Longitudes Radio

We’re closing out our three-part podcast series exploring the Black business landscape by going back to the beginning — the founding of the United States — and examining a not-so-simple challenge: How do we rewire the American Dream for Black people?To answer that question, we welcome Nat Irvin, Assistant Dean of Thought Leadership and Civic Engagement at the University of Louisville, to Longitudes Radio. Irvin argues that business is uniquely suited to dismantle systematic racism and fuel a ...

When Yelitsa Jean-Charles was a young girl, she didn’t see any dolls that looked like her. In fact, when her parents tried to give her a non-white doll, she cried because it wasn’t “the pretty one.”She didn’t know it yet, but in that moment, a business was born.Today Yelitsa is the founder of Healthy Roots Dolls, a toy company that creates dolls and storybooks to empower young girls and showcase the beauty of our diversity. In this episode of Longitudes Radio, part two in a three-part series ...

Whether at the local or federal level, Anthony Foxx knows perhaps better than anybody how transportation can forever transform a community — for better or worse.As U.S. Secretary of Transportation for President Barack Obama and the former mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, Foxx strived to modernize the American transportation landscape, recognizing how such an agenda could serve as a great equalizer for communities of color. “There’s a reason why we use the phrase ‘other side of ...

Connie Matisse had all kinds of plans for her business. Then coronavirus hit.Like many entrepreneurs grappling with how to move forward during a global pandemic, the co-founder and chief marketing officer of East Fork faced a simple yet scary question: What’s next?In this episode of Longitudes Radio, Matisse takes us behind the scenes of her Asheville, North Carolina-based pottery company, explaining exactly how the company switched gears to get ahead of the coronavirus crisis. It all began w...

The coronavirus pandemic is changing daily life as we know it. Society at large is grappling with how we live and work during a time when the only certainty is more uncertainty. Behind the scenes, however, transportation and logistics workers move the healthcare supplies and medicines needed to fuel an effective response to a global problem.Two experts with decades of healthcare logistics experience between them — UPS Healthcare President Wes Wheeler and Rob Feeney, CEO of Medvantx, a ho...

Most of us don’t have just a single face. We have many different faces for different people and different environments. But when we talk about diversity and inclusion in the corporate space, a common sentiment goes something like this: Bring your authentic self to work. But really, who does that? Nobody — at least not in those simplistic terms — argues UPS Executive Communications Manager Janet Stovall, chief speechwriter for CEO David Abney.Stovall moderated a recent panel dis...

UPS knows a thing or two about logistics. We fuel the movement of goods between every corner of the world, as our Smart Logistics Network helps us reimagine the role of the delivery provider in more than 220 countries and territories around the globe every day. But what if you had to send goods — and people — to the Moon? Or even Mars? Our guest on Longitudes Radio today has the answers to those questions, which are moving from the world of science fiction to the real world.

This small business owner is shattering outdated perceptions of “beauty.” She’s also showcasing the business value of “revolutionary inclusivity.”

Two-foot-long gummy worms, the world’s spiciest lollipop and the largest stress ball you’ll ever see.Those products sound more like the brainchild of well, a child, than the foundation for a thriving small business.However, the Vat19 story and its founder, Jamie Salvatori, are different. And we had to see for ourselves their formula for success.That’s why UPS Vice President of Global Marketing Chris Byrne traveled to the Vat19 headquarters in St. Louis to unpack how Vat19 is thriving in such ...

Invent life tomorrow.That’s the central mission for Joe Coughlin of MIT’s AgeLab, who says we all need to rethink everything about how to serve adults living longer and longer.Nowhere is this calling more pressing than in healthcare, where people are reimagining the “doctor’s office,” increasingly turning to care from the comfort of their own home and getting tested before they get sick.At the same time, the global outsourced healthcare logistics market will grow to $102 billion by 2021, fuel...