Awakin Calls

William Rosenzweig learned he had been awarded the Nobel-level prestigious Oslo Business for Peace Award via a Google news alert -- and immediately assumed it was spam.  "I printed it out and went around the office and asked people, 'Does this look for real, or is this like a scam thing where somebody generates an e-mail that inserts your name here?'" said the educator, entrepreneur and investor.

It was in fact real.  A 2010 recipient of the Oslo Business for Peace Award, selected by a committee of Nobel Laureates for “the highest distinction given to a businessperson for outstanding accomplishments in the area of ethical business,” Will has spent more than twenty-five years integrating the practices and perspectives of an entrepreneur, venture investor, and pioneering educator in order to help transform global corporate business practice.  He is one of just a handful of leaders whose work has catalyzed positive change from a previously narrow and disconnected metric comprised solely of financial returns, into the current ecosystemic perspective which includes care for our planet and each other as part of a redefinition of “actual” return. 

Will credits his childhood, in part, for preparing him to operate within what he refers to as the "schizophrenia of capitalism."  "I am the product, literally, of a rocket scientist and a humanities professor who's a Shakespeare scholar," he has said.  He’s also the beneficiary of life lessons from the family’s Japanese gardener.

Now a constant gardener himself, Will is co-founder and Managing Partner at Physic Ventures, the first venture capital firm dedicated to investing in keeping people healthy.  He has been involved in growing the health and sustainability sectors through his work as an entrepreneur and investor in Odwalla, Trinity Springs, Winetasting.com, Yummly, and Brand New Brands, a functional food incubator he founded in 2004. 

In 1990, he co-founded and was CEO of The Republic of Tea, an award-winning specialty tea company that is credited with creating the premium tea category in the United States “sip by sip, rather than gulp by gulp.”  The Republic of Tea is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2017.

In accepting the Oslo award, Will remarked:  “The people who know me best know that at heart I am just a quiet gardener. … A gardener sees the world as a system of interdependent parts -- where healthy, sustaining relationships are essential to the vitality of the whole. ‘A real gardener is not a person who cultivates flowers, but a person who cultivates the soil.’ In business this has translated for me into the importance of developing agreements and partnerships where vision and values, purpose and intent are explicitly articulated, considered and aligned among all stakeholders of an enterprise - customers, employees, suppliers, shareholders, and the broader community and natural environment.”

Will pioneered the development and teaching of the first MBA courses in Social Entrepreneurship and Social Venture Development at the Haas School of Business at University of California, Berkeley, where he has served on the faculty since 1999. He has been a Price Kauffman Fellow and a visiting faculty member at London Business School.  Currently Will is teaching, along with Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, the most popular undergraduate class at UC Berkeley:  Edible Education, a course that “explores the future of food, its diverse systems and movements.”  And in November 2014, Will joined forces with The Culinary Institute of America to launch The Food Business School.  As Dean and Executive Director of The Food Business School, Will is working with industry experts to create specialized programs that enable and empower entrepreneurs to design, deliver, and lead transformative innovations that address the world’s most pressing food challenges—and its greatest business opportunities.

As co-author of The Republic of Tea: How an Idea Becomes a Business, which was named one of the 100 Best Business Books of All Time, Will asks a question that possibly reflects for him a persistent issue:  “Can poetry make a business?” 

The sum of Will’s vibrant and prescient journey in transforming business values continues to inform the world.  He serves as Senior Advisor to Generation Investment Management, a global investment management partnership chaired by Vice President Al Gore.  From his UC Berkeley classroom have emerged world-class businesses such as World of Good, Indiegogo, GoodGuide and Revolution Foods, and his now closed VC firm supported firms including Gazelle, Pharmaca Integrative Pharmacies, Recylebank and WaterSmart Software.  His work has been profiled in The Wall Street Journal, Sound Money, Business Week, USA Today, and the San Francisco Chronicle.  In 2014, Will was named on the Purpose Economy 100 list of leaders who are “the first to research, develop, and shape markets that foster community, expression, and impact,” and in 2016, he was recognized as one of the 7 shapers of the future of food by Bon Appetit magazine.

What has emerged most recently in Will’s garden, Ideagarden, springs from his earliest roots as a professional magician, jazz cornetist, mime, and student of film at Cornell.  Ideagarden contains Will’s musings and reflections on topics including Entrepreneurship, Garden, Innovation, Livelihood, and Poetry. 

Join us in conversation with this remarkable and visionary leader!

A father who left before she was born.  Relocating with her mother and uncles as refugees from Vietnam to Canada as a young child.  Growing up in an overcrowded household.  Gangs.  A scholarship to the prestigious engineering program at the University of Waterloo.  Systems engineering jobs at some of the world's leading technology corporations.  A diabetes diagnosis after nearly bleeding to death.  A recommitment to health, and a Kickstarter campaign to learn to cook and share it with the world.  A return to Vietnam as a foodie and blogger, and a newfound sense of purpose as a traveling food writer and published author.  Then back on the technology career track as an engineer in leading companies and at a booming startup.  Pre-cancer diagnosis.  A fight for life and a return to health (for the second time), but this time via naturopathy, meditation, and numerous alternative healing modalities -- modalities that allowed her to uncover buried issues including the sexual abuse she experienced as a child.  Now booming startup founder and dedicated community servant.

Technology entrepreneur Thu Nguyen has transformed her life into one of service -- on "the other side of deprivation and need."  Through remarkable resourcefulness, resilience, and a dedication to re-learning the "art of living", Thu has found joy on the other side of suffering. 

