, it's so interesting to hear that you found Fusion or helped found it because it's such a big thing on campus now. Rachel: It's such a huge thing now. April: [inaudible 00:09:39]. Rachel: Yeah, no. We really grew it, but it was small when we started. We were just in parades and doing small shows, and then we finally started putting shows on in Tech my last two years there. It was very fun, really meaningful experience. April: That's great. Yeah. Rachel: Yeah. April: Then you kind of touched a little bit on this, but could you elaborate more on the biggest adjustment you had to make going from undergrad to industry? Rachel: I actually got this piece of advice when I went from my PhD to venture. I went and had coffee. One of the coolest things about Silicon Valley and the technology community is that it's very open and if you ask people for advice, they're really open to giving it and having conversations like this, but times 10. So one of the coffees I had was with someone who had also had a PhD and moved into venture. And he said something to me that has always stuck with me, which is the biggest adjustment you're going to have to make is the complete lack of rigor in business decisions, which is hysterical, and I don't think fully true, which I'll explain, but it is true, the standards of rigor in academic science are completely different than the standards of rigor in making a business decision. So I always think about that moment of you got to get used to the fact that they make decisions with less information. I think that's only partially true. I think one of the reasons is true is what we talked about, that data is often mediated through people, and so it doesn't feel as rigorous. But actually, the decisions you're making about and with people are just as important. It's just different, and that is a very big adjustment. There is not always right. It's not a test or a thesis or whatever, and that's a big change. There's just making a decision and then owning the consequences of the decision and upside of the decision. But that, it's a huge change. So that's what I would say one of the biggest adjustments that I had to make. On a more practical basis, specifically like Silicon Valley and startups, they're just opportunities, they are roles, sorry, environments with very little management structure. That's the whole point, you're doing something from scratch. There's not someone telling you what to do. That's not true if you go into industry and go to a very big technology company or a bunch of industries I've never been in that are managed in totally different ways. That obviously is like two hops from undergrad. I had a PhD and then I had time in investing. But yeah, working without a lot of oversight, also a big change. April: [inaudible 00:11:58]. The training you get from undergrad to grad school and then going to industry, it's a bit of an adjustment, but yeah. Rachel: Yeah. April: It's an interesting problem, how you would apply your scientific training to the business world. Rachel: Yeah. What do we know and what do we not know, is a question I often try and ask myself. In fact, I was thinking about it late last night about something we're trying to figure out in our business. And it's hard because you sometimes feel like you know things that you don't. It's a trick of the brain. April: Then sort of related, but what are some current trends that you're seeing in the industry or in the area that you work or some of the modern day challenges? Rachel: I would be remiss if I didn't say the most enormous trend in technology right now is AI. So there's sort of no other answer you can give them that, this unbelievable explosion in technical capability and then it's application into all kinds of industries. So I don't know, Modern Treasury has been such an interesting ride. One of the things that is interesting about startups is you really cannot predict the world around you. So this tiny company, we're not tiny anymore, but this company that was tiny, I was the first employee, it was just the four of us, just us chickens in a co-working space, trying to build this payment operations company. And in the interim, COVID happened and we could never work together again until many years later. And then Silicon Valley Bank crashed and there were multiple bank failures all over the country. If that had happened two years earlier, it would've taken our business down. As it happened, it accelerated our business like, oh my god, better lucky than good. Now we're going through an AI transformation. Crypto has gone up and down three times in those six and a half years. It's just wild what happens around you and how that affects the work you do day to day. So I don't know. One thing I would say is things are unpredictable. I have never learned that more than in this particular job I'm in now. April: For sure. Would you say that kind of unpredictability is characteristic of working at a startup versus a larger company or even in academia, for example? Rachel: It's a good question. I'm not sure I'm the right person to answer because I've never worked in a huge company. I've always worked in... Investing is also in the business of startups, so I don't think I'm the right person to answer. I think I have a hypothesis that it affects you less. If you're in a big established company where things don't go, the amplitude of the curve isn't quite the same level, I don't think you necessarily feel it as much. AI is happening to everyone no matter where you work, right? I assume you're all using it every day in your undergraduate environment. So that's universal. I think how it affects your job or what you're using it for is probably different. If you're a computer science undergrad, it's really affecting what your experience is like compared to five years ago. If you're a physical chemistry undergrad like I was, doing some frequency generations two floors below in the basement of Tech, I'm sure it's helping on the research side, but nothing changes the lasers but hands yet, until the AI robots come. So I just think it depends how much the volatility affects your certain area of pursuit. April: That makes sense, yeah. So with all this volatility, how do you approach work-life balance? Rachel: I don't think there is any, in all honesty. My mornings are totally insane between the 27 things I'm trying to do, and I'm always later than I want to be to my first meeting, and that just is what it is. I actually have a four-page document called Working with Rachel and for people to get to know what it's like to work with me when I hire and bring on new teams or new managers, et cetera. And one of the things that's in here is my mornings are insane and I'm always late and I'm totally frazzled and whatever, but I can almost always talk in the afternoons and nights almost any day. You just have to know your rhythm. Exercise is a huge part of my management of work-life balance. So probably started before Fusion, but definitely long, hard dance practices helped me get through undergrad. And at every phase of life I've sort of had a different exercise, deep exercise pursuit and crutch, I would say, to get through the craziness of life. So that's really important for me personally to focus and, I don't know, just get to a different level than the overly intellectual all the time, brainwave level into the body and into the breath. So that's huge. And then more tactically, I'm terrible about always having my phone around, but I do always have my laptop on do not disturb. So when I'm working in my environment, Slack and email are going constantly nonstop, especially Slack. So if I actually want to write or actually want to read or actually want to listen, the pings don't help. But to do my job, I need to be ever present with my teams. So just practically, it's always on do not disturb, and then I pick when I check. So I don't know, that goes from small to big of how I manage and cope with work-life balance, but it's the truth. April: There's some pretty good tips though. Sympathize. Rachel: Do people in Northwestern use Slack? Is that part of an undergrad life or no? April: Some of the clubs use it. I have a couple- Rachel: More texting? April: Yeah, they use GroupMe. Yeah. And then I know a lot of the research labs use Slack. Rachel: Oh, that makes sense. April: Yeah. Rachel: Yeah. But less of the all in every day, all encompassing, et cetera. April: Yeah. Rachel: Yeah. April: Do you think those work-life balance habits were developed during your graduate school years or in college or as you go into industry? Rachel: I don't know about do not disturb because technology has, not technology, but the physical hardware of communication has advanced so much. I'm so old compared to you guys. And when I was an undergrad, Facebook came out when I was a sophomore. So just think about how different of a world it was then. We had really kludgy Hermes email, Hermes email server at Northwestern. So the never ending notification encroach on our life, it existed then. And of course, we texted, but we texted T9. So it's just a different world. So we had it and obviously we all needed to learn how to focus, but not to the extent that it is a challenge for people in college and PhD programs now, I don't think. That's my guess as an outsider. But some things, like exercise, 100%. I think those things get developed earlier on. But once you're in university, it's your decision to continue to pursue them and how much you pursue them and how much they're a part of the rhythm of your life. So that, I would say for sure, I established for myself at Northwestern. April: Was there anything at Northwestern that you wish you had participated in that you didn't? Or the other way around, that you did but you wish you had opted out? Rachel: I wish I'd done dance marathon earlier. I only did it senior year and it was like what an incredible experience. Once you had the experience, then you realize, oh, I should have been doing this the whole time because it's like, I don't know, it's just something you could only do in an all encompassing environment like that. My major regret at Northwestern is actually academic, which is a silly small choice, but I studied French in elementary and high school and I really wanted to learn Spanish as a California person. So I took it in college, but that ate up a lot of quarters of getting my language credit because I was going from scratch. So my regret, and I'm not very good at languages anyway, so it's not like it stuck around, my regret is actually not that I took it, it came from good intentions, but that I used up six possibilities of taking classes in non-chemistry, non-African studies. Just you're spoiled for opportunity in undergrad of going to learn about everything. And it's one of the amazing parts about Northwestern and the way they do the core curriculum, that everyone has to learn a little bit of everything somehow. And that's my biggest regret. I regret not taking a philosophy class or a whatever. I took one world religion class, but should I have taken two. That breadth is the thing that I crave and miss. And by the time you get to PhD, and certainly in the British education system, you specialize earlier, so that opportunity's gone. You can obviously go to lectures and stuff, which I did, but it's not the same as being in a class. So yeah, my biggest I wish I had is I wish I hadn't taken Spanish in that environment and done it some other way and had six quarters to go just do dealer's choice of interesting things in departments I never would've gotten to know. April: Did you have the Weinberg language requirement? Rachel: Yes. April: But you got out of it with French? Rachel: I could have taken I think only one quarter or no, I can't remember how my testing was, sorry. But I could have taken either one quarter or zero quarters of French. But I instead put myself from scratch with Spanish because I've never taken it before. So I don't know, I just think that was good intentions, wrong decision. April: It happens. Rachel: Anyway, yeah, that's my biggest, I don't know, regret is too strong a word, but if I had a magic wand and could do it all over again, I would've taken more general humanities or other types of classes. April: Speaking of classes, what were some of your favorite classes at Northwestern? If you were to- Rachel: Oh my God, do I even remember? April: Yeah. Rachel: The physical chemistry. I don't remember if it's physical chemistry honors class or physical chemistry practicum. It's the last thing you take senior year with real world lab problems. And that class, there were six of us and we were in lab, I don't know, four or five hours twice a week. We were there all the time. It was so hard and so intellectually stimulating. I remember that class extremely well. I remember my world religions class. I don't remember who taught it, but it was the only time I ever studied anything like that. That was interesting. And I remember some of the seminar debates I had with other people. I don't know, those are the two that come to mind. April: Very cool. Now that we're getting towards the end of our time, the last question is if you were to look back on your undergrad, which I suppose we already did a little bit, but what advice would you give, I suppose, other people in your position? Rachel: I have one very specific piece of advice that I give to a lot of undergrads or people early in career, which I can share. And then the other is one that I give all the time now, but I don't know if it's relevant, but I'll share that one too. I'll start with the second one first because it might be less relevant. The one I give now, that is also can be very counterintuitive to people who are working on giving and getting feedback and what it takes to truly manage and motivate teens, is that clarity is more compassionate than kindness. And I don't mean don't be kind because the goal is, of course, to deliver clarity with extreme compassion and care. But it's nerve wracking to tell someone, "You're not meeting expectations for this role," or, "We did not hit our goal as a company and we have to make this really hard decision," or whatever the hard thing is that you have to say. It's harder to say it clearer than to say, "Well, I know you this and what about that, and I'm so sorry and this is hard, blah, blah, blah. But I think maybe the role," and then the person walks away and is like, "I don't know what I heard," and they don't know that they're not meeting expectations. So I would say that took me, it's a lifelong pursuit, I don't think I'm perfect at it yet. No one anywhere in my academic career, undergrad or grad, really taught me that. So that's one. I'm not sure if that's relevant for a sophomore undergrad, but maybe. April: I think so. Rachel: Could be. The advice that I often give to undergrads or very early in career folks, who are either looking for startups or end up whatever. I actually have a call with one this afternoon who's a woman who's a family friend who's thinking about a job change and she's like just wants my advice. I think that one of the unrealistic things that somehow culturally gets imbued in very driven and successful students, like all of the people who get accepted to Northwestern, is that you can have it all in your first job. And that is fucking bullshit. And I think it leads to a huge amount of heartache and angst because it's not true. Now, what you can have is one or two awesome things. So when you're, like you graduated at 21 or 22 or whatever age you are, you have usually no strings attached. You can make incredible broad decisions that you can't make later on and that affords you the opportunity to go do amazing things. But what you can't do is do it all at once in that one first job. So the specific example that I often give is you could pick where you work or what industry you work in or that you make a lot of money, but it is basically impossible to pick all of those things. So if you're a econ undergrad at Northwestern, of which there are many, it's probably pretty hard to work in a mission-driven company, make a 300,000 a year banker undergrad job, and move abroad for that first job as an American, blah, blah. That doesn't exist. If you want to make a lot of money, there are incredible programs with established firms where they really reward you for hard work really early on and that's the trade that that job encompasses. And if that's valuable to you, awesome. But you're probably going to be in one of their major locations and they're unlikely to ship you to Sydney for being 22. If you have the opportunity to go do something extremely mission driven that speaks to you, that's amazing, go do that. But you're probably not necessarily going to pick where or you're not going to be highly compensated. So I often talk to people who are in their early 20s who are like, "But I really want to be in New York, but I really want to work, I want to be in the arts and I want to do this, but I need a lot of money to support this thing." You're like, "You can't have it all." And that's not bad, it's just true. And it's much more compassionate for me to tell you, April, if you want to pursue physics, that's awesome. I was a PhD student. You're not going to make any money in your 20s. April: That's true. Rachel: But you might work at the cutting edge of science in something incredible that super motivates you. That's awesome. So if I could wave a magic wand for undergrads, I would get rid of that angst of that decision making. And the decision can have angst because it can be hard to choose a path, but the you can have it all, I think is a great lie. That's not fair to people in their late teens and early 20s in undergrad. I thought of another one, so I'm going to give you a third, even though you didn't solicit another one. Which is you at the beginning of this you asked about my career, which is kind of all over the place from a traditional perspective. I was in academics and then I went to investing, and then I went to startups. And then in startups, I was in healthcare and I went into payments in FinTech. It's all over the place. Every time I made the jump, everyone around me told me I shouldn't because I was leaving their path. And to be an amazing professor, you stay in academics. So people leaving academics is like, they don't want to give you the advice to do that. Or when you're in investing, the way you stay in it, and particularly in private investing, it's long feedback cycles. You got to stay and practice the craft. So I said, "Hey, I'm an operator at heart. I'm going to go do this thing." Some people encouraged me, but many people said, "Why would you ever do that? Why would you ever leave the job you have? Stay in practice." And then same when I left healthcare and picked a totally new thing. So that's more mid-career advice, which is like it's okay to leave that perfect tracked path and trust your gut. April: Yeah, that's actually really valuable advice, so thank you. Rachel: I hope so. April: Yeah. Thanks for taking the time out of your day to talk with me and to give all this advice to whoever's listening. Rachel: Yeah. It's awesome. Nice to meet you, April. April: Mm-hmm. And thank you for listening to this episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast. We hope you have a great day and go Cats.  

