Welcome to Episode #17 of The Make Life Work Podcast!

This week I am excited to have on the show Jelani Memory, an African American entrepreneur, thinker,  constant learner and founder of A Kids Book About... a publishing company that helps start conversations between kids and parents on a variety of topics including racism, failure, anxiety and feminism (and 36 more titles!).  He lives here in Portland, Oregon with his wife and six kids. Prior to writing his first book, A Kids Book About Racism,  he co-founded Circle, a parental control platform.

In this episode we talk about raising kids, how to talk to kids about tricky topics, building businesses, Jelani's journey to becoming an author and publisher and what's next for his company.

This episode of The Make Life Work Podcast is supported by our friends at ArtKive, -- the easiest and most beautiful solution for preserving and celebrating your kids artwork. Our listeners can get $20 off their first book or mosaic by visiting https://www.artkiveapp.com and using code Make Life Work at checkout.

Enjoy!
~Melanie Marconi

Melanie Marconi is the founder & CEO of VIDA, a coworking community and professional services firm in Portland, Oregon designed to support modern life. Learn more at vidacoworking.com #MakeLifeWork

Welcome to Episode #16 of The Make Life Work Podcast!

After Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday comes Giving Tuesday, a  global movement that inspires hundreds of millions of people to give, collaborate, and celebrate generosity,

As such, this week I am excited to have on the show Toni Tringolo, the Executive Director of Willamette Week's Give!Guide, a year-end giving platform in Portland. This year G!G showcases 174 small, medium and large organizations whose missions fall into eight categories: Animals, Civil & Human Rights, Community, Creative Expression, Education, Environment, Health and Human Services -- the goal this year is to raise $5 Million from 10,000 donors.

Toni is also a mom and longtime nonprofit professional who "believes in community over competition" and we talk about the impact nonprofits make in communities, especially during these trying times, the innovative Give!Guide model and also fun ways to engage kids and family in charitable giving and philanthropy.

This year, my daughter Ellie and I selected Don't Shoot PDX and the Fresh Water Trust and there are so many other amazing organizations to support! You can make a donation through the end of the year at https://giveguide.org/ -- or to your favorite nonprofit or cause!

This episode of The Make Life Work Podcast is supported by our friends at ArtKive, -- the easiest and most beautiful solution for preserving and celebrating your kids artwork. Our listeners can get $20 off their first book or mosaic by visiting https://www.artkiveapp.com and using code Make Life Work at checkout.

Enjoy!
~Melanie Marconi

Melanie Marconi is the founder & CEO of VIDA, a coworking community and professional services firm in Portland, Oregon designed to support modern life. Learn more at vidacoworking.com #MakeLifeWork

Welcome to Episode #15 of The Make Life Work Podcast!

In this episode I speak with Kelsey Lewis, a mom of two, Certified Public Accountant and co-owner of Arrow Advisory Group, which provides solutions for the modern business including tax planning, tax compliance, systems planning and advisory services. She is also my CPA and tax advisor!

After a selling a traditional tax practice, two years ago Kelsey launched Arrow Advisory Services to focus on providing hands-on boutique services to small business owners. This approach to tax planning has come in handy this year for many of her small business clients as so many (all?) businesses have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

Kelsey and I talk about small business life, year-end tax planning in a very uncertain year, PPP forgiveness and the recently released IRS guidance on the non-deductibility of PPP-funded expenses and the importance of holding on to cash.

This episode of The Make Life Work Podcast is supported by our friends at ArtKive, -- the easiest and most beautiful solution for preserving and celebrating your kids artwork. Our listeners can get $20 off their first book or mosaic by visiting https://www.artkiveapp.com and using code Make Life Work at checkout.

Enjoy!
~Melanie Marconi

Melanie Marconi is the founder & CEO of VIDA, a coworking community and professional services firm in Portland, Oregon designed to support modern life. Learn more at vidacoworking.com #MakeLifeWork

Welcome to Episode 13!

This week we have a very timely episode as we welcome Yshai Boussi, PCP, therapist, dad and founder of Portland Family Counseling, which offers decades of experience helping adults, children, couples and families.  He understands first hand the challenges of raising kids while trying to stay connected to ourselves as individuals and as a couple and family.

