Authentic Leadership for Everyday People

Christian Muntean is a strategic coach and consultant based in Anchorage, Alaska, who specializes in leadership transitions and business exits. Christian came into this work from a very nontraditional path. He started his career in the NGO world and specifically doing work supporting medical efforts in Africa and Kosovo. Through this work he became interested in mediation and that is what ultimately led him down his current path.

In our conversation we spent a lot of time discussing his experiences in Africa and how that informed his overall approach to leadership. A key point that he made is that in his experience the success of projects often is affected more by how it is organized and run than by the amount of resources availailable.

Contact Dino at: [email protected]

Websites:

al4ep.com

christianmuntean.com

Additional Guest Links:

Dowload the Train To Lead Self-Assessment HERE

Leadership resources: christianmuntean.com/resources/

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/christianmuntean/

Book: Train To Lead

Authentic Leadership For Everyday People / Dino Cattaneo

Dino on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dinocattaneo

Podcast Instagram – @al4edp 

Podcast Twitter – @al4edp 

Podcast Facebook: facebook.com/al4edp

Music

Susan Cattaneo: susancattaneo.bandcamp.com

Lily ZHeng is a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Strategist, Author and Practitioner. They take a very practical approach, deeply grounded in data and in creating long-term measurable results for the companies they partner with.

In this conversation, Lily explains what it means to take a data driven approach to DEI. They share their focus on fostering long-term partnerships with clients truly committed to change, ensuring that DEI efforts are impactful and sustainable.

They also give us insights for corporate leaders on what makes an effective DEI practitioner, and some of the steps that a senior executive who wants to embrace a data-driven approach to DEI can take.

Contact Dino at: [email protected]

Websites:

al4ep.com

lilyzheng.co

Additional Guest Links:

Contact at:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lilyzheng308

Instagram: @lilyzheng308

Books:

Reconstructing DEI amazon link: Reconstructing DEI

DEI Deconstructed amazon link: DEI Deconstructed

Authentic Leadership For Everyday People / Dino Cattaneo

Dino on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dinocattaneo

Podcast Instagram – @al4edp 

Podcast Twitter – @al4edp 

Podcast Facebook: facebook.com/al4edp

Music

Susan Cattaneo: susancattaneo.bandcamp.com

Jim Schleckser is founder & CEO of The CEO Project, a company that serves CEOs and high-revenue entrepreneurs. Their offering combines peer group meetings and discussions with personalized one-on-one coaching sessions led by former CEOs.

We start with Jim's path to his first CEO role, and how coming up from the sales side shaped his approach. And in this context he shared some of his early mistakes and lessons. We then talked about what drove him to choose a more entrepreneurial path.

We continue with a deep dive into what makes a CEO successful: how to balance organizational culture and leadership, the importance of building complementary teams, the need to know from the beginning how a business is going to be sustainable from a financial standpoint, when and how to think about raising capital. We finish with some thoughts on how the CEO role has changed over the past 20 years and what are the key traits to be effective.

Contact Dino at: [email protected]

Websites:

al4ep.com

theceoproject.com

Additional Guest Links:

Corporate:

The CEO Project Podcast (aka The Lazy CEO podcast): theceoproject.com/the-podcast

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/theceoproject/

Facebook: facebook.com/IncCEOproject

YouTube: @CEOProject

Personal

jimschleckser.com/

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jimschleckser/

Authentic Leadership For Everyday People / Dino Cattaneo

Dino on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dinocattaneo

Podcast Instagram – @al4edp 

Podcast Twitter – @al4edp 

Podcast Facebook: facebook.com/al4edp

Music

Susan Cattaneo: susancattaneo.bandcamp.com

Neta Weiner is an artist and social activist based in Jaffa. He is the founder and lead singer of the Jewish-Arab hip-hop band System Ali and the artistic director of the Beit System Ali social educational movement. And right now, he is also teaching a Tufts University.

System Ali is musical collective of artists of many nationalities and ethnicities, that blends music genres and languages. As we discussed Neta’s journey from the organic birth of System Ali through its evolution into a structured performing group and an educational movement, we touched on a number of points: the challenges of maintaining unity within such a diverse group,the process of making art under conflict, the importance of disagreement within the creation of art, and changing his role from being a pure creator to also being the business leader of the group.