Professor and HOPE Chair in Peace and Health at McMaster University, Dr. Ingrid Waldron, marks Mental Health Awareness Month and five years since the murder of George Floyd with guidance for navigating racial trauma and decolonizing our health care system.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/tavis-smiley--6286410/support.

We have tasked Stephen Waldron with booking CBS interviewer Tony Dokoupil to talk about his interactions with Belichick and Jordon. Gio has a little scuttlebutt on Waldron from some of the people that work with him.

Dr. Adam McAtee, PT, DPT sits down with esteemed Pilates coach Tom Waldron to discuss common narratives involving the hip flexors to help you become more skilled, knowledgable, and confident. Want to learn with Tom?Click here for his 6-week Fit Floor Support Program. Click here to view his other offerings.Click here to follow him on Instagram.Want to learn with Adam?⁠Click here⁠ for a 2-week free trail of the Pilates Club.⁠Click here⁠ for a 2-week free trail of the Anatomy & Biomechanics Club.⁠Click here⁠ to follow Adam on Instagram.

Imagine a sea creature so massive it makes a whale look small—that's the giant ichthyosaur! This prehistoric marine reptile, nicknamed "the dino of the deep," lived over 200 million years ago and could grow up to 85 feet long. Scientists discovered its fossilized remains high up in the Alps, proving just how much our planet has changed. It looked like a mix between a dolphin and a lizard, but on a supersized scale. With its long snout and powerful body, it ruled the ancient oceans like an unstoppable predator. This giant proves that nature's imagination has no limits, especially when it comes to creatures of the past! CreditsCredit: CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0: Expl2276: By IFE, URI-IAO, UW, Lost City Science Party; NOAA/OAR/OER; The Lost City 2005 Expedition - https://flic.kr/p/93orrd, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17936594 Expl8176: By NOAA Photo Library - https://flic.kr/p/fHZpAw, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=107183191 CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/: Liopleurodon ferox 2: By Ghedoghedo, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6798356 CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0: Barbed wire siphonophore: By Peter Southwood, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=105989420 Magnapinna: By Nikivas, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=126356587 CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0: Siphonophore: By Bernard DUPONT - https://flic.kr/p/dVA1Uq, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40734741 CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0: Ichthyotitan: By D. R. Lomax, P. de la Salle, M. Perillo, J. Reynolds, R. Reynolds, J. F. Waldron - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0300289, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=147475414 Eardasaurus mandible lateral: By Ketchum, H.F. and Benson, R.B.J. - https://www.app.pan.pl/archive/published/app67/app008872021.pdf, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=118272769 Animation is created by Bright Side. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/ Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightside Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en Stock materials (photos, footages and other): https://www.depositphotos.com https://www.shutterstock.com https://www.eastnews.ru ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Originally aired on March 24th, 2025.

Jeff Waldron, a gift planning attorney at the National Christian Foundation, began his career in corporate law before God got his attention in a powerful way. He later found his way to NCF and discovered that his love for the Lord, his desire for pastoral ministry, and his experience in tax law beautifully intersected to help givers amplify the impact of their generosity. Jeff acts as a guide to help givers navigate the more nuanced and complex non-cash gifts. He is overflowing with practical wisdom, powerful giving strategies, and a passion to help people become faithful stewards of what God has given them to manage. You don't want to miss all he has to share! Major Topics Include: Jeff's early career and coming to faith How Jeff connected to NCF Amplifying the effectiveness of generosity through non-cash gifts What makes a non-cash gift so powerful Examples of counseling someone through giving complex assets Thinking through when to give a large asset The nuances of giving a business Quotes to Remember “Whose likeness and inscription is on you?” “I feel like the Lord has given me the blessing of doing work that He's fitted me for.” “By giving the non-cash asset, you're really supercharging the impact you can have.” “Stewardship isn't just how much you give, it's also how you give. And if you can give in a certain way that has a 40% extra impact, then that's something to consider.” “We're not here to replace your advisor. We're more like a sherpa that's walked the mountain, and we can point out the best places to walk.” “I really don't care what kind if gift somebody makes. I want them to be informed so that they can be faithful with what they have.” “The big transactions don't excite me as much as the transforming ones.” Links from the Show National Christian Foundation (see our interview with President Emeritus, David Wills) The Finish Line Community Facebook Group The Finish Line Community LinkedIn Group Bible References from the Show Matthew 22:21b | You Belong to God Then he said to them, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” Romans 8:28 | Work Together for Good And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. John 12:1-8 | Mary Anoints Jesus at Bethany Ephesians 2:4-10 | By Grace through Faith We Want to Hear from You! If you have a thought about something you heard, or a story to share, please reach out! You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. You can also contact us directly from our contact page. If you want to engage with the Finish Line Community, check out our groups on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Maundy Thursday Old Testament Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. [Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn.] This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the passover of the Lord. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance. The Response Psalm 116:1, 10-17 Dilexi, quoniam 1 I love the Lord, because he has heard the voice of my supplication, * because he has inclined his ear to me whenever I called upon him. 10 How shall I repay the Lord * for all the good things he has done for me? 11 I will lift up the cup of salvation * and call upon the Name of the Lord. 12 I will fulfill my vows to the Lord *  in the presence of all his people. 13 Precious in the sight of the Lord *  is the death of his servants. 14 O Lord, I am your servant; * I am your servant and the child of your handmaid;  you have freed me from my bonds. 15 I will offer you the sacrifice of thanksgiving *  and call upon the Name of the Lord. 16 I will fulfill my vows to the Lord *  in the presence of all his people, 17 In the courts of the Lord's house, *  in the midst of you, O Jerusalem.  The Epistle 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. The Gospel John 13:1-17, 31b-35 Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?" Jesus answered, "You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand." Peter said to him, "You will never wash my feet." Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no share with me." Simon Peter said to him, "Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!" Jesus said to him, "One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you." For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, "Not all of you are clean." After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, "Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord--and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them. Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, `Where I am going, you cannot come.' I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."Ma

In this episode, Sam Waldron contrasts the New Perspective on Paul with the historic Reformed understanding of Sola Fide. Dr. Waldron references multiple resources authored by Jeff Smith and himself in this conversation. These resources can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JUIdshIzeXoeHhycsTPi320rdxLvu2Ex/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y0jY9PCCVa4zSDZomcIbfLBi1a3DmdFg/view?usp=sharing For more information about CBTS visit: https://cbtseminary.org  

Bringing a baby into the world is a life-changing experience, but it also introduces major shifts in intimacy and connection for couples. In this episode I sit down with Dr. Michele Waldron, clinical psychologist and certified sex therapist, to talk about navigating the postpartum period with intention and care.We explore:✅ Why intimacy changes after birth (hormones, exhaustion, body image, and shifting roles)✅ How to communicate openly about your needs without guilt or pressure✅ The science behind sexual desire—understanding "accelerators" and "brakes"✅ Ways to foster connection beyond sex, from mindful touch to shared rituals✅ When to seek professional support for intimacy strugglesIf you're feeling disconnected from your partner after birth, this conversation will help you feel seen, validated, and equipped with strategies to nurture your relationship.Resources & Links: AASECT - Find a Certified Sex Therapist Postpartum Support InternationalBooks mentioned:Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski Desire: An Inclusive Guide to Navigating Libido Differences in Relationships by Jennifer A. Vencill and Lauren Fogel MersyYou can learn more about Dr. Michele Waldron's work at: www.sexualhealthandhealing.org Check out the blog post for this episode HEREIf this episode was helpful, share it with an expecting parent who needs this info!Get 20% off your first monthly subscription with NEEDED Vitamins 

In this episode, Sam Waldron contrasts the New Perspective on Paul with the historic Reformed understanding of Sola Fide. Dr. Waldron references multiple resources authored by Jeff Smith and himself in this conversation. These resources can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JUIdshIzeXoeHhycsTPi320rdxLvu2Ex/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y0jY9PCCVa4zSDZomcIbfLBi1a3DmdFg/view?usp=sharing For more information about CBTS visit: https://cbtseminary.org  

A conversation between Dewey Dovel, Austin McCormick, and Sam Waldron on the New Perspective on Paul. This discussion was originally featured on the Covenant Podcast.

We spent hours looking ahead to Championship over the weekend on KCLR Sport. Here we cut out the ads and updates and bring you the uninterrupted versions of our chats with Michael Walsh and Aidan Taggy Fogarty, Naoise Waldron and James Hickey. Plus, we talk to Brian Dowling about Kildare. Remember every Kilkenny game in the Leinster Championship and Carlow game in the Joe Mc Donagh Cup is live on KCLR.

Carl Waldron talks about Destiny and the parent-focused gaming group Dadstiny and the relationships formed from gaming

Carl Waldron shares the lengths he went to getting a copy of Final Fantasy VII

Born in Elmhood, Michigan, Sam Waldron was raised by parents who converted to Christ shortly before his birth. Though still young in the faith, they were the biggest influences on his life, regularly reading the Bible as a family and attending church together, and faithfully disciplining him for misbehavior. After confessing Christ and being baptized at age 7, Sam struggled with assurance of salvation for years until he came to understand that salvation was by God's free grace alone. Since then, God has raised him up as a leading Reformed Baptist pastor whose passion for sound doctrine and the importance of the local church has blessed many.

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-32 Gary reviews a new book by Dr. Sam Waldron about eschatology called The Doctrine of Last Things. Waldon basically follows John Murray's amillennialism and doesn't really deal with much of the material that presents a different view. While Dr. Waldron offers his views on preterism, he doesn't actually interact with any of their writings and dismisses it as a Catholic heresy.

When you are evaluating a church, what should you keep in mind? Dr. Sam Waldron and Pastor Steve lay out the groundwork for things you should be looking for. We hope and pray that Grounded has become a useful and regular part of your Christian learning and growth! - the Grounded team Would you like to know one of the best ways to help our ministry? Telling others about Grounded, it's one of the very best ways to help us to grow!

