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The current employer-sponsored retirement savings plans are in desperate need of innovation: 401Ks aren’t cutting it, pension plans are nearly extinct, and a large portion of our workforce isn’t even eligible for such benefits. Even those who do have a savings plan will have to pay high penalty fees to withdraw them when they inevitably change jobs (a huge contributing factor to the one trillion of unclaimed dollars that are trapped in old 401K accounts). Further, many Americans are locked out of 401K eligibility including gig workers, part time workers, and typically excluded industries like retail and restaurants. That’s why I wanted to speak Laurie Rowley, a financial services industry vet who’s the founder and CEO of Icon Savings Plan, which calls itself the first portable savings provider. I talk to Laurie about why retirement savings are so critical to society, and why the industry is ripe for disruption.

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One thing we’ve wanted to cover on this show for awhile is brand purpose,. It’s increasingly becoming an important consideration for brands, in part because many consumers care more about that attribute, especially younger consumers. 27% of Gen Zers are very likely to pay more for a purpose-driven brand, according to an April study by Cubist Martini. That’s why I wanted to speak to Andreas Markdalen. He’s the award-winning Global Chief Creative Officer of frog. For 20+ years, Andreas has been leading and forming relationships with the leading global consumer and enterprise brands across a wide array of industries and domains, and increasingly those brands care a good deal about something near to Andreas’ heart: brand purpose.

I spoke to Andreas about how the concept of brand purpose has evolved over the years, how brand purpose has to be aligned with a brand’s values, and whether or not brand purpose actually increases customer loyalty—or if loyalty is dead.  I know I learned quite a bit and I think you will too, so let’s jump right in!

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Alec Ross is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Industries of the Future as well as The Raging 2020s, which came out this past September. During the Obama administration, he served as Senior Advisor for Innovation to the Secretary of State, and he’s appeared on CNN Fareed Zakaria GPS, CNBC “Squawk Box”, Bloomberg TV, among many other programs.  

I wanted to talk to Alec since I know he has well-informed perspectives on issues ranging from privacy to sustainability to diversity and workers’ rights, and I feel like we’re at an inflection point, as the world rages amidst pandemic, rising inequality and increasingly frequent climate disasters, Alec has some interesting ideas about how we move forward.

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For years now I’ve heard about the problems with funding entrepreneurs and how the funding landscape is broken. To that end, I wanted to speak with  Andrew D'Souza. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Clearco, the world’s largest e-comm investor and unicorn valued at $2B. After years of witnessing founder challenges in the VC world, Andrew saw an opportunity to modernize the funding system. Traditional access to funding is biased, based on assets, connections, and exponential forecasts. Clearco is attempting to remove those barriers. 

I wanted to talk to Andrew about his mission to democratize capital, how the funding landscape will evolve in the coming years and how Clearco uses data to create an unbiased approach to funding.

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Dr. Rebecca Parsons is the Chief Technology Officer at Thoughtworks (TWKS), a global software consultancy. Dr. Parsons has deep technical expertise, including leading the creation of large-scale distributed applications and the integration of disparate systems. Separate from her passion for deep technology, she is a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion in the technology industry. Dr. Parsons is a frequent speaker at industry events including Collision Conference, Web Summit, YOW!, Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing and more. She is the co-author of several books: “Domain-Specific Languages,” “The ThoughtWorks Anthology,” and “Building Evolutionary Architectures.”

We spoke to her live at Web Summit 2021 on whether or not the tech sector is approaching sustainability in the right way, DEI efforts within the sector, and how the tech sector can take responsibility for the unintended consequences of tech innovation.

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I’ve followed today’s guest for years. Not in a scary, stalker-ish way...I just have a lot of respect for the guy, so much so that I quoted him in my first book, Going Social, eight years ago. Simon Mannering is the Founder and CEO of We First, a strategic consultancy that turns companies into movements by empowering their brands to lead with a purpose larger than themselves. He’s also the author of LEAD WITH WE: The Business Revolution That Will Save Our Future, which came out yesterday!

Lead With We shows how all of us—from the CEOs of the biggest corporations to exciting entrepreneurs to the everyday consumer—can make more environmentally friendly, purpose-driven, and positively impactful choices in service of everyone’s future. I talk to Simon about how consumers can help businesses more accountable to make better decisions, specific ways companies can not only do less harm but more good, and why sustainability is at such a critical juncture right now. I think you’ll learn a lot from Simon in this episode.

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Ulcca Joshi Hansen is Chief Program Officer at Grantmakers for Education. Hansen has worked in education for two decades. Her experiences as an English-language learner and first-generation college student inform her perspective on what it means to provide an “equitable” education for every child and engage communities in that effort. She’s also the author of THE FUTURE OF SMART: How Our Education System Needs to Change to Help All Young People Thrive, which hit shelves in September. 

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Jonathan Brill is an expert on resilient growth, innovation, and decision-making during uncertainty. He was a senior leader and the Global Futurist at Hewlett Packard, where he directed long-term strategy programs, a creative director at frog design, and now he’s the managing director at Resilient Growth Partners and a board member at Frost & Sullivan, a major market intelligence firm.

He advises globally on product innovation and resilient growth strategy with clients, including Samsung, Microsoft, Verizon, PepsiCo, the United States government, and the MIT Media Lab, and is the author of  ROGUE WAVES: Future-Proof Your Business to Survive and Profit from RadicalChange, which hit bookshelves recently.

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COVID has changed the world to such an extent over the past year and a half, and of course it’s not something that anyone would ever wish on society, but there have been some interesting developments - a lot of them positive. One of those innovations comes from SiO2, a little-known material science company from Alabama that received a $143 million investment from the US government to tackle the vaccine vial shortage. To date, they have provided the government with vials for over 100 million covid vaccine doses. I spoke to the company’s president, Lawrence Ganti [at the 1:01 mark], about why the future of drugs will be biological — and the long-term positive effects that COVID could bring to pharma and life sciences. 

My conversation with Lawrence got me thinking about the new kinds of jobs that might have been created on account of the pandemic, which then had me thinking about how companies are finding the talent they need in a post-COVID world. To help clue us in on that front, I turned to Evan Sohn [at the 11:11 mark]. He’s the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Recruiter.com, an on-demand recruiting platform that combines AI and video job-matching technology with the world's largest network of small and independent recruiters. We talked about how the pandemic changed how companies recruit, what the post-COVID world of work looks for job candidates, and much more.

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Think about how much of our lives are spent communicating behind computer screens these days, and then compare that with most of human history when we were communicating face to face using body language. It’s such a shift that it’s perhaps not unexpected so many of us are bad at it. That’s why we wanted to speak to Erica Dhawan.

Erica is a globally recognized leadership expert and keynote speaker helping organizations and leaders innovate faster and further, together. Her writing has appeared in dozens of publications, including Fast Company and Harvard Business Review. She has an MPA from Harvard Kennedy School, MBA from MIT Sloan, and BS from The Wharton School—so you could say she knows a thing or two about a thing or two. Her new book, Digital Body Language: How to Build Trust & Connection No Matter the Distance, came out this past May, and I wanted to talk to her about her research and advice for us as digital body language keeps growing in importance. Her book's been praised by everyone from Seth Godin to Sheryl Sandberg to Billie Jean King, so I’m happy we get the chance to learn from her.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play - and make sure to follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn!