People At Pyramid

Listen to the full conversation: https://t-sml.mtrbio.com/public/smartlink/pyramid-club

Andrew Bogert spent his Air Force career keeping wounded troops alive on cargo jets. Today he runs a pet and home concierge business and chairs the Pyramid Club LGBTQ+ committee.

Andrew joined the Pyramid Club in October 2015. Before that he served in the Air Force Reserve as a flight combat medic, flying into Baghdad and Balad after Operation Iraqi Freedom kicked off and into Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. His job was to pick up wounded troops from every branch of the service, plus civilians moving through the State Department, and keep them alive on the run to Ramstein Air Base.

That career started almost by accident. Andrew wanted to be a flight attendant and washed out of the American Airlines process on a height requirement, a quarter of an inch too tall. A friend in the Army pointed him toward Aeromed, and three years of training later he was fully qualified on the aircraft, lifting patients into the top litter tier of what amounted to a flying hospital carrying up to 100 people at a time.

The instinct behind all of it came from his mother, Joan Marie Bogert, a nurse for 60 years who fostered 32 children over 12 years with his father in an emergency placement home outside Allentown. Andrew is the youngest of five. He tells Vince he would think of her before treating an injury he had never seen before.

Caretaking is also what brought him to horses. After retiring in 2011 he found Shamrock Reins at a table outside a courthouse during jury duty, met founder Janet Brennan, and spent five years in intensive equine therapy at the farm in Pipersville. He is certified to work with horses now, and he walks through what a session looks like, from grooming and anatomy to lunging on a long lead to the moment you breathe into a horse's nostrils so it learns your scent. Dogs came next, which is how Drew's Doggy Days started. He takes care of dogs, cats, horses, chickens, goats, homes and pools, whatever the client needs.

At the Club, Andrew chairs the committee Maureen Coyle asked him to join in 2015, back when it was called the LGBT committee and four people sat around one table. It is the LGBTQ+ committee now, more than twenty members strong, and it fills the room on the third Thursday of most months with a rotating cast of partner organizations. Penn Medicine, Jefferson, the Philadelphia Police, the Fire Department, Aramark. Andrew served during Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and he is direct about why a conversation like this one matters.

CHAPTERS:
0:00 - Meet Andrew Bogert
2:34 - Becoming a Flight Combat Medic
4:41 - The Nurse Who Raised Him
7:49 - Equine Therapy After Service
11:40 - From Horses to Doggy Days
13:52 - Inside the LGBTQ+ Committee

GUEST LINKS:
Drew's Doggy Days on Instagram: @drewbogert
[email protected]

ABOUT PEOPLE AT PYRAMID:
People at Pyramid is the Pyramid Club's member spotlight podcast. Every episode, host Vince Quinn sits down with one of our members to find out who they are, what they do, and what makes them worth knowing. Business, service, second acts, and the occasional story nobody saw coming.

SUBSCRIBE for new episodes every other week.

CONNECT:
Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/people-at-pyramid/id1784545290
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7alEumoeEpbqgHzaugBPLZ
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdd93VlJAwBR_m7jDhPxq3agoS8iLuT4G
Vince Quinn on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/vincequinn
Show feed: https://feeds.transistor.fm/people-at-pyramid

Interested in being featured on People at Pyramid?
Register here

Want help with your podcast?
E-mail Vince Quinn [email protected]

Want to learn about Pyramid Club Membership? 

Click here.

Be a guest on People at Pyramid: https://feeds.transistor.fm/people-at-pyramid

Five decades of chemical engineering, the plants he was called in to rescue, and why he reads history to understand the AI boom, with our member Joel Shertok.

This week on People at Pyramid, we're spotlighting our member Joel Shertok, a chemical engineer and the president of Process Industries Consultants in Newark, Delaware. Joel has spent 50 years in the field, and he has the stories to prove it.

His work has always come down to two jobs: take a process a chemist developed and scale it up to commercial production, or walk into a plant that has started misbehaving and figure out why. He tells us about a membrane-filter line that suddenly began turning out unusable product. The culprit turned out to be a supplier that had changed a raw material to get around a patent fight and decided it was too small a detail to mention. That small detail cost tens of millions of dollars to engineer around. Then the supplier switched back.