"You can't really experience joy without the suffering," she has written. "It's a priceless memory you will never forget, as opposed to pleasures you can buy. What I learned is that you can't really know what good is until you experience the bad. The Yin and the Yang, they're a packaged deal. And if you want to experience joy, you need to overcome pain. ... So when things are not working out, and you're in that cycle of suffering, just remember -- this probably leads to a feeling of unbelievable joy...eventually."

Thu is currently the CEO and Co-founder of Flowzo, a startup dedicated to bringing high-speed internet to smaller North American metropolitan cities, in which large telecommunications companies are not incentivized to invest in large infrastructure projects such as laying fiber.  A computer engineer who specializes in wireless communications/systems, Thu previously worked on putting the first embedded WiFi chips into the first iPhone and into all kinds of consumer electronics.  

Thu's earlier professional life had followed a trajectory of career sprints, burnout, health scares, and then rehabilitation. "When I finally realized I needed to change, the right people appeared. It's like you open your eyes to a different subset of stories and resources on your newsfeed and more importantly, you realize that you're not alone."

It was after her second health scare -- a pre-cancer diagnosis, together with diabetes and depression -- that she realized she needed to change.  Through the help of two close friends, one of whom was a naturopath, Thu became introduced to a range of healing modalities outside of the western medicine framework. "Within 2 years, I was able to reverse the diabetes back to pre-diabetes and complex atypia hyperplasia back to simple hyperplasia, one step away from 'healthy'. During this time, I posted a quote a day on Instagram mostly for myself and then realized others looked forward to seeing them every morning. In 2015 I went for my first Vipassana retreat and have been back every 6 months. It was the first time I found something that made sense and was so practical. I felt an incredible pull as I was given a second chance at life -- to make the most of every moment I had left."

"When you truly have time to listen to yourself, get comfortable with yourself, you start remembering why you're here," Thu wrote. "You start remembering our goal as humans and how we are intricately connected to each other. You start realizing you can't be at peace if your neighbors are not at peace. There's really no better way to spend your time than on yourself. Call it what you will, self-absorbed/selfish. But when you do become at peace with yourself, even for a moment, it's much harder to spread negativity, fear and hate in the world. It's easier to pause and contemplate before naturally reacting. What I've learned is that working on yourself is a big contribution to society as a whole."

Join us in conversation with this remarkable woman!

“Freedom is the goal of the liberal education.”

A teacher at Berkeley High School in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Douglas Powers was a student of philosophy exploring phenomenology and freedom of the mind, as well as a self-described Bay Area “happy hippie,” when he encountered Buddhism, in the form of Venerable Master Hsuan Hua, in 1973.  Drawn to Buddhist precepts about the mind and the causes and conditions of freedom, Doug embarked upon the study (and the eventual teaching and practice) of Buddhism even as he continued a lifelong learning and teaching career in Western philosophy.  Doug taught at Berkeley High School for nearly 40 years, until 2009, where he was among the early instructors in the special education program and later taught history, economics and English. 

Doug is now a Professor as well as the Provost and Vice President of Finance and Administration at Dharma Realm Buddhist University located at The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Mendocino County, California, 110 miles north of San Francisco.  Dharma Realm Buddhist University is a small, private institution of higher learning dedicated to liberal education in the broad Buddhist tradition—a tradition characterized by knowledge in the arts and sciences, self-cultivation, and the pursuit of wisdom. Its pedagogical aim is twofold: to convey knowledge, as well as to activate an intrinsic wisdom possessed by all individuals. All students partake of a unified curriculum, reading the original seminal texts of the Eastern and Western traditions. Undergraduates study a broad liberal arts curriculum including eastern classics, western classics, writing, music, mathematics and natural sciences.  The University was established in 1976 by Venerable Master Hua, who devoted his life to education in developing the human character.

Having taught in Berkeley public schools for nearly four decades, Doug is constantly pushing the edge of how Buddhism can be brought into contact with the “modern mind.” Versed in both Western philosophy and Buddhist thought, he currently lectures on Western Philosophy, and Buddhist Study and Practice.

“Western psychology— Freud in particular—developed the concept that freedom means acting on one’s desires,” Doug has written. “One of the Buddha’s first and most fundamental awakenings centered on the insight that to act on desire—on impulse, on instinct—is actually a form of bondage. … It’s a pattern, an almost involuntary reflex that actually holds us in bondage to a previous habit pattern. Every time we yield to and act on a habitual desire it becomes more ingrained and consequently harder for us to break in the future.  … True freedom paradoxically comes not from getting what you want but from not wanting to get. In short, freedom means being free from desire, free from greed, free from habits.”

As Vice President of Finance at the University, Doug has the unique task of applying these principles to the institution’s finances.  “You can create any community with any amount of money and if the people themselves don't manifest the values with each other, there's no value to the institution at all. It's just another institution amongst other institutions. Unless you can do something fundamentally different in the way that we both experience ourselves and experience each other, and actually live that life in some kind of a way as a manifestation, what is there for us to institute to do of any value? Just become another institution? I'd rather hang out in a hammock. I'm not interested in creating an institution that's battling other institutions for funding,” he says.

“The key is that every time you decide you don't need something you gain that amount of freedom of mind. Every dollar you don't need, you gain freedom of mind. I was taught that money is really a problem because you get habituated in it and you get attached to it and you get bound by it. Money is a bondage. The freer you can be from the money the less of a bondage you have in that way.” 

