Money Tales

Money Tales

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Money Tales episodes

  • Love and Money, with Arielle Nobile
    In this episode of Money Tales, we speak with Arielle Nobile. Love is a common thread in the money stories Arielle shares with us. She talks about how money has been used in her family to express love – sometimes with strings attached and sometimes without restriction. Arielle also talks about how she and her husband, both of whom are artists dealing with money stigmas of that profession, have deeply explored their relationship with money in the context of their loving relationship with each other.
    Arielle is a documentary film maker, who is usually the one asking all the questions. She is the CEO of Legacy Connections Films (www.legacyconnectionsfilms.com), which was founded in 2005. Arielle’s company produces documentary films for High Net Worth families to reflect on their history, truths, shared values and vision for the future. Her clients tend to be interested in both their family history and the impact that it has on their lives and future generations. While most of the clients Arielle works with are connected to a family business, she has helped entrepreneurs, financial advisors, doctors, and more connect with the invaluable stories that make up the true legacy of a family beyond their financial wealth.
    Arielle received her BFA in Experimental Theatre from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She then studied in an MFA-style year-long directing program at Second City Theatre in Chicago. She taught improv and theatre at Second City and Piven Theatre to adults and children, which makes her uniquely skilled at helping all her subjects relax and be natural on camera.
    Arielle is the producer/director of the award-winning documentary series Belonging in the USA: Stories from our Neighbors. The first film in the trilogy, The Story of Michael D. McCarty was a 2019 official selection at the Pan African Film Festival, the largest Black film festival in the US. Arielle was named to The Independent Magazine’s List of “10 Filmmakers to Watch” in 2018 for the Belonging in the USA documentary series. In 2012, she won a Hugo Television award for her 6-part public television series, Belonging in Boulder: Unexpected Stories from Your Neighbors (vimeo.com/channels/belonginginboulder).
    57 min
  • The Road Less Traveled, with Jim Marocco
    Jim Marocco started his career doing temp jobs out of college and couch surfing. He eventually made his way to Google where he became the VP of Finance and Corporate Controller. Jim grew up talking about money with his family around the breakfast table. This instilled a financial confidence that enabled him to leverage the little breaks in life and catapult his career. He’s a reformed pessimist who now describes himself as a raging optimist. His wife was a big influence on his changed outlook. They have faced many challenges – including a potentially life shortening one – with a united front that has allowed them to beat the odds.
    Jim started working at Google in 2003, responsible for a variety of key financial activities including accounting and controls, compliance, forecasting and analysis, financial and order management systems, strategic deal support and managing outsourced operations. When the Alphabet holding company structure was first created, Jim managed a global team responsible for all financial activities associated with Google’s “Other Bets” business segments, which included products such as Google Fiber and autonomous cars.
    Prior to joining Google, Jim held various financial and management positions at technology companies including the parenting media start-up Dr. Spock Company, Lycos, internet start-up WhoWhere?, and NEC Technologies.
    Jim has served on the Corporate Advisory Board for the Northern California chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation since 2011 in support of his wife, Larissa, who has cystic fibrosis and received a double lung transplant in 2018. He also serves on the Dean’s Advisory Council for Cal Poly’s Orfalea College of Business. Jim graduated from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo with a B.S. degree in Economics.
    Currently, Jim is a stay-at-home dad of twin middle schoolers and actively volunteers within the local school district and as a youth sports coach. He is training his boys in the art of lawn mowing.
    50 min
  • You Are Leaven, with Elizabeth Lesser
    In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Elizabeth Lesser, one of Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul 100, a collection of 100 leaders who are using their voices and talent to elevate humanity. Elizabeth is a best-selling author and the cofounder of Omega Institute, the renowned conference and retreat center located in Rhinebeck, New York. Elizabeth’s most recent book, “Cassandra Speaks: When Women are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes”, reveals how humanity has outgrown its origin tales and hero myths, and empowers women to trust their instincts, find their voice and tell new guiding stories. We appreciate how Elizabeth demonstrates many of the insights and practices she discusses in her book as she tells her important money stories on Money Tales.
