THE IDEALISTS.

In this week’s all-new episode of THE IDEALISTS. podcast, host, and entrepreneur, Melissa Kiguwa, speaks with Kara Goldin. Kara is the founder and CEO of Hint, a $220 million beverage producer of fruit-infused waters and lifestyle goods, offering a healthy alternative to sodas and artificially sweetened drinks. 

Melissa sits down with the former AOL executive and current “accidental entrepreneur” to glean her insights on what it takes to start a category-changing business from scratch, as well as to learn how other dynamic female executives and would-be entrepreneurs can tap Kara’s pragmatic leadership wisdom. 
In this enlightening conversation, Kara and Melissa explore how process, persistence, and the ability to have patience with one’s inner knowing, can help you ultimately make the right decisions.

Highlights:

• Kara leads off the conversation with the need for training, process, and stability and what it means when an entrepreneur hasn’t experienced that grounding before building a company. “Process” may sound unsexy but there are so many ways it can prove empowering as you scale. As Kara reminds us, it’s not enough just to be a room full of visionaries.

• Next, she relates how a company’s culture is often set from the top and infuses the whole experience not only within the business’s internal culture but also as the organization attempts to build partnerships. People can tell when there’s an alignment of mission and culture.

• Building on that, she discusses how getting involved in the PFAS conversation became an unexpected turn into politics and raising awareness around water safety with Congresswoman Jackie Spiers and Vice President Kamala Harris.

• Lastly, she shares her parting wish, gained from her time at the Fortune Women’s conference and the Young President’s Organization (https://www.ypo.org). She hopes for younger leaders and would-be entrepreneurs to have greater access to stories, like those in her book, and to c-suite networks—so they can be emboldened to solve their own problems in building their businesses.

Join the conversation about THE IDEALISTS. and break*through. 

At our website: https://www.theidealistspodcast.co/
On Instagram: @theidealistspodcast_
On Twitter: @theidealistspod
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This week we are elated to bring you a complimentary session from our new series break*through. 

Marina is a prolific banking executive who has guided multiple international banks through crisis, retrenchment and growth. She’s held positions as CFO of Citi Bank in Russia, and Director of Private Banking at Credit Suisse in Vienna. 

Marina currently spends her time in Paris where she is building a web3 startup to help migrants around the world. 

As Marina builds her startup, she feels as though she is unable to achieve in the same way she always has. The skills she relied upon to achieve in the banking world, don't seem to help her as she builds her startup.

Paula, Marina's coach, is a former banking executive who runs Rites of Passages for women, a modality that leverages knowledge indigenous and traditional communities have known for thousands of years... that rituals and ceremonies are necessary to acknowledge, support, and celebrate pivotal life transitions.

Based in Byron’s Bay, Australia, Paula has an incredibly beautiful framework for powerful women. She takes Carl Jung’s original framework of the "heroine's journey"— that a woman's life-phases moves from maiden to mother to crone— and expands it so there is a phase between mother and crone-- that of the Empress.

This week, break*through dives deep into stepping into your Empress Season.

Join the conversation about THE IDEALISTS. and break*through. 

At our website: https://www.theidealistspodcast.co/
On Instagram: @theidealistspodcast_
On Twitter: @theidealistspod
Help us grow! Leave a review of the show on Apple or Spotify
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In this week’s last (re)wind episode, THE IDEALISTS. podcast host and entrepreneur, Melissa Kiguwa, revisits her conversation with celebrity stylist, entertainment journalist, filmmaker, and author of Supreme Models: Iconic Black Women Who Revolutionized Fashion, Marcellas Reynolds. Marcellas is joined by Veronica Webb, supermodel, actress, writer, and the first African American to land a major global cosmetics deal. Veronica appeared on covers of Vogue, Essence, and Elle magazine as well as on the runway for Victoria's Secret and Chanel. In this episode, Marcellas and Veronica explore self-love as a means of survival, the rarity of excellence, and how to use fashion as armor.

Highlights:

• Marcellus leads off with the highly contrarian view that being a model has lost its exclusivity. It’s lost that which makes it special and glamorous if anyone with an Instagram account can call themselves a model. Alternatively, Veronica offers up her contrarian notion that women need to be conceited—conceited about their intellect, their beauty, and their style because the world has a way of beating down a woman's confidence and she needs that belief, that genuine conceit, as her armor.