Carl has his own mark on the Podcasting world, but many of us know him as the driving force behind Dadstiny, a parent-centric group of Destiny players. Come hear Carl chat about games from his past including Final Fantasy VII, Destiny 2, and Metal Gear Solid.You can find all of Carl's links at c3.gg/carlwaldronOur hosts' links can be found at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ c3.gg/rey ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠and⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ c3.gg/dan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The show is Executive Produced by Channel 3 Founder Joel Willis who can be found at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ c3.gg/joel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Our theme song is provided by Castor Garden. Find all of their tracks on Spotify by simply going to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠c3.gg/castorgardenmusic⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or find all of their links at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠c3.gg/castorgarden⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ALSO!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://adam-evalt.itch.io/neoclassical-mystery⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is a music package that our own castorgarden put together for game developers. Go check it out or contact Castor Garden for your own custom music package.About Channel3.gg: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠channel3.gg⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is social networking built from the ground up for gamers. Sure you can do all the stuff like on the old social medias like post pictures, videos, comments and the like. Channel 3 is so much more than that though. It takes the social media experience and game-ifies it. Made a great post that someone likes (1-ups) or respawns? You earn XP experience points that level you up. New levels mean chances to win tickets for physical prizes, earn digital flair for your profile, and more. Additionally there are weekly events hosted by Channel 3 that let the community unwind and kick back with a little friendly competition. Sure, you want to win but it's more about hanging out and the vibes. These events are hosted on C3's Twitch Channel and also earn XP for participants. XP can also be earned for completing quests-questions related to games and being a gamer, challenges where you go forth and complete a task in a game, rating & reviewing games and systems, creating specifically themed lists of games and more. You can find Channel 3 in both the Android and Apple App Stores or at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠c3.gg/app⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Dora Zhang interviews Shiven Shah, CFO at Libra Solutions, on the "Weinberg in the World" podcast. Shiven discusses his extensive career in finance, including roles at Merrill Lynch, Citi, Peak6, ABN AMRO Clearing Group, and OppFi, where he helped take the company public. He emphasizes the importance of flexibility and teamwork, and highlights the supportive community and lasting relationships he formed at Northwestern University. Transcript:  Dora: Welcome to the Weinberg in the World podcast, where we bring stories of interdisciplinary's thinking in today's complex world. My name is Dora Zhang and I'm your student host of the special episode of the podcast. I'm currently a junior studying economics, psychology with an IMC certificate. And today, I'm very excited to be speaking with Mr. Shiven Shah, who is a CFO at Libra Solutions, a PE-backed specialty finance company. Mr. Shiven, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. So to start off, do you mind introducing yourself? Shiven: Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you Dora, for having me on the podcast. My name, as you mentioned, is Shiven Shah. I graduated in Northwestern, the class of '99. So I've just had my 25th year reunion recently, which was great to see a lot of old faces and friends and colleagues from many years ago. So I have had a really tight connection with the Northwestern community. I'm a member of the NULC, helped with admissions committee, and also with some mentoring projects as well. Background wise, I grew up in the Chicago area, right outside of Oak Park, Illinois, which is a western suburb, very similar to Evanston in a lot of ways, a diverse community. And my first choice was Northwestern and I ended up being fortunate enough to be accepted in, and studied economics and minored in statistics. And then I ended up going into a career in finance, starting right after undergrad in New York City at Merrill Lynch in investment banking. I did that for a few years, and then went to business school. I ended up in a financial management program during the financial crisis, and it was really interesting times 2007, 2008, where we had to bail Citi out with the too big to fail and the credit derivatives and the swaps. So it was a very interesting time to be there. So I ended up staying at Citi in a variety of finance roles for about eight years. And then ended up coming back to Chicago, and then worked at a trading company called Peak6, which was a diversified company. They had several investments in small private equity type investments, private placements, and also had bought a couple other companies and sold a couple of companies while I was there. So really, really great experience. And then I ended up going into another CFO role at ABN AMRO Clearing Group running the Americas business for trading clients. And then I really, really found my footing in 2017 when I joined a company called OppFi, which is a mission-driven company to help the hundreds of millions of Americans that live paycheck to paycheck and with 70% of America having savings of less than a thousand dollars. We tried to provide an alternative to payday loans and other high interest rate products, with a fully amortizing product that really gave people an opportunity to withstand an emergency situation. We ended up building the company up over a five year period from startup and then we ended up taking the company public via the SPAC process in 2021. I stayed with the company one year post public and then I joined another company, similar space, similar mission to help those in an emergency situation. In this case, Libra Solution is responsible for consumer litigation funding, so mostly personal injury. So when people get into a car accident, a motor vehicle accident, we help them out by providing an advance against the case settlement. So while they wait on a case which can last anywhere from an average of a year and a half to sometimes more than five years, we provide... And also have relationships with providers and attorneys to help them get the right care. So that's my background. Really excited to be here, as I said. I'm looking forward to the questions. Dora: Yeah, thank you so much for sharing your background. Because you've previously talked about your recent reunion with the Northwestern community, do you want to talk a little bit about the Northwestern alumni network? How would you describe the network? And are you in touch with any of the alumni? Shiven: Yeah, I think some of my best friends are from Northwestern, who I still keep in touch with, talk to on a daily basis really, and spend a lot of time. I think the greatest thing from my experience at Northwestern, were definitely the relationships that I formed there. I think the friendships are long lasting, lifelong and genuine. And the best part about the Northwestern alumni network, is that people really are out there to help each other. And I think whether it's a more recent alum or somebody that's more seasoned, or that's been out of school for a longer period of time, I think the ability to leverage the network and leverage the relationships and the friendships, I think is one of the best things ever. So yeah, not just the reunion, but again, on an ongoing basis, having that connectivity with the school and the university is very important to me. Dora: Is there any other resources you remember taking advantage of at school? Shiven: Yeah, so I think there's a lot of resources at the school, the career network, I think the student clubs are great as well, to network into different companies. The relationships that the co-op program that I wasn't a part of, but a lot of friends were, is another great opportunity. And I think, just the number of organizations, I was in the Greek system, so I had joined a fraternity there and a lot of the relationships I had from there continue to last for years post Northwestern. So I had a really good experience there. I was involved with cultural groups and affinity groups, the South Asian Student Association. And was involved with some of the dances and the performances and the festivals that we celebrated. So I think that that diversity is also super important with so many people from so many different backgrounds. That's what makes Northwestern really unique. Dora: Yeah, absolutely. And going back to your career, were you thinking about doing a career or jobs in finance when you first came to Northwestern? Or how was that process of choosing what career? Shiven: Yeah, no, I came in thinking like a lot of the Asian and Indian parents want their kids to be doctors. So I came in being told that I should be a doctor. And unfortunately, after about a year and a half and struggling through organic chemistry, I realized that it wasn't my calling to do medicine. And to the disappointment of making that phone call, I'll never forget to my parents, they were very disappointed that I decided not to go. And I got a very long lecture about why my career and my life is going the wrong direction. And they thought I was just goofing around the whole time during Northwestern, which is partially true, but not fully. I ended up with Northwestern really realizing that math was my calling in life, and I like the business side and how using mathematics and data to solve business problems, I thought it was what I wanted to do. And so over the course of a couple of years really by my junior year I thought I wanted to do something more in financial services and where I can do something that I'm more passionate about. So yeah, I feel like it was the right decision and I feel good about where we are. Dora: Yeah, thank you for sharing that. Is there any particular skills or habits do you think is important for your career? Shiven: Yeah, I think the most important characteristic one can have, and my advice is to be flexible in a company and be versatile. Not just do something that this is your immediate job, but offer perspectives, offer out of the box thinking. And I think that the other piece is be a team player. There should be no job that's too menial. Whatever you're told to do, view it as a service to your company and try to do the best, not for yourself, but for the broader and the greater organization. Be a culture champion, make it a positive experience, help other people out. I think it's super important. I think the other piece is as a leader, is care about your people, really care about the individual, care about their development and make it an environment where people want to work. They're not just there to collect a paycheck, but they're having a fun time there and really making an impact and really fulfilling the mission of what that company is. So I think it's go for what you're interested in rather than trying to check boxes. Dora: Yeah. And another question I have, is that during your academic or professional journey, is there anything that you regret or wish you could do differently? Shiven: Yeah, I think what I would have said, is I would have been more honest with myself in what I really wanted, what my passions were. And I think the other piece of it, is be who you are, even who you spend time with. And I would say, early on in my college career I was trying to like fit in as opposed to being myself, both with my family at home and trying to be a doctor. And also with the people I associated with, I was trying to, adhere to what I thought what people liked. And then as you get older you're like, "You know what? You are who you are, be yourself, be a good human being, but don't try to be somebody you're not and be true to yourself." Dora: Yeah. And also I feel like as a college student sometimes we'll meet some obstacles in school and also in recruiting and stuff. So is there any advice you can give the students to keep them motivated? Shiven: Yeah, I think my biggest advice is I think there's no substitute for hard work. And whether that's in recruiting, whether that's in your schoolwork, whether that's in as you look for a job or decide on a career path in general, I think you got to spend the time, right? So for example, if you're looking for a job, people aren't going to reach out to you, and there's so many qualified individuals, so how do you differentiate yourself? One, is you make an effort. You go to these career fairs but also start to figure out who's in your network? Who's at Northwestern? Have introductory coffees together and try to learn from them and seek help. And you may reach out to a hundred people and only one or two people respond, but it's one or two more than you would've had if you didn't make any effort. And if you look at like how people get to where they are, a lot of it is really based on the people you know and the people that have helped you out. As a society we help each other out, but you have to seek that help. And so don't be afraid to ask for help and not do it all on your own, but get guidance of those that have done it in the past. Dora: And I think you've already touched a little bit about this, but is there any specific tips for networking for students in college or after graduation? Shiven: Yeah, I think it's important to be part of the student organizations that are connected to the field of study that you want to do or the career that you want to pursue. And also, I think using job networks like LinkedIn and the Northwestern alumni network, there are thousands of alum all over the world, tens of thousands of alum. It's just a question of finding them, right? And so I think using those resources, going through databases and reaching out, and just asking like, "I'm a Northwestern student seeking advice," you will get responses. And it's not going to be a hundred percent as I said, but find and make a point each week to meet at least two new people. That I would say, would be a goal. Have conversations with two new people each week in your field of study. Dora: And just for students who are interested in financial services or finance, do you have any general advice for the students to do in school or in recruiting? Shiven: Yeah, for finance in general, I think a lot of the skills with a liberal arts background are transferable. You don't need to have been in an undergraduate in business school to be successful. I think it's the way of thinking. Take classes that involve critical thinking, that involve data and numbers and analytics. So I think statistics, science courses are very helpful, math courses, computer science. The other thing in finance is that there are two ways to go about it. You're going to go into finance right out of undergrad, or you work in a company, like let's say, you're interested in science and you go work at a biotech company. Or you're interested in art or whatever it may be, or you're an engineer, develop skills that are problem solving skills and analytical. Then you can go back, get your MBA and then do more of a finance specialty. So there's a couple of paths to go on that. Dora: And I know a lot of students, they didn't know what to do for their career when they were in college. So do you think it's important for them to decide what to do before graduation? Or do you think it's okay for them to just navigate and figure it out through their journey in Northwestern? Shiven: I think it is important to have some idea prior to graduating in the first couple of years. I think it's important to explore, keep your options open. But by junior year, like having a path of where you want to go I think is important and having a focus, because you want to hit the ground running out of college. And I think the more you wait to figure that out, the bigger issues that you'll have. And use the time by speaking to others, that have been in different fields and getting a feel for what people do. Go to different companies, go to company visits, go to career fairs and that's how you learn and talk to people. But I think it is important to figure it out before you graduate. Dora: Perfect. Thank you so much for speaking with us today. I think that is all the questions I have. It was really wonderful getting to know you. And thank you again for joining us today. Shiven: Yeah, absolutely. It's a pleasure to be on here and I'm happy to speak to other individuals that have questions on their career. And as I said, use the network and use the opportunity that you have at Northwestern in a positive way. Dora: And thank you for listening to this special episode of Weinberg in the World podcast. We hope you have a great weekend, and go Cats.  

What if the key to a thriving metabolism lies deep inside your cells? In this episode, I sit down with nutritional therapist Dawn Waldron, whose personal journey as a breast cancer survivor has led her to explore metabolism through the fascinating world of mitochondrial health. We dive into the real reasons why fasting, exercise, and gut health are so essential—not just for weight management, but for energy, longevity, and disease prevention. Plus, we explore emerging research, including the intriguing concept of reverse Krebs and its potential role in chronic health conditions. Whether you're a health enthusiast or a professional, this conversation will change how you think about metabolism and what it really means to fuel your body for lifelong health.