Contact Dino at: [email protected]

Websites:

al4ep.com

Additional Guest Links:

Instagram: @netaweiner

Facebook: facebook.com/neta.weiner

YouTube: youtube.com/user/TheNetaji

Music links:

Linktree

Spotify

Bandcamp

Authentic Leadership For Everyday People / Dino Cattaneo

Dino on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dinocattaneo

Podcast Instagram – @al4edp 

Podcast Twitter – @al4edp 

Podcast Facebook: facebook.com/al4edp

Music

Susan Cattaneo: susancattaneo.bandcamp.com

Today's guest is Patrick Heron - Managing Partner of Frazier Life Sciences, a healthcare investment firm focusing on companies developing novel therapeutics.

In our conversation we covered his career, but then we dove into the hard questions: how do you build a successful partnership with a founder? As a VC, how do you balance protecting the interest of your investors with ensuring the business success of the companies you invested in? How do you navigate the hard trade offs when they show up? And then, in his dual role as investor and managing partner of Frazier, how do you build a successful VC firm? How do you manage that type of work force and how do you make sure all the incentives are lined up correctly?

Throughout the episode, Patrick was very transparent and direct. If you are either a VC or aspiring VC or an entrepreneur, you will find a lot of deep insights.

Contact Dino at: [email protected]

Websites:

al4ep.com

frazierls.com

frazierhealthcare.com

Additional Guest Links:

LinkedIn Corporate: linkedin.com/company/frazier-life-sciences/

LinkedIn Personal: linkedin.com/in/patrick-heron-b4b72913/

Authentic Leadership For Everyday People / Dino Cattaneo

Dino on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dinocattaneo

Podcast Instagram – @al4edp 

Podcast Twitter – @al4edp 

Podcast Facebook: facebook.com/al4edp

Music

Susan Cattaneo: susancattaneo.bandcamp.com

Maggie Olson is the Founder of Nova Chief of Staff, the first-of-its-kind destination for Chief of Staff education, certification, and development. In our conversation, we discussed her career and then dug deep into what it means to lead from the Chief of Staff spot. What are the key steps to take when you start in the role, what are the success factors, what are the traps, and conversely, what CEOs can do to make sure that they successfully onboard a chief of staff.

Maggie is the perfect expert for this conversation. After an impressive career in the retail, food and beverage, and technology sectors, she became the Chief of Staff to the President of the T-Mobile Business Group. In this role, she built the Chief of Staff model from the ground up, creating a highly efficient team and establishing an executive back-office structure. supporting the President, SVPs, and over 5,000 employees. She also built a Chief of Staff team, defining all roles, processes, and systems. This experience led her to the decision to found Nova Chief of Staff.

Contact Dino at: [email protected]

Websites:

al4ep.com

novachiefofstaff.com

Additional Guest Links:

Corporate:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/novachiefofstaff

Instagram: @novachiefofstaff

Facebook: facebook.com/NovaChiefofStaff/

Twitter: @novachiefofstaf

TikTok: @novachiefofstaff

Personal

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/maggie-olson-cos

Instagram: @maggiej_5

Authentic Leadership For Everyday People / Dino Cattaneo

Dino on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dinocattaneo

Podcast Instagram – @al4edp 

Podcast Twitter – @al4edp 

Podcast Facebook: facebook.com/al4edp

Music

Susan Cattaneo: susancattaneo.bandcamp.com

At the end of every episode I ask my guests their "food for the soul" - arts or other things that inspire them. In this episode I answer the question with some of my food for the soul. I start with guitars and specifically, my current favorite guitar, my Powers Electric.

Then I talk about two groups of books that have influenced me - the great early 20th Century European novels and musicians biographies.

Contact Dino at: [email protected]

Websites:

al4ep.com

Mentioned in the episode:

Powers Electric Guitars

Luigi Pirandello - Six Characters in Search of An Authors

Italo Svevo The Conscience of Zeno

Marcel Proust - In Search of Lost Time

Joe Jackson - A Cure for Gravity

Bill Bruford - The Autobiography

Will Hermes Lou Reed - The King of New York

Authentic Leadership For Everyday People / Dino Cattaneo

Dino on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dinocattaneo

Podcast Instagram – @al4edp 

Podcast Twitter – @al4edp 

Podcast Facebook: facebook.com/al4edp

Music

Susan Cattaneo: susancattaneo.bandcamp.com

Claudia Scott, the Head of Inclusive Entrepreneurship and Director of KIVA North West Arkansas at Startup Junkie. In that role, Claudia leads the development and implementation of strategies that give access to capital and other entrepreneurial resources to underserved populations. We talked about the main challenges that these entrepreneurs face suffer, and some of the steps that can be taken to help them succeed.