As we head into the last week of the election, anxieties might be running high -- and for our kids as well! Yshai and I talk about how to talk through current events as a family, how to remember the bigger picture of how we want to raise our kids, and that at the end of the day, "It's all going to be ok."

I hope this chat is helpful and don't forget to vote!
~Melanie

Melanie Marconi is the founder & CEO of VIDA, a coworking community in Portland, Oregon designed to support modern life.

You can find Portland Family Counseling here and Yshai's blog post from the last presidential election here.

Welcome to Episode 12!

This week we are excited to welcome two partners of The Goodness Collaborative, an incubator of talent, confidence, and readiness that meets clients where they are — and supports them as they make their next moves. This innovative firm is seeking new ways to support people and change in the world, serving individuals and companies and creating powerful impact across a range of projects through consulting, coaching and change management.

Diane Bradley is the Founder & CEO and Sarah Foltz serves as Head of Experience - their team is headquartered at VIDA. 

In this episode, Diane, Sarah and I discuss the intersection between coaching and consulting, how business has changed this year, and how we are dealing with distance learning and the future of education -- and of course, how we set-up our personal and families lives to make it all work.

I hope you enjoy our chat and cheers for a great week!
~Melanie

Melanie Marconi is the founder & CEO of VIDA, a coworking community in Portland, Oregon designed to support modern life.

You can follow The Goodness Collaborative on Instagram @thegoodnesscollaborative and on Linked in at Diane Bradley and Sarah Foltz.

Welcome to Season 2 of The Make Life/Work Podcast!

As the new school year kicks off this week, I am excited to share this interview with Kali Thorne Ladd, a mom of two and the Executive Director of KairosPDX, a nonprofit organization here in Portland that operates the Early Learning Network and a Reggio-inspired, multicultural Learning Academy Public Charter School.

Kali is a longtime social entrepreneur who is a passionate advocate for equity and education transformation with a background that spans from teacher to program manager to policy maker over the last 18 years. She currently sits on the Early Learning Council for the State of Oregon and is part of Reimagine Oregon, a coalition of Black-led organizations, community members and activists, that are creating big plans to 'reimagine' the state, from its education system to the justice system to housing and healthcare.

In this episode, Kali and I talk about the need tor talking to kids about race to help children be accepting and understanding of difference, the role of growth mindset and neuroscience in educating children, why we need to focus on equity in education, and how Black children must be included in the conversations of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Kali says she, "believes in the power of children to transform our society" and she uses her entrepreneurial instincts and policy savvy to "illuminate their voices and drive towards educational transformation in the name of equity and a better society for all."

Finally, my thoughts go out to my adopted state of Oregon and those who have lost their homes or been evacuated as several fires burn and smoke chokes our air. Big thanks and admiration to the firefighters and others who are working nonstop to put them out and keep our homes and businesses safe.

I hope you enjoy the episode and cheers for a great first week of online school!
~Melanie

Melanie Marconi is the founder & CEO of VIDA, a coworking community in Portland, Oregon designed to support modern life.

You can follow KairosPDX on Instagram @kairospdx and Kali Thorne Ladd on LinkedIn 

Catherine Ryan Gregory is a mom of two, a freelance writer and travel blogger of the To and Fro Fam Blog. She is also a newly minted author with the publication of her first book, Virtual Travel Activities for Kids: Explore the world from home with 52 fun, no-prep lessons - which she wrote during quarantine so that the coronavirus wouldn't cancel her family's love of travel.  

In this episode, Catherine and I talk about how to keep kids engaged with virtual learning and how education is shaping up for the fall. She also shares more about the creative and winning schedule she used to write the book over four weeks during quarantine (and uses for all writing projects) -- it includes lots of post-its!

I also share a bit about what we are doing at VIDA to help support our member families with virtual learning this fall -- you can learn more about VIDA SCHOOL here.

I hope you enjoy!
~Melanie

Melanie Marconi is the founder & CEO of VIDA, a coworking community in Portland, Oregon designed to support modern life.