As an early Western disciple of Master Hua, Doug has served in many capacities in DRBU over the years, including administering a refugee program at City of Ten Thousand Buddhas and serving as the principal of Instilling Goodness & Developing Virtue boys’ school.  He holds an MA in Philosophy and Religion from the Graduate Theological Union and an MAT in Political Science from the University of Redlands. He has been on the Adjunct Faculty of the Graduate Theological Union since 2003. 

Douglas has been married for nearly 30 years, has children and grandchildren, and lives in Carmel.

“Wisdom is not about intellectual debate, but magical moments of presence so deeply connected and so pure with people.”  -- Bernd Kolb (Atman Project)

Business leader Alfred Tolle has spent his personal and professional lives at the geographic as well as spiritual intersections of East and West – maintaining personal spiritual practices even while professionally scaling some of the world’s biggest corporations in Asia, Europe, and the United States. Now he is aiming to bring those worlds together, by “trying to bridge the business world and the spiritual world in a meaningful way.”

Alfred started meditating daily in the Zen tradition nearly 30 years ago as a student. Originally from Germany, Alfred got a scholarship to write his thesis about Japanese theater in Japan. “So I went to Japan and wrote about Kabuki. And while I was there I’d visit temples and shrines and I came across people—it was really like coming from work and doing some meditation, and then drinking a cup of tea and then going home. It’s really normal for them, actually; it’s integrated into their daily life. That was 1988, 1989. I got interested and that was my introduction to meditation. Then I did martial arts as well, which always has some alignment with meditation practices as well.”

But the seeds for Alfred’s consciousness of what he calls the “higher dimensions” of the universe were planted earlier, at the age of 13 – when, still grieving the death of his mother in a car accident a few years earlier, he was suddenly confronted with the tragic loss of his father from a heart attack. “At that moment of time [in the hospital],” Alfred recounted, “I discovered not only a deep sadness, but I discovered also a kind of moment where I felt connected to each and everybody; space and time were no longer existing. And that kind of moment accompanied me through my whole life, and that (I’m recognizing now) is why I am doing what I’m doing.  And that was a magic moment for me when I was 13.”

“Interpreting it now, and looking back, it gave me a sense that there’s a deeper meaning to everything we do, something that goes beyond what we see and experience or can understand with our rational mind. I think that’s the basis for how I make my decisions in life and how I solve things. … Then the Universe probably helped me meet some people along the way. I once wanted to become an actor. I had an Italian teacher who … was a deep soul. We had two-hour sessions with exhausting physical exercises. Then when you were completely exhausted, he’d say, ‘Now we start working.’ Because then, you didn’t have any energy left for your ego to prevent you from having deeper experiences of what art really is.”

Alfred went on to assume leadership roles in some of the world’s largest technology and media companies. He was Vice President of Bertelsmann online in Asia/Japan and Executive Board Member of Daum Communication in Korea; then CEO of Lycos in Boston; and then a senior sales manager in Google’s European headquarters in Dublin. In each of these roles, he instigated a number of projects that supported convenings and conversations aimed to bridge spirituality and business. He initiated several happiness and wellbeing projects within Google and was instrumental in bringing the first Wisdom 2.0 Conference to Europe, referred to as “an unholy alliance of Googlers, Buddhist monks, techies, HR directors, MPs and recovering CEOs band[ying] around words like ‘compassion’, ‘empathy’, ‘communion’ and ‘consciousness’.” Alfred organized the event because “we have to reconnect to our souls and ourselves in order to use technology wisely. I see it as my job to drive Google in that direction.”

Following a successful corporate career, Alfred left Google “because I felt I’d maximized what I could do to make the world a better place from inside the system.” He increasingly felt the constraints of corporations’ unending commitment to ever-increasing profits and a growth-at-any-cost mindset. And so he left the corporate world to become the Founder and Chairman of Wisdom Together, a non-profit association aiming to foster compassion and wisdom by promoting well-being and values for a prosperous and sustainable world.

“I felt that there are so many people, institutions and organizations in this world striving for a higher consciousness, and trying to bring compassion to the world. But they’re not connected to each other; they’re operating in their own little ecosystems. So … I want to help establish contacts and connections between these groups and individuals for an exchange of their experiences and perceptions of the world. Such an exchange might help them to get to the next level, spiritually—as well as reaching another dimension in the material world as well. If these two are aligned—the spirituality with the material world—this will be for the good for everybody. If these are not aligned, then it could be destructive, and that’s what we’ve been seeing. That’s why I think wisdomtogether.com should have places where we come together—for conferences, meetings, workshops, retreats—with the intention of exchanging our ideas and for creating networks and inspiring people, and for creating new ideas and supporting them in creating new kinds of projects that can create this alignment that makes better work possible.”

Alfred aims above all to inspire a new kind of conscious leadership in traditional institutions. “Leading means understanding where the other people, or another person is, and creating a place and a framework that he or she can use to develop to the next level, if that’s what they’re seeking. To help them, to your best extent, so that they can spiritually, and also professionally, develop in the best way they decide to do. I think that’s the leadership we need. … Conscious leaders have high levels of inner and outer awareness and act with compassion to share their knowledge and experience with others in order to contribute to a greater good. They lead from an inner source of wisdom and authentic power, and can be found in any position in our societies. In our view conscious leaders can play a fundamental role in a transformative process that goes from the inside out: from leaders to organizations to systems.”   

Join us in conversation with this remarkably authentic, conscious leader!