In this episode of 100% Real with Ruby, I'm joined by Max Waldron, a coach, strength expert, and gym owner who has navigated multiple dimensions of the fitness industry. Together, we dive deep into the often-misunderstood differences between coaching and training, the mental and emotional barriers holding people back, and why fat loss isn't sustainable as a lifestyle. Max brings his no-BS approach to challenge the fitness myths that keep you stuck, while providing a fresh perspective on building the body and life you truly want. This conversation is packed with actionable insights, powerful mindset shifts, and tools to help you break free from frustration and step into progress. Whether you're a coach, a client, or someone who's been spinning their wheels for years, this episode will make you think differently about what it means to succeed in your health and fitness journey. Don't miss it!Most of us already know what to do. Eat better, move more, be consistent—right? But if it were that simple, why would so many still feel stuck? The truth is, it's not about knowledge; it's about what's stopping you from following through.Fat loss isn't sustainable long-term, and trying to balance it with life often leads to frustration. Fat loss should be viewed as a temporary phase, followed by maintenance or building phases.Measure What MattersObsessively tracking every metric can detract from focusing on meaningful progress. Measure the variables that truly align with goals, such as consistency and effort, rather than arbitrary metrics like scale weight.Many clients fail to appreciate their progress because they live in a scarcity mindset, focusing on what they lack instead of what they've achieved.Muscle is not bulky; it is sculpted and compact. Building muscle creates a leaner, stronger look, and achieving this requires fueling the body and training effectively. Addressing common fears of looking "too bulky" helps educate clients on the value of strength training and adequate nutritionCreating the Right EnvironmentSuccess often stems from a supportive environment, such as meal prepping, structuring workouts, and reducing decision fatigue.The Danger of Focusing Solely on Scale Weight or trying to make fat loss sustainableOver-reliance on the scale as a measure of success can undermine progress. Shifting focus to performance, strength, and habits is more productive.Key Insight: Addressing the emotional attachment to the scale helps clients find fulfillment in non-scale victories.Even perceived setbacks provide valuable insights for future progress. Clients are never truly starting over—they're building on past experiences. Reframe "failure" as an opportunity to learn and grow, fostering resilience and a growth mindset.Sustainability isn't achieved through perfect plans but by aligning mindset with actions and focusing on intrinsic motivation.Strength training fosters intrinsic motivation by creating enjoyment in the process and measurable progress beyond aesthetics.Further Knowledge: Strength training also provides a tangible sense of accomplishment, reinforcing clients' commitment to their goals.Sacrifices and Realistic Expectations (1:03:59-1:07:42):Achieving goals often requires more effort and sacrifice than initially expected. However, the trade-offs must align with what the client values most.Insight: Helping clients evaluate their willingness to make sacrifices ensures alignment with their deeper goals and life priorities.Training Intensity and FocusMany don't train with enough intensity to see significant progress. Simplified, structured programs with a focus on effort can yield better results. prioritize progressive overload in their training and focus on quality over quantity.

Theonomy, also known as Christian Reconstructionism, has seen a revival in recent decades. The early movement, led by R.J. Rushdoony, Gary North, and Greg Bahnsen, taught what Bahnsen described as “the abiding validity of the Mosaic law in exhaustive detail.” But how does this teaching align with Scripture and the Reformed tradition?In this video, Scott sits down with Dr. Sam Waldron and Dr. Tom Hicks to discuss their new book, Theonomy Old and New: A Reformed Baptist Assessment. They examine the historical roots of Theonomy, its postmillennial and ethical distinctives, and the modern rebranding as “General Equity Theonomy.”

Sammy and Skraby talked about the Padres and A's game happening in Mesa, Arizona. They also talked about a minor league catcher who was unofficially banned, and Ben & Woods talk to Jackson Merrill!

“We can all make a positive difference to help tackle the climate crisis. We can all be climate champions.”If you're interested in in what is being done to help climate change, and you want to be more pro-actively pro planet and climate change aware, then listen to my guest this week Sangeeta Waldron founder of Serendipity PR and author of ‘What will Your Legacy Be' in which she interviews 36 brilliant minds who generously share their knowledge and perspective from science to food, global politics, business, to the media, arts and music, communities about the climate crisis and sustainability.Sangeeta shares about her book which is a blueprint of ideas for how each and everyone of us can contribute to reversing the impact of humans on nature and on the planet, so that we do indeed leave the legacy of a sustainable and bountiful Life on Earth for future generations to come.She shows that we all count when it comes to climate change and every one of our actions matters for the legacy of a planet that is still liveable for humans in the not too distant future.You can find out more about Sangeeta's work on https://serendipitypr.co.uk/Buy her book ‘What will Your Legacy Be' at all book vendorsAnd follow her on Linkedin @SangeetaWaldron  You can follow Host Lou Hamilton on Instagram @brave_newgirl and on Linkedin @LouHamiltoncreatelabPS. Lou helps you transform your health & wellbeing: LOU'S LIFE LAB SERVICES HEREFor Lou's creative transformation and art practice go to ART HIVE or LOUHAMILTONARTJoin our Brave New Girls retreats to reset and reconnect with what really matters to you. HEREMusic licensed from Melody Loops.Support the showBrave New Girls podcast is an Audio Archive Art Project with pioneering, creative & entrepreneurial women at the head of the curve, who are inspiring us on the airwaves, to work towards the health & wellbeing of ourselves and the planet. Brave New Girls podcast ranks in top 2.5% globally, and No 7 in the "45 Best UK Women's Podcasts to Listen to, in 2024", with Host Lou Hamilton, artist, author & wellbeing coach. Thank you for listening and please subscribe to keep up to date on new episodes as they're released.Lou is the founder of Brave New Girl Media- bringing you inspiration, support and growth. 1. INSPIRATION from courageous, creative women on Brave New Girls podcast working for the benefit of people and the planet. ️2. SUPPORT with 1:1 creative transformation coaching and our holistic, healthy, creative wellbeing retreats www.bravenewgirlmedia.com/wellbeing-retreat 3. GROWTH blogs to help you THRIVE.Sign up to our emails for inspiration, support & growth and LOU'S LIFE LAB free downloadable guide https://bravenewgirlmedia.comInsta @brave_newgirlBooks: Dare to Share- bestselling guide to podcast guesting FEAR LESS- coaching guide to living more bravely Brave New Girl- How to be Fearless Paintings & Public Art www.LouHamiltonArt.comInsta @LouHamiltonArt

