Change Makers Stories Podcast

AI is changing everything before our eyes. Not so long ago, artificial intelligence was black box science and often personified as an evil android. Now, AI has hit the mainstream, expanding what is humanly possible, or more accurately expanding what humans can do. With AI, innovators in every business sector are in a race to develop better tools, spawning 1000’s of commercial ventures. And 1000’s of new brands.

In this episode we talk with Steve Ardire, an adviser to start-ups specializing in AI for Health & Wellness. His experience traces back to the beginning of AI time, when natural language processing and cognitive computing were nascent. Today, Steve is a force multiplier for newly minted ideas, helping teams sharpen their strategy, pinpoint their “why” and attract investors from seed to Series A. According to Steve—good storytelling is the acid test for AI brands in this hyper competitive space.    

About our Host: This episode of Change Makers and Their Stories is hosted by Claire Taylor, Director of Strategy at Carpenter Group.

ROI, return on investment, is a term we're all familiar with. The success of a business or investment depends on it. But how does this apply to nature, to wildlife? And we're not just talking about being ESG compliant. We're talking about the return on nature, a topic our guest today has been advocating for his entire career.

Ray Victurine leads Wildlife Conservation Society's Business and Conservation Program, which is part of the markets team that engages with businesses and governments to support policies and practices that seek to balance conservation objectives with development interests. Ray is instrumental in WCS efforts to create investment opportunities for conservation related enterprises. He has more than 30 years of experience working on sustainable development programs and policies in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

In today's episode  Ray will be speaking to us about why applying this concept is vital to the world and to our business practices.

By definition, research is the study of the past. And using the right research-based marketing can bring immense gains beyond insight. It can improve your business, operations, and competitive edge in measurable terms. Yet, across the industry, there remains a disconnect about the interplay between excellent marketing, excellent brands, and excellent firms.

In this episode, we'll be speaking with Neil Bathon, who has not only understood the value of marketing, but has built a career and research empire on his ability to look at the right metrics that can quantifiably improve the bottom line for asset managers.

Neil is the Founder and Managing Partner of FUSE Research Network and has appeared on CNBC and Bloomberg and is a regular contributor to a wide range of business publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Ignites, and Barron's.

Type “metaverse” into the New York Times search engine and you’ll find over 100 articles published since the beginning of this year, about the same number that appeared in the Times in all of 2021. In 2020, there were five. And in 2019, none. This year the word was added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

But what is the metaverse, what does it do and why should we care? Previously on the Carpenter Group podcast, Change Makers, Peabody-Award winning documentarian Bill Lichtenstein discussed how the metaverse has begun to remap the boundaries of the internet and redefine the possible. In this episode, Bill explores the amazing ways the metaverse will revolutionize business and commerce in the next few years.

Suddenly, it seems, “metaverse” has come into everyday parlance—except that few people have a clear sense of what the metaverse actually is, how it works and why it matters. One exception is today’s guest, who has been writing about and exploring the metaverse since 1992.

Peabody-award winning Bill Lichtensetin answers what your  Avatar says about you and how the metaverse can provide a window into the intricacies of human behavior.

James Carpenter, a creative polymath in our time, bends light to change the way we reflect—literally and introspectively. His work, artistic and architectural structures are grounded in the immediate effect of light, using glass as a vessel to refract it. In the experience of his work, it’s nearly impossible to NOT be attuned to your place on Earth in relation to the sun and the temporality of it—even in the heart of New York City.

In today’s episode, we’ll be hearing from James Carpenter about what draws him to this medium and the change he strives to instill in people—we’ll also find out what he thinks glass would say if it could talk. 

Financial institutions are not known for providing clear, concise and easy-to-digest information about investment performance—a problem our guest today has built his career on solving.

Lou Harvey, founder of DALBAR, has been hailed for his contributions to elevating the level of excellence in the financial and regulatory industry. His interest has always been focused on understanding and protecting the highly individualized best interests of all investors.

In this episode of Change Makers and Their Stories,Lou shares with us what motivates him to continue wrestling with seemingly unsolvable problems. We’ll also hear from him about the one thing he would change if he could change anything in the financial industry.

Fireworks, Viagra, Penicillin, Pringles, microwave ovens: What do all of these have in common?

