The Disruption Lab

Kansas City spent years preparing to welcome the world for the World Cup. Jessica Hong arrived as chief curator of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in the middle of it and noticed something the planning missed: the world was already here. The proof ran from Polish Hill to a Nelson-Atkins founded on Chinese art. Her answer was an exhibition of 16 local artists from nine countries, with no soccer ball in sight. Recorded live, Kevin McGinnis talks with Jessica about what a museum owes a civic moment, why liking art and recognizing its importance aren’t the same thing, and whether AI makes curators obsolete.

In 1974, Iowa farmers averaged 125 bushels of corn an acre and cleared about $80 on it. Fifty years later, yields are up 60%, and the return is $20.

Jason Tatge has spent his career chasing that gap. His grandfather was a farmer who told him never to become one. Jason became a commodity trader instead, then built two ag tech companies to successful exits. One of them, Farmobile, put a box on tractors and told farmers the data was theirs to sell. That stance took him to testify before the Senate and put him in the crosshairs of the equipment makers.

Now, as CEO of PrairieFood, he turns cattle manure and ethanol waste into food for soil microbes, built to get farmers off the fertilizer treadmill. Kevin McGinnis talks with Jason about the identity crisis that follows an exit, and why a Silicon Valley VC wouldn’t fly to Kansas City. They also cover selling more product than you can make, and why six inches of soil may be the most undervalued asset in America.

When a child gets a life-altering diagnosis, the hospital has a bed waiting. For the parent who drove through the night from Dodge City or Joplin, or got put on a plane with an hour’s notice, there is no bed anywhere in the healthcare system. That is the gap Ronald McDonald House fills, and in Kansas City it still isn’t big enough: last year it had to turn families away nearly 800 times.

Tami Greenberg, CEO of Ronald McDonald House Kansas City, is a social worker who never expected to run a political campaign. Then the only way to grow meant buying the city park the house sat on, which took a vote of the people. Recorded live in front of a studio audience, Kevin McGinnis talks with Tami about why kids heal faster when their parents are cared for, the McDonald’s funding myth, leading a team through the long middle of compassion fatigue, and what Kansas City owes the family getting the phone call tonight.

For ten years, Paige Beltowski traveled with her sewing machines in her checked bags. She built costumes for Star Wars, Marvel, 1923, and Super Bowl halftime shows. Almost none of that work is visible. Behind every credit roll, live broadcast, and stadium tour are hundreds of craftspeople, and nearly all of that industry runs through Los Angeles and New York.

So why did she just open a storefront in Kansas City?

Recorded live, Kevin McGinnis talks with Paige about the week in New Orleans that planted the idea. She describes the day she walked out of a bridal job to join a union costume shop racing a Christmas deadline. She also recounts the back-to-back run of Beyoncé, the Super Bowl, and Lady Gaga’s Coachella, which ended with a serious talk from her mom. Now, with Cut & Sew KC open on Delaware Street, she’s making a bigger bet. She believes the Midwest already has the talent. What it’s missing is enough steady work, and enough trust, to keep that talent here.

What happens when a city's entrepreneurs aren't excluded from the economy, just invisible to it? On this episode of The Disruption Lab, recorded live in front of a studio audience, host Kevin McGinnis sits down with Suzanne Gunn. She is a former oncology nurse, med spa owner, couture designer, founder of AfroKC, and co-founder of a planned Fashion and Beauty Innovation Campus in Kansas City. Every one of those ventures traces back to one person: her mother. She died of cancer after being misdiagnosed four times in Kenya, and her quiet, community-first way of living became the blueprint Suzanne didn't recognize until it was almost too late. Today we talk about everything she's built since: a med spa that safely treats oncology patients a couture label shown at Kansas City Fashion Week a retail line selling handmade goods from African artisans AfroKC, a festival she started after realizing the region hadn't excluded African-owned businesses so much as never known they existed a planned Fashion and Beauty Innovation Campus Recorded live, Kevin McGinnis talks with Suzanne about grief, a near-breakdown, why balance is a myth, and what it takes to build the community infrastructure most founders take for granted.