April Wang, a second-year student studying physics and integrated science, hosts the “Weinberg in the World” podcast and interviews Mike Forman, a 2012 Northwestern graduate and senior managing director at Blackstone. Mike shares how his studies in MMSS and economics, along with his involvement in a fraternity and the Kellogg Certificate Program, were formative experiences. He discusses how these experiences, along with internships and networking, led him to a career in finance and his current role at Blackstone. Transcript: April: Welcome to the Weinberg in the World Podcast, where we bring stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. My name is April and I am your student host of this special episode of the podcast. I'm a second-year student studying physics and integrated science, and I'm looking forward to learning more about our guest's career. Today I'm excited to be speaking with Mike Forman, who graduated from Northwestern in 2012 and is now senior managing director at Blackstone. Thank you, Mike, for taking the time to speak with me today. Mike Forman: Thank you so much for having me, April. Northwestern is a near-and-dear place to my heart, so I'm excited to chat with you. April: Excellent. To start us off today, I'm wondering if you could tell us more about your time at Northwestern as an undergrad. What did you study, and what were some impactful experiences for you that led to your current career path? Mike Forman: Yeah, yeah. Good question. I went to Northwestern from 2008 to 2012. I majored in MMSS and economics, and I also did the Kellogg Certificate Program. I was in a fraternity and made a bunch of lifelong friends who I'm still very close to today, so those were super impactful and formative. I would say MMSS definitely was the hardest academic experience I ever had. I think I learned a bunch of things from that. First of all, it was hard but it was also incredibly rewarding. I think maybe another reminder or one of the better lessons I've learned along the way of most things that were really difficult that I went through, I looked back on fondly and are pretty formative experiences that help you become who you are. That was definitely the case with MMSS. It gave me a really interesting framework to interpret the world. What else was impactful experiences? Well, hugely impactful in terms of how I ended up on my career path. I went to Northwestern, and I knew I wanted to work in business after school. But it was that vague, in terms of what I ... That was as crystallized as the idea was in my mind. I went to school, and some friends and friends of friends, I started to appreciate a number of the people who felt like were thoughtful and focused on the career they were going to have after school, started to see what they were interested in and what they were doing. A number of those people were going into either finance or consulting. That got me just interested in the finance world and investing, understanding what they did, they gave me a bunch of books to read, things like that. I ended up doing two internships my sophomore year for a prop trading firm in Chicago and also UBS. Then my junior year, I was planning on going into investment banking because that's what I think a lot of, I don't know, the people I respected and looked up, that's what they were going and doing after school. I think I was looking on it, it was called Career CAD at the time, which was Northwestern, where you used to find jobs, whatever. April: Okay. Mike Forman: I don't know what it's called today. I saw a posting for a job at Blackstone as an intern in their real estate group. I actually remembered one of my friends, he was a couple of years older than me who was also in the same fraternity as me, or had been, was working at Blackstone. Oh, I'll give him a call. I called my friend Dave Levine. I was like, "Hey, do you like your job? Do you think I would like your job?" He laughed and he was like, "Yeah, I think you would. You should apply." I had this vision in my mind of going and working in investment banking and this opportunity popped up with Blackstone, which is a real estate private equity role. I ended up interviewing, getting a job offer. I wasn't specifically interested in real estate, but I felt like everyone I had met really enjoyed what they were doing. They were super active, getting things done. They were good people. I decided to try it out. I was an intern in 2011. Then I ended up joining full-time since 2012. Actually, I've been here since I graduated, so I've been here for almost 13 years now. That was not exactly my plan coming out of school, but it's been a really fun adventure. It's changed a lot over time, too. April: Yeah. It's really tricky to figure out what you want to do, especially in college, but I'm glad it worked out. Mike Forman: Totally. April: Yeah. Mike Forman: Totally. April: Then you spoke a little bit about some of your biggest challenges turning out to be the most rewarding, which I think leads well into the next question. Which is what are the most challenging and rewarding aspects of your current job? Mike Forman: I'll start with maybe some of the most rewarding aspects, and maybe I'll tie it back to some of the challenging equals rewarding later. I would say the most fun part of my job, and this organization, and the people we get to work with both inside and outside of Blackstone are getting to work with really talented, smart, hard-working, but also kind and considerate people. That's why I'm still here I think and that's pretty special. That's the most rewarding aspect, call it the people element or the human element. Besides that, look, I think investing is super fun. It's a combination of, I don't know, treasure hunting and building things. It definitely scratches my curiosity itch. I love to learn, I love to read about new things, trying to understand and form a view around where the world is going. Investing definitely, definitely scratches that itch. I've always loved technology, so my career, what I focused on has evolved a little bit over time. I now oversee our digital infrastructure investing around the world on behalf of our real estate business. We're building a bunch of really large data center businesses. By getting to focus on technology and really understand it deeply is fascinating and super fun. It feels like we're building the future, building the brain if you will. Dynamics have changed a ton. Okay, let's tie it back to the challenging part. I think one thing I came to appreciate working here is to be excellent is hard. Even if you're smart and capable, and whatever, you also just have to try really hard. Not just for a year or two, for many years. That is, I don't know, just getting a little bit tougher almost. And actually embracing that and leaning into it, maybe that's the most challenging aspect is just the hard work it takes to do a good job. But it's also something I really love about this place. I feel like there's a lot of people around me, they're smart, kind people, like I said, but they also work super hard. It's invigorating but it's not easy. April: That's great. Yeah, I totally agree with that. Speaking of challenging aspects of your job, how well did college prepare you for those aspects and for your career in general? What would you say was the most important skill or lesson that you learned from undergrad? Mike Forman: I would say the most important lesson, it was the toolkit. It was learning how to learn. I guess I've come to appreciate why a liberal arts education is amazing more as time has gone on. It's funny. I told you I wanted to go into business. At a certain part I was like, "Oh, I should go to a business school," undergrad. I'm so glad I didn't because I've been in business school since I graduated in a way. I'm really happy that I had the opportunity during college to, yes, take some economics class. But also, classes like game theory and strategic interaction, a framework to think about strategic interactions. And also, classes like Russian literature that are philosophy and pull your brain in a different direction, and give you a totally different lens to look at and think about the world. I think really, just the skillset, the tools to learn, that was a really important one. Then the second one is, I would say when I first went to Northwestern ... I would say before I went to college, I had a bad habit of procrastinating. April: Me, too. Mike Forman: Which I'm sure everyone can relate to a bit. But I realized that if I wanted to do well in school, and have a social life, and be able to do a bunch of other things, I needed to get organized and not procrastinate, and make the best use of time. That was a really important skill that I learned in undergrad that I'm appreciative I got a little bit of a wake-up call there almost to really be efficient and figure out how to make the most of my minutes. April: Yeah, definitely. That Russian literature class you mentioned, it's actually still really popular here. I've heard a couple people that are in it and they really enjoy it still. Mike Forman: Oh, it's incredible. April: That's really interesting. Yeah. Mike Forman: It's incredible. It's one of my favorite classes I ever took in school. April: What was the biggest adjustment that you had to make going from college to industry? Mike Forman: It's funny. I guess I just said something similar, but I think time is probably the big one. Making the most of your time. It's funny. I say I went to school and I had to start getting a little bit more organized, not procrastinate, really get my work done, et cetera. At times, it feels like you're almost short on time, I guess especially during finals week or whatever, when you're cramming for whatever's coming up. When you start working, you have a lot less time. I guess with the benefit of hindsight you're like, "Oh wow, I actually had a lot of free time during college." You just have a little bit more time and space, et cetera. That I think really changes and it forces you to make even better use of your minutes. Become more efficient, become more focused. And also, just appreciate the time that you have. For example, I think you have more time just to have fun and go enjoy yourself during school. One thing I appreciate is okay, maybe I'll only go do things with my friends during the weekend or not as often during the week, but I actually really savor them. That's a little bit of, I guess a tweak mentally, that is definitely an adjustment going from college to industry afterwards. I'm trying to think what else? That's probably the biggest. That's probably the biggest. April: Just out of curiosity, what were some of the fun moments you had with your friends or some things that you look back at fondly now? Mike Forman: Oh my God, there's so many. It's funny, I have this video reel playing in my head right now. It was everything from literally first days at school, I made a handful of friends through whatever random adventures we were up to, and a number of those stuck for forever. I still work with some of this people, which is kind of cool. One of my best friends from school who I lived with for a couple years works at Blackstone nowadays, which is pretty cool. I would say everything from we checked out a ton of music, we explored Chicago. We ran all over Northwestern, I don't know, playing Frisbee in the great lawn, or whatever adventures around the lake we got up to. I don't know, there's almost too many to count. But I would say I got to meet and know a number of people, they were both smart and hard-working, but also really interesting and fun. I almost feel like previously in my life, I had to choose one or the other a little bit. I don't know, that was my favorite part of school, probably. April: Definitely. Friends are great. Mike Forman: Yeah, friends are good. April: Yeah. Mike Forman: A lot of good music and food in Chicago too, so that's always nice. April: Yeah. Well, how have you approached that worklife balance, like balancing friends and going out and having fun and then school work? Or now that you're in industry, how are you balancing worklife balance in your career? Mike Forman: Yeah. I guess it comes back to, I feel like I'm talking about time a lot, but just being focused and trying to make the best use of your minutes, that's key. Okay, if you're going to be working, be focused, get it done, do the things that you need to do. But also, I think you need to make space for fun in your life. Working hard is very fun, and also super rewarding and energizing. But also, making time for the other things that you love to do is super nourishing and makes it all really sustainable, and I don't know, ties it all together. For example, I love to surf. Even though I got lots of stuff going on, I've always been able to find a way to fit that into my life, go on cool trips, and get better over time. I love to do yoga and meditate. If you make sure you prioritize and make space for the things that you care about and make you happy, first of all, you can fit them in. But also, if you are happy and you are enjoying yourself, it's infectious. It's the point almost of everything we do. I think you need to prioritize it. By the way, also just spending quality time with family and friends. That's, I don't know, super important. Look, there's this tension. I guess I've come to appreciate hard work is actually pretty cool because as you keep at it, you get more knowledgeable, you get better at it. That's this feedback loop, it's a little bit of a flywheel that's rewarding. If you make no space for the other things that you enjoy and your family and friends, I don't know, what's the point of that? I think you do need to prioritize and make space for it, but then try to keep it all in balance and trying to squeeze the most juice you can out of the time you have I guess is what it all comes down to. I will say, I think that, as you have to make more of the time or as you feel more and more stretch, I do actually feel like you come to appreciate things a little bit more deeply, which is pretty cool. April: Yeah, definitely. Are there any things that you wish you had done more or, or maybe even less of in college? Mike Forman: That's a good question. What do I wish I did more of? I would say, look, what would I tell myself then? I would say this time in school and in academic setting with all these incredible intellectuals, it's like a wide menu of things that you can go to a bunch of subject matter experts to and really learning a ton about. And actually, more time to go be curious and see what interests you, or learn about this thing or that thing. I would say really push yourself and take the hard classes that stretch your brain or that intrigue you. I think sometimes there is a little bit of this tension where it's like, "Okay, I'm going to take these hard classes I have to, and then I have some space here, I'm going to take something that is a little easier." Maybe there's a couple cases I could point to for myself where I was like, "Shoot, I actually wish I took that really hard foundational science class," or whatever, because I'll never take it now. It's actually pretty cool if you have a good, good foundational understanding of some of these topics. By the way, I don't know, I guess personally I wish I took more classes on philosophy. Maybe that was one of the things I loved the most about the Russian literature classes. April: Yeah. Mike Forman: I think it's what interests you, and then really go for it. Don't try and take the easy path, I guess. April: Well, I guess we've talked a lot about your college time and things that you wish you had done differently. What's one specific piece of advice that you would give your past undergraduate self? Mike Forman: I would say ... What advice would I give myself? Look, I guess I've said this already, but really take advantage of a liberal arts education. Do not focus on one thing. By the way, it is such a good opportunity to get this broad understanding of the world, and again, a bunch of different ways to look at it. Really take advantage of that and don't get sucked into a vortex of being like, "Okay, I need to do exactly this thing." Then also, be a little bit flexible in terms of what it is you think you want to do after school. I had a little bit of a sense, but I let the exploration path of trying to find a job shape what it was that I wanted to do a bit. Just be receptive to, I don't know, friends. I don't know, just be receptive to where the process guides you a little bit. The most important thing is what you do and where you do it matters, but who you do it with is so important. Probably more important. Really being excited about the people that you get to work with is totally key longterm. By the way, keep in touch with your friends from Northwestern. I know it's easy, but they go on and do pretty cool things. They've got a lot of really smart people. By the way, it builds on itself over time as their careers go on. Stay in touch with people and understand what they're up to. And by the way, stay in touch with the school. I'm so grateful for the experiences I had at Northwestern and how it set me up for the rest of my life. It's super fun and rewarding to, A, go visit campus. B, spend time with students when I can, understand what's going on at the school. I don't know, I guess that's a couple pieces of advice, but it's what comes off ... April: Yeah, Northwestern has a great alumni network. We get to talk to people like, so that's pretty great. Mike Forman: Oh, it's awesome. Yeah. April: Yeah. Mike Forman: When I was looking for a job for example, Northwestern's alums, they were so helpful. They dropped whatever they were doing and be happy to help and provide advice, et cetera. Then afterwards, there's lots of cool things that I've been able to get involved with over the years. April: What's something that you are looking forward to going forward, now that you're working and out of college? Something exciting? Mike Forman: What's exciting that's coming up? I would say personal life, I got married- April: Congrats. Mike Forman: ... last January. April: Wow! Mike Forman: Thank you. Thank you. It was actually our one-year anniversary yesterday, which was pretty cool to celebrate. April: Oh, wow. That's so fun. Mike Forman: I think that's something that's exciting. Family life I guess, that'll be a fun adventure ahead. That's one area. Then in terms of work, I love getting to spend a ton of time in the technology world and the companies we're getting to build. We've got the largest and fastest-growing data center platform around the world, which is an awesome opportunity to learn, to build, and to get to work with some super fascinating people. I'm really excited for what's in store for this year, and getting to travel around the world and learn a ton about different markets, different cultures, all that good stuff. I've always loved to travel. Traveling in a work context, sometimes it can be a little intense and the timezone changes are tricky. What a cool way to understand other cultures and get a true experience. When you go and visit somewhere as a tourist, you check out the sights, try the restaurants, which is awesome. But that's not really what people who live there do every day. They go to work and do things. It's a pretty cool and authentic way to get a taste for different places around the world. April: What are some of your favorite places that you visited? Mike Forman: Last year, I got to spend a bunch of time in Tokyo and Australia, which were both incredible places. Totally different, but both pretty incredible and really fun to visit. Those were up there. I always love going to California. April: Yeah. Mike Forman: I'd say Europe as well, there's a bunch of pretty cool ... There's so much history and the cities are beautiful, and a little bit cleaner than New York which is nice, too. April: That's pretty exciting, getting to travel. That's fun. Mike Forman: Yeah, it's super fun. It's awesome. April: Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you so much for talking with us, and for sharing your advice and your experience in undergrad. Yeah, just thank you for joining us today. Mike Forman: Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me and be well. April: Of course. Okay, thank you for listening to this special episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast. We hope you have a great day, and go Cats! Mike Forman: Go Cats. Bye-bye.

South Decatur vs Waldron Girls BB Sect., Feb. 7, 2025

Tom Waldron is a Pilates teacher, Bio-mechanics coach and Franklin Method educator.In this conversation, Tom and Matt discuss:What the pelvic floor actually isCommon pelvic floor dysfunctions and the impact on quality of lifeThe fact men have a pelvic floor and why a healthy pelvic floor is so important for themStrategies to improve functionTips for movement teachers looking to improve function of their clients Link to Tom's 6 week pelvic floor course starting February 10th 2025http://www.fitfloorsupportforlife.com/ Want to connect with Tom? See details below:Website – www.tomwaldronmovementtherapy.co.uk Email – tom@tomwaldronmove.co.ukInstagram: @tomwaldron.moveFacebook: tomwaldronmove If you have a question for the podcast or are interested in working with Matt, you can reach out at:Email: info@wellnesseducationdubai.comWebsite: www.wellnesseducationdubai.comInstagram: @wellness_education_dubaiFacebook: @mattmarneyfitnessLinkedIn: Matt Marney (Wellness Education Dubai) 

We continue our episodes of the Auto Remarketing Podcast originating from Used Car Week 2024 in Scottsdale, Ariz., with a keynote presentation featuring James Waldron, who is president of 1st Adjusters. Waldron identified several growing trends in fraud and how collections and repossessions are being impacted by these illicit activities.

