Financial literacy is not a part of the core curriculum in education. I had to teach myself. Many of you had to do the same. These are conversations we need to have more often, especially among black and brown communities. When it comes to underrepresented groups, building generational wealth is extremely difficult due to lack of resources, lack of education, and generations of skewed wealth distribution that makes it nearly impossible to get ahead.

My guest today is Pablo Torres, a Chicago native, financial advisor, and founder of Pablo Wealth Talks. Pablo sees the opportunity to educate newer generations and break down systemic poverty so all can be compensated fairly for the value they add to society.

I’m willing to bet you’ve had more bosses that you’ve struggled with than bosses you were actually excited to work for. Honestly…it’s not their fault. We’ve designed work systems that promote top performers and not the employee with the top leadership skills. It’s time for a change and I am so excited to discuss this with today's podcast guest.

Matthew Sandel’s goal is to wipe out bad leadership. He leverages neuroscience to create better leaders who promote positive culture to change the workplace. I’ve had the privilege of working with his firm, DX Learning, for a while now and I can say that it is the best leadership development training program that I’ve seen. It’s rich, research-driven and empirical.

My work is focused on building human-centric companies. I want to help drive organizations to truly put culture first and help leaders worldwide to build profitable, sustainable, and regenerative ecosystems at work. That’s why I get excited when I connect with like-passionate individuals like Fresia on the podcast.

Fresia Jackson is Lead Researcher at Culture Amp and kindred I/O Psychologist so you might notice our excitement escalating the more we talk together.

Culture Amp is a values-driven company whose mission goes beyond just building a business tool. It includes a commitment to providing the education, community, and support companies need to bring a culture-first approach to their employees..

In times like these, I like to turn to my “why,” or the purpose that is driving my work forward. I can be encouraged to know that, at least in my own little corner of the world, I am doing some good to improve people’s lives at work.

That’s why I’ve enjoyed my conversation with today’s guest, Eric Ressler, who has a keen eye for macro changes and helps individuals take action in micro ways that have a big impact.

Eric is Founder of Cosmic, a Social Impact Creative Agency that empowers social impact in organizations to catalyze real world change by helping them nail their impact story, build brand awareness, and inspire action.

When you think about what makes us great as humans is that we have the capacity for deep emotional connection. The biggest travesty, however, is when we, as individuals, buy into the concept that our self-worth should be tied to the work that we produce. Aiko and I agree that it is wrong and we are here to address it.

Aiko Bethea, Esq., PCC, is Founder of RARE Consulting and Coaching LLC who specializes in providing leadership coaching and workshops for underrepresented individuals. She has been working with leaders for decades who have a desire to create equitable and inclusive teams, want to develop an awareness of their blindspots, and recognize behaviors and circumstances that create barriers for underrepresented individuals.

At their core, DEI professionals are change experts. They own the challenge of shaking the foundation of traditional corporate cultures to help leaders confront subconscious bias.

I usually talk to white male leaders who recognize that they are entitled and privileged, they will say “I’m the last person you should be talking to about DEI,” but that’s not true! For what they lack in lived experiences, can be made up by actively deciding to use that privilege to do better. We need everyone for diversity to flourish.

That’s just what Valerie sets out to do. Valerie Williams is Founder and Managing Partner at Converge Firm, a diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI) advisory that helps organizations design and implement DEI strategies and have bold conversations. Converge aims to address equity issues at scale and drive systemic change within the workplace.

How do you measure wellbeing at work? Is it the number of company retreats each year? The number of positive comments among coworkers? Is it how well employees can memorize the company values?

Being someone who works daily in the culture space, a lot of people reach out to me with “symptoms,” but there is a huge gap between the responsibility of direct leaders and the implementation of company culture. We need to look at our day to day behaviors and make sure they match the values that we proclaim to hold at the organization. Wellbeing is the byproduct of a leaders’ behaviors at work.

My guest today is Matthew Jackson, a subject matter expert in the global HR & benefits SaaS space. Matt is passionate about mental health in the workplace with a proven success record at building high performing teams. Matthew believes in better, empathetic leaders, who are bringing the wellness epidemic to the forefront of productivity management and creating healthy programs for companies to take care of their people.

Underrepresented leaders have a vast array of talents and skills that they bring to the table, but traditional leadership rhetoric has kept their contributions to a minimum.

This is why today’s guest launched Untapped Leaders to create a space for those contributions to be named, validated, and amplified.

Jenny Vazquez-Newsum, Ed.D. is a leadership facilitator and writer with a long-time interest in leadership stemming all the way back to being a 5th grade elementary school elected official. As a biracial Black/Latinx woman, the leadership journey has been bumpy, invigorating. challenging, and a life's work.

Lindsey Caplan is a screenwriter turned organizational psychologist who helps HR and business leaders script their change efforts for the effect they want…

…so you better believe we leaned right into the screenwriting narrative to provide a framework for people-first leaders who want to design better employee experiences.