When you consider its synchronicities and various plot twists, Luc Reynaud’s life seems stage directed by the universe.  Perhaps it all started when at 6 years old he announced to his teacher Rayma Hayes that he was going to paint the moon.  “And what about the Earth, Luc?” responded Rayma, “What about all the other planets? What about the universe?” Luc felt an electric surge of energy through his body, as his teacher picked up a huge bolt of construction paper and unfurled it across the classroom floor. “Paint the entire universe Luc,” Rayma said, “I’ll help you.” For the next few weeks, Luc -- along with his friends -- painted the universe. It was a heady first taste of what it felt like to dream a big dream, hold a shared vision, and color it in with community.

Years later, in his small, hometown of Methow Valley, Luc took on a miniscule role in a theater version of “Grease.” When the lead actor playing Danny Zuko didn’t show up to rehearsal one day, teenager Luc joked aloud that he could substitute, since he came from a musical family and was familiar with the part. The directors took him at his word and put him in the starring role.

That inadvertent step into the limelight awakened Luc’s passion for theater and film-making. It led to his decision a few years later to pursue acting at the University of Washington. It was there that his path to self-discovery really began. During an acting class the instructor had students focus on their breath. Luc was hooked by the experience, and began to actively explore the practice of meditation. Through all this time his connection to music lay beneath the surface, waiting like dormant seeds in the desert for summer rains. The perfect storm came in 2002, when during a hitchhiking trip Luc bought a used guitar in San Francisco and discovered his calling. His love for music broke into blossom. He dedicated himself to honing his craft, but it would still be a few more years before he discovered music wasn't just something he loved.  Music could be a force of love.

Luc was working at a construction site in 2005 when he saw images of the havoc being wreaked by Hurricane Katrina. Unable to fathom that kind of suffering in his country, and so close to home, he went to his boss to ask for a leave of absence. Two days later he was on a flight to New Orleans with the Red Cross. He was assigned to a shelter in Baton Rouge. On a whim he’d brought his guitar with him. Five days into volunteering, he snuck out to a quiet spot behind the shelter for a “music break”. There already were two older men silently smoking cigarettes. Luc began to strum the chords of Otis Redding’s hit, “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay”. As if he’d flipped a switch, the two men began snapping their fingers to the beat, as their voices swelled with the lyrics. “They just took the song away,” Luc recalls in his 2012 Tedx Talk, “It was weird because that was the most alive I had seen anybody since I’d been down there…I remember I got the message immediately. I was like play music. Get out of yourself, and play music. It obviously helps.”

Luc began playing his guitar for the kids at the shelter. Eventually they began to develop their own lyrics and co-created “Freedom Song”. Then they toured the shelter with it. They played to evacuees who had lost so much so recently, but whose spirits could still be lifted, their burdens lightened, by the intangible power of song. Returning home, Luc couldn’t stop talking about these phenomenal kids and their music. It was his grandfather who told him he had to go back -- and record them. Soon Luc was on a flight back to Baton Rouge with four goals and no plans. Find the kids. Find a recording studio they could use for free. Get the kids to the studio. Record the song. [All this in the middle of a disaster zone]. Four days later, with a little bit of help from the universe, and a lot of kind strangers and his friend and eventual band member Benjamin Swatez, he had done all the above.

In 2010 after getting in touch through a MySpace account that Luc rarely checked, two-time Grammy award winner, Jason Mraz, re-recorded Freedom Song with Luc’s permission, and began to play it to audiences all over the world.  Thanks to the exposure Mraz created, the song would later be adopted as the anthem of “Free the Slaves”, an organization fighting against modern slavery.

In 2007, Luc formed his band Luc and the Lovingtons -- with the intention to merge music and service. Luc and the Lovingtons is a world-soul-reggae band that uses a multi-sensory approach, mixing the colors of love with musical notes.  They definitely beat to a different drum. In 2014 they created a new format for touring called “The Goodness Tour Music and Art for People Facing Adversity.” As the band put it, they wanted to “take music where it can’t be paid for, bringing free, live music and art to people facing extreme adversity.” The tour provides concerts to people in need and can be found at homeless shelters, youth crisis centers, hospitals, refugee camps and more.

Last year, the band collaborated on “Welcome to My House,” a song and music video, with Voices of the Children. The video was filmed in a Syrian Refugee Camp in Jordan and also featured Syrian and American youth dancing in the United States.

Luc and the Lovingtons are currently working on their third studio album and preparing for an international tour promoting peace, joy and love. As they continue to paint the universe with the colors of music and community, they are showing the world that no matter what happens, or where, we can still dream and help others dream, we can still sing awake the spirit and harmonize across the divides. All it takes is tuning in to the stage directions of the universe – and the guidance of our inmost heart.

Join us in conversation with this infectious musician-storyteller.

 

Walking in the footsteps of his grandfather, Anthony Chavez wants to make difference in the lives of young people.

"What I want to tell the youth is that their voices do matter that they can start making change now," Chavez says.

He is the grandson of César Chavez, who formed the United Farm Workers union and led the Farm Workers Movement in California in the 1960s, fighting for civil rights while promoting nonviolence.

"I remind students what my grandfather said, 'We don't need perfect political systems, what we need is more perfect participation,’" Chavez has said.

Anthony, the oldest son of Socorro and Paul Chavez, César's oldest son, grew up attending UFW marches and political efforts and now travels the country speaking on behalf of the César Chávez Foundation.  He speaks about the legacy of the farm worker movement and of his grandfather, while advocating for service learning and character education initiatives with the Alameda County Office of Education.

“What we do is share this one example of history — my grandfather — to try to move others to make a difference,” says Anthony Chavez.