• Next, they discuss how we’re conditioned so often as children to apologize, or to downplay our accomplishments, abilities, skills, and our very beauty. For both Marcellas and Veronica, it was about having strong women in their lives growing up, building up their inner narratives, encouraging them to dress up for the parts they ultimately want to play in life—and how fashion became a vital tool for that.

• Building on that, they discuss how to surround yourself with those who build you up, and who can help see your vision through. How can you also self-build? How can you show up in the world as you would want to be treated? How can you see yourself in Marcellas’ words, as a “unicorn in a field of cows?” Self-love had been a mode of survival for Marcellas, but now being able to write about these powerful black women, giving accolades to those who so deserved them has become more gratifying than anything for him.

• Lastly, they share their audacious visions for the world. For Marcellas to keep telling bestselling stories about people who are marginalized so that it’s easier for the next gay black boy to walk into a publisher and breakthrough. For Veronica, it's for people to realize that black women have always been here and have always been powerful—and ever and on the rise.

Join the conversation about THE IDEALISTS. and break*through. 

At our website: https://www.theidealistspodcast.co/
On Instagram: @theidealistspodcast_
On Twitter: @theidealistspod
Help us grow! Leave a review of the show on Apple or Spotify
Order a copy of the*journal

In this week’s very special (re)wind episode, THE IDEALISTS. podcast host and entrepreneur, Melissa Kiguwa, revisits her conversation with Ty Stiklorius, CEO of Friends at Work,  a 21st-century management and social impact firm, which handles some of the world’s most respected and beloved artists, including John Legend, Lindsey Stirling, Charlie Puth, and the list goes on. Ty also served as Executive Producer on the Oscar-winning film La La Land and won an Emmy for Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert on NBC. Billboard named Ty one of the most powerful women in music, and after this conversation, you’ll understand why.

Ty's Business: https://friendsatwork.com/about/

Episode Highlights:

- Ty leads off with a story about a manager who wanted to buy her company but opted not to because she values maximizing not just shareholder value, but workers and the planet. It was a moment that crystallized things for her—that because of her roots in Quakerism, because of her perspective, having an MBA from Wharton, and working in consulting—she could do something different.

- Next, she discusses the ethos behind her company Friends at Work, and how they function as the CEO for their clients, handling everything from digital strategy to tour planning, to brand strategy, to advertising, to social impact strategy.

- Building on that, she discusses what it means to trust your gut, and sense of knowing in the face of veteran managers who might play upon your fears or insecurities when making critical decisions.

- Lastly, as part of her inadvertent audacious vision for the world, Ty reads from a first draft of her Real-Life Manifesto, a collaborative document meant to embrace ideals of care, difference, and equity, so everyone comes away with their needs met—in a more hopeful win-win-win scenario. 

Join the conversation about THE IDEALISTS. and break*through. 

At our website: https://www.theidealistspodcast.co/
On Instagram: @theidealistspodcast_
On Twitter: @theidealistspod
Help us grow! Leave a review of the show on Apple or Spotify
Order a copy of the*journal

In this week’s very special (re)wind episode, THE IDEALISTS. podcast host and entrepreneur, Melissa Kiguwa, speaks with Wanja Muguongo, world-renowned Queer social justice activist, Yale World Fellow, and founder of UHAI, Africa's first indigenous fund created for and by LGBTI communities in East Africa. Under Wanja, the fund raised and distributed over $12 million to LGBTI and sex worker human rights movements in East Africa. In this rich, revelatory conversation, Wanja and Melissa dive deep into what it means to raise funding to tackle deep structural and systemic discrimination on your own terms.

Highlights:

• Wanja leads off the episode by discussing the field of participatory grant making in which funds are directed at the community level, by the community so that the impact is felt more authentically.

• Next, she discusses broad paradigm shifts in international human rights conversations and what it means to come to the table as Africans with the agency and knowledge of what will work there and what won’t. She also flips the script by fundraising from sources that have colonized Africa and left it in debt.

• Building on that, she discusses how participatory grant making puts the power back in the grantee’s hands. She cites the example of NGOs tending to fund the LGBTI community through the vectors of HIV, or the temporary rescue of LGBTI people in abusive situations (only for them to return to them) when it might make more sense to fund longer-term legal protection, legislation, and security strategies.

• Turning the conversation to women founders, Wanja relates the intentionality of her approach to fundraising and partnerships. While her focus is very friendship-driven, she understands the isolation women founders experience—especially if they are persons of color who also identify as LGBTI. 