    Elizabeth’s first book, “The Seeker’s Guide”, chronicles her years at Omega Institute and distills lessons learned into a potent guide for growth and healing. Her New York Times bestselling book, “Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow”, has sold almost 500,000 copies and has been translated into 20 languages. Her third book, “Marrow: Love, Loss & What Matters Most”, chronicles the journey Elizabeth and her younger sister went through when Elizabeth was the donor for her sister’s bone marrow transplant.
    Elizabeth cofounded Omega Institute in 1977 — a time when a variety of fresh ideas were sprouting in American culture. Since then, the institute has been at the forefront of holistic education, offering workshops and trainings in: integrative medicine, prevention, nutrition and the mind/body connection; meditation and yoga; cross-cultural arts and creativity; ecumenical spirituality; and social change movements like women’s empowerment and environmental sustainability. Elizabeth is also the cofounder of Omega’s Women’s Leadership Center, which grew out of the popular Women & Power conference series featuring women leaders, activists, authors and artists from around the world. Each year, close to 30,000 people participate in Omega’s programs on its campus in Rhinebeck, New York and at urban and travel sites, and more than a million people visit its website for online learning.
    A student of the Sufi master, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan for many years, Elizabeth has also studied with spiritual teachers, healers, psychologists and philosophers from other traditions. In 2008, she helped Oprah Winfrey produce a 10-week online seminar based on Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth. The webinar has been viewed by over 40 million people worldwide. She was a guest on the Oprah Show, a frequent host on Oprah’s Soul Series and appeared on a weekly radio show on Sirius/XM.
    In 2011, she gave a popular TED talk titled “Take ‘the Other’ to Lunch,” a call for civility and understanding as we negotiate our differences as human beings. She gave her second TED talk in 2016, about the power of truth-telling.
    Elizabeth attended Barnard College, where she studied literature, and San Francisco State University, where she received a teaching degree. In 2011, she received an honorary doctorate from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, in Palo Alto, California. Early in her career, she was a midwife and birth educator. Today, besides writing and her work at Omega Institute, she lends her time to social and environmental causes and is an avid walker, cook, gardener, friend, mother, grandmother and homebody. She and her husband live in New York’s Hudson River Valley.
    53 min
  • Living in Purpose, On Purpose, with Frank Britt
    Frank Britt shares with us what it was like to grow up in a paycheck-to-paycheck home, where financial anxiety was an underlying theme. At a young age, Frank used his thirst for knowledge to redefine the path of his life and reimagined who he would become. Frank is a consummate investor in self-development and self-discovery. As you’ll hear in this episode, Frank is someone who brings his heart, his soul and his brain to important conversations, including those about money.
    During the course of the Money Tales interview, Frank talks about the role personal finance played in his development and career path, and the lessons he learned as an executive, investor, parent and husband. In the end, his story highlights how people get molded and shaped by the choices they make, and how others are affected by those decisions. He can't say what is best for you, but instead why it's important to build yourself a story that includes being focused on helping others find the agency to create their own stories.
    Frank is preoccupied with the issue of income inequality, notably in the nation's cities and hardest-hit communities. He believes the market for empowering people to more fully believe in themselves is nearly infinite, and helping individuals change their futures and redefine their personal story starts with creating career pathways where everyone has access and opportunity.
    Frank’s unlikely narrative centers on his own path to self-empowerment, growing up in a diverse community outside of Manhattan, as he struggled to draw the connections between education, a successful career and a fulfilling life. Fast forward 25 years, after an impactful career across several leading companies, he heard a persistent voice that he couldn't ignore and ended up as the leader of an institution focused on helping to transform the lives of the often left-behind middle class adult workers in the US.
    Today, he is the Chief Executive Officer of Penn Foster, the leading skills development training, credentials and employment matching enterprise for frontline workers. His social-purpose organization is focused on employment outcomes for middle class workforce through ed-tech enabled workforce solutions and today has more than 200,000 active adult learners and 100’s of partners, including employers, youth organizations and academic institutions.
    56 min
  • Jumping Social Classes, with Tuti Scott