But Anthony does more than speak about the social impact of his grandfather.  He conveys the internal character, sacrifices, and commitment to service, compassion, and community that made the external impact of his grandfather’s work possible.  Anthony tells students that civil rights icon César Chavez was able to improve the conditions for American farmworkers and mobilize 17 million people worldwide in a California grape boycott because he recognized the power individuals could have when they joined together to fight for justice.

“He always used to remind us there's never a time in our life when we don't need the help of another," Anthony says, connecting his grandfather's activism with that of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and contemporary uprisings in the Arab world.  "The end of all education should be service to others," he says. "I want to remind you to aim high, dream big, follow your heart."

Anthony does not come by these lessons of character and integrity lightly.  He spent many years serving as travel assistant to Benedictine Brother David Steindl-Rast, world-renowned author, speaker, lecturer and interreligious pioneer, during Brother David’s national and international tours.  And Anthony now serves on the board of Gratefulness.org, founded by Brother David, and as an adviser to both the Fredrick Douglas Family Initiative and the President’s Advisory Council at Character.org.

“When Brother David spoke, his words carried weight, and that’s something I enjoyed – being in his presence – that his words carried weight.  Even when he was joking around …. That kind of just represented the integrity, and the discipline, and who he is,” Anthony says.  “As I was going through religious studies and had transitioned over from political science and economics, I was very interested in looking at ways that we can be of service to one another, looking at ways where we could find these fine threads that unite us all together at the core.  … I realize that a lot of my grandfather’s work and the work of Mahatma Gandhi and MLK Jr. was very simple – and it was all on the premise of respecting a human life for what it was.  … MLK Jr., what he was aspiring toward – even though it was to help the African American population in the south with all the racism and hatred or anger he was dealing with – he reminded them it was about everyone’s wholeness, for everyone’s well-being; to make sure we can live in a just world together.  That’s what I realized about Brother David’s message [of gratefulness and thanksgiving and gratitude] – that it goes right down to the fundamentals and to the essentials and to the priorities of reminding ourselves that we should be grateful for the lives that we have and the lives that we share … by learning to respect the life that we belong to and the life that we have, it allows us to shape a new course of action because we put ourselves in a very mindful, a very considerate, a very compassionate (if you want to call it that) view or vantage point so I think it calls for a certain action out of us and we start to see things in that new light.”

In speaking with youth, Anthony is motivated by the belief that all real change comes down to “just talking to people and helping them gain the courage to realize they can do extraordinary things.”  Citing Brother David’s words that “real wisdom begins with wonder, and curiosity and caring come from the same place,” Anthony believes it is “important to ask questions – enter into the conversation, mindful, thoughtful, considerate conversation with people – that’s how you begin to make yourself aware.”  From this place of curiosity and conversation, Anthony encourages youth to speak out about the things that are important to their hearts, and to those things that make each of them individually “feel like you need to speak out and say something.  Find your place of entry.”  He says that the best place to start is to begin with issues that call the greatest amount of attention to each person uniquely.

Anthony recognizes that “it’s all about turning the little me into the big we.”  “It’s very hard when people ask me ‘what are YOUR dreams, what are YOUR aspirations, what’s YOUR ambition?’  Me?  I don’t know about me or mine or your?  I think I’ve been shaped, and I’m glad to be shaped this way, where try to think of the larger we, because the little me is always taking care of itself, it’s always attending to its needs.  So you could actually not focus on yourself and you’ll still manage to take of yourself but you could also do a lot more for other people.  And I think in doing more for other people you actually receive quite a bit.  By giving you receive a lot actually.  And so I think that’s really what reenergizes me, is just connecting with young folks, and seeing their sheer brilliance their creativity their imagination their caring their curiosity and telling them to run with it.”

Anthony holds a B.A. in Religious Studies from California State University, Bakersfield, and completed the San Francisco-based Coro Fellows Program in Public Affairs in 2014.  He is an avid skateboarder.

Join us in conversation with this wise and inspirational youth leader!

 

When Scott Elias lost 80% of his hearing in kindergarten, his emotional and intuitive connection to the world went into overdrive like a sixth sense. When his hearing was surgically restored two years later, the medical miracle ignited his passion for music and science which he channeled into his wildly successful 30+ year career as the CEO of the world’s largest and most-awarded audio communications agency, Elias Arts.  It's from this uniquely intuitive and empirical place that he stands against the conventional economic thinking that businesses exist simply to make a profit. Scott’s work is a force for bringing out the very heart and soul of business.  By designing for love in some of the world’s biggest companies, he’s a leading voice for the idea that business success is not the goal, but rather a by-product of offerings that fuel people to express who they are and all they yearn to become.

Scott has helped launch, grow, and re-position nearly 40% of the top 1,000 global brands through audio communications, branding, psychoacoustics, and environmental and embedded product audio.  As the co-founder and pioneering CEO of Elias Arts, the world’s largest, most awarded audio communications firm, Scott led an extraordinary team that redefined audio’s role in communication and brand strategy.  Scott and his team pioneered systems that allow businesses to harness music – which uniquely reaches directly into a highly charged, emotional dimension of the brain and creates enduring memories – in order to design and reinforce a coherent and compelling set of product or service messages and to generate powerful consumer bonds triggered by music.  Elias Arts initiated large-scale use of audio and the emotive pull of music as a means to give voice to brands – Adidas, Apple, Budweiser, Coke, Columbia, eBay, eTrade, Exxon, Nike, Universal, Verizon, Visa, Yahoo – to name just a few.  The firm to date has received 750 awards for 7500 commercial projects including 2 Emmys, hundreds of Clios, AICPs, London International Awards, and Cannes Lions.  