Joel's career spans petrochemicals, advanced composites, carbon fiber, biotech, and filtration, and clients from zero-revenue startups to companies worth $100 million. He got into the field after reading a book called So You Want to Be a Chemical Engineer, comparing starting salaries, and making a very practical decision. Decades later, when his company told him it was time to retire, he simply started consulting, and the clients called him. No marketing, no sales.

Away from the lab, Joel is a history buff, and he reads about the end of the Weimar Republic and the crash of 1873 with a clear eye on the present. Ask him about today's AI boom and he will tell you how he thinks it ends.

Meet Joel, and hear five decades of the chemical industry in one conversation.

CHAPTERS:
0:00 - Meet Joel Shertok, Chemical Engineer
1:10 - When a Good Process Starts Making Garbage
4:30 - Consulting From Startups to $100M Firms
7:00 - History, Bubbles, and the AI Boom

GUEST LINKS:
Process Industries Consultants: https://processindconsultants.com
Joel Shertok on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelshertok/

ABOUT PEOPLE AT PYRAMID:
People at Pyramid is the Pyramid Club's member spotlight podcast. Every episode, we sit down with one of our members to hear what they do, what drives them, and the stories that make them worth knowing. Hosted by Vince Quinn.

SUBSCRIBE for a new member spotlight every other week.

CONNECT:
Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/people-at-pyramid/id1784545290
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7alEumoeEpbqgHzaugBPLZ
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdd93VlJAwBR_m7jDhPxq3agoS8iLuT4G
People at Pyramid: https://feeds.transistor.fm/people-at-pyramid
Vince Quinn on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/vincequinn

Interested in being featured on People at Pyramid?
Register here

Want help with your podcast?
E-mail Vince Quinn [email protected]

Want to learn about Pyramid Club Membership? 

Click here.

Listen to People at Pyramid wherever you get your podcasts: https://t-sml.mtrbio.com/public/smartlink/pyramid-club

Feeding the homeless in Philadelphia started for Darryl Johnson with one bag of sandwiches and a man who knew his name.
Our member Darryl Johnson was handing out sandwiches in Center City about twenty years ago when a man pulled back a blanket and said hello by name. They had gone to school together. Darryl's son was standing right next to him.
That night is why Beloved Brothers Inc. exists. Darryl and his friends had gone out once, as a church thing, and by the end of it none of them wanted it to be a one-time trip. They started going back every quarter.
Going back every quarter is not the same as running a nonprofit, and the paperwork came later. Every time Darryl went to a council member for grant money he heard the same answer: get your 501(c)(3) first. He got it done in 2016, which makes this the organization's tenth year.
The financial side of running one was familiar ground for him. Darryl spent his career as finance director for the Child Care Information Services program across Philadelphia with Caring People Alliance. What he had to learn was how to walk into a room and get people to see a vision well enough to fund it.

The vision he is proudest of came out of a walk through the City Hall courtyard. Now in its fifth year, the annual dinner seats guests at tables, hands them menus, and has volunteers in black serving the plates. There are donated clothes, a barber cutting hair, and city homelessness offices set up with tables to connect people to services.
By the third year of that dinner, the name of the work changed. A man came up to shake Darryl's hand and told him he was no longer homeless but was still hungry, because his budget ran short after medication. Darryl started saying homeless and hungry after that.
That dinner is also where Darryl brings the next generation in. The youth who come out serve plates rather than watch. As Darryl puts it, the people the city walks past are the invisible people, and for one day they are told they are seen.

CHAPTERS:
0:00 - Meet Darryl Johnson
3:04 - From One Night to a Nonprofit
7:08 - Feeding the Homeless at City Hall
11:03 - Not Homeless, But Hungry

GUEST LINKS:
Beloved Brothers Inc.: https://www.belovedbrosinc.org/
Email Darryl: [email protected]

ABOUT PEOPLE AT PYRAMID:
People at Pyramid is the Pyramid Club's member spotlight podcast. Every episode, host Vince Quinn sits down with one of our members to find out who they are, what they build, and what makes them worth knowing. Stories worth telling, from the people who make up this place.

SUBSCRIBE for new episodes every other week.