    In this episode of Money Tales, Sandi and Cammie talk money with Tuti B. Scott. Tuti grew up in a large family on a farm in rural New Hampshire in the 1970s, where they lived off the land and created their own entertainment. Tuti became a competitive basketball player, which she says saved her life. Basketball provided Tuti an identity, exposure to the magic of teaming and rewards for hard work. Basketball got her into college and helped pay the tuition. After growing up working class and “jumping class,” today Tuti’s work inspires women to get in the game of money, influence, and power.

    Founder of Changemaker Strategies, Tuti is a speaker, author, strategist and coach for leaders and teams. She is the producer of “Women & Money– Making Money Moves that Matter,” an event and community focused on turning knowledge into action in the social justice investing space. Tuti is a founding partner in The New Search Collaborative, a high touch comprehensive search firm offering matches of the highest caliber. Recently, Tuti served for 18 months as Interim CEO at Tides, a global foundation and social venture accelerator during the organization’s unprecedented growth to mobilize $1.3 billion in 2020.

    A life-long athlete and point guard, Tuti engaged thousands of activist donors at the Women’s Sports Foundation, Billie Jean King’s charity, where her team raised $70 million over 15 years (1994-2008) to catalyze equal access to all sports for women and girls.

    For 12 years, Tuti’s firm, Changemaker Strategies, has guided organizations in navigating growth and transitions such as Athlete Ally, Equal Rights Advocates, Farm Sanctuary, Jewish Women’s Funding Network, ReflectUS, Root Capital, Third Wave Fund, Women Moving Millions, among others.

    After a 30-year career in women’s leadership, Title IX protections and strategic philanthropy consulting, Tuti is now focused on engaging people in bringing a social inclusion lens to philanthropy and investing, via workshops, speaking and writing. Publications include “Money, Gender and Power – A Guide to Funding with a Gender Lens” (2019) for Slingshot’s community and “Moving Money for Impact; A Guide to Investing with a Gender Lens” (2021). Board service has included Women Win Foundation, Women’s Funding Network, and Tides Network.