In our conversation Claudia shared her personal journey from focusing on business success to helping others succeed. She discussed making the hard decision of quitting her career in banking, and how going through the process of finding personal balance also helped her find a new inspiration for her professional path.

Finally, as someone who has it, Claudia is also an advocate for Tourette Syndrome. We discussed her own experience with Tourette syndrome and she shared some advice for supporting people afflicted by it.

Contact Dino at: [email protected]

Websites:

al4ep.com

startupjunkie.org

Additional Guest Links:

Personal:

LinkedIn:linkedin.com/in/claudiapscott/

Instagram: @claudiapscott

Facebook: facebook.com/claudiapscott

Startup Junkie:

Podcast: startupjunkie.org/podcast

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/startup-junkie

Instagram: @startup_junkie

Facebook: facebook.com/startupjunkie

Kiva Northwest Arkansas:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/kiva-nwa

Instagram: @kiva_nwa

Facebook: facebook.com/KivaNWA

Authentic Leadership For Everyday People / Dino Cattaneo

Dino on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dinocattaneo

Podcast Instagram – @al4edp 

Podcast Twitter – @al4edp 

Podcast Facebook: facebook.com/al4edp

Music

Susan Cattaneo: susancattaneo.bandcamp.com

Today's guest is Damon Lembi – CEO of Learnit, published author and host of the Learn-It-All podcast. As you may guess from the name, Learnit is a learning and training company that helps organizations upskill their workforce.

Through college, Damon thought he would be a professional baseball player. He was drafted by the Atlanta Braves in high-school but elected to go to college and played at Pepperdine and Arizona State. But after college he found himself without an option to go pro, and elected to join Learnit, which had just been started by his family, as a receptionist. Over time, he made his way up to CEO.

All of this makes for a very rich episode, where obviously you will hear about the leadership lessons from playing sport at a very high level, building your leadership approach as you move through your business, and how successful entrepreneurs can think about bringing the next generation into their business.

Contact Dino at: [email protected]

Websites:

al4ep.com

learnit.com

Additional Guest Links:

Damon’s website: thelearnitallleader.com

Damon’s Books: thelearnitallleader.com/books

The Learn-It-All Podcast: thelearnitallleader.com/podcast

linkedIn: linkedin.com/in/damonlembi

Instagram: @damonlembi

Youtube: youtube.com/learnittraining

Authentic Leadership For Everyday People / Dino Cattaneo

Dino on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dinocattaneo

Podcast Instagram – @al4edp 

Podcast Twitter – @al4edp 

Podcast Facebook: facebook.com/al4edp

Music

Susan Cattaneo: susancattaneo.bandcamp.com

Joanna Strober is the CEO and founder of MIDI health, a company that provide tele health services to women in midlife. In the process, she ended up taking a leadership role not just for the company but for society as a whole, as MIDI Health does work that fills a big gap.

Like many founders, Joanna had the idea to start the company when she experienced this void of service personally. In our conversation, she very candidly discusses the experience that led her to the idea, and she shares how her previous career as a partner at a venture capital firm helped her design and build a company in a way that would enable it to be economically viable while fulfilling this mission. She also shares some eye opening statistics on what the status of healthcare for women is in this country.

Contact Dino at: [email protected]

Websites:

joinmidi.com

al4ep.com

Additional Guest Links:

Corporate links:

LinkdedIn: linkedin.com/company/midi-health

Instagram: @midihealth

Facebook: facebook.com/joinmidi

Personal Links:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/joannastrober

Authentic Leadership For Everyday People / Dino Cattaneo

Dino on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dinocattaneo

Podcast Instagram – @al4edp 

Podcast Twitter – @al4edp 

Podcast Facebook: facebook.com/al4edp

Music

Susan Cattaneo: susancattaneo.bandcamp.com