Aimee Resnick, a senior at Northwestern University, interviews Steven Preston, CEO of Goodwill Industries International, on the “Weinberg in the World” podcast. Steven reflects on his time at Northwestern, highlighting his major in political science and his transformative junior year in Munich. He also shares how his unexpected passion for statistics influenced his career in investment banking and leadership roles.  Transcript: Aimee Resnick: Welcome to the Weinberg in the World podcast, where we bring stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. My name is Aimee Resnick and I'm your student host of the special podcast episode. I am a senior studying social policy at Northwestern University who plans to pursue public administration in my home state of Colorado. Today, I'm excited to be speaking with Steven Preston, who is the CEO at Goodwill Industries International. Thank you, Steven, for taking the time to speak with me today. Steven Preston: Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to it. Aimee Resnick: Me too. To start us off today, I was wondering if you can tell us a little bit more about your time at Northwestern as an undergraduate in terms of what did you study and what were the most impactful experiences for you that led you to your current career path? Steven Preston: Yeah, so I was a political science major. And Northwestern, it was kind of a big thing for me. I kind of grown up in a medium-sized town up in Wisconsin and going to Northwestern kind of introduced me to a whole new world that I didn't even know existed of people from different places and that type of thing. I'd say there are two things, a couple of things that were really important. Number one is I was actually a poli-sci major with an international politics focus. So number one, it gave me a perspective on the world and how the world operates, which is something I didn't have as an 18-year-old coming to college. Number two, I took that further and I actually did a junior year in Munich program, and this was before the wall had come down, so east, west. International relations were what really defined kind of the global dynamic. So it was just a remarkable opportunity to study with different people in a different language right on the border of what was kind of definitional for international politics. And that year, I felt like I kind just burgeoned intellectually and academically and personally. The other thing I would say, that may not be what most people would expect, but I took a statistics class and I loved it. And I took more and I took more and I took graduate statistics classes and I became kind of like a quant poli-sci major. And that really was valuable for me because it was a way through which I could marry a topic that we think of as not being very quantitative and do a lot of research within political science using statistics, whether it was voter trends or national expenditures and how that relates to different government structures. And that became really important to me when I went into investment banking. I got an MBA in finance and [inaudible 00:02:38] Wall Street, and the ability to connect data with what felt like qualitative issues was really definitional to my path forward. Later, I became a CFO and a CEO and for the rest of my life, I really connected those two concepts in a way that was really powerful for what I was able to do professionally. Aimee Resnick: Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing your response. And I think it's really fascinating how you were able to take a lot of the skills that you gained at Northwestern in your more non-traditional courses like statistics and apply them to a more impactful career pivot later in your life like we typically encourage at Weinberg. So thank you for sharing that experience. Steven Preston: Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, it's one of the requirements I have for my kids is they all have to have some proficiency in statistics now. So yeah, it's become multigenerational. Aimee Resnick: I'm sure they love that requirement. I say as someone who's not the biggest math person ever. But I'd love to hear a little bit more about your current career right now as well, as the CEO of Goodwill Industries. And I noted in your video introduction to the 2023 annual report for Goodwill, you mentioned that Goodwill is about possibilities of hope for the people who receive services. And in that same report, you described how over 140,000 people found new employment after receiving services through your organization in workforce development. So I was wondering if you could just tell us a little bit more about how Goodwill promotes economic opportunity across the United States and why that mission particularly resonates with you. Steven Preston: Yeah, so the people we serve are not the people that you're going to college with right now. 83% of the people we serve are people with a high school degree or less. In fact, about a third of the people never finished high school. And many of these people have other challenges in life. Some of them have gone down very difficult pathways, people coming out of incarceration, people who are experiencing poverty, even people who are experiencing homelessness. And what we often do in society is make assumptions about those people and make assumptions about what's possible. And we sort of relegate them, in many cases, into a category of, well, that's kind of who they are and that's what their life is going to be like. But the truth is that embedded in every one of those people is a massive amount of potential and talent. And in most cases, and I really say in most cases, those are people who, because of opportunities they've been given or not given, because of their circumstances in life, because of their pathways, have never been able to develop those capabilities. And in fact, have never really known how to, because they didn't have access to good education, they weren't surrounded by people who could give them advice. They didn't really know what the possibilities were. So what we do is we work with people to sit with them and say, "What are the possibilities for your life? And how do we help you get there?" So one of the most important things we do when somebody comes to us is really do an assessment of what their skills are, what their hopes are, but also what their challenges are. A lot of times, their challenges might be training or skills related, but they also may have challenges with behavioral issues. They may be, many of them don't have housing or have insecure housing. Many of them don't have core financial skills, so they know even how to get through life with a small amount of income. So if we can work with people to help them stabilize those sort of personal aspects of their life, at the same time that we can provide them with skills that are attractive to employers, we can help them move from a very difficult place to a place where they are flourishing and where they have a fundamentally different future, and a future that allows them to take care of themselves and grow and learn much more. What we often find is once we've supported somebody and they land that first job and they're successful and they see the people they work with and what the possibilities are, it's not just that their lives have changed to get to that job, it's that the trajectory of their life has changed because many of those people begin investing themselves, learning more, getting better jobs. And then the other great thing is it's often multi-generational because their kids benefit, or if they don't have kids and they had them later, they benefit. And it really breaks a cycle of poverty and brokenness that's very difficult to break. And that's why we talk about the possibilities and we talk about hope because that's really where we live. For me personally, I came from what I would call pretty humble background. So I think just in a couple of generations, I've seen what education and opportunity has done for me. But I think on a bigger scale, I've lived in a number of major cities early on, when I was in my 20s, I spent a lot of time in tough neighborhoods in New York working with kids in difficult situations and trying to help them move on. So I feel like I've seen it up front in what's possible. And then when I worked in the government, I was the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and that is really the federal agency that deals mostly with poverty issues. And seeing intergenerational poverty and seeing people unable to do something about it is a sort of a dispiriting situation, and I believe we can do something about it. And really, Goodwill I think is, well, I know Goodwill is the largest nonprofit that is trying to change the landscape for many of those people, and hundreds of thousands of people find a different opportunity because of us. Aimee Resnick: I think that's a really excellent transition because I actually do want to talk to you a little bit more about your experience with housing and urban development. So for context, in 2008, you were nominated by President George W. Bush to serve as the secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. And I'd just like to hear a little bit more about how you started this large career in public service, and then a little bit potentially about how your public sector experiences under George W. Bush have shaped your approach to private sector leadership in your current career. Steven Preston: Yeah. So I think one of the important things was I spent almost 25 years in the private sector before I went into the government. So I had been an investment banker, I had been a CFO, I had been a corporate leader. And I say that because many times, young people coming out of college will say, "I want to go into nonprofit, what do I do?" And one of the first things I say to people when they come to me is, "Think about the early part of your career especially as a time where you are learning and growing and developing and getting the skills you need to be effective later in your career." And many kids, many people will go in a nonprofit and have a wonderful career. But I had 25 years in the private sector to prepare before going into the government and later into nonprofit. And those skills, both as somebody with an MBA and somebody who grew up through the corporate world, have been incredibly valuable for me in my career. So I want to mention that. So the first thing I did when I went into the government is I ran the Small Business Administration and the Small Business Administration makes loans to people who've lost their homes in a national disaster. And I came in after Katrina and most people hadn't gotten their loans yet. So I applied those skills from the private sector to figure out how to fix the operational and technology and financial issues to accelerate loans to people who needed to rebuild after the disaster. So toward the end of my tenure at the SBA, the housing and financial crisis was mushrooming. And because of the experiences I had as a banker and a CFO and the experiences I had in working in a federal disaster, the president asked me to go to Housing and Urban Development to work on the housing crisis. I give you the background because that's how I got there. I got there because my experience and my background were sort of uniquely prepared me to be able to do that. I would not be a typical HUD secretary because I didn't have a poverty housing background, but I understood financial markets. I understood operational fixes. I understood national crises and media by that point because you do a lot of... You're on television a lot, you're dealing with Congress. So I was uniquely qualified to do this for that time in history, which was the financial crisis. So one of the greatest things about serving in these situations was the, and I really do, I think it was incredible blessing to be able to serve in a crisis because when you're in the middle of a crisis, people need leadership, they need people who can pull them together to fix the problems. People want to be part of a team that's doing something great. And if you're successful, a ton of people have seen their lives improved, whether it's an ability to rebuild their home after Katrina, in the financial crisis, whether it's the ability to stay in your home if you're being foreclosed, or we were able to rebuild public housing in New Orleans, and sort of the two came together. The public housing had been destroyed in Katrina. And when I came to HUD, we worked on rebuilding it. So if you have that opportunity, even though it's extremely stressful to work in a crisis, you also have an opportunity to have a very big impact. And you have an opportunity to have sort of restorative or a kind of healing impact on an organization that's in stress. So it really hits on a number of different levels. It comes with stress, but it also comes with what I would say great blessing and great opportunity, both for the people you're serving with and the people who benefit from this service. So that was really what that felt like. And then the other part of that is it wasn't just about housing. Some people who know about that era of history will know what the acronym TARP stands for. TARP was a large allocation of capital that the federal government made to support housing and the financial system. That money ended up going into financial institutions to save them. And I was on the board of the TARP with Secretary Paulson and the head of the Fed, Ben Bernanke and two other people, which sort of put me right in the center of seeing what was happening across the financial sector around the world and how we were going to work to save it. And that was just, it was a remarkable time. I think it was terrifying for many people because we saw what could happen if the world financial system was going to break down. And thankfully, it was averted, although there was just a massive impact from the financial fallout, really from early to mid 2008 going into well into 2009 before things started to recover. Aimee Resnick: Absolutely. And that actually brings me to something I'm very curious about, bringing you back to your poli-sci roots. A lot of young people today kind of feel a large sense of distrust in the government, especially on campus at this time, which I've seen some people describe as a new type of political crisis, almost like that you experienced back in the Katrina era. And I'm curious, what steps did you concretely take to rebuild trust, and in particular with the Small Business Administration, because it was somewhat disoriented when you began? And how do you think that can be applied to the current context? Steven Preston: Well, so first of all, yeah, trust has been declining in federal government for a long time, and I think we're absolutely at a nadir right now. And for me, it's very distressing to see, because I think there are good reasons for people's concern. But it's also really important for people to believe that if they go into it, they can make a difference. What I did when I went to the SBA, I found... One of the biggest benefits I had is I'd never been in the government, I didn't really know how it worked. They brought me in because I knew finance and I knew operational change and they wanted things fixed. And I got brought in and sometimes I would say, "How do I do this?" Or, "We want to fix this and this is how we're going to do it." And people would say, "No, you can't because there's a regulation or a law and you got to do it this way." And I'd say, "That can't possibly be true." There's nothing logical about my having to do that to make this decision. But yeah, well, it's a law that's been on the books for a long time. So one of the benefits I had is I came in and I needed to know how it worked, but I didn't need to be overly shackled in how I did this. So when I first got nominated, so before I even got to Washington, I was in the George Bush administration and a lot of Republicans were kind of briefing me. And the Democrat head on my oversight committee was John Kerry at the time. He had just lost the election for president. And they were the committee that the Senate does the nomination, they were the ones who were going to approve my nomination. And I just said, "Well, nobody... I'm not talking to any Democrats. Why..." So I called up the people briefing me and I said, "I want to talk to John Kerry's chief of staff." And they're like, "Why?" I said, "Because I'm hearing what you guys are saying, but I don't..." I know I'm a Republican nominee, but I'm not like a super partisan guy and we're all trying to fix this problem. I want to hear what they're saying. And as a business person, the first thing I'm thinking is you hear from all your customers, you hear from all your stakeholders, you want to build the first... So I talked to her and she was really surprised, and she kind of gave me her thinking on it. Once I got to the administration, I said to my team, "We're all about transparency. I'm going to invite the Democrats to do briefings on how we're doing fixing this problem." And they said, "Well, no, you're going to give them fodder to come against you in the press," and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, "We all want to fix it, right?" So I started holding briefings at the SBA office on the measures we were taking to fix the problem, the data that we were seeing on how big the problem was, once we started fixing it, the improvements. And I actually became very friendly with the teams on both sides of the aisle. When I got nominated for the HUD job, I needed to get confirmed by the Senate. By that time, the Senate was Democrat and I was a Republican nominee. The two most important reasons I got through that nomination process quickly were John Kerry and Dick Durbin, who was the number two person in the Senate. He was head of my appropriations committee. And the reason was because we were completely transparent with their teams. We worked with them very closely. We had them over for briefings. And we developed those relationships because they trusted us. So what I would say is you can be somebody who works both sides of the aisle. And by the way, most of the time, as an agency head, most of the time, you're going to be working on issues that aren't necessarily big political issues. You're serving people, you're trying to improve something. You've got a program that you maybe want to tweak to make it better. And when we go into a situation assuming that people are going to attack us and be against us, sometimes there's a reason for that, right? It is pretty fiery. But I think we have to go into it saying, "Let's win them over." Let's help them understand that we're all trying to get to the same place. We might disagree on the best way to get there. And most of those people just want to do their jobs really well and be part of something good. So some of my fondest memories were working with people really on both sides of the aisle. And I'm very grateful I had the opportunity to do that. And we probably see less, it felt like it was really kind of fighting all the time back then, but oh my goodness, it's at a whole different level now. And I also think President Bush was very focused on bipartisanism. He did a lot of work with people on the other side of the aisle. The financial rescue package was very much negotiated with both sides. Believe it or not, back then, he had negotiated an immigration bill that was more heavily supported by Democrats and Republicans. But because of an impending election, a lot of people didn't feel comfortable supporting it because they were concerned about winning re-election. But many of those things were worked on with both sides of the aisle, even though there were plenty of partisan politics at the time as well. Aimee Resnick: Really, I like that idea of having optimistic view towards bipartisanship and hopefully seeing that expand into the future in the next decades as a way to build public trust. I absolutely agree, that's critical. And I think we'll move on to our last question because I recognize we're coming up on our time, but I want to ask you, what do you wish you could tell yourself when you were me, a senior who's interested in public service and policy, who's about to graduate? What do you wish you could say to that 22-year-old version of you? Steven Preston: So yeah, it's what I tell people. I've had a chance to talk to students at Northwestern a couple of times, not recently, but I've talked to a couple of classes with Diane Schanzenbach who's on the policy side there. And I've spoken at a couple of other schools. And I tell them, one of the pieces of advice I give is very consistent. You all are really smart. You are getting a great education. You are learning critical thinking skills. But our society is very much about groupthink. And when we see the political divide or the divide on policies, you don't hear a lot of talk about the deep research on one side of the policy or the other. And we see it actually in Congress. I think we've seen fewer deep policy thinkers than we did 10 years ago, or certainly 20 or 30 years ago. So my encouragement is, even if you have strong views on something, challenge them, look at the data. And in the area that we focus on is a perfect issue. Why do we have intergenerational poverty? What will change it? What really has to happen? And when you think about where that debate lies, it's pretty fiery, and you've got all sorts of people fighting about these issues. But we don't have nearly enough people saying, "Let's look at the data on what really helps somebody." You guys are in Chicago. What really helps somebody who's a little boy or girl who's born in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago or some other tough neighborhood? What are the factors that make it very difficult for them to have the kind of life that most of the people you go to college have? And what can we change in that person's life? Whether it's the kind of schooling they get, whether it is the kind of family support they have, whether it's the protections we give them. Whether it's when they come out of high school, if they do need a little bit of support to get on the right track, how do we do that? What kind of youth... What truly does it take to help a person flourish in society? Or in our world, somebody who's coming out of prison? We have all these big narratives. You guys are the ones, because you're super smart, you got a fantastic education, you're taking statistics, like I recommended, you can dig deep. And when you see something where you say, "I need to challenge my thinking. I know I've been telling myself this, but I actually don't see this. Or I think I need to understand it deeper." We need deep policy thinkers. And the other thing is, if you're going into business, everybody's going to say find the right solution and see the data. But in the policy world, a lot of times that stuff doesn't happen to the degree that it needs to. So use that great education and be rigorous, be tough thinkers, ask tough questions, even if it takes you to a place that maybe doesn't align with what you think is the case today, because that's what's going to help us have a better world. And you know what? Those are the conversations we need to be having across the table from each other. We can be having rigorous arguments about the right policy decision, but if we're going to do it, let's look at the facts and let's really pressure test those because that's what's going to help us all have a better world. Aimee Resnick: Thank you, I really appreciate that idea of having Northwestern graduates go out into the world and just make it a better place. That's very encouraging. Steven Preston: Well, I love Northwestern, and I don't live in Chicago anymore, so I'm sad that I can't go to those games and go to the concerts on campus and talk to students as easily as I used to. But I just think it's a terrific place, and thank you for giving me an opportunity to chat with students indirectly. Aimee Resnick: Oh, of course. I think with that, I will say thank you to our listeners for listening to this special episode of the Weinberg in the World podcast. We hope you have a good day. And as Steven just mentioned, go Cats. Steven Preston: Go Cats. Take care.  