    See all episodes >

    49 min
  • What Didn’t Kill You, with Michael Silverman
    Sometimes investing isn’t about the portfolio, it’s about relationships. In this episode of Money Tales, we speak with Michael Silverman who shares some very powerful insights learned through a painful pivotal moment when his sister died in a car accident. This situation changed everything for Michael and caused him to reevaluate his outlook and behaviors. As a result, Michael is now intentional about being open, honest, vulnerable and candid about everything, including relationships and money.
    Michael Silverman is a Denver-based entrepreneur and investor. After growing up in Carmel, CA, Michael went to the University of Southern California where he explored his passion for philosophy and then went on to the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.
    After spending time as a venture partner with a firm in the consumer space and pursuing his own deals in the live events and technology industries, he founded Samantha Brands Group, a CPG focused investment platform in 2016 and has been operating and investing in brands and production companies since then. Michael is also an avid investor across software, e-commerce, real estate, and other verticals.
    In 2020, he launched the podcast “What Didn’t Kill You? with Michael Silverman” to explore guests' personal and professional stories of challenges overcome, mistakes monetized, and the nature of post-traumatic growth and development in people as well as organizational systems. You can also find his blog on Instagram at @whatdidntkillyou or via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelesilverman/.
    Michael lives in Denver with his wife Kate, and he loves reading, skiing, hiking, CrossFit and traveling.
    42 min
  • Don’t Let the Money Rot – Enjoy it!, with Dr. Jamie Traeger-Muney
    In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Dr. Jamie Traeger-Muney. Jamie is someone who has been talking about money her whole life. It started with her parents, who continually emphasized the need and modeled the importance of discussing and learning about the value of money, how to use it and the importance of saving it. This developed Jamie’s fascination with money, which led her to become a wealth psychologist.
    Jamie specializes in the emotional impact of wealth on inheritors, women and couples. She has revolutionized the conversation of wealth and worth by providing an opportunity to openly discuss the roles money plays in her clients’ lives, enabling them to be passionately engaged in the world and to lead a rich life.
    She works with multi-generational families, helping them to concretize their values, develop a vision for their future and create sound governance structures. Jamie earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and her doctorate in clinical psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology.
    Jamie’s personal experience as a second-generation owner of a family business and board member of her family foundation, combined with her theoretical and practical expertise in wealth psychology, has given her a unique sensitivity to issues surrounding the inter-generational family dynamics of affluence.
    Jamie is an engaging speaker whose presentations are insightful and inspiring. She has been featured in major media outlets such as: WSJ, BBC, Bloomberg Business Week and Town & Country Magazine. Based on research done with 4th generation family enterprises, she co-authored, Social Impact in 100-Year Family Businesses: How Family Values Drive Sustainability through Philanthropy, Impact Investing, and CSR as well as part of Borrowed From Your Grandchildren. Jamie is currently researching Financially Diverse couples, a topic that while becoming increasingly common, has yet to be clinically studied.
    Jamie has the distinction of being the first psychologist ever to be hired as an employee of a bank, to work with their clients. She worked as a Family Wealth Consultant for Wells Fargo’s Family Wealth Group (now Abbot Downing), a multi-family office platform that serves families with $50 million and above in investable assets.
    Jamie has been married for over 25 years and has two children. She believes strongly in giving back to her community, and does so by offering pro bono expertise to nonprofit agencies and serving on several community boards.
    52 min
  • There’s No Shame in Pursuing Money, with Zabreen Khan
    In this episode of Money Tales, we talk with Zabreen Khan, who is an inspirational, young powerhouse. Zabreen grew up in Lahore, Pakistan; and, while she always knew that she would move to the US, her move occurred sooner than expected to distance her from the political situation developing in Pakistan at that time.
    Zabreen currently works at Lead Edge Capital, a venture capital and growth equity firm based in New York. She focuses on software and internet investments and hopes to fund more female founders. Prior to Lead Edge, Zabreen worked at Facebook, Andreessen Horowitz and Disney. Outside of her day job, Zabreen is the Co-Founder of HerCapital (https://www.hercapital.org/), a nonprofit and community organization with the mission to educate and empower women on personal finance and investing.
    Zabreen studied Science, Technology & Society and Creative Writing at Stanford University. Zabreen graduated Phi Beta Kappa with Honors and Distinction and received the Robert McGinn Award as Valedictorian in her department. She has been a longtime proponent of female empowerment, starting in her hometown of Lahore where she worked to promote women’s education. Zabreen was a speaker for the 2015 TEDx Women’s movement and continues to be involved in female focused organizations.
    46 min
  • Money Is About Choices, with Joe Gagnon
    Joe Gagnon is the creator of the High-Performance Life, a philosophy and guide to learn techniques for mental toughness, creative problem solving, leadership and personal effectiveness. In our Money Tales conversation, Joe makes it abundantly clear how this goal-driven approach to life has fueled him to achieve success in all areas of his life: family, money, and physical and mental endurance, including successfully running six marathons across six continents over six consecutive days in 2017.
    Joe grew up in the Bronx. His father was a social worker and they had to save every dime, literally. He went on to achieve career success as a young consulting partner at Ernst & Young and ultimately, decided that his life was missing purpose. That led Joe to create a series of personal, fitness and career goals that have taken him up and down the chutes and ladders of life ever since, always striving to better himself and those around him. One thing that has remained true for Joe across all of his endeavors is maintaining the discipline to always save money along the way.
    Joe is a rare mix of entrepreneur, innovator and visionary executive with global experience, having worked with clients in more than 45 countries. As a turnaround CEO, he has taken over from the founder on three occasions, restructuring the businesses and putting them on a path to growth. Joe is a seasoned CXO executive, with over 20 years of operational experience focused on software-enabled businesses, transformation and technology innovation in tech, retail, education, hospitality and health and wellness.
    As a firm believer in the parallel challenges of leading a company and pushing physical fitness limitations, Joe is also an accomplished endurance athlete. He has completed six Ironman Triathlons and over 75 marathon+ distance races. He recently published his book "Living the High Performance Life."
    58 min
  • Let’s Go Do Some Living Before We Do Some Dying, with Ella Chase Hyland
    Ella Chase Hyland is a 6th generation inheritor, who can trace her roots back to the Mayflower. She also happens to be super competitive. Ella learned to ski at age two, started racing at age five and ultimately, became a nationally ranked downhill skier . Her dad was her coach, and unfortunately, experienced a debilitating skiing accident, where he became paralyzed from the neck down. This proved to be an important lesson for Ella about what money cannot buy and inspired her to live by the mantra, “Let’s go do some living before we do some dying.”
    Ella is the co-founder of Wellth Works. And, as a multi-generational asset recipient from a hundred-plus-year family who has seen the burdens and blessing of complex, multi-generational preparation and transfer. Ella is a dynamic and innovative speaker, facilitator, and mentor. She is a recognized authority on the psychology of leadership, negotiations, and organizational turnaround. Wellth Works is a leading provider of coaching and consulting for emerging female family leaders as well as women creating their own wealth as they navigate male-dominated industries.
    Ella is a certified CTI professional coach, and is a Northeastern University alumnus, having graduated summa cum laude with dual bachelor’s degrees. You can find Ella traveling the globe, exploring new cultures and adventures, especially those that involve being in, or on, water.
    Our conversation with Ella inspired the financial insight at the end of the podcast, where we discuss how to financially plan for the potential of an unexpected disability.
    51 min

About Money Tales

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In American society, money is a taboo topic. By not talking with loved ones and friends about money, we miss opportunities to sort through the noise and learn the vocabulary and skills we need to…