Professional Confessionals

A super quick sampler of the guests and their insights from Season 1 of the Professional Confessionals podcast.

An in depth sampler of the wisdom and perspectives shared in the 31 episodes of Season 1. Many heartfelt thanks to our guests who so generously shared their time. We were honored by their participation in this podcast and learned so much from each and every one of them!

"All the skills that are required to be successful in the [tech] field can be self-taught. You can learn anything nowadays. Be curious. Read all you can. Watch all you can. Mess around. Try to build your own products. Build an app, build a website. That's what really interests me as a hiring manager."

A unique perspective on technology is revealed in K. David McCarthy's engaging interview on his professional journey in tech and advertising. From a pre-internet gig at ad agency giant J Walter Thompson to his current role at Tightrope Interactive, David shares insightful observations drawn from personal experience and offers informed advice to those wishing to pursue a career in tech.

"It is deeply, personally fulfilling to work for something that you believe in and would support, and would give money to if asked...the mission of the organization was central to my happiness."

Susan Kenny has found great satisfaction in her career of meaningful work at nonprofit and mission-driven organizations, and is a firm proponent of the benefits and intrinsic value of an education in the humanities. She believes "there is a direct line between a humanities education and working in fields where ethics, compassion, humility, and empathy are important".

"To a lot of people, architecture is an intangible. It's not something they understand. They can understand the work that an engineer does, so a building doesn't fall down on them. They can understand the work a contractor does because they drive the nails or they apply the paint. But architecture is the art of the building, and that gets to be much more difficult for people to understand."

With a focus on energy-efficient passive homes, Architect James Hartford shares his thoughts about his professional journey and working as an architect, plus offers advice for those interested in pursuing the field. James Hartford and his wife Juhee Lee-Hartford are partners at River Architects.

- PODCAST EXTRA -

Author Jo Pitkin discusses the challenges and intricacies of textbook writing for major educational publishers and how she draws upon her literary creativity in what she considers her “survival job”. She offers good tips and advice for writers interested in the field of educational publishing.

Don't miss Jo's additional Professional Confessional interview on her primary career: [Poet] Jo Pitkin

"The high points for me are less about making a quarterly number or something like that. It was about the friendships and joy you have with the people that you work with."

As a former Chief Financial Officer and current Compliance Officer, Mike LaRocco's experience may be in finance and accounting, but his insights and philosophy on work, life and being true to yourself are applicable to anyone.

"A Creative Technologist is someone who uses technology and their creative self to solve problems."

Combining dual disciplines of creative arts and technology, Creative Technologist is a new and unique profession in our brave new world. Bo Bell's intriguing journey has taken him from neoclassical and experimental electronic music composition to work as Off-Broadway Soundscape Designer and as Creative Technologist with the NYC Central Park Conservancy. These days he works as a "creative technology ambassador" for StudioLabs, a digital technology development company. He shares his thoughtful perspective in this engaging interview.

"One thing through my career is corporations taking over hospitals and when they're trying to save money, they cut nursing staff. It just doesn't seem there's enough nurses to do the job."

Practicing Nurse Linda Raftery has seen much in her nearly 3 decades of working in hospital intensive care units, emergency rooms, and as a camp, school and pediatric nurse. She shares the ins and outs and ups and downs, shedding light on often overlooked considerations relating to the nursing profession.

"I don't think there is anything more important than the freedom to think, the freedom to generate new knowledge, the freedom to distribute that knowledge wherever it takes us."

The author of 12 books on media, communications and journalism, Rutgers Professor John V. Pavlik not only gives us his take on working in higher education, but shares fascinating insights from decades of research into technology's effects on media, journalism and society, plus the prospects for people interested in pursuing the field. Highlights include his outlook for journalism and media in the modern age, implications of 'deep fake videos', difficulty in detecting modern propaganda, research experiences in the Middle East, and the use of immersive technologies like AR and VR (augmented reality and virtual reality) in journalism and storytelling.