CONNECT:
Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/people-at-pyramid/id1784545290
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7alEumoeEpbqgHzaugBPLZ
Watch every episode: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdd93VlJAwBR_m7jDhPxq3agoS8iLuT4G
Vince Quinn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincequinn

Interested in being featured on People at Pyramid?
Register here

Want help with your podcast?
E-mail Vince Quinn [email protected]

Want to learn about Pyramid Club Membership? 

Click here.

Be a guest on People at Pyramid: https://feeds.transistor.fm/people-at-pyramid

Process improvement, Lean Six Sigma, and the planning that decides a project before the work even starts, with our member Elena Varela.

This week on People at Pyramid, we're spotlighting our member Elena Varela, a business manager at Drexel University who spends her days making complicated projects run smoothly. If you have ever watched a big initiative stall, drift, or collapse under its own weight, this conversation is for you.

Elena works in process improvement, and she is a believer in the Lean Six Sigma approach and the DMAIC framework: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control. But the heart of what she does is simpler than the terminology sounds. Before any project starts, she gets the requirements clear and builds a charter everyone can agree on. Skip that planning, she says, and it always comes back later as bloat, rework, and a timeline nobody signed up for.

She also talks about the human side of the job. A big part of managing projects is managing people: getting experts in a room, keeping them pointed in the same direction, and building the trust that keeps the work moving. Elena calls it herding cats, and she clearly loves it.

We get into where AI tools fit, too. Elena and Vince trade stories about using them for the parts of the work nobody wants to do, and about what happens when you hand them the hard part instead. Then the conversation turns to something closer to Elena's heart: movies, storytelling, and why she is drawn to stories about human connection.

Meet Elena, and hear why she is the kind of member who makes this community what it is.

CHAPTERS:
0:00 - Meet Elena Varela, Business Manager at Drexel
3:00 - Project Management Best Practices
7:40 - Movies, Storytelling, and Human Connection
10:30 - A Show Recommendation and How to Connect

GUEST LINKS:
Elena Varela on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenajvarela/

ABOUT PEOPLE AT PYRAMID:
People at Pyramid is the Pyramid Club's member spotlight podcast. Every episode, we sit down with one of our members to hear what they do, what drives them, and the stories that make them worth knowing. Hosted by Vince Quinn.

SUBSCRIBE for a new member spotlight every other week.

CONNECT:
Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/people-at-pyramid/id1784545290
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7alEumoeEpbqgHzaugBPLZ
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdd93VlJAwBR_m7jDhPxq3agoS8iLuT4G
People at Pyramid: https://feeds.transistor.fm/people-at-pyramid
Vince Quinn on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/vincequinn

Interested in being featured on People at Pyramid?
Register here

Want help with your podcast?
E-mail Vince Quinn [email protected]

Want to learn about Pyramid Club Membership? 

Click here.

Be a guest on People at Pyramid: https://feeds.transistor.fm/people-at-pyramid

A paralegal, a law student, and a property manager all at once, and a plan built around tax law, with our newest member Emerald Vaughan.

This week on People at Pyramid, we're spotlighting our newest member, Emerald Vaughan, who joined the Club just two weeks ago and is already running three careers at once. She is a paralegal by day, a law student by night, and a property manager on the weekends.

Emerald walks us through what a paralegal really does, and why the job comes down to being a details person: reading contracts, drafting motions, and catching the small things that keep a client protected. From there she traces her path from debate-team captain to the courtroom-adjacent work she does now, and the moment she asked herself why she was not the attorney in the room. So she went to law school, and she is set on tax law.

Her case for tax law is refreshingly practical. She likes finding a deal, and she likes helping people, and reducing what someone owes is one of the most direct ways to do both. For a lot of people, she points out, it is easier to trim expenses than to earn more.

Then we get into her weekends. Emerald manages several properties and does much of the renovation work herself, from swapping a faucet to redoing a backsplash. Her advice for anyone intimidated by home projects is to start small and build up, and to remember her golden rule: measure twice, cut once, and if you mess up, call a contractor.

Meet Emerald, and see why she is the kind of member you want to know.