Managers play essential roles in designing and instigating a better employee experience because they are on the front line interacting with employees daily. If we want our EXD initiatives to break through, we must create better support for our front line managers.

That’s why I love this conversation with Paul, my guest on today’s podcast all the way from Canada, who has spent decades focusing on transformation and systems thinking. When asked about how to transform the leadership function, he digs right in with what has worked in the past and what the future of leadership training holds.

In this episode we discuss how the UNMUTED leader can show up, speak up, and inspire action. Heather boldly states, “when we are conscious, confident, and connected we can truly be unmuted and build a psychologically safe environment to bring out the best in our people. This will allow us to communicate more successfully in a distributed, global workforce.”

Heather focuses on fostering unmuted communication cultures where every voice is heard, resulting in greater inclusion, innovation and efficiency across remote and global teams. She is an outspoken advocate for global voices and her views on global communication have been featured in NPR, ABC, Quartz, and multiple print and radio outlets.

Monique spent the first three decades of her life being a gardener of plants 🪴and now she’s a gardener of people 👩

In this episode we entertain ourselves by comparing horticulture to business culture and how leaders can better tend their “work garden.”

Referring to regenerative business practices, Monique says, “When you do regenerative work, you leverage all the resources available to you to create a clear process and journey for employees to be the true purveyors of culture”

On this podcast we often amplify underrepresented voices, but today we’re opening up conversations for men and how they can avoid burnout by embracing expansive intimacy.

My guest is Jim Young, a burnout coach for men, both individually and in groups, to help them create sustainability in their personal lives and their businesses.“It’s the story I know the best and it’s a huge part of the solution.”

Jim uses a blend of deep personal & professional experiences, along with coaching skills rooted in neuroscience, psychology, emotional intelligence, creativity, play, and good old honesty to help men build the skills that are required to achieve lasting balance in their lives.

When we first decided to launch the Humanly Possible: Future of Work Conversations podcast, it was right in the middle of a pandemic (October 2020), and I had a burning need to use my platform, my knowledge, and my network to have transformative discussions around the world of work. The world of work continues to change, and the podcast has reached more than 50 countries with more than 50 inspiring guests (You all inspire me every single day). And we now have a following of listeners who are in positions to address and inspire transformative conversations around how work and business can be a catalyst for social impact.

We’ve covered topics around wellness, justice, anti-racism, psychological safety, equity, inclusion leadership, and sustainable culture building, and it’s become clear to me that we’re no longer talking about the future of work. The future of work is here, and we must shift the conversation to action and accountability.

Nothing gets me more excited than speaking with brilliant guests who just get it, you know? Dan & Pat Riley, Co-founders of RADICL, understand the human side of the future of work and are working to transform the people function as we know it.

RADICL is an authority in people science and the whole person experience that enables organizations to move beyond traditional employee engagement, performance management and leadership development.

When was the last time you hit your flow state? There is nothing quite like it, the productivity, the at-one-ness with your work etc… Trying to find and stay in that state can be a challenge, but there are two bright minds working to ensure that you stay on your A-game.

On this episode, I’m joined by two special guests, Ulf Schwekendiek and Steven Puri, co-founders of the app Centered. Together, in response to the growing influence of distracting technologies, Centered was created to help people be more productive by getting into deep work states quicker and staying there longer. It’s not just a “to do” app, Centered is changing the way we think about work. We discuss their experiences in creating this mindfulness app that “helps you get work done faster and happier.” 

Spirituality and work are often two terms that mix as well as water and vinegar, but if workers put so much stock into their careers, it’s almost impossible not to consider their spiritual wellbeing also.

According to my guest, Janelle King, the two are practically inseparable. In this episode we dig into the importance of understanding the intersection of individual spirituality, finding organizational meaning and purpose, and the difference between having a purpose and a “calling”

80-85% of stress in organizations is caused by ineffective, internal communication. That means, according to Evan, that organizations are standing in the way of their own success.

In today’s episode we get the best of two worlds, Evan Singer is a former-NFL and former-Uber leader turned people-first entrepreneur. He has used his experiences to apply a human-centered approach to leadership, communications, performance, and well-being through understanding stress and evolving mindset and resilience.

“We need to get clear that there is probably not this thing called ‘culture’ that an organization dictates and pushes through an organization. It needs to be viewed as a network effect, a collaborative effect, and a co-creation effect.”

This is one of the many powerful soundbites dropped by my most recent guest Ciela Hartanov, which contained many jaw-dropping moments. She makes a VERY convincing case for employee experience design.

Our guest on today’s podcast helps connect preventive health to culture at work and sustainability.

Dr. Jim Feng founded Phyxable Inc, an end-to-end virtual pain and prevention platform that uses machine learning, augmented reality and gamification to coach people out of pain, while empowering them with better human performance.