Scott is a serial entrepreneur, investor and growth consultant.  As technology reinvented the music industry, he rode the turbulent networked world to focus on mutually rewarding business relationships as the enduring source for sustainable growth and profit. This propelled the launch of TheRelationcy, where Scott serves as Chief Growth Advisor and mentor to CEOs and CMOs of purpose-driven brands.  Since 2011, Scott also has headed up LivingWorks Ventures, a venture firm focused on seeding and sustaining the growth of "designed for love" companies, brands, and products. LivingWorks helps companies design, develop, and deliver the most reliable and effective paths to sustainable profits by aligning the organization, creating market coherence, focusing opportunity, and reducing distraction.

When, says Scott, does a brand or company succeed? When it becomes a company that people love. 

As one of the earliest and most influential proponents of harnessing sound’s emotional impact as a gateway for generating heartfelt connections, Scott views marketing as a bridge for connecting the intrinsic purpose of the organization to the emotional needs and soul needs of their communities of customers. “Great marketing embraces fundamental human truths, and then helps people achieve their aspiration,” says Scott. He identifies the key components of great marketing as rich communication, rich experiences, and rich relationships augmented by tools and platforms that allow customers to form their own communities. “When all of those things come together, […] then we have what we see to be as the future of marketing which is rich commerce.”

While recent marketing research indicates that brands are increasingly becoming irrelevant as most consumers don’t care if 74% percent of them disappeared. Yet of the brands that people do care about, chances are high that Scott had a hand in launching, growing, or repositioning them. And the ironic secret to success lies in going from branding to being. Scott helps companies identify and embody their signature purpose for existing, which unlocks incredible alignment within the organization and translates into market coherence with a laser-like focus on serving the needs and aspirations of customers. With such deep attunement to their hearts, customers become community and the company thrives because it is loved.

Scott says we’re stuck in a transactional economy that dates from the WWII era—with damaging results. Messages from companies are increasingly annoying and noise-filled, fueling people to disengage and disconnect while breeding mistrust and distrust. Yet Scott is doing to marketing what he does to companies: seeing it for what it is, appreciating what it could be, and helping it become what it longs to be.

As a serial entrepreneur, Scott is a striking blend of head and heart; always looking to understand what sustains people – emotionally, physically and intellectually – then growing a business from there.  Scott is also an active mentor and professor at universities on three continents.  A Northwestern University graduate, he loves being an adjunct Graduate Professor at City College of New York and teaching in Shanghai, Lyon and Helsinki to Master’s degree students.

Join us for this exciting call into the head and heart of an innovative changemaker in business!

In 1999 Liz Mitten Ryan, award-winning artist, mother of six and founder of a successful fine art publishing company in Vancouver, traded in the secure terrain of her known life to move with her architect husband, and a herd of eleven horses, to Gateway 2 Ranch -- a 320-acre slice of paradise nestled in the grasslands of British Columbia. For several months their home was a simple tent in the midst of an enchanted landscape studded with lakes, wild flowers, emerald hills and whispering woods. In this vast solitude it became customary for Liz to spend her days following the herd. Communing with them she began to recognize their deep gift for  connection to all of life, and how being in their presence awakened that sense of connection within her own heart. Thus began the path of her deepest calling -- to connect with animals and spirit and to share that understanding with the world as best she could.

Liz chronicled her experiences in a remarkable book "One With the Herd" a mesmerizing collage of journal entries, original art work and photographs of the horses from that early formative period. Several more books followed, and also nine book awards, including the prestigious Nautilus Award.

As an animal communicator, Liz considers all the creatures she lives with (now numbering fourteen horses, a pony, dogs, cats and a steer named Tesoro) as collaborators. She seeks to be a channel of their particular wisdom and messages, and many of her books are written in their voices. The animals often mix their insight with humor. From her cat Min Buddha Ben Puss Ha for instance, comes this cosmic catchphrase: "Isness Is My Business." 

As Liz puts it, "Just experiencing downtime with each horse individually, and feeling their energy as a group, is a meditation. Horses are great spiritual beings; just being in their presence is almost like a tuning fork that changes the vibration of the instruments around it. I find insight in their presence; a thought simply pops into my mind and I recognize it as a truth that I know at another level." 

Born into a loving environment, and free to roam the expanse of the property and return to the shelter of the barn at will, Liz's herd is offered a rare kind of freedom, and over time it became clear to Liz and other visitors to the ranch, that the horses had something truly unique to offer. For over a decade now, Liz has facilitated "Equinisity Retreats" on her magnificent ranch. Coined by her husband Kevin, the word 'equinisity' means "the gift of finding the unexpected and truly meaningful perspective through the clear and almost 360 degree vision of the equine."  People from all over the world come to these retreats, which run from April through November of each year. For a little over a week Gateway 2 Ranch becomes their home. During this time they are exposed to Liz's way of working with the horses, an approach that depends not on pressure and punishment, but on the far more subtle, and stunningly effective powers of invitation, intention and focus. These unique healing retreats also offer opportunities for individuals and the horses and other animals to interact in unstructured, spontaneous ways, often times with extraordinary results. 

Seventeen years of living on this pristine land in communion with the horses, the realization that underpins Liz's work and her efforts is this: "There is only one consciousness in ALL life.... all thoughts, emotions and inspiration flow from this higher consciousness and express through the diversity of all creation." It is the ineffable gift of this realization that she aspires to share with the world. She holds a strong conviction that when people are invited to connect with the sacred beauty of the land, the intuitive friendship of the horses and the wisdom of their own hearts, a profound shift can be catalyzed in health, well-being and consciousness. Many can hold up their own experiences as testament to her belief.