Troost Avenue is Kansas City's most infamous boundary — a redlining border named for a man who enslaved six people, and the same line congressional maps are still drawn along today. Chris Goode built Ruby Jean's Juicery, now a national brand carried in over 160 Whole Foods stores, out of a promise he made at 14, watching his grandmother die of type 2 diabetes. Eleven years later, that promise has become a campaign to rename the street, a bus-stop adoption program aiming for 1,000 stops, and a hard case for why wealthy institutions — not good intentions — are what actually change a neighborhood. Kevin McGinnis talks with Goode about grief, capital, and building something that outlasts a name.

In March 2020, John Pryor was standing in a furniture studio he'd just spent a year renovating, watching his business teeter. He launched a face-mask line before he knew how to sew, and sold 15,000 masks in eight weeks. Then the real story walked through his door: dozens of refugee and immigrant stitchers from Burma and Afghanistan, carrying generational craft skills the labor market had never learned to see.

Pryor rebuilt his company around them, launching a handbag brand where designs carry their makers' names, royalties flow back to the designers, and there are no investors or bank debt to dilute the mission. Kevin McGinnis talks with Pryor about talent that hides in plain sight — and what it takes for a city to finally see it.

What does it take to rename a street that still functions as Kansas City's color line — and what happens when the city's own mayor won't let it happen?

On this episode of The Disruption Lab, recorded live in front of a studio audience, host Kevin McGinnis sits down with Chris Goode, founder of Ruby Jean's Juicery, the first 100% health-focused food business ever to open on Kansas City's East Side.

Goode traces the story from its origin: at 14, he lost his great-grandmother to a sudden heart attack and his grandmother, Ruby Jean, to type 2 diabetes — three days apart — and made a vow that would take a decade, a stable insurance career in Chicago, and a 10-day juice cleanse in Los Angeles to finally act on. He explains why, in 2017, he chose to open a Ruby Jean's location directly on Troost Avenue, the historic redlining boundary named for a man who enslaved six people, instead of avoiding the address — and how that decision built the trust that later got Ruby Jean's discovered, unsolicited, by a Whole Foods employee who had spent months secret-shopping every location before ever introducing herself.

The conversation moves through the systems Goode has built since: Truth Over Troost, his campaign to rename the avenue, now stalled at the mayor's desk despite roughly 15,000 petition signatures; the first bus-stop adoption program in Kansas City history; a Kansas City Public Schools juice pilot that reached three schools and 10,000 bottles before it was never renewed; and the reality of scaling a mission-driven brand into national CPG distribution while, eleven years in, still chasing capital and cash flow. Goode is candid about what breaks in that transition, why Whole Foods will "like you but not love you" until the bottles move, and why he believes real change for kids in under-resourced schools will only come when wealthy institutions decide to care.

Infrastructure without application strategy is just real estate with electricity. Sprint launched America’s first 4G network — and still lost the 4G era to the translators. Having the infrastructure first is not the same as capturing the era. KC now has $11B+ of announced hyperscale investment. The economic return depends on the translation: connecting the compute to the compute-hungry industries already here. And the proximity advantage is real where it’s honest: the triangle of compute + physical testbeds + operating companies, which almost no other region has.

Kansas City is the 33rd-largest metro area in America. It was competing against host cities ranked in the top fifteen nationally and it won anyway. Then FIFA told them they had redefined what a host city does.

Cliff Illig, co-founder of Cerner and majority owner of Sporting Kansas City, explains how a decade of deliberate infrastructure investment, not luck, turned Kansas City into a World Cup host. He breaks down the difference between hosting a moment and building sustained economic advantage, why design intentionality shaped everything from stadium architecture to fan experience, and what comes next for a city that no longer has to prove it belongs.