CHAPTERS:
0:00 - Meet Emerald Vaughan
2:05 - Why Tax Law
4:15 - Real Estate and DIY Renovations
7:00 - Taking On New Projects and How to Connect

GUEST LINKS: Emerald Vaughan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emeraldvaughan

ABOUT PEOPLE AT PYRAMID: People at Pyramid is the Pyramid Club's member spotlight podcast. Every episode, we sit down with one of our members to hear what they do, what drives them, and the stories that make them worth knowing. Hosted by Vince Quinn.

SUBSCRIBE for a new member spotlight every other week.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/people-at-pyramid/id1784545290

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7alEumoeEpbqgHzaugBPLZ Watch on

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdd93VlJAwBR_m7jDhPxq3agoS8iLuT4G People at Pyramid: https://feeds.transistor.fm/people-at-pyramid Vince Quinn on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/vincequinn

Interested in being featured on People at Pyramid?
Register here

Want help with your podcast?
E-mail Vince Quinn [email protected]

Want to learn about Pyramid Club Membership? 

Click here.

This week we sit down with our member Yola Vital, owner of Recovery Space and founder of Green Girl Era, on how showing up built her business and her community in a brand new city.

When Yola moved to Philadelphia, she did not know anyone. She was building a business, but the community was not there yet, and it wore on her. What turned it around was putting herself in the right rooms, the Pyramid Club among them, and letting the connections find her.

Out of that came Green Girl Era, the women's golf and social club she launched in 2026. For Yola, golf is a networking engine first and a sport second. She goes for the conversations on the course, the lunches after, and the introductions that travel from Philadelphia to Ghana, Kenya, and beyond.

The other side of her work is Recovery Space, the social service agency she owns. It grew from sober homes into transitional and emergency housing, case management, and partnerships with the district attorney's office and private landlords, serving people coming home from incarceration and rebuilding their lives. She talks about learning the business from the ground up, writing her own grants and proposals, and going all in to own her agency.

Interested in being featured on People at Pyramid?
Register here

Want help with your podcast?
E-mail Vince Quinn [email protected]

Want to learn about Pyramid Club Membership? 

Click here.

What does it take to find purpose once you've already "made it"? This week we sit down with our member Charley Timmins, who has been part of the Pyramid Club for eight years and spends his days helping talented professionals get unstuck and figure out what's next.

Charley calls himself the "what's next" guy, and it fits. He works with high achievers who have built careers, companies, and wealth, then reach the moment where they ask, is this all there is? His answer starts with purpose. Not the quota, not the title, but the impact you have beyond yourself.

We talked about why community matters more than ever. As Charley put it, the pandemic proved we can't do things alone, and real connection doesn't happen through a screen. We have to be in each other's presence. That belief is a big part of why he values the Club, and why he tells new members to give it a full year before they judge it.

The heart of the conversation is a story. Charley walks through how he helped a 62-year-old consultant prove his irreplaceable value to a company that was about to move on without him, using nothing more than a roll of butcher paper and the history of a product only he understood. The outcome changed that man's retirement, and his legacy.

It's a warm, generous conversation about purpose, community, and helping people become who they were meant to be. Meet Charley Timmins on this week's episode.

GUEST LINKS:
Email Charley: [email protected]
Connect with Charley on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charleytimmins/

ABOUT PEOPLE AT PYRAMID:
People at Pyramid is the Pyramid Club's member-spotlight podcast, hosted by Vince Quinn. Every episode, we sit down with one of our members to hear who they are, what they do, and what makes them worth knowing. It is a look inside a community built on the people who make it what it is.

SUBSCRIBE for new episodes every two weeks.

CONNECT:
Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/people-at-pyramid/id1784545290
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7alEumoeEpbqgHzaugBPLZ
Host: https://linkedin.com/in/vincequinn
Show website: https://feeds.transistor.fm/people-at-pyramid

Leadership is the constant that holds steady through AI, economic shifts, and everything else. This week we sit down with our member Stephen Novak, Client Lead at Aiir Consulting, to talk about what that looks like in practice.

Stephen spends his days coaching leaders at companies of every shape and size, and he keeps his definition of the job simple: leadership is the act of realizing a clear and compelling vision through others. Everything else is detail.