Preena Shroff, a third-year student at Northwestern, hosts the “Weinberg in the World” podcast and interviews Joel Meek, a 2001 graduate. Joel, who recently served as VP of finance and operations at Reddit, discusses how his studies in economics and mathematical methods shaped his career. He emphasizes the value of a broad education, mentioning impactful classes in astronomy, psychology, and Japanese. Preena and Joel highlight how Northwestern's interdisciplinary approach teaches students to think critically and approach problems creatively. Transcript: Preena Shroff: Welcome to Weinberg in the World podcast where we bring stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. My name is Preena Shroff, and I'm your student host of this special Weinberg in the World episode. I'm a third year student majoring in neuroscience and global health with a minor in data science, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Joel Meek, who graduated from Weinberg College in 2001 with a bachelor of arts in economics and mathematical methods in the social sciences. Joel most recently was the VP of finance and operations at Reddit, a community platform where users submit content and share advice for other members. Throughout his technology career, Joel has led functions across sales, operations, business development and finance. Joel, thank you so much for being here with us today. Joel Meek: Very excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Preena Shroff: We are so excited to learn about your work in technology, but would love to start out with how your career path was shaped by your time at Northwestern. So maybe if you can tell us more about your undergraduate experience. What were some impactful classes, extracurriculars or maybe even mentorship experiences that you had, which impacted your postgraduate career? Joel Meek: Of course. Yeah, so I think as you mentioned, my major at Northwestern was economics and mathematical methods in the social sciences. I'll start with the economics. Actually, it was really helpful for me in studying both macro and microeconomics to just get a broad view of how the economy works. How does things like the money supply affect inflation, employment, GDP growth? Why are some industries more fragmented than others like the restaurant industry or why are some products more price sensitive than others? I can't say that I use sort of economic theory directly in my day-to-day career, but it definitely shaped my perspective when thinking about different business challenges in my business career. And then with mathematical methods in social sciences, this is really a very data centric major where you're looking to apply your knowledge of math to a social science. And so actually my senior year I did a thesis that was similar to the movie Moneyball with Brad Pitt and I looked at which baseball players yielded the best bang for the buck. So really bringing that sort of background to the business world and being able to break down problems was really helpful. And then I think last, just being part of the College of Arts and Sciences, it was awesome to really just get a broad exposure to a wide array of topics. I still remember taking my astronomy class and just learning about the universe and how it was formed or taking a psychology class, which has helped me better understand the inner workings of the mind and how people work. And I took Japanese, which eventually led me to go living in Japan for a year after college. So I think in total, when I really think back about Northwestern, it was building that curiosity and that love of learning that's really helped me take on new challenges once I graduated. Preena Shroff: Wow. Yeah. Thank you. And I think something that a lot of students here at Northwestern maybe aren't able to experience just yet but kind of have an idea is that these classes are teaching students how to think as opposed to exactly what you're going to require in your career. It's more about how to approach problems and how to develop from that. So thank you for sharing that. Joel Meek: Of course. Preena Shroff: So now moving forward a little bit beyond Northwestern, what led you on your career path? So which skills would that be, interactions or experiences that you were able to build up that have been critical in your field today? Joel Meek: Yeah, so when I graduated Northwestern, I honestly didn't really know. I knew I wanted to do business, but I didn't really know what type of business I wanted to do. So I ended up choosing banking and consulting as my first two jobs out of college. And it was actually a really good first couple jobs to do out of college because you really get a 30,000-foot view of the business world. I got to work across a ton of different industries and work on a ton of different problems, and I learned a lot about myself. I learned that I really liked numbers and finance, but I wasn't really into the 80-hour weeks of the finance world. In consulting I loved the business problem solving of consulting, but I really wanted to be the decision maker actually owning the decisions. And so I ended up transitioning into technology, which was really exciting because all the innovation that was happening, and I moved into more of an operator role, which I ended up doing for the past 16, 17 years in technology. I think the skill that was probably most important that I got from Northwestern that I was able to apply to my career was really just, I mean you mentioned it, just problem solving. In the technology space in particular, things are moving very quickly and often there is not a blueprint for how to solve a problem because it maybe hasn't been solved before. I can think of a time when I was at Pinterest and we had millions of users on the site and we had a challenge with a lot of spammy content on the site, people that were trying to get click baited into clicking through the links and then trying to take advantage of people. And so we only had a small team because Pinterest was, when I joined, was still less than a hundred people, and we had to figure out how to clean up this site that had millions of users so that they didn't have a bad experience. So there was really no playbook for how to do that, and you just had to really approach the problem from first principles and break it down. And I think that building that skill set through really helped me later on in my career. Preena Shroff: Yeah, absolutely. And I think actually I wanted to ask you for a follow-up on your discussion about that pivot point from investment banking into the tech industry. I know students nowadays go in with a mindset of whichever career they're looking to get into, they want to make sure they're very well-prepared beforehand. And sometimes I guess a pivot isn't something you can always plan for. My question is, do you think a student today who might encounter this sort of pivot or maybe is trying to plan one thing and ends up might changing? Do you think it's still possible to have that kind of career switch today? Or what advice would you give to a student who's maybe unsure about that decision? Joel Meek: You can definitely make career switches. I probably made four or five career switches in my career from right out of college. I was in banking, then I went to consulting. I ended up jumping to work for Google where I worked in their Google cloud division when cloud computing was taking hold in an operational role. And then my boss gave me an opportunity to move into sales, and then I jumped into some startups. I went to Pinterest, I went to Reddit, eventually ended up running finance at Reddit, was my last job. I would say that if I think about just my path, I would do a lot of moonlighting. I would do a lot of just researching the place where I wanted to go or the new function I wanted to go into. I would meet with people, I would just try to be a sponge and soak things up as much as possible. And what I learned was that it can be difficult to make a career switch, because people will look at your background and say, "Well, how are you relevant for this job?" But what I learned is it only takes one. You only need one person to be willing to give you a chance. And I was fortunate to have a few moments in my career where someone was willing to take a chance on me, and then it's up to you to prove that you can do it. So I definitely would not hesitate if you're interested in making a career change. Just go for it. Just start learning as much as you can about that path that you want to go. Eventually, if you keep trying, you'll get there. Preena Shroff: Yeah, thank you. That's great advice. And I know you brought up Pinterest and Google. I actually wanted to ask you, having been closely involved with building up a developing company or at least a department within each of these last three companies, Google, Pinterest, and Reddit, how do you manage conflicting priorities between growth and sustainability? So by that I mean just company growth and also making sure it's economically stable, everything's on track. Joel Meek: Yeah, it's a great question. I think it's really going to be very company dependent, and it's also probably going to be dependent upon the stage of the industry in which the company operates in. I can start off with Google. I joined in 2007, and this is when cloud computing was the buzzword. Before that everyone was using Microsoft Office, Windows, Excel, PowerPoint on a desktop, and we were providing that all in the cloud at a much more affordable price. And we knew we had a critical window where we could get market share. And so really the focus was really on, at that point, growth. We had our eye on profitability and sustainability always, but really we felt like this was important enough for Google as a company that we wanted to grab market share. When I was at Pinterest, I joined in 2012. Again, it was about less than a hundred people at the time, the giants were Facebook and Twitter, and they had many more users, a lot more employees, a lot more capital. And we knew, again, we had a short window to get market share. And so our focus was really on growing our users and growing our revenue. We had our eye on the unit economics and we wanted to make sure that we could get there and we knew we did, but we were willing to pull forward some investment and be less profitable in the short term to get growth in the longer term. And I'd say the same thing was true at my experience at Reddit as well. So in all three of my experiences, it was really around growth in the short term and then flipping the profitability in the long term. Preena Shroff: Okay. Yeah, for sure. And thinking about how would you make that kind of decision? What about a company and where it is in development lets you decide between profit and making that shift? Joel Meek: Yeah, I think it's going to be a function of the industry that you're in. What is the competitive landscape look like and how important is scale? And we knew that it was only going to be a handful of players in this cloud computing space really serving these wholesale applications like email, docs and calendar. And so it was our moment to really sort be that option that people went to, and then if we didn't, someone else was going to go there first. So I think in other industries, maybe it's more fragmented, maybe there's less competition. Maybe you have a competitive advantage over the competition where you're able to charge more and you can focus a little bit more on profitability. But it's just going to be, I think, specific to each company and industry that they're in. Preena Shroff: Is there any job that you've felt gave you a full circle moment back to your time at Northwestern? Maybe any experiences like that? Joel Meek: Yeah. When I was at Google, one of the first things I was asked to do is to help bring Gmail calendar, Google Docs to the universities throughout the United States. Preena Shroff: Oh, wow. Joel Meek: And so we were looking for a few brave souls to be some of our initial customers. And actually Northwestern was one, I think maybe the first university, if not one of the first five universities to use Gmail calendar and Docs. I remember we had a whole campaign to get the students motivated to switch over. We called it Kid on the Bus and we painted a school bus and we drove it to Evanston and I sat, I think in front of the Rock, it was handing out flyers to tell people all about Gmail calendar and docs. Credit to Northwestern. They were pioneers in adopting new technology. And that was a really cool full circle moment to bring that stuff that I was passionate about back to the campus. Preena Shroff: That's a great memory. And I know you mentioned earlier that you wanted to get or be more of the decision maker in your role. And so I was wondering, since Northwestern from graduating from Northwestern to all the way to today, how has your leadership style evolved over time, whether it be decision making or just working in a group setting? Joel Meek: So directly out of college, I think I was much more of an informal leader. I was an individual contributor. So it was more about leading through example, working hard, being a part of a team, prioritizing integrity in everything that I did. It wasn't really until I entered the tech industry that I became more of a formal leader. I was actually quite fortunate. The division in Google I joined was led by Sheryl Sandberg, who later became the chief operating officer at Facebook. And she placed a really high premium on attracting talented leaders as well as investing in leadership training for junior managers like myself. So it was really valuable. I got frameworks around how do you hire A players, how do you organize and structure your team? How do you set strategy and goals? How do you execute? How do you run one-on-ones, deliver feedback, how do you promote, how do you fire people? I didn't know any of that. And I got a really good education in my first job in technology at Google. And then through that, I over time learned what kind of leader I was. I learned about what I was good at, and actually I learned about what I was not good at. And from there I learned to play to my strengths and then build a team around me where I was weaker. For example, I was always really good at structuring problems and creating process for us to scale things to really, really large numbers. But I wasn't the most creative person in the world, so I'd always make sure there was people on my team that would be able to bring new ideas. I think it's really when I understood who I was as a leader and what I was good at, that's when I was actually most successful in my career. Preena Shroff: And I think it's really incredible that you've been able to find so many mentors along the way. And even within Northwestern, I know students are always seeking mentorship, whether that be from alumni, their professors, anyone in the industry they're interested in. Do you have any advice for finding mentorship or is it something you seek out or something that can just develop over time? Joel Meek: Whenever I was choosing a new job, whether it was in banking or in technology at Google, Pinterest or Reddit, I was not just looking at the job I was going to be taking, but I was looking at who I'd be working for because your boss is someone you're going to spend a lot of time with. And I was very fortunate to have a few really great bosses across my time at specifically Google, Pinterest, and Reddit. And I learned a ton from them, and it really shaped who I was as a leader. So I would just say as you're jumping into the working world, have a really focused eye for who your boss is going to be. Make sure that you gel with that person. Make sure you think about, "Okay, what can I learn from this person? How can I grow with that person?" That will be almost as important as the job that you pick. Preena Shroff: Okay. Yeah, for sure. And then taking a pivot here, I guess for those of our listeners who are interested in working in the tech industry, what is the common misconception about working in the industry that you would like to debunk? Joel Meek: Maybe a common misperception is that either it's like everyone's working on the next big thing or everyone's going to get rich quick. The reality is that even for the next big thing, there is a lot of very routine day-to-day mundane stuff that's required to make that happen. And it ends up adding up to something amazing, but it's just like every other job, there's going to be that methodical day-to-day work that you got to do. And then in getting rich quick, most companies, most startups don't succeed just statistically speaking. And so I think it's an amazing experience. It's where I've pursued most of my career, but I think if you're doing it just for the money alone, it's probably not going to work out. You got to really just love technology and love being a part of that startup culture. I think that's going to probably breed more success than just going there to try to make money. Preena Shroff: Yes, for sure. That's great advice. And then I actually have one more question and then I might do some follow-ups based on everything. But I guess in terms of career overall, are there any obstacles or challenges that you've overcome? I remember you mentioned in Pinterest there was difficulty dealing with scammers or something like that. So anything like that, like a challenge, an obstacle, and then did your time at Northwestern impact your approach to solving this problem? Joel Meek: Yeah, honestly, I would speak to my career. I think the biggest obstacle really was just getting doors opened. And I still remember at Northwestern, applying for those, for example, banking and consulting jobs. Thankfully there was an amazing career center at Northwestern, but I think I ended up doing 30 to 40 interviews. And I can't say that my success rate was good, but it only takes one. And thankfully I was able to get the job that I eventually took and had a good experience from that. So I would just say be very entrepreneurial and opportunistic about going for the thing that you really want. And I think building up an ability to take rejection is actually a really important skill because I probably was rejected way more times than I was accepted to things. But what I found was whatever the next thing I wanted to do in my career is that as long as I kept swinging, eventually a door would open and I'd be able to jump through it and have success. Preena Shroff: Yeah, it seems like a theme. Only one door, only one person, and then you can get to where you are. Joel Meek: Exactly. Preena Shroff: Yeah. No, that's really great, and this is really insightful and super helpful I'm sure to all the students who are a little bit nervous about starting their careers as I am in my third year, just kind of looking towards the future. It's very daunting just to be like, "It's about to happen now." So it was really nice speaking with you about that. Joel Meek: Thank you. It was really nice talking with you as well. Preena Shroff: Thanks so much for joining us today. Have a wonderful day, everyone. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Weinberg in the World.  