This year will see the release of "Herd", an award-winning film on Liz and the transformational work of the Equinisity retreats. Brilliantly shot, and documenting a group of retreat attendees from the time of their arrival to the end of their stay, "Herd" poignantly captures the light and shadows of individual journeys and the gentle miracles that unfold between the people, the land and the animals.

It has always been second nature to Liz to transform her love into art -- not just through words but also images. In addition to writing, producing the film, managing the retreats and caring for her animals, she has been a published artist for over 25 years, and her subjects include protected wildlife areas, endangered species, breathtaking landscapes and of course horses -- many, many horses. Her vibrant, soulful paintings have raised not just awareness but also millions of dollars in support for national and international environmental groups, and her prized artwork even includes the honor of a Canada Stamp.

"Beyond our mundane interaction there is a thread of something much more important, a higher message and meaning that is weaving a fabric of our higher purpose here as spiritual beings....We are all pieces of that puzzle, evolving in each others company. With that in mind let us recognize our animals for the amazing spiritual beings that they are and begin to resonate in that oneness." - Liz Mitten Ryan and the Herd

Join us this Saturday for a conversation with a remarkable artist, writer, equine communicator/trainer and more, whose work reconnects us to the profound wisdom of the herd.

“From the formless comes the form, and the form takes you back to the formless.” - Ancient Indian Scripture

At the end of her first day at her first job at a prestigious design firm in Mumbai, 20-year-old Miti Desai came home and wept for five hours straight – without having any idea why. Questioned by her concerned parents, the explanation that instinctively rose to her lips was this: “Every aspect of what happens there ultimately comes down to a financial transaction. I can’t live my life that way.” Twelve days later she quit. A few months later she flew to Atlanta, Georgia, a freshly enrolled graduate student of the Portfolio Center. A week after classes began she turned up at the dean’s office with an announcement: “I think I need to leave the school.” Why? “Everything we’re being asked to create here is commercial.”

A soul-searching six-hour conversation ensued, and in the midst of it, a pivotal realization dawned on Miti about what she was truly looking for: To explore design, not as a commercial enterprise, or a purely external form, but to explore it as an internal experience. She wanted to live design through her body and mind. “I think I need to dance,” she told the dean.

“Stay here with us for two years,” he counseled, “You can choose your own projects. And when you graduate if you still want to dance – then dance.” Stay she did, but two years later Miti still wanted to dance. With no guarantees, much less any kind of a plan, she flew back to India, abandoning a work permit and career prospects, to look up Mandakini Trivedi, a danseuse whom she’d heard taught Bharatnatyam, the classical form of Indian dance Miti had trained briefly in as a child.

At their first meeting Trivedi asked Miti what she wanted. “I want to learn Bharatnatyam from you,” Miti responded. “But I don’t teach Bharatnatyam,” said Trivedi, “I teach Mohiniyattam.” At the time Miti had never heard of Mohiniyattam – the classical dance form hailing from the southern Indian state of Kerala, and capturing in its elegant, circular movements something of the swaying grace of coconut palms. Trivedi's presence held a special quality. Miti's spirit had led her this far; she wasn’t about to turn around and go home on a technicality. Mohiniyattam it was to be then, she decided. For the next eight years she “disappeared” into a rigorous discipleship under her chosen teacher.  

Now, well over a decade later, Miti Desai is an accomplished professional dancer and teacher whose finely-honed skills and poised understanding of the deeper dimensions and demands of her chosen form have entranced, informed and inspired audiences around the world. Apart from her training in India, she also studied at the Bauhaus Theater in Dessau, Germany where she was exposed to the world of Western theater, music, costumes and dance. While appreciative of all of it, her own heart was spoken for. It belonged wholly to the classical Indian dance form, with its rich underpinnings of philosophy, mythology, poetry and spirituality, and most of all, its design principle of transcendence.

That focus on an evolution of consciousness is a central theme in Miti’s journey. Elaborating further she says, “In Indian thought the purpose of life is to elevate, engage, introspect and integrate. This thought is given a form through the actual form of the dance. But the real purpose of dance is for the dancer to understand and express, through the magnificent form, the experience of the formless. ...This to me is a heightened goal and a journey that inspires my inner space.” It is an approach that demands both intensity of discipline and integrity of character from the practitioner. When practiced as intended, the form tends the mind ever towards stillness, deepening awareness and a capacity for subtlety – and freedom.

Today the Nateshvari Dance Gurukul, where Miti trained (and previously taught) with Trivedi, is a center committed to keeping alive the aesthetic, symbolic and yogic tradition in Indian dance, through a constant aspiration towards perfection – not only of the technique, but also of the self. And, under the mentorship of Trivedi, Miti is the Executive Trustee of Shaktiyoga Ashrama, a residential school outside Mumbai that is dedicated to the integrated study of the Indian classical arts together with spirituality and the Indian classical sciences of yoga, ayurveda (medicine), and astrology.

With her roots deeply plunged into the soil of dance, Miti had gone on to complete a masters in Design Education from London's Goldsmiths University.  Today as founder and creative head of Bangalore-based Miti Design Lab, Miti explores the inner principles of her training in multiple outward spaces as well. Her work is stunningly wide-ranging, yet beautifully integrative. As she explains it her work includes communications design through branding and multimedia products, education design where she works with schools and institutions to help think through the educational process, social design where she works with communities, business design, where she helps people structure and design around their business ideas, and then there is thought design and of course – dance. For Miti all of it is part of a design continuum, each an integral part of the whole.

