Legacy-Makers@Work

Susan Robinson proudly claims to have failed at being disabled. She says not having 20/20 vision is a misalignment in a world constructed for sighted people – but it has its advantages. Listen to hear why she believes this is so, and have your eyes opened.

In this episode, we hear how Tatia Mays-Russell evolved accidentally from her engineering/industrial start to several senior management positions in the sports world. Currently Chief Financial Officer at the Major League Baseball Players Association, she was prepared for a pivot when unexpected opportunities came her way, then charted her course intentionally through significant challenges, boldness, attention to brand and monitoring her impact daily.

Co-hosts Phyllis Weiss Haserot and Liz Stern explore why this pandemic era transitioning time is particularly ripe for reflecting on and planning for your intentional work legacy. They discuss how to think about the process and an excellent way to build support through a community of purposeful legacy-makers.

In this episode, champion of women’s leadership and serial entrepreneur Leslie Grossman traces her path from public relations agency owner to finding her intentional legacy focusing on women’s leadership and gender equity. Through the challenges of starting and running five businesses, her leadership in mostly women-centric organizations, and her extensive research, her work legacy has evolved and is illuminating how she has and intends to scale her contributions and impact. Leslie has created over her career a strong and ambitious “vision” toward gender equity and how women can be leaders in both their career and personal life.

In this episode, fintech executive Valisha Graves shares with us her work legacy path to combine her interests and experience in business and technology with “giving back” to provide opportunities as a mentor and educator to minorities and women, who are underrepresented. Leveraging the resources of her corporate employer and her alma mater, she leads by identifying what she cares about, always trying to do more with her time, continually learning and adding value in the right spaces.

In this episode Glen Macdonald tells us how he has been influenced by his evolving perspectives on investing, impact investing, wine, and a deep desire and sense of responsibility to make the world a better place. Glen is an excellent example of someone who has forged a broad and multi-faceted path in his work life journey, all while staying true to his core values. Glen is also a leader, a visionary and consummate networker.

Alex Wolf shares her journey as a Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) artist, designer, and inventor, who invented the Pattern ABC along with other visual systems for understanding spatial relations and how nature grows, which are used in preschools to PhD programs and with AI specialists. She is the co-founder of na2ure.org, which was founded to explore the intersection of good design, emotional wellbeing, visual and spatial learning, and mental health. Na2ure partners with UNICEF, NASA, and INCOSE (International Council on Systems Engineering) and other institutions.

Simply put, Alex and her team have developed design tools to empower all of us to explore patterns in nature and find intersections within our lives that create vision, imagination, and opportunity to create a more inclusive, humane, and productive society.

Julianne Zimmerman shares her circuitous path in her life journey, career and work legacy, all of which are nothing short of fascinating and remarkable. Julianne's professional passion is putting technology and capital to work for the greater good. She has been in the innovation space since the 1980s as a member, founder, mentor, and advisor to a host of mostly technology driven startups. Twice a finalist in the NASA astronaut selection process, Julianne’s work legacy tells a story of invention, reinvention, vision, and passion, and the power of pivoting.

Our guest for this episode of Legacy-Makers@Work is Employment Attorney and civil rights activist Gary Ireland.

Gary is a relentless advocate for inclusion and non-discrimination. An exciting example: He participated in a multi-year advocacy and media campaign working with his family, the National Organization for Women, and local elected officials resulting in young women successfully becoming full members in the previously all-male Boy Scouts of America. The initiative resulted in over 200,000 new female Scouts and a new name for the premier program: Scouts BSA. Gary recognizes needs and sees ways to make a meaningful contribution in both the non-profit and for-profit world. He is a champion for inclusion and non-discrimination with a powerful story.

Rachel Happe believes in the power of community to enable human potential and is fascinated by social dynamics and false truths. Co-founder of The Community Roundtable, she has spent the last 25 years helping organizations implement emerging technologies to advance their business strategies. 

Her work focuses on how networked communications environments transform how people work, their productivity and their personal satisfaction by aligning their passions, skills, and relationships.

Her purpose in co-founding The Community Roundtable is to support organizations in using community governance models to pursue agility and innovation. Clients benefit from the Community Roundtable’s models, research, and expertise to advance their community’s performance. Rachel uses her ability to make sense of abstract trends and see the implications that technical and operational decisions can have on people and processes to support business leaders in developing their community, collaboration, and engagement strategies.

And Rachel believes “People are patient about the wrong things.”

We encourage you to take a moment to consider your legacy at work and reach out to us at https://legacy-makersatwork.com/