FH JBAY | VISION WEEK 2 | Maretha Waldron | 19 January 2025 by Father's House SA

FH JBAY | VISION WEEK 1 | Maretha Waldron | 12 January 2025 by Father's House SA

The Doctrine of Last Things: An Optimistic Amillennial View is the culmination of Dr. Sam Waldron's pastoral heart on eschatology, which spans over thirty years. This book aims to clarify the often contentious and complex discussions surrounding the doctrine of last things (eschatology). Waldron even-handedly addresses various eschatological views, including premillennialism, postmillennialism, and amillennialism, while emphasizing the importance of understanding the relationship between Christ's return and the millennium. Beneficial to all believers, regardless of eschatological position, lay readers and theologians alike will revitalize their hope in these last days and behold clearly the exalted-Christ. Order a copy here: https://freegracepress.com/products/the-doctrine-of-last-things-an-optimistic-millennial-view For more information about CBTS visit: https://cbtseminary.org  

This episode of Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars features Jen Waldron from Augusta Software, addressing the prevalent issue of caregiver job applicants ghosting employers. Jen identifies key challenges in the hiring process and offers insights into optimizing caregiver recruitment.The episode begins with a discussion of a common question: "Where are the good caregivers?" Jen dispels the myth of hidden talent pools, emphasizing that 84% of caregiver hires originate from Indeed.com. This highlights the need for agencies to focus on optimizing Indeed as a recruitment platform. She notes that applicants coming directly from agency websites, though fewer in number, tend to be highly motivated and convert to hires at a higher rate.Jen explains the reasons behind caregiver ghosting, including the ease of applying to multiple jobs with one click on platforms like Indeed, leading to applicant burnout and miscommunication. She encourages agency owners to experience the application process firsthand to understand the frustrations caregivers face.To combat ghosting, Jen advises agencies to:Evaluate the quality of information gathered during the application process.Use clear qualifying standards to ensure only suitable candidates progress.Offer flexible interview formats, especially for candidates applying from distant locations.Respond to applicants quickly, ideally within four days, as delays significantly reduce interview attendance.Jen highlights the importance of measuring recruitment metrics correctly, suggesting that agencies should assess no-show rates based on the total volume of applicants, rather than just scheduled interviews.Augusta Software's platform offers solutions tailored to these challenges. It streamlines the hiring funnel by matching caregiver applicants to agencies using AI-driven processes. The platform ensures that candidates provide comprehensive, home care-specific information during the application, including previously overlooked experience like family caregiving. In return, applicants receive tailored job details, such as location, pay, and flexibility, enhancing their confidence and commitment.A key innovation of Augusta is its caregiver-centric design, featuring simple interfaces optimized for older mobile devices. The platform gamifies the application process, encouraging engagement while reinforcing the job's relevance to candidates. Augusta also addresses a common caregiver need—flexible hours—helping agencies identify and highlight benefits that align with caregiver priorities.The episode concludes with Jen providing practical advice for agencies not yet using Augusta, such as using built-in messaging tools on job boards to engage applicants promptly and asking additional screening questions to gauge suitability. For those interested, she invites listeners to learn more about Augusta Software at its website, www.augusta.care.This episode offers actionable strategies for home care agencies to improve caregiver recruitment, reduce ghosting, and ultimately strengthen their teams.Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars is produced and sponsored by Ankota - If you provide services that enable older or disabled people to continue living at home , Ankota can provide you the software to successfully run your agency. Visit us at https://www.ankota.com. 

Metro districts are a key part of new housing development in Colorado. Tune in as Brownstein's Corey Zurbuch speaks with Robert Rogers, shareholder at White Bear Ankele Tanaka & Waldron, about the challenges and opportunities that come with metro districts.

In this illuminating episode, I'm joined by Tammy Waldron, founder of Towanda Wellbeing and a seasoned Advanced ThetaHealing® Teacher and Practitioner, to explore the transformative power of intuition in healing. Tammy shares her profound insights on connecting to Source energy (Self/Higher Self energy) and how intuitive abilities—often expressed through the "claires" (clairvoyance, clairaudience, etc.)—can deepen our healing journeys. We discuss how parts in Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy can sometimes block intuition, and Tammy provides practical strategies for unblending from these parts to reconnect with intuitive wisdom. Learn how to strengthen your intuition through daily practices, discernment, and muscle testing to bridge the subconscious and the body. Tammy and I also reveal ways to integrate intuition into IFS work, creating stronger connections to yourself and others while preventing burnout through intentional intuition practices. This episode culminates in a special guided meditation led by Tammy to help you tap into your own intuitive abilities and connect with your higher Self. Whether you're an IFS practitioner, someone curious about ThetaHealing®, or seeking new ways to deepen your personal healing journey, this episode is filled with actionable insights and inspiration.   About Tammy Waldron:   Meet Tammy Waldron, founder of Towanda Wellbeing and a passionate guide for wellness practitioners, healers, and truth-seekers looking to align with their True Selves. With over a decade of experience, Tammy leads the transformative R.I.S.E. Program (Reignite Intuition & Self-Expression), a year-long integrative certification that blends powerful modalities like ThetaHealing®, Silent Counseling, and Gene Keys. Through this holistic program, participants learn to release limiting beliefs, heal emotional wounds, and reconnect with their intuition, offering tools to create lasting transformation. Tammy empowers individuals to move from trauma to freedom, overwhelm to clarity, and stagnation to harmony, fostering deep healing, intuitive growth, and an aligned life of purpose. __________________________________ Topics Covered: Connecting to Source energy (Self/Higher Self energy) Exploring intuitive abilities through the "claires" When parts block intuition and how to work through it Strengthening discernment and practicing intuition Muscle testing to connect with the subconscious and body Integrating intuition into IFS work to deepen self-connection Preventing burnout with intuitive practices A guided meditation to connect with your intuition Tune in for an episode that blends spirituality, intuition, and evidence-based practices to empower your journey toward healing and connection. ______________________________________ Tammy Waldron Resources:   Schedule a 30-minute discovery call here: https://calendly.com/towandawellbeing/30min    Website: https://www.towandawellbeing.com/    Email: tammy@towandawellbeing.com    Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tammy-waldron/    Linktree: https://linktr.ee/towandawellbeing    I hope you can join my FREE Monthly Healing Circle—https://www.towandawellbeing.com/healing-circles    ___________________________________ Want to work with Natalie? Contact her below   Website: https://www.ndwellnessservices.com/   Contact: https://www.ndwellnessservices.com/contact    Instagram: @nataliedeering _____________________________   Donate to the podcast Here!    Interested in sponsoring an episode of the podcast? Upgrade your business and let more people know about your amazing services or products by reaching hundreds to thousands of people by sponsoring an episode for only $100!  Please email ndwellness.services@therapysecure.com for more information.  Thank you for the support!    *Please support the podcast by following, rating, and leaving a review*

In this special episode, Tammy Waldron, founder of Towanda Wellbeing, leads a calming and transformative guided meditation designed to help you connect with your intuition for deep healing. Tammy invites you to tap into your inner wisdom, quiet the mind, and align with your True Self. Whether you're new to intuitive practices or looking to deepen your connection, this meditation offers a supportive space to release blocks, cultivate clarity, and harness the healing power within. Take a moment, find a quiet space, and allow Tammy to guide you on this journey to reconnect with your intuition. ______________________________________ Connect with Tammy Waldron:   Schedule a 30-minute discovery call here: https://calendly.com/towandawellbeing/30min    Website: https://www.towandawellbeing.com/    Email: tammy@towandawellbeing.com    Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tammy-waldron/    Linktree: https://linktr.ee/towandawellbeing    _________________________________________ Want to work with Natalie? Contact her below   Website: https://www.ndwellnessservices.com/   Contact: https://www.ndwellnessservices.com/contact    Instagram: @nataliedeering  

In this episode, therapist Keisha Saunders Waldron discusses various topics related to stress, therapy, and emotional well-being. She emphasizes the importance of emotional awareness in children and the need for adults to create safe spaces for them. Keisha also explores the differences in how stress manifests in men and women, highlighting the importance of setting boundaries and practicing self-care.Guest Spotlight: Keisha Saunders-Waldron LCMHC, is a licensed professional counselor supervisor who works with individuals and families to improve their quality of life through the use of counseling and holistic approaches. Keisha holds a Master's degree in Science and Service Agency Counseling from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke as well as a Bachelor's degree in Arts and Science in Psychology with a minor in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.Want to get in touch? Maybe you have an AITA you need solving or a recommendation for On My Radar? Get in touch at hello@editaud.io with Be Well Sis in the subject line! Be Well Sis is hosted by Dr Cassandre Dunbar. The show is edited, mixed and produced by Megan Hayward and Reem Elmaghraby. Our Production Manager is Kathleen Speckert. Be Well Sis is an editaudio collaboration. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Waldron is out! George Ofman and Joey talk about the firing and what happens now. Is Trace Armstrong fleecing the Bears? #bearsfootball MVP Injury Law https://mvpinjurylaw.com/

Alex Shapiro returns to the podcast with Ruthie Polinsky. Alex gives his perspective on the Bears' recent struggles. They talk about Thomas Brown bringing a different approach and focus to the offense. They look back at the hiring process that landed Shane Waldron in Chicago. Matt Eberflus acknowledging his struggles to identify a play-caller. Injury updates and more!

Nick Kostos reacts to the Chicago Bears firing Shane Waldron. Plus, Nick and Femi break down the Rams chances of making the NFL Playoffs. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

(0:00) Felger, Mazz & Murray discuss reports that the Patriots are researching how to handle a young quarterback. (14:47) The Bears fired Shane Waldron - should Alex Van Pelt be next? (22:10) Callers weigh in on rumors that the Patriots are looking for a new offensive coordinator. (31:01) Does history show that the Patriots are likely to mess up the offense?

Joe Ostrowski and Sam Panyotovich continue to react to this morning's breaking news of the Bears firing Offensive Coordinator Shane Waldron, and how this will effect the way we bet Chicago going forward. Plus, some of our favorite team futures to bet right now, including if anyone can anyone challenge the Lions in the NFC. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Reaction as the Bears part ways with Shane Waldron.