The cast of MTV's The Buried Life joins us on The Drum for an inspiring conversation about bringing your dreams to life, producing reality television and closing the deal.

As Chief Reconnaissance Officer, ThayerWalker is Summit Series’ explorer-in-residence overseeing environmental affairs, global outreach, and communications. In addition to his role with Summit, Thayer is a correspondent with Outside magazine and has written for the New York Times, Men’s Journal, and Playboy. He has covered wars in Uganda and Nepal, explored the ocean at 2,400 feet in a homemade submarine, wrestled jaguars, and stranded himself on a desert island for 20 days—all for the love of story telling. Summit is his most exciting adventure to date.

Summit Series is a community of millenial leaders drawn together annually for three-electric days designed to connect, inspire, and empower. This year's Summit Series conference will be held April 8--11, aboard the Celebrity Century, an ocean-liner leaving from Miami and headed to an undisclosed tropical island in the Caribbean..

Interested in launching your own business? We will be speaking with Ahmad Islam and Sherman Wright, founders of commonground marketing about entrepreneurship in the advertising and marketing industry.

commonground was created in 2004 by Sherman Wright and Ahmad Islam. What prompted them both to leave executive positions at prominent Chicago agencies was simple: the passion to fill a significant void in the agency space. There was no agency fully equipped to address the “new marketplace” – a diverse and dynamic landscape comprised of the traditionally defined general market and a rapidly evolving multicultural consumer population.

During this episode of The Drum, we will open up the floor to questions regarding the summer boot camp. Applications for the boot camp will be due on January 14th. We will also discuss one of our boot camp clients, John Legend's The Show Me Campaign and make a special announcement with regard to The Jacqueline Factor.

This week, we will be speaking with Paul Bolls, co-director, PRIME Lab and Associate Professor in Strategic Communications at The University of Missouri School of Journalism.

About PRIME: The PRIME (Psychological Research on Information and Media Effects) Lab is both a research and teaching laboratory devoted to the study of how different features of media affect the way that people think, feel, and act. We conduct theory-driven, empirical research using psychophysiology and other behavioral science methods. We also teach both undergraduate and graduate students how to conduct independent research using these methods.

The PRIME Lab is part of the Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri.

We have an exciting episode this week, speaking with Jovian Irvin about Thrivals 3.0™, a brand of thinking about the future.

It’s a way of thinking and learning about the broad social, political, environmental, economic and technological trends that are shaping the mid- to- long term future now. Thrivals is a fun, mind bending, future focused, innovative, leading edge and thought provoking learning experience where humans of all identities are challenged by each other, to think about new ideas, rethink old assumptions, build on the minds of others, to become, to do, to understand, to otherwise live this single planetary experience to its fullest.

e will be speaking with Adrianne Smith, Executive Director for The Center for Excellence in Advertising at Howard University.

Background:

The 4A's has partnered with Howard University’s John H. Johnson School of Communications to establish a comprehensive center to address challenges, eliminate barriers and identify opportunities to achieve a more diverse and inclusive advertising industry workforce at middle to senior management levels.

The Center for Excellence in Advertising is charged with the following objectives:

* To provide professional development, leadership training and resources to increase and strengthen the impact of individuals of color in middle and senior level management across all disciplines.

* To provide the advertising industry with research, analysis, strategic and tactical consulting, and policy input to attain diversity goals and objectives.

* To benchmark best practices and solutions to increase the quantity and quality of persons of color in the industry.

We will be speaking with the founders of unKommon Kolor about being "young & creative." The owners of an amazing clothing line will share with us a little of their history and their future.

We will be chatting with Former Office of AIR partner and industry veteran Luke Raymond, who has recently partnered with NFL star Dhani Jones in creating a New York and Los Angeles based full-service advertising and design firm specializing in high-end interactive marketing in the fashion, sports, and hospitality industries.

The firm is called VMG Creative. (http://www.vmg-creative.com/)

Founded in 2010 by NFL star and business man Dhani Jones and Executive Creative Director Luke Raymond, VMG Creative provides digital design and marketing services that develop long-term brand loyalty for clients the world over. Since its launch, VMG Creative continues to build on its reputation as a progressive creator of strategic brand experiences on and off-line. Clients include: Ralph Lauren, Proctor & Gamble, United

Football League, Eboost, Esquire Magazine…

This show will be the first in a monthly series highlighting "passion projects" of our members and supporters. We will be speaking with MGP co-Founder Kenji Summers (@kenjisummers) regarding The Passport Project initiative that he is launching. We will also speak with new MGP supporter and fiscal partner Trent Shelton, regarding his passion project REHAB TIME.

This will also be a call to action to support each other through collaborative partnership.