2024 was a slow year on the podcast because of my health, but I had the opportunity to meet some amazing people. In 2025, I hope to share some of those with you and the first is a conversation with the CEO and co-founder of Sora Schools, Garrett Smiley.

Ryan Schachtner is co-founder of Success Beyond Gameday, and I think you'll enjoy the conversation on how they have innovated to help elite athletes think beyond their sport and playing careers.

This was a longer conversation with my friend Mitch Weathers of Organized Binder about his work and book and general thoughts on our professional work.

"Democratizing access to dreams and opportunity" is a line from the Gladeo website that caught my attention as I have gotten to know Michelle and her company, which seeks to help people prepare for the modern workforce and the future of work.

Michelle is co-founder and CEO of Gladeo, the Grand Prize winner of the US Department of Education Future Finder Challenge. Check out this short video on their work.

In this conversation with Shaka Mitchell we talk about Education Policy and connect it with his blog and the Massai greeting, "How are the children?" As we see new policies created to empower parents and allow schools to become more distinctive we focus the conversation on the students and their opportunities and outcomes.

Shaka Mitchell is Senior Fellow at the American Federation for Children and Political Science Professor at Belmont University.

Daniel Liebeskind is the founder and CEO of Topia, a platform-as-a-service technology for real time social interaction and spatial video chat inside customizable virtual worlds. From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, Daniel’s mission is to foster human connection through technology.

Check out his work with Topia!

Will Percy is Executive Vice President at TeamOptix, and he shares in this conversation about how we need to rethink leadership and talent development in our profession and schools.

I had the opportunity to speak with founders and friends, Alexandra Kazilo and Natalia Pereldik of FunExpected along with their Scientific Advisor, Leonid Rybnikov. FunExpected is a math-learning app for 3-6-year-olds that utilizes gameplay to build math understanding and confidence. Check it out!

I love these conversations with Mitch Weathers of Organized Binder and the author of Executive Functions for Every Classroom.

Stephen Carter is the Director of the CHCA Entrepreneurship and Sustainability program and the author of Teaching the Entrepreneurial Mindset.