Embark

Barbara Roche, or 'Coach Roche' develops leaders, inspires confidence and gets people talking. She also adds a booty-shaking dance routine or fun movement break into almost every program she develops.

Join us for this smart and savvy conversation about how to see yourself better so you can raise yourself up and forward.

About Barbara Roche

Her mission is to help more women advance to the C-Suite. And to eradicate death by PowerPoint!

She's  a player-coach. When Barbara is not speaking, she's  coaching presenters, leaders and aspiring keynoters. She's coached CEOs, pitch teams, job candidates, and TEDx speakers.

A native Bostonian, Barbara is a proud member of Red Sox Nation. She  lives a secret life as a fitness instructor.

"Time to stop playing small. Step up, speak up, stand out."

What does it mean to have a life well-lived? That's the title of Sky Bergman's documentary, and the theme of today's episode. We discuss resilience,  having a sense of purpose, curiosity and  intergenerational mixing.  At the center of Sky's film are 40 people from ages 75 to over 100, their histories, heartbreaks and personal victories.  Their determination to live generously and fully,  as well as good old-fashioned grit,  are essential ingredients for a rich and vital life.  Sky's grandmother and muse also added  a healthy dose of cooking, regular workouts and dedication to la famiglia.

Sky Bergman (she/her) is an accomplished, award-winning photographer and filmmaker.

Lives Well Lived  is Sky’s directorial debut. Her fine art work is included in permanent collections at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Her commercial work has appeared on book covers for Random House and Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc., and magazine spreads in Smithsonian, Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel, Reader’s Digest, and Archaeology Odyssey.

Sky Bergman is Professor Emeritus of Photography and Video and a former Department Chair of the Art & Design Department at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, CA. She has two short films about intergenerational connections currently on the film festival circuit and is working on a feature-length film that is a celebration of love.


More about Sky  here and here. 

Kavita Ahuja is an Entrepreneur and Founder of Power Purpose Play, a Global Platform dedicated to advancing the personal growth and inner power of women in midlife. She is the Host and Visionary behind the successful Podcast, “The Midlife Reinvention”, a course content creator, an accomplished writer, and a Personal Transformation and Transition Coach. At the age of 52, Kavita, who also holds a major in Biology and an MBA, left an extremely successful corporate pharmaceutical career of almost 25 years, took control of her health, her spirituality, her personal relationships, and found her next true calling. This is to help women find the Power within them to rediscover their Purpose and reinvent themselves, regardless of their age or circumstance. She rediscovered herself after the age of 50, and she knows you can too. Her mission is to help you do just that.

“My vision is to give you a glimpse of yourself beyond anything you can imagine. I want you to experience more happiness, more hope for your future, more excitement for your next journey, more confidence in yourself, and a greater understanding of your true purpose and power in this next chapter of your life”

This week, I rant - I mean discuss - our penchant to indiscriminately share too much information,  online and often in real life.  Not that there's anything wrong with it!

We  may have become a little too confessional for own good, and sometimes, as one friend pointed out to me. "Did you ever think of something and not say it?"

Of course, there is more self-restraint on platforms like LinkedIn, where we try to show up as our most professional selves. Other platforms,  we let those emotional floodgates open, perhaps exposing a little more about us than is necessary. Or healthy.  

When is it okay to reveal all  in order to establish connection? Is it ever okay?  Do we overshare to the point of  emotionally sluttiness?

I ponder these questions, and opine on chronic filterless exchanges of information.  While  a propensity to overshare is often  all too human,  there are times  'discretion is the better part of valor.'

Thanks for listening to Embark. This week,  author Juliette Fay and I discuss her latest novel Catch Us When We Fall (see synopsis below).  Within the discussion of the book is our conversation about addiction, which has become epidemic, recovery, community, family and baseball. Writers always tell great stories. Stick around for this one.

About Juliette:

Juliette Fay is the bestselling author of six novels, including Catch Us When We Fall, City of Flickering Light and The Tumbling Turner Sisters, a USA Today bestseller and Costco Pennie’s Book Club Pick. Previous novels include The Shortest Way Home, one of Library Journal’s Top 5 Best Books of 2012: Women’s Fiction; Deep Down True, short-listed for the 2011Women’s Fiction award by the American Library Association; and Shelter Me, a 2009 Massachusetts Book Award “Must-Read Book” and an Indie Next pick. Juliette is a graduate of Boston College and Harvard University, and lives in Massachusetts with her family. Visit her at www.juliettefay.com, Facebook Juliette Fay, author, Twitter @juliettefay, and Instagram Juliette_Fay.

Synopsis of Catch Us When We Fall

 On her own since the age of 18, Cass Macklin dated brilliant, troubled Ben McGreavy. They drank their way through their 20s, growing more addicted and less able to hold down jobs as time went on. Now Ben is dead, and Cass is broke, homeless, scared … and pregnant.

Determined to raise Ben’s baby, Cass has to find a way to stop drinking and build a stable life for her child. She turns to the only person with the means to help her: Ben’s brother Scott, third basemen for the Boston Red Sox, a man with a temper and problems of his own.

'O, how wonderful is the human voice! It is indeed the organ of the soul! - H.W. Longfellow

This week, I  break from Embark's interview format to ruminate on the qualities of the voice.  What do we sound like?  What do our voices say about us? Does it matter?

How much of our character, personality or background does our voice reveal? Do we hide behind our voice to conceal things we'd rather not share? Does our voice tell our entire story?

Subsequent episodes will discuss how styles of speaking evolve, the rise of AI  and synthesized voices, as well as how kids in one world class city speak in a very different dialect than their parents.

Today's episode features a little bit about voice acting and how casting has changed, how broadcasting has homogenized how we speak in the U.S,  and if it's possible to sound taller. 

