Curiosity requires friction and friction drives change.

B: I think that the human potential element is what’s missing. So, a lot of my work is centered around helping people understand that and then trying to create equity and equality within that. It’s equity in terms of being able to go into spaces, any type of space, and be treated like a human.

I’m here because I have the opportunity to, you know, show people my humanity. And as a result, they’re going to tell stories to the people who were growing up, who look like me, or who love like me, or who are thinking about their gender in a way that I’m thinking. We’ll have examples. So, it’ll be a little bit easier for them.

It’s about having the education, the tools, and experience to help people, you know, do a better job of bringing others into the story.

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Follow B’s convention-defying work:

LinkedIn: bpagelsminor

Twitter/IG: @bpagelsminor

Website: bpagelsminor.com

About B:

B. loves product development and improving the processes of developing successful products. B. has worked with small (<50) and large technology (>100,000+) companies to increase product adoption, improve the product experience and design, and evolve the product vision.

B. is a thought leader on product and culture development within technology companies. They are passionate about creating a culture of accountability and sustainable processes that allow teams to “just” do the work well.

 

Cory Ames and his wife, Annie, founded Grow Ensemble with a mission to make sustainable business and living the norm. In this episode of the Defy Convention Podcast, we talked to Cory about what it means to use business as a force for good, what can happen when our work aligns with our values, and how to separate life and work. 

CORY: I worked my way up to the CEO position, which was, at the time serving like a hundred or so clients, and had a couple of million dollars in revenue. That position was really the point at which I kinda saw the curtain pulled back on exactly how this business was run.

It was a grind, it was a hustle, it was hard work, it was very stressful, and I invested so much time and energy and belief into all the skills that I was trying to cultivate. Then I came to this point of like, what does it even matter?

On its face, you’d look at the P and L and say: Oh, this is a very healthy, successful business. But at the same time, I was having conversations with the staff who were reporting to me, saying: We’re not making enough, we don’t have benefits yet, these sorts of things.

It felt so out of alignment. I certainly did not like the feeling of working with a team and feeling as if I’m different than them, that our statuses are different, that I am privileged to particular information or resources that they may not be, and feeling unequal in that way with the people that I worked with.

I really questioned: is there a way in which entrepreneurship and business can be done ethically—in a way that is a win-win for everybody?

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Follow Cory’s convention-defying work:

Twitter: @AmesCory

Website: growensemble.com / coryames.com

About Cory:

Cory is the Co-Founder & CEO of Grow Ensemble, an impact marketing and media company on a mission to make sustainable business and more sustainable living the norm. He is also the host of The Social Entrepreneurship & Innovation Podcast, where he interviews leaders in the space of better business and social impact.

Prior to leading Grow Ensemble, Cory was the CEO of a digital marketing agency, a position he earned at the age of 22. After leaving that experience, Cory began consulting on all things digital marketing & SEO exploring how he could more directly use his skills for doing good.

It was then, at the direction of his partner in life & partner in Grow Ensemble, Annie Bright, that Cory dove into the world of social entrepreneurship and using business as a force for good.

Soon after, Grow Ensemble was founded by both Cory and Annie as a vehicle to raise awareness of and inspire action around some of the world’s biggest problems and problem solvers. They blog, podcast, and publish videos on all things leaving the world a better, more just, equitable, and habitable place for all.

To keep up with Cory, Annie,

Having founded Chicago’s first feminist sex shop in 2001, Early to Bed, Searah Deysach has made it her mission to defy the convention around sex and dismantle the anxiety, misinformation, and shame around sexual health, pleasure, and interest. Knowing that many people were uncomfortable in “traditional” adult stores, her vision from day one has been to create a safe, welcoming place where women (and people of all genders and sexual orientations) could shop for quality sex toys with freedom and empowerment.

SEARAH: We’re in a bubble. I think that sexual shame, fear of sex, lack of knowledge about sex and sexuality is everywhere. There’s still a lack of education about sex and sexuality. There’s more information available on the internet, which is great, but there’s also still bad information or twisted information.

We get people in the store now who are like: I know I want this brand and I’ve read all about it, I’ve read my reviews, and this is what’s going to affect me—which would not have happened 15 years ago, 20 years ago. But we still get people who are like: I’m scared to be here. I don’t know what I want. I’ve never masturbated before. I’ve never had an orgasm. My partner’s mad at me for, you know, not having an orgasm. There’s still this stuff that we’re not shaking off in our culture.

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Follow Searah & Early to Bed’s convention-defying work:

Twitter: @earlytobed

Instagram: @early2bed 

Website: early2bed.com

About Searah:

Searah Deysach is a sex educator and the owner of Early to Bed, Chicago’s feminist sex shop. She also runs the trans-focused ftmessentials.com and is a frequent speaker at colleges and social service organizations in and around Chicago.

 

Meghan French Dunbar’s purpose is to help business leaders build a life they love. After co-founding and leading Conscious Company Media, the US’s premier source of information on conscious business—as well as founding the World-Changing Women’s Summit, the largest conference in the country for purpose-driven womxn—Meghan has become an expert on what it takes to align our work and our lives with authentic purpose. 

We spoke to Meghan about setting boundaries and breaking down barriers of capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy as purpose-driven womxn in business.

MEGHAN: All I wanted in the world is a women’s group that is just chock-full of super bad-ass purpose-driven women. Yes, we’re interested in talking about money and figuring out how to do capital raises and all the things that come along with business, but we’re also, and more importantly, interested in talking about how do you infuse purpose? What do values look like? How do you grow and scale your company with purpose and values? Like, what do mission-aligned angel investors looked like? So I just got this download from the universe. I stayed up until three o’clock in the morning. I outlined the whole damn thing. And within five months we had our first World-Changing Women’s Summit.

I was in grad school looking at shareholder-centric capitalism and profit at all costs, profit maximization—the way that we have societally accepted that we do business. Businesses exist to make money and be damned all the negative externalities that come along with whatever people might do to get there. I just was like, “I can’t, I don’t believe this. So how do we change it?”

I decided when I was 29, that the best way to do that was to start a magazine called Conscious Company Magazine. So I co-founded that and essentially we told the stories of businesses that said, f the status quo. That actually did good for the world that made money, but also had a sense of purpose and did good by their employees, did good by their communities.

You know, if you go to the business section of a magazine rack, it’s all filled with like Forbes and Fortune, and it’s almost all predominantly either white men or celebrities being glorified and deified because they made the most amount of money. And so we thought maybe if we started putting people on the cover of magazines that were doing good as sort of glorifying them and upholding them as something that society should look to emulate that well might start following suit.

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Follow Meghan’s convention-defying work:

Social: @meghanfrenchdunbar

Website: meghanfrenchdunbar.com

About Meghan:

Meghan is the Co-founder and former CEO of Conscious Company Media. The company’s flagship product — Conscious Company Magazine — was the first nationally distributed print public...

For Executive Director of the Chicago Cultural Alliance Peter Vega, the value of the arts is not in a piece of work that someone has deemed worth a million dollars; it is in using material culture to educate people about the past and shape the future for the better.

In this episode of the Defy Convention Podcast, we speak to Peter about defying convention in the museum sector, his mission to teach, educate, and tell stories differently, how the Chicago Cultural Alliance “walks the walk” when it comes to supporting and connecting the community-driven work of over 40 cultural heritage centers in Chicago, and how the cultural arts are their own kind of therapy—helping us have more challenging and courageous conversations.

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Follow Peter’s convention-defying work:

* Peter on Twitter: @petervega

* CCA on Twitter: @chicagocultural

* CCA on Instagram: @chicagocultural

* Chicago Cultural Alliance Website

Karen Hawkins founded Rebellious Magazine for Women with a mission to give opportunities to those whose points-of-view differed from the conventional straight-white-male lens through which mainstream media is shared. In this episode of the Defy Convention podcast, we speak to Karen about what it means to be a disruptor in today’s white-male-dominated media industry, how to set boundaries to preserve our mental health as leaders, why “objectivity” in media is bullshit, and how storytelling through an authentic and inclusive lens has the power to “lower the wall between the writer and the reader.”

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Follow Karen’s convention-defying work:

Karen on Twitter: @chiefrebelle

Chicago Reader on Twitter: @chicago_reader

Rebellious Mag on Twitter: @rebelliousmag

Karen on Instagram: @chiefrebelle

Chicago Reader on Instagram: @chicago_reader

Rebellious Mag on Instagram: @rebelliousmagazine

* Rebellious Magazine Website

* Chicago Reader Website

About Karen:

Karen Hawkins is the Founder and Rebelle in Chief of Rebellious Magazine and Co-Editor In Chief of the Chicago Reader. She is a recovering mainstream media reporter and editor who wants to thank her former boss for naming the online magazine she’s always wanted to start when he called her “Rebellious” for taking too many weekends off. When she isn’t instigating a media Rebellion, she’s thanking her lucky starlets she gets to do whatever she wants on weekends.

