IMPACT LEARNING

After designing her learning journey (previous episode), Maria shares with us today how she is building her Portfolio Career to create impact through her work. She gives us an overview of what her Portfolio Career looks like, how she’s creating new projects and the skillset she continues to develop. You’ll hear about her experience as a podcaster, a writer, a coach and an active member of the community.

If you're curious about how a Portfolio Career can impact your life and work, tune in and listen to Maria tell her story and share what she learned along the way.

Today, Maria shares her story about going back to school after leaving her corporate career. She walks us through the questions she asked and the steps she took to explore how to create impact with her work. She then discusses the learning resources she leveraged to develop skills by doing work on specific projects. Maria participated in four online workshops in 2018 that led her to shape her impact learning vision and create her plan forward. She also built her support network of like-minded people who are on a similar journey with her.

This episode explores how we can design our own learning journey to do meaningful work and create the life we want.

Maria is back on the mic to share her story of transitioning out of corporate and into freelancing.

In this open-heart episode, Maria talks about the raw emotions she experienced when she left her Vice President job at a multi-billion international corporation. She gives us insights on how she dealt with fear through journaling and how she gave herself space and time to figure out her next steps.

Relevant for virtually anyone in transition, this episode explores how to make big decisions during various stages of our life.

Maria talks about navigating lack of confidence in starting new projects, juggling work and self-care and the power of kindness with Michelle Welsch, a master Social Worker, writer, and researcher focused on education in Nepal.

With a background in psychology and social work and after a few years working for a branding company in New York City, she left for Nepal for a 2 week trip and never really came back. There she founded Learning House, a community learning center offering free workshops, paid classes and scholarships to promote education and leadership in Pokhara, Nepal.

A conversation full of zest and energy, just like this week’s guest!

Today, we share the second and last part of Maria’s conversation with Stefanie Faye Frank.

Stefanie is a neuroscience researcher who is teaching people about their mind, brain and body system that influences their ability to self-regulate and build healthy relationships. She is a consultant, a podcaster and blogger focused on growth mindset, psychological resilience and performance. Her teaching and consulting work in countries all over the world over the past decade combined scientific insights and her training in monasteries with meditation masters from India, Africa and Vietnam.

In the previous episode, Stefanie and Maria talked about how experience-dependent learning helps us adopt a growth mindset. They also discussed why even identical twins could develop a very different mindset through our life experiences that shape our brain. We ended our conversation with the importance of celebrating mistakes as a way to develop a growth mindset. If you haven’t yet listened to episode 22 of Impact Learning, we highly recommend you do!

Today we do a deep dive on the four essential elements of growth mindset development. And then we discuss the 3-step process we can follow daily to develop a growth mindset at any age.

A conversation packed with knowledge about the role of neuroplasticity on growth mindset development!

Today, we share the first part of Maria’s conversation with Stefanie Faye Frank.

Stefanie is a neuroscience researcher who is teaching people about their mind, brain and body system that influences their ability to self-regulate and build healthy relationships. She is a consultant, a podcaster and blogger focused on growth mindset, psychological resilience and performance. Her teaching and consulting work in countries all over the world over the past decade combined scientific insights and her training in monasteries with meditation masters from India, Africa and Vietnam.

In this first part of their discussion, Maria and Stefanie explore her learning journey and why she decided to study psychology and neuroscience.

Stefanie talks about how experience-dependent learning helps us adopt a growth mindset. They also discuss why even identical twins, through different experiences, can develop changes in their brain and narrative. They conclude their conversation with the importance of celebrating mistakes as a way to develop a growth mindset.

A conversation packed with knowledge and understanding of our neuroplasticity!

Today, Maria talks with Rhondene Wint.

She was born and raised in the Carribean where she studied biology and served as a high school teacher for three years.

After her applications to several graduate schools kept getting rejected, she decided to take a machine learning online course and teach herself how to code while she was in Jamaica. Her perseverance and commitment to building skills paid off when she was finally accepted by UC Merced in California, where she is currently pursuing her PhD in Genomics.

Together, we unpack her learning journey and growing passion for research. She shares how she continues to leverage online learning platforms to develop essential skills for the future of work. She also talks about the importance of communication and writing skills to help her cultivate meaningful network connections.

Rhondene wants to inspire and guide youth to make decisions about what to learn and how to future proof their skills in our fast-paced technological era.

An inspiring conversation with a deep learner!

Today, Maria talks with Ann Davis.

Ann founded the non-profit "Swim 4 Success" during her first year in college in New Orleans to teach children how to swim after hurricane Katrina. Her teaching career was interrupted when she was diagnosed with brain cancer at 23-years old. After her full recovery and a short assignment as a learning coach, she moved to New York city and continued teaching in a low-income public school.

Her life and work changed when she decided to found Venture with Impact, an organization offering a 30-day skills-based volunteering project for digital nomads. While they work remotely, they develop professionally, rediscover purpose, and in the process, provide a positive social impact.

The mission of Venture with Impact is to expose professionals to new cultures, people and ideas so that they may be more informed and empathetic world citizens, who contribute to local communities around the world.

An inspiring conversation with an entrepreneur who helps digital nomads face their fears and create social impact!

Today, Maria speaks with Tania Marien. Tania is a freelance botanical educator and the host of the podcast Talaterra.

Throughout her career, she has created illustrations and shared resources on her website and in-person to make plant science more accessible to a larger number of people. As a bookstore owner for many years, she connected communities around a shared love for plants, nature and learning.

During her sabbatical year, she immersed herself in peer-learning workshops created by Seth Godin including the altMBA, the Marketing Seminar and the Podcasting Fellowship. She started “The Freelance Condition Project” in 2018 to bring the spotlight on freelance environmental educators who are making learning happen in their communities. In January of 2019, she launched the podcast Talaterra, a platform where she shares their stories and helps them build an intimate community. Through her current work, Tania wants to put freelance educators on the map by sharing their work that is mostly under the radar.

Together, they unpack her learning journey, the small triggers and the forks in the road that led her down her current path.

On this episode, Maria reflects on her learning journey as a VP of a multi-billion enterprise. She opens up about the fork in the road that led her to leave the organization after more than sixteen years.

She shares with hindsight and honesty the decisions she had to make and what fueled her aspiration to become a VP.

She then wraps up this series of Maria-on-Mic with her reflections on the questions she first posed: What do you want to be when you grow up? What do you want to do when you grow up? What environment do you want to work in?

With a genuine love for learning and making an impact, Maria takes us through her corporate journey in the hopes of guiding and inspiring yours!