Design is not a word she uses casually, “It can be experienced, explored and experimented with at every level. It is way beyond the capacity of my mind and conscience to define design because I feel it is limitless; but it is definitely an area constantly investigated in every medium through which it reveals itself. I would say that design just is – and not – is this, or that.”

Join us in conversation with this luminous artiste who seeks to touch the transcendent through the dance of design.

Florida businessman Edmund F. Benson, together with his wife Susan, declined to rest on their laurels when their well-earned retirement began.  Instead, the energetic and service-committed couple in some ways just began (again) their service journeys during their golden years.  They devoted their retirement to establishing the ARISE Foundation in 1986, a global skills-teaching program for at-risk youth.  The Foundation has had a remarkable history and impact, from its initial focus on environmental education for young people to now addressing a range of needs for the young, the elderly, and many populations in between.

ARISE currently provides a range of evidence-based life skills curricula for at-risk youth.  It offers interactive, entertaining, easy-to-understand lessons about important topics such as anger management, self-esteem, peer pressure, gang avoidance, drug and alcohol prevention, the power of networking, interviewing and keeping a job, domestic abuse, etiquette and manners, conflict resolution, bullying and violence prevention, health and hygiene, stress management, stranger safety and much more.  The ARISE life-skills lessons are not sequential.  Each stands on its own, making them ideal for transient populations.  Everyone starts fresh with each new learning experience.

The organization also offers staff training that enhances the effectiveness of those on the front lines who care for troubled youth and adolescents.  ARISE lessons have a memorable impact on troubled youth because, for the most part, they are conducted by ARISE-trained group facilitators who carry out guided group discussions with exciting activities that are easily understood and put into practice.  ARISE group facilitators inspire conversation, involvement and interest.

ARISE life-management skills curricula are used in public, alternative and charter schools, juvenile justice facilities, residential treatment centers, faith-based organizations, Salvation Army, Boys and Girls Clubs, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s After School All-Stars program and organizations that educate orphans and other troubled youth around the world.  The programs are written for underachieving pre-k, elementary, and middle school children, teens, and young adults with limited reading and writing capabilities.  The ARISE life-management skills program succeeds with youth who have behavior issues and special needs.

As of 2009, the ARISE Foundation had trained and certified over five thousand group facilitators who have taught over four million documented hours of ARISE life-skills lessons in Florida alone. ARISE programs are also used throughout the US, in Canada, Jamaica, England, Australia, the Bahamas, Bermuda, New Zealand, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Bosnia and Kazakhstan.  For his 80th birthday in 2009, Benson gifted to the international nonprofit community the creative licenses for all of the 100 ARISE life-skills curricula materials.  Benson has allowed the materials to be translated free of charge into any language (except Spanish, which has been done), for use in life-skills training programs around the world.  The curricula are also available online, as are some of the training programs.

Beginning in 1996 the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice started using all of ARISE Life Skills programs in their major facilities throughout the state of Florida.  "Once the program was funded, we went into all the juvenile justice facilities in Florida. We train guards and they teach the curriculum to the incarcerated 12 to 18-year-olds. We teach ethical behavior," Benson said. 

Benson understands firsthand the hardships faced by high school dropouts and at-risk youth, because he took that difficult path himself.  "I started this program because I was once one of these troubled kids," he said. "I just wanted to prevent kids from following in the footsteps of those locked up."

Though perhaps troubled as a youth, Benson by the age of 21 had established a sales organization which grew into a chain of 18 furniture rental showrooms with locations stretching from Boston to Austin, TX.  Since his first retirement in 1982, he has devoted 100 percent of his time and energy to sharing the life skills he learned the hard way with youth – and now with adults over 60.

After spending over thirty years developing life skills programs for at-risk youth, Benson soon realized that people over 60 also needed specific life skills to successfully navigate their non-working years, remaining relevant with their grandchildren, achieving happiness without a career or job as center stage, and much more.  So he embarked on a new quest and spent almost two years researching the material specifically to conduct group discussions with seniors on 1,000+ topics.  He developed a new program called “Constructive Aging,” consisting of guided group discussions that inspire the 60+ generations to live positive, vibrant lives and to improve with age.  Benson has conducted these programs at local organizations in Jupiter, Florida where he lives.  Benson is also working with a neighborhood high school to train the high school students to go into a senior living facility (independent living, nursing home, community center) and interview the older adults and write or video their life stories that can be shared with their children and grandchildren.

And Benson’s latest endeavor is “Positivity Cards”.  "You've been noticed doing something good," the cards read.  They were developed because Benson found that working with at-risk populations can be difficult.  “The kids are tough and the staff have to deal with difficult situations. It is hard to be positive in this environment.”  In an effort to change the culture in juvenile justice facilities and alternative school environments, Benson encouraged ARISE trainings participants to look at what the youth were doing good and compliment them, even for a very small deed that was good.  Receiving a card saying “You Have Been Noticed Doing Something good” changed someone’s day form negative to positive and this had a ripple effect as the day went on.  Benson hands out positivity cards all day long – at the supermarket, when he gets a haircut, at a doctor’s appointment, walking in the mall, at the gym wherever he goes.  He is known as the “Positivity Card Man”. There are now 260 uplifting cards in this collection available on the ARISE website.

Join us in conversation with this remarkable change leader and can-do positivity man!