We talked about AI first, because Stephen had just hosted an event on AI and leadership. His take is steady and clear. The tools are changing fast, and good leaders adapt to them. What does not change is that business is still built by people. AI can hold a lot of knowledge, but it does not carry lived experience or judgment, and it only works with the context you feed it. As Stephen put it, your team can tell when a response came from a model instead of from you, because the model does not have your wisdom.

From there the conversation turned to sports, home turf for Vince after a decade in sports radio. Stephen, a Pittsburgh guy through and through, drew the parallels between coaching athletes and coaching executives. Even the best in the world keep a coach. Tiger Woods always had one. The demands keep shifting, the game rarely goes to plan, and the ability to adapt in the moment sits at the heart of both sports and leadership.

We got into coaching styles and culture, from the burnout that follows a coach who pushes too hard to the patient, culture-first rebuilds that pay off over years. Stephen and Vince talked about coaching trees, the way one strong leader develops people who go on to develop others, and how that compounds across a whole organization.

It is a warm, wide-ranging conversation about the parts of leadership that technology cannot touch. Meet Stephen Novak on this week's episode.

GUEST LINKS:

Email Stephen: [email protected]

Connect with Stephen on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-novak/

CONNECT:

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/people-at-pyramid/id1784545290

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7alEumoeEpbqgHzaugBPLZ

Host: https://linkedin.com/in/vincequinn

Show website: https://feeds.transistor.fm/people-at-pyramid

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdd93VlJAwBR_m7jDhPxq3agoS8iLuT4G

Follow People at Pyramid wherever you listen.

Interested in being featured on People at Pyramid?
Register here

Want to learn about Pyramid Club Membership? 

Click here.

Steve Melchiorre went from carrying a gun as a juvenile probation officer to building wealth plans for everyday Philadelphia families.

In this member spotlight, host Vince Quinn talks with Steve Melchiorre — financial planner and co-chair of the Pyramid Club's Young Executive Committee — about a career that zigzagged through law enforcement and carpentry before landing in financial planning. Steve works with everyday individuals, families, and businesses, using the same tax and finance strategies usually reserved for the ultra-wealthy, and he's building an "I got a guy" network to connect Philadelphia's young professionals.

Be a guest on the show — if you're a Pyramid Club member with a story to tell, check the show notes and reach out.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• An unconventional path — juvenile probation officer, then carpenter — shaped how Steve works with clients today
• He serves everyday people, not the ultra-high-net-worth, with the strategies the wealthy already use
• Financial health starts with a mindset shift, not just cutting spending
• The Young Executive Committee is uniting Philadelphia's siloed young-professional groups into one connected network
• Community in action: volunteering at MANNA and a World Cup Fan Fest watch party

CHAPTERS:
 00:00 — Introduction
 00:50 — From Probation Officer to Planner
 04:52 — Financial Planning for Everyday People
 06:26 — The Young Executive Committee
 08:28 — Building an "I Got a Guy" Network
 11:13 — Martial Arts & Wrap-Up

GUEST LINKS:
 Steve Melchiorre, Financial Planner, Fortune Financial
 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-melchiorre-cfp

CONNECT:
 Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/people-at-pyramid/id1784545290
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7alEumoeEpbqgHzaugBPLZ
Vince Quinn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincequinn
Show website: https://feeds.transistor.fm/people-at-pyramid
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdd93VlJAwBR_m7jDhPxq3agoS8iLuT4G
 

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Want help with your podcast?
E-mail Vince Quinn [email protected]

Want to learn about Pyramid Club Membership? 

Click here.

This week on People At Pyramid, we talk with Deep Parmar, founder and CEO of Caramel Advisors and a longtime Pyramid Club member. Caramel is an outsourced accounting firm that takes bookkeeping, tax, audit, and financial planning off business owners' plates so they can focus on growth.

Deep breaks down how he manages a team of nearly 120 people spread across a ten-and-a-half-hour time difference, the best career advice he ever received about when to speak and when to hold back, and how cooking became his way to slow down and reset.

 Connect with Deep on LinkedIn

Interested in being featured on People at Pyramid?
Register here

Want help with your podcast?
E-mail Vince Quinn [email protected]

Want to learn about Pyramid Club Membership? 

Click here.