The Make Life Work Podcast is proudly supported by the University of Oregon’s Executive MBA program. This Portland-based program is designed for established professionals who want to earn their MBA while continuing to work full time, and they are currently accepting applications for the fall 2020 cohort. Learn more or register for an upcoming info session here.

"I don't think philanthropy should exist as it currently does in the United States," said Emily Evans, the Executive Director of the Women’s Foundation of Oregon and proud bonus mom to two kids and our guest for this episode of The Make Life/Work Podcast.

The Women’s Foundation of Oregon mission is to focus the power of women’s collective resources to improve the lives of women and girls throughout Oregon, and six years ago Emily arrived there to work alongside its visionary board of directors to build a new foundation, from the ground up, as it was transitioning from a traditional grant making organization to a Giving Project model (created by Social Justice Fund to reach and engage historically underrepresented communities).

Emily came to Oregon after a long and impressive nonprofit career in Washington D.C. —most recently at the Forum for Youth Investment, a nonprofit think tank, and at the Women’s Leadership Institute where she helped produce events featuring notable women leaders including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, NPR’s Linda Wertheimer, and U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar.

Emily shares some strong and exciting ideas about the current state of nonprofits, giving and the social good, and as a nonprofit consultant in my former career, this topic really has great personal interest to me. It's also a very timely conversation as we look at ways to advance equity in all aspects of American life, including philanthropy.

I hope you enjoy!
~Melanie

Melanie Marconi is the founder & CEO of VIDA, a coworking community in Portland, Oregon designed to support modern life.

The Make Life Work Podcast is proudly supported by the University of Oregon’s Executive MBA program. This Portland-based program is designed for established professionals who want to earn their MBA while continuing to work full time, and they are currently accepting applications for the fall 2020 cohort. Learn more or register for an upcoming info session here.

Welcome to episode 8 of The Make Life Work Podcast — 

This week I had the pleasure of interviewing Madison Young. Madison is not only a mom of two and a Founding Member of VIDA, but also a feminist filmmaker, sexual revolutionary and brilliant storyteller whose most recent project, Submission Possible, just premiered on Revry TV.

As a noted sex educator and artist, Madison's work has taken her around the world and has been featured in outlets from the Independent Film Channel to Bitch Magazine to the Best Sex Writing of 2013 anthology. Very early in her career, Madison founded the nonprofit arts organization Femina Potens Art Gallery, and has since served as a speaker and panelist on the topics of sexuality, feminist porn studies, and the politics of BDSM around the world including at Yale University, Hampshire College, Northwestern University, University of Toronto, University of Minnesota, and the University of California at Berkeley.

Her storytelling work has spanned her life and touches every medium from live theatre to a memoir, to children’s books to a podcast and her recent project, Submission Possible, is a travel TV series that takes viewers on a sex positive trip around the globe -- she has been described as the "Anthony Bourdain of sexuality."

I hope you enjoy this far ranging episode in which we discuss the new show and her ever-- evolving career, the Black Lives Matter movement and marginalized communities, as well as the importance of finding and maintaining the resources needed to take care of oneself. Enjoy!

~Melanie

Melanie Marconi is the founder & CEO of VIDA, a coworking community in Portland, Oregon designed to Make Life/Work for women and families.

The Make Life Work Podcast is proudly supported by the University of Oregon’s Executive MBA program. This Portland-based program is designed for established professionals who want to earn their MBA while continuing to work full time, and they are currently accepting applications for the fall 2020 cohort. Learn more or register for an upcoming info session here.

In this episode of The Make Life/Work Podcast, I offer my top three considerations I review when making difficult decisions -- a practice that has been tested again and again over the last three months!

For me, this includes taking some time, taking care of myself and then acting decisively. I hope this process comes in handy for you too.

I am also excited to share that VIDA has reopened for current members, with many new protocols and procedures in place to keep everyone safe and healthy. 

~Melanie

Melanie Marconi is the founder & CEO of VIDA, a coworking community in Portland, Oregon designed to Make Life/Work for women and families.