Philly Who?

Brendan Lowry is the founder of Rory Creative and one of the biggest social media influencers in Philadelphia. He is best-known for the Instagram account he created, Peopledelphia, which has over 85 thousand followers.

He is also a part of the founding team of Curalate, one of Philly ’s fastest growing startups. In this episode, we’ll chat about his beginnings at Curalate, which originally was an “AirBnb for parking and storage” called Storably. But after that idea failed, Brendan and the Curalate team found a much more successful business in social media marketing services.

We’ll also talk about how Peopledelphia began, and how, as it grew, Brendan had to find ways to ensure it actually represented all Philadelphians.

We also discuss his departure from Curalate, what he's doing now with Rory, and what life is like as one of the internet's sought-after "influencers."

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Alex Hillman is the cofounder of Indy Hall, one of Philly's first ever coworking spaces. Indy Hall today features around 350 independent entrepreneurs and freelancers. But, back in 2006, when Alex was a freelancer himself, freelancing wasn’t so common and could be pretty lonely. Alex loved the independent life, but he missed the camaraderie found in the workplace. So, he set out to find his peers.

In this episode, you’ll hear how his group of fellow independents grew, and how they had the crazy idea to actually do their work in the same place. Alex will share how he and the community built Indy Hall from the ground up, and how they lead the coworking revolution.

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Lindsey Scannapieco is the Managing Partner of Scout, an urban design collective that specializes in repurposing vacant and underutilized spaces. Their claim to fame so far is the Bok building, a giant, 8-story vocational school that takes up an entire city block in South Philly.

The Bok School was closed in 2012, but in 2014 Lindsey bought the building with a grand vision - she would lease pieces of it to creatives, who would use the building’s maker spaces for their original purpose, rather than just turning the building into condos.

Today, Bok has 130 businesses operating out of the building, but, the most famous one is Bok Bar, the rooftop beer garden with an unmatched view of the skyline. Bok Bar opened to a bit of controversy in 2015, but since then has become a Philly summer staple.

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Thomas Dixon was born-and-raised in Philadelphia, and would go on to receive a bachelors degree in Psychology with a minor in Neuroscience at Ursinus. One day in 2010 , while he was working at CHOP towards becoming a Youth Psychiatrist, an unexpected accident would change his life forever.

Thomas would suffer a brain injury and develop Episodic Memory Loss, meaning that he could no longer reliably remember specific details of things that happened before a given day. He originally turned to Twitter as a means to record things like what he did, who he saw, and how he felt each day, but soon enough, it was time for a bigger solution.

His app, ME.mory, has essentially become an external hard drive for his mind, and in this episode, you’ll hear how really, you could say that his memory is now better than ours.

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Yasmine Mustafa is a social entrepreneur fueled by a passion to leverage technology for good. She's the CEO of ROAR for Good, a certified B-corp aimed at reducing assaults against women using smart safety wearables and empathy education. Before that, she founded and sold her first company to a prominent content marketing firm in Silicon Valley. 

Yasmine brought Girl Develop It to Philadelphia, a non-profit providing affordable opportunities for women interested in learning software development. In addition, she sits on the board of Coded by Kids, a non-profit organization committed to providing free tech education to inner city youth.

Due to challenges she experienced migrating to the United States as a refugee and discovering she was undocumented, Yasmine is also a champion for immigrants. Her "Birth Lottery" TEDx Philadelphia talk highlights the challenges (and opportunities) inherent in each life.

BBC selected Yasmine as one of it's 100 Women of 2016 due to her work in empowering women. She was also recognized as Upstart 100's most dynamic people shaping business, Philadelphia Magazine’s Top 20 Best Philadelphians.

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Miguel Dalmau is a comedian who has appeared on TruTV, BET, and MTV. His comedy album, Thank You, That's My Time can often be heard on Sirius XM Radio. He is also the host of the American Immigrant podcast, where he interviews other immigrants who are pursuing their dreams.

In this episode, Miguel chronicles his escape of poverty and an abusive father in the Dominican Republic. He shares his discovery of comedy while growing up in NYC, and how he turned to comedy as a way to get by when he became an undocumented immigrant. We also hear how Miguel has fallen in love with the Philly comedy scene after becoming disenchanted with the state of "imitation comedy" in New York.

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This is Part 2 of a two-episode series.

Todd Carmichael (IG: @todd_carmichael) is the Cofounder and CEO of La Colombe Coffee Roasters. He and his cofounder JP Iberti started the first La Colombe Cafe in Rittenhouse in 1994, and today it has 30 locations nationwide. Todd also invented the Canned Draft Latte, which took only 1 year to be found in 60% of all stores in the US.

Todd holds the world record for the fastest solo trek from the Antarctic coast to the South Pole, and he hosted Dangerous Grounds on The Travel Channel for three seasons.

In part 2 of this two-part episode, we hear stories of Todd's adventures sourcing coffee as the host of Travel Channel's Dangerous Grounds. We also dive into his recent invention of the Canned Draft Latte, and we get his perspective as an outspoken Philly-based CEO.

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Todd Carmichael (IG: @todd_carmichael) is the Cofounder and CEO of La Colombe Coffee Roasters. He and his cofounder JP Iberti started the first La Colombe Cafe in Rittenhouse in 1994, and today it has 30 locations nationwide. Todd also invented the Canned Draft Latte, which took only 1 year to be found in 60% of all stores in the US.

Todd holds the world record for the fastest solo trek from the Antarctic coast to the South Pole, and he hosted Dangerous Grounds on The Travel Channel for three seasons.

In part 1 of this two-part episode, we dive deep into Todd's origins in the Pacific Northwest, and we hear the firsthand account of what it's like to face death at the hands of Antarctica's minus-100 degree temperatures.

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Becca Craig (IG @chefbeccacraig) is the Executive Pastry Chef at Cake Life Bake Shop in Fishtown. She recently was a contestant on The Food Network's Best Baker in America, and previously baked behind-the-scenes on TLC's Bakery Boss. Her biggest claim-to-fame, though, is that in 2017 she baked Beyoncé's birthday cake.

In this episode, we hear the story of how watching the Food Network with her Craigslist roommate inspired her to start baking as an art form, and how her career quickly rose to TV Stardom and making sweet treats for Queen Bey.

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Erica Atwood (@ericainphilly) is currently the CEO of First Degree Consulting, LLC. Erica has served as the interim executive director of the Philadelphia Police Advisory Commission, which is the city's police civilian oversight board. She was the first Director of Black Male Engagement for the City of Philadelphia. She has also led External Affairs & Community Engagement for the Mayor’s Office and was Deputy City Representative serving as a protocol officer and overseeing management of special projects.

In this conversation, we hear stories of her role in the Michael Nutter mayoral campaign, we learn about the lives she's touched in her social justice work, and we talk about the ways in which we can all gain a greater perspective by empathizing and seeing life through another's lens.

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