Today we talk with my old friend and colleague Dr Frederik Pferdt, who is on a mission to empower everyone to fulfill their visions for the future.

From shaping Google's fabled creative culture as Chief Innovation Evangelist to nurturing the minds of students at Stanford University's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, Frederik has a track record of helping others realize their creative superpower to imagine and invent a better tomorrow.

Join us now as we have a conversational celebration around his new book, What's Next Is Now: How to Live Future Ready as we talk about shyness and audacity, knowing and not knowing, curiosity and risk. 

Intro and Outro music kind courtesy of Taraval.

Cross cultural efforts can be a minefield. Cliff's areas of geographic focus are mainly post colonial countries in Asia. As a white dude American, Cliff knows the pitfalls. What's surprising the how these challenges can become an innovation superpower via the intention of care and the skills of empathy and cognitive perspective taking.

Cliff is most passionate about helping teams and organizations through transformations, enabling them to succeed in new levels of complexity.  Supporting leaders in their ability to rise to the challenges of rapid change when prior ways of leading seem to fall short is some of the most joyful work he does.  He believes those who find deeper connection to their purpose and practice ways of deepening their self-awareness are able to see and let go of beliefs and assumptions limiting their effectiveness as leaders.  He finds joy in helping others look inward with courage to encounter what holds them back to release themselves from what hinders their greatness.

His practice ranges from online and in-person leadership program design and delivery  as well as executive and team/cohort coaching. Clients worked with have been in major manufacturing, hi tech, bio tech, pharmaceutical, telecommunications, land development, financial services, US Navy, including start-ups, family run conglomerates, mid size and Fortune 500 companies in the US, Europe, Australia and SE Asia. He is trained in Presence-based and Growth Edge coaching methods, also is certified to use Leadership Circle framework of assessments and the MBTI. He is also a member of the global faculty for Leadership Circle Certifications.

Intro and Outro music kind courtesy of Taraval.

Marco Ferrara is co-founder and SVP of Software Analytics at Form Energy, a company pioneering iron-air batteries to solve grid storage for renewable energy. (He is also the CIO - Chief Italian Officer.) He has a dazzling technical resume: a PhD in Nuclear engineering from MIT and another in Computer Science for good measure. Yet, he credits beauty and creativity as they key drivers in his entrepreneurial journey. Join us as we unpack how this came to be and how we can all learn the "wisdom of our hands" even as we tackle problems that seem to require the wisdom of our brains. 

Intro and Outro music kind courtesy of Taraval.

Today we get to talk to Meg Salter about how humans develop and how that can allow you to innovate at the core - who you are - and how that can enable creative and innovative action and how we can even use life's deepest pain to spur growth.

Meg Salter is an internationally experienced Executive Coach and Management Consultant.  and works with corporate, public sector and non-profit clients.

As an Integral Master Coach™, Meg supports leaders to develop the mental, emotional and interpersonal capacities needed to handle the greater complexity required at pivot points as their careers or organizations change. These involve the abilities to frame context, direction and outcomes needed and work with diverse point of view

A skilled teacher of mindfulness, she incorporates mindfulness and self-awareness techniques into coaching programs and leadership development. 

Intro and Outro music kind courtesy of Taraval.

Any innovation process needs to accommodate and even encourage diverse points of view and even divergent truths. This almost necessarily produces conflict. Are there practical, trainable ways of navigating this reality at both the individual and group levels to give us the peace of heart and mind to enter in this dance of complexity and ambiguity and create systems of wholecome innovation? YES!
Dr. Roxy Manning, is a clinical psychologist and certified Center for Nonviolent Communication trainer. She brings decades of service experience to her work interrupting explicitly and implicitly oppressive attitudes and cultural norms. Dr. Manning has consulted, and provided training across the US and in over 10 countries individuals and groups committed to social change - creating what she calls the beloved community.
www.roxannemanning.com for more info and book purchasing!

Intro and Outro music kind courtesy of Taraval.

Cheryl Strauss Einhorn is an award-winning  investigative reporter at New York Times and Foreign Policy Magazine, Barron’s who wanted to be sure she could navigate complexity and ambiguity in the high stakes world of finance with confidence and good conscience. To solve for this she innovated an evidence-based decision-making system that uniquely controls for and counters cognitive bias to expand knowledge while improving judgment called the Area method In todays chat, well be talking about specific tools we can use to better trust our intuition - and address our biases and new book Problem Solver.
You can learn more by watching her Ted talk and visiting areamethod.com.

Intro and Outro music kind courtesy of Taraval.

Irene Au has been building bridges between technology and creativity her whole life. From being the child of Chinese immigrants in South Carolina who wanted to study design and dance (but chose engineering) to being the voice of user centric design at tech companies who thought design was the result of complex calculations, she has developed a fascinating way of projecting her power and expertise in the world in the form of values based design in ways that are both practical and transcendent. 
Irene has led User Experience at Netscape, Yahoo, Google and Khosla Ventures and has led Human Experience in Yoga, Meditation, Art, Raising a Family and Being Irene Au. 

Intro and Outro music kind courtesy of Taraval.

Cecily Mak has been wildly successful at the forefront of innovation and has had several careers: modeling, law, start-up executive and venture firm co-founder in the fields of music, publishing, mindfulness/wellbeing, and now crypto. However, her proudest and most difficult accomplishments are in developing clarity, vulnerability and presence.
We talk about the role of discomfort, love, family patterns and bathroom stall cocaine offers in reinventing ourselves and how we can develop our intuition and know when it’s time to make a change.

Intro and Outro music kind courtesy of Taraval.

The world of professional sports is undergoing massive innovation in how it deals with mental health and training in the context of high stakes performance. This innovation comes from a surprising combination of player and organization desire for long term value and meaning as well as the desire to succeed and win.  Josh Lifrak, former head of Mental Skills programs with the Chicago Cubs, tells us how human flourishing can happen in what may seem like an unlikely business and the lessons that can be learned for individuals and organizations seeking long term happiness and success.
Intro and Outro music kind courtesy of Taraval.

Intro and Outro music kind courtesy of Taraval.

The Clash were musical and social innovators, so why is it surprising that their lyrics describe a very key aspect of creativity-  that you need to include stopping as part of the process of creation.
In this episode we explore this surprising and counteritive idea with Eric Antonow , one of the most effective and creative people I know. These days Eric an executive coach who works in technology. Before that he led early product marketing teams at Google, and later as VP of marketing at Instagram and Facebook.
https://youtu.be/WD5N0rTsulQ
Intro and Outro music kind courtesy of Taraval.

Intro and Outro music kind courtesy of Taraval.