They were the result of accidents. Wrong turns. Mistakes. No one started out to create Viagra—it was supposed to be a drug for treating hypertension. Penicillin happened only because a British bacteriologist forgot to clean his lab before going on vacation. Percy Spencer came up with the idea for the microwave when a candy bar melted in his pocket. At the time these missteps may have seemed innocuous, inconvenient, even embarrassing. No one likes making mistakes—or owning up to them.

But as our guest and self-proclaimed professional mistake-maker Laurie Rosenwald sees it, the moment you stop making mistakes is the moment you stop learning. 

Featured guest bio: A native New Yorker and 1977 Rhode Island School of Design graduate, Laurie Rosenwald has made her name as an author, artist, designer, animator and educator. Her work has appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, The New York Times and New York magazine, and in solo shows in Europe and the U.S. How to Make Mistakes on Purpose is Laurie’s fourth book; her similarly titled creativity workshop has been hosted by schools and corporations on both sides of the Atlantic, including Starbucks, Google, the Art Directors Club, AIGA New York, and Art Center College of Design.

About our Host: This episode of Change Makers and Their Stories is hosted by Carpenter Group founder Polly Carpenter.  

Polly Carpenter has brought a passionate commitment to financial services marketing since founding Carpenter Group over 30 years ago. She’s helped navigate hundreds of clients through the dramatic expansion of the financial services industry since the 1980s. She has been involved in the launch of many of the country's best known financial services brands in areas such as mutual funds, separately managed accounts, ETFs, retirement platforms and annuities, resulting in many billions of assets raised.

Adaptable. Resilient. Futurist. Change agent. These are all ways of describing a person and most of us aspire to have just one of these qualities. April Rinne has all of them. She is a fearless advocate, author, and speaker, whose life has been committed to improving the quality of life around her, for both people and the planet.

In her new book, FLUX: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change, April brings a global perspective and cross-cultural understanding to how we see, think about, struggle with and ultimately forge relationships with change.

Featured guest bio: As a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, one of the 50 Leading Female Futurists in the world, and one of the earliest Estonian e-Residents. Her mission is to connect people, ideas and resources in ways that say, "wow, that's what the world needs" and "wow, we'd never seen it that way" -- and then to see differently and make it happen. Author-consultant-futurist April Rinne helps individuals and organizations rethink and reshape their relationship with change and uncertainty in a world in flux. She is an advisor to startups, corporations, financial institutions, nonprofits, and think tanks worldwide, including Airbnb, Nike, Intuit and the World Bank, as well as governments on five continents. Her latest book, Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change, was published this year by Berrett-Koehler. 

About our Host: This episode of Change Makers and Their Stories is hosted by Carpenter Group founder Polly Carpenter.  

Polly Carpenter has brought a passionate commitment to financial services marketing since founding Carpenter Group over 30 years ago. She’s helped navigate hundreds of clients through the dramatic expansion of the financial services industry since the 1980s. She has been involved in the launch of many of the country's best known financial services brands in areas such as mutual funds, separately managed accounts, ETFs, retirement platforms and annuities, resulting in many billions of assets raised. 

NFTs—as in “Non-Fungible Tokens”—are all the buzz among artists, collectors, crypto-investors and speculators. But what exactly are NFTs and what’s behind their explosive growth? Can you buy and sell them like traditional art? Do they appreciate in value? Can you hang them on your wall?  In this episode of Change Makers and Their Stories, multimedia artist and crypto-art expert T. Mikey recounts his real-world experiences with NFTs and discusses why they’re challenging everything we thought we knew about investing and art.

Featured guest bio: After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, artist T. Michael Tracy—known to art world denizens as T. Mikey—went on to study software engineering at Harvard University. Today he is known for working in a variety of media, specializing in gallery installations, digital art, coding and web development—and, most recently, in crypto-art and Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs. T. Mikey’s art is held in private collections and showcased by corporations and foundations throughout the United States.

About our Host: This episode of Change Makers and Their Stories is hosted by Carpenter Group founder Polly Carpenter. 

Polly Carpenter has brought a passionate commitment to financial services marketing since founding Carpenter Group over 30 years ago. She’s helped navigate hundreds of clients through the dramatic expansion of the financial services industry since the 1980s. She has been involved in the launch of many of the country's best known financial services brands in areas such as mutual funds, separately managed accounts, ETFs, retirement platforms and annuities, resulting in many billions of assets raised.