Alma Matters: The DL On Finding Success

Oliver and Sasha Zabar have lived and breathed food basically since they were born. Their father, Eli Zabar, has created his own empire in New York with Eli's, which has become an Upper East Side institution, and the twins are trying to branch off and do the same. 

Devon is the brothers' most recent project together. The craft cocktail bar and restaurant offers creative, whimsy cocktails and a selection of shareable plates inspired by the team’s extensive travels in France, North Africa and the United Kingdom, which are made with local, seasonal ingredients sourced from the family-run rooftop greenhouse on the Upper East Side, as well as house-made breads from Eli’s Market on the Upper East Side and the family-run Broome Street Bakery. Enjoy this episode and come out to Alma Matters' next live event - when all the craziness winds down! 

If you're on Instagram or really any social media platform, you'll know Comments By Celebs, the popular account that showcases celebrity interactions and sheds light on the fact that famous people - they're just like us. Emma Diamond and Julie Kramer unintentionally landed on a goldmine when they realized the Instagram algorithm changed to bring celebrity comments to the forefront and identified the opportunity to capitalize on it. Since its conception, Comments by Celebs has racked up 1.4M followers and has spun out into different accounts: Comments by Bravo, Comments by Bachelor, Comments by TikTok etc. In this episode, Emma and Julie talk about starting the account back in their Syracuse days, foregoing their original plans of going to grad school to pursue this full time and what's in store for the future of Comments by Celebs.

On the podcast today, I’m joined by Steve Uria, the founder of one of New York’s hottest workouts Switch Playground, among many other fitness concepts that he developed in his home country of South Africa and during his time in Atlanta and LA. When talking to him and learning about his life as fitness visionary, I thought about Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. At Penn, my alma mater, I actually had the chance to listen to Malcolm Gladwell speak and from the book, he expounded on the 10,000 hour role, which he considers to be the key to becoming world-class in any field. You practice something by dedicating 20 hours of work a week to it for 10 years and that’s your key to success. Steve is perfect proof of that, having immersed himself in physical activity and movement and the study of the human body for more than three decades. 

In this episode, he talks about the origins of his love for fitness, the lessons he learned at school that fostered his scientific knowledge, which inform his practice, his roots in South Africa’s Special Forces Military training and the ways he continues to innovate and revolutionize the fitness space. 

Link to the female founders panel with Jen Gotch of ban.do, Vicki Fulop of Brooklinen and Lisa Barnett of Little Spoon here! https://almamattersxbrooklinen.splashthat.com/

Cyndi Ramirez is the amazing self-made entrepreneur and chiller-in-chief behind Chillhouse, the go-to destination for all things self care. What started as a Lower East Side brick and mortar with a nail salon, massage boutique and full service café has evolved into a national wellness brand with a loyal following and its own editorial platform dubbed The Chill Times. This whole endeavor didn’t stem from the traditional path of college then maybe an MBA. Cyndi dropped out of college twice and spent that time on the ground, learning on the job until she and her now husband found a void in the wellness market and filled it with Chillhouse. Enjoy her incredible story in today's episode! 

New Yorkers, RSVP to The Alma Matters Experience live podcast recording with Jen Gotch, Vicki Fulop and Lisa Barnett here! https://almamattersxbrooklinen.splashthat.com/

When the year started, I made it one of my 2020 resolutions to start reading again because up until then, the extent of it had become work emails and instagram captions. I was a huge English nerd so I always used to leave reading books and plays like The History Boys, anything by Arthur Miller, A Little Life, The Great Gatsby etc etc. One of the books I had the chance to read snippets of and have been extremely excited about it is Buy Yourself the F*cking Lillies. Take it from Chelsea Handler and Adam Grant, two of my favorite human beings on the planet, who called it “compelling, persuasive, and useful no matter where you are in your life,” and “a bracingly honest, funny read . . . like Wild meets You Are a Badass.”

The book’s author Tara Schuster graces the podcast this week and I could not be more excited. After graduating from Brown University, she landed at Comedy Central where she’s had a storied career and now sits as the VP of Original Programming and Development. Some of the shows she’s been in charge of include Key and Peele and David Spade’s Lights Out - no big deal. In this episode, she talks about the lessons that Brown taught her, the evolution of her Comedy Central career and the inspiration for Buy Yourself the F*cking Lillies. 🌷

The beauty industry is an increasingly saturated space. I literally get the most overwhelming wave of anxiety when I walk into a Sephora or even the beauty floor at a Bloomingdale's or Nordstroms. Even though I have some mainstay staples, I'm always intrigued by the products on the next shelf or the lipsticks and glosses that influencers on the store signs are telling me to buy. So I always appreciate a brand that tries to break through the clutter and provide just the key essentials to a good beauty routine. 

Wander Beauty has been doing that since its inception in 2015, when co-founders Divya Gugnani and Lindsay Ellingson met at a party and bonded over their love of travel and conversely, their frustration over the lack of efficiency in their beauty bags. In this episode, Divya talks about how her early beginnings at Cornell, foundational background at Harvard Business School and experiences working on Wall Street helped her to take on the new challenges that come with being an entrepreneur and CEO sitting at the helm of an ever-evolving beauty disruptor. 

I truly garnered a lot of inspiration from this conversation with Minali, the Co-Founder and Head of Brand at Wild One, because her story is one I can identify with. Like me, she's from a different country, took the International Baccalaureate (IB kids, if you know you know), started her career at Bloomingdale's and is just a creative soul at heart. There's something special about finding a person who reflects your path and background and has achieved success. Look around for those people in your life – they're there. 

Back to Minali! After a stint at Bloomingdale's and then becoming one of the initial team members at Sweetgreen, the healthy and modern fast casual chain that has taken the US by storm, she landed at Wild One. As a pet lover, I'm obsessed with the thoughtful design and community they've fostered through the brand and she's had a lot to do with that. 

There are so many Instagram accounts that have popped up just highlighting one of the best things in this world – good food. I could honestly spend an entire day just scrolling through those feeds, watching them break open cookies to uncover slightly melted chocolate chips inside, pull apart pizza so the cheese stretches out, spoon the most perfect bite of pasta (lol I'm torturing myself right now). 

One of the OG food influencers in the game is Alexa Matthews, the name and face behind Eating NYC. She now has over 300K followers and has ventured outside of her page alone to create an IGTV series on PureWow called #StreatTalk and consult for other restaurants. Enjoy this episode! You know the drill – if you liked it, rate, review, subscribe and follow on Instagram @almamatterspod.

It's such a beautiful thing for a first generation student to evolve into a successful entrepreneur at the helm of her own company - and that's exactly the case for Christina Carbonell. The intelligence and work ethic that brought her from Kraft Foods to Harvard Business School to Diapers.com as the third employee, a company that was famously acquired by Amazon, to finally creating her own company was palpable in our conversation.

Today, Christina leads the charge at Primary, a direct to consumer children's brand that focuses on quality, simplicity and price. It's not prescriptive – a little girl can be seen in a red hoodie, a little boy in a bright purple shirt – and it's this approach that really sets them apart. Listen to Christina's incredible story now and drop a review if you liked her episode.