For 51 years, Free Street has been creating original, joyful, and thought-provoking theater by, for, about, with, and in Chicago’s diverse communities. In this episode of the Defy Convention Podcast, we speak with Executive Director of Free Street Theater, Karla Estela, about the power of authentic and inclusive storytelling in amplifying social justice, how she is redefining what it means to be a “strong leader” in the midst of a pandemic, and the importance of remembering to pause, reflect and reconnect with what is real.

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Follow Free Street’s convention-defying work:

Twitter: @FreeStTheater

Instagram: free_st_theater

Facebook: freestreettheater

Website: freestreet.org

Keep up with Karla:

Twitter: @kestelarivera

Instagram: @kestelarivera

Whether she’s disrupting Hollywood as Producer and Co-Founder of Serqet Productions and Media or reshaping the business landscape as Partner at Relationships Matter Now, entrepreneur, author, and TEDx speaker Denise Barreto wakes up every day to ensure that America lives up to her promise—to everyone.

On this episode of the Defy Convention Podcast, we speak with Denise about the roots of systemic racism and its relationship to Hollywood, her dedication to telling diverse stories that would otherwise not be told, and how to amplify our impact by living our values.

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Keep up with Denise’s convention-defying work:

Twitter: @denisewbarreto @serqetproducers

Instagram: @denisewbarreto @serqetproductions

Website: www.serqetproductions.com

Current PBS Show: www.flybrother.net

About Denise:

Entrepreneur, author, and TEDx speaker Denise W. Barreto is a prominent 21st Century voice on leadership and storytelling. Whether she’s executing in her role as a business strategist and managing partner of Relationships Matter Now, LLC or behind the camera in her newest roles as an executive producer and co-founder of Serqet Productions and Media, LLC, Denise is always challenging the status quo and building new, more inclusive narratives and environments across government, nonprofit, corporate and soon-to-be Hollywood entities. At Relationships Matter Now, LLC, primarily delivering strategic planning facilitation, organizational and leadership development, and inclusion and diversity strategy, Denise and her firm have quickly become a go-to resource for non-profit and government agencies and businesses of all sizes who want to better leverage their relationships to grow their bottom line.

What does it mean to live our truth? For our debut episode of the Defy Convention Podcast, we spoke with Lisa Arie, Co-Founder and CEO of award-winning experiential discovery center Vista Caballo.

For Lisa, transformation begins with understanding how we are wired and learning to trade false narratives for innate wisdom so that we can come to know ourselves on the deepest, truest level. Together, we discuss how to tap into our intuition in order to lead with authenticity outside of our comfort zone while cultivating clarity and fulfillment in our work.

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Follow Lisa’s convention-defying work:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/arielisa

Website: vistacaballo.com/

About Lisa:

Lisa Arie co-founded Vista Caballo with her husband Jess Arie. Lisa designs and leads the personal and leadership development experiences. Fast Company magazine calls Lisa a “CEO whisperer.”

Lisa’s early life granted her a unique perspective of life. She was born in New York. Starting at the age of two and throughout her childhood and teenage years, her father’s international job with Time magazine moved the family to New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, South Africa, the Netherlands, and England.

Lisa met Maori, Maasai, and aborigines. She ice-skated on frozen canals and hiked through jungles. She even dodged gunfire during the Singapore-Malaysian Riots.

After attending college in England and the United States, Lisa graduated with a BA from Hampshire College. Her career took off shortly after she graduated. Named one of Adweek Magazine’s Creative All Stars, she produced the famed Motel Six commercials featuring Tom Bodett (“We’ll leave the light on for you.”), selected by Advertising Age magazine as one of the Top 100 Advertising Campaigns of the Twentieth Century.

After working for agencies for seven years, Lisa used a $5,000 loan from her parents to start her own businesses. They grew into multi-million dollar companies.

She created thousands of commercials for brands, such as Adidas, Anheuser-Bush, British Airways, and Miller and led a paradigm shift in the advertising industry.

Twelve years into her entrepreneurial run, Lisa was confronted with a terminal disease that made her re-evaluate what was important in life and what she wanted to leave the world in terms of contribution.

As she writes in her memoir, Crossing the Silly Bridge, “When our hearts speak and we listen, we find ourselves.”

With a new sense of consciousness, Lisa decided “I was not going to die without having first lived. Even if it was for just one day.”

Lisa listened to her heart and it led her, seemingly illogically, to the world of the horse.