Who is writing all of those fabulous business books? Often, it's the work of a ghostwriter. Savvy business people - and many fiction writers - long ideas but short on time, enlist the skills,  versatility  and stealth of a ghostwriter to translate their vision and experience into compelling prose.

Today's guest,  ghostwriter Emily Crookston,  possesses the shape-shifting ability to capture voice, attitude and vision to make your book read as if you  -- the co-author - actually wrote it.  And the rest of us will never be the wiser. We talk about Emily's shift from the world of academia to her current status of badass muse, how to excel at using LinkedIn, and why it's important  to state who you don't want as clients. So freeing.

Emily Crookston is the ghostwriter for rebels, renegades, and mavericks. She helps experts—who are long on ideas, but short on time—write business books. As the Owner and Decider of All Things at the Pocket PhD, Emily and her team collaborate with professionals and brands who are ready to take their LinkedIn networking to the next level. Together they strategize and create content for LinkedIn based on their clients’ goals. Emily is also a former philosophy professor, speaker, and podcast guest. When she’s not writing intensely, she’s most likely practicing yoga intensely. She lives for coffee shops that play great music to write to and desserts topped with *real* whipped cream.

Connect with Emily:

LinkedIn 

Want to up your game on LinkedIn. Download Emily's free LinkedIn Cliff Notes.

How do we live our lives when the heartbreakingly unthinkable happens - the loss of a young husband and father? If you are Zhu Shen and her son Perry, you 'take your broken heart and make it into art.' as the late Carrie Fisher counseled.

Today on Embark, we talk about life, loss, the nature of art as both healing mechanism and lasting tribute to our loved ones who have left us.
 
You can watch and support Zhu's films here   for exclusive screening invitations and major updates, and receive FREE link to watch Zhu and Perry's  Oscar-qualified Changyou's Journey:

Listeners of Embark can watch exclusive scenes from our documentary feature in late production from now till March 20, 2022 HERE:

Biography

Dr. Zhu Shen is an award-winning film producer, best known for two Oscar-qualified, critically acclaimed animation shorts she produced: Ingrid Pitt: Beyond the Forest about a young Holocaust survivor, animated by her 11-year-old son Perry Chen in 2011, and Changyou’s Journey about her late husband’s life, written and directed by Perry Chen in 2018. She is currently writing, directing, and producing her first feature film, a personal documentary, Journey of a Thousand Miles. A 2020 Spring Roy Dean Grant Finalist.

 A former award-winning biotech executive, author, speaker and China business expert,  Shen’s love for movies started when she grew up during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and movies were the only available  mass entertainment. 

 Zhu Shen’s work has featured on national and trade media including Fox, Business Week, China Central Television, Pharmaceutical Executive, and the Scientist Magazine. She earned her Ph.D. in biochemistry from University of Colorado, her MBA at Cornell University Johnson School of Management, studied medicine at Peking Union Medical College, and pre-med at Peking University. 

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Dr. Zhu Shen is an award-winning film producer, best known for two Oscar-qualified, critically acclaimed animation shorts she produced: Ingrid Pitt: Beyond the Forest about a young Holocaust survivor, animated by her 11-year-old son Perry Chen in 2011, and Changyou’s Journey about her late husband’s life, written and directed by Perry Chen in 2018. She is currently writing, directing, and producing her first feature film, a personal documentary, Journey of a Thousand Miles. A 2020 Spring Roy Dean Grant Finalist.

 A former award-winning biotech executive, author, speaker and China business expert,  Shen’s love for movies started when she grew up during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and movies were the only available  mass entertainment. 

 Zhu Shen’s work has featured on national and trade media including Fox, Business Week, China Central Television, Pharmaceutical Executive, and the Scientist Magazine. She earned her Ph.D. in biochemistry from University of Colorado, her MBA at Cornell University Johnson Sch

Think you have what it takes to be a podcast host?  Pod 617's David Yas is here to share his quick wit and sharp insights about venturing out into Pod World. We talk about our shared love of music, his storied career  as a podcast producer, creator and host as well as where he thinks opportunities are. Spoiler alert: there is still a lot of subjects and markets to tap.

About David

David L. Yas is the Founder and CEO of The Boston Podcast Network. He has been producing podcasts since 2015 and has put his signature on approximately 1,000 episodes as a creative influence, host, editor, and promoter. He is the host of The Boston Podcast, which has logged more than 100,000 downloads.

David, a licensed attorney, spent 15 years at Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, which he guided to an all-time high in paid circulation and profits. He has served as a commentator providing perspective on legal matters for a wide range of media outlets, including CNN, CNBC, NPR Radio and the Boston Globe. Yas was named Best Humor Columnist by the New England Press Association in 2008.

Connect with David

The Boston Podcast Network

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Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.
— Gustave Flaubert

Author Randy Susan Meyers lives by these words. And she has lived many lives,  from her time as a bartender to her involvement as a social activist and work with victims of domestic violence. Randy Susan is certain her novels are imbued with all the above, as well as her 'journey from obsessing over bad boys to loving a good man.'

Randy Susan  is the national bestselling author of Waisted, Accidents of Marriage, The Comfort of Lies, The Murderer's Daughters, and The Widow of Wall Street. Her books have been chosen as Must-Read Books" by the Massachusetts Center for the Book three times, writing "The clear and distinctive voice of Randy Susan Meyers will have you enraptured and wanting more." She teaches writing in Boston and still misses her Brooklyn hometown. Her most recent novel was The Fashion Orphans.

Fasten your seatbelts because this will be a fun, free-wheeling conversation about how much of a writer's life appears in their fiction,  fighting to include  women 'of a certain age' in novels and her most controversial book.  (Spoiler Alert: It has nothing to do with sex.) We also talk about Randy's latest work, Fashion Orphans.

Connect with Randy

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