• Lastly, she talks about her decision to ultimately take a step back from UHAI at the ten-year mark, leaving the institution with a comprehensive body of work, a secretariat of people, and a set of self-sustaining systems to keep operating.

Join the conversation about THE IDEALISTS. and break*through. 

At our website: https://www.theidealistspodcast.co/
On Instagram: @theidealistspodcast_
On Twitter: @theidealistspod
Help us grow! Leave a review of the show on Apple or Spotify
Order a copy of the*journal

Welcome to THE IDEALISTS. rewind, where we revisit some of our favorite past episodes. This week’s rewind is Fariel Salahuddin, the founder and CEO of UpTrade, a bartering service which enables rural communities in Pakistan to exchange livestock for solar-powered water pumps and solar home systems. More than 40% of the people in Pakistan live off the grid and without lights in their homes, or  electricity to pump water. Women can spend up to four hours a day fetching water from distant wells. This episode was chosen by THE IDEALISTS. Head of Marketing, Alisa Jones, because Fariel shares her vision for an inclusive economy that values more than just fiat currency. The BBC calls her : "A business a solution for the desert" and Fariel is both a 2021 TED fellow and a 2019 finalist with Cartier's Women's Initiative.

In the episode:

- Fariel begins the conversation describing how UpTrade works and the ways she gets off-grid, rural communities to opt into bartering their goats for solar water pumps and solar home systems.

- She then shares what inspired her to start UpTrade and how her model is based on community and self agency versus traditional charity-focused interventions.

- Fariel then describes her vision for tech-enabled marketplaces that are not bound by fiat currency.

- Fariel ends the episode sharing her vision for rural, unbanked communities to be able to participate in the mainstream economy using the resources they have.

Join the conversation about THE IDEALISTS. and break*through. 

At our website: https://www.theidealistspodcast.co/
On Instagram: @theidealistspodcast_
On Twitter: @theidealistspod
Help us grow! Leave a review of the show on Apple or Spotify
Order a copy of the*journal

Welcome to THE IDEALISTS. (re)wind, where we revisit some of our favorite past episodes. This week’s rewind is Elise Loehnen, the former chief content officer of goop, the lifestyle and e-commerce company established by Gwyneth Paltrow in 2008. You may have also seen and heard Elise co-host The goop Podcast and The goop Lab on Netflix. This episode was chosen by THE IDEALISTS. host Melissa Kiguwa because Elise brings so much ideology and depth to the topic of divine femininity.

In the episode:

- Elise begins the conversation by sharing one of the thesis in her upcoming book: how easy it is to claim women should rise in the world, but how difficult it is to tactically and tangibly support women. She breaks down how often historical tropes solidify ideas about women's cattiness towards each other and around the ways women compete for the attention and protection of men.

- She discusses the trauma of witch-hunting over centuries and the millions of women killed during the hunts. One of the mechanisms of witch-hunting was getting friends to turn on friends and daughters to turn on mothers, which Elise describes as having left women with a collective sense of scarcity and fear carried over from generation to generation.

- Melissa asks if intergenerational trauma includes the fear of being disconnected from one's deep sense of power, how can women trust each other if we do not even trust ourselves?

- Elise answers by explaining the role of the crone, the third archetypal stage of a woman's life. The crone is an initiator and healer, as well as, the representation of life and death. She explains without the crone, young women are now going at it alone and suffering loss and disconnect.

- Elise describes what has replaced the crone and what the ramifications are for our political, economic, and social structures. She then describes how the gender binary keeps men and women at odds with each other versus understanding the masculine and feminine in all of us.

- She then outlines how various spiritual modalities help as a guide in healing the disconnection and getting back to our humanity.

Join the conversation about THE IDEALISTS. and break*through. 

At our website: https://www.theidealistspodcast.co/
On Instagram: @theidealistspodcast_
On Twitter: @theidealistspod
Help us grow! Leave a review of the show on Apple or Spotify
Order a copy of the*journal

Welcome back to break*through! 

In this week’s episode, we are elated to bring you yet another session from our new series under THE IDEALISTS. roster. For those of you who are new here, break*through offers a raw, handcrafted kind of show in which you will experience transformations and insights from a whole world of visionary women all seeking to change, clarify, and embolden their personal narratives through the work of coaching. 

This week, we dive deep into the issue of the “stuck” narrative—something we all grapple with at some point or another in our lives, but for our guest today and her coach—the traumatic narrative has been on repeat for so long—she’s called on the much-needed services of a master executive coach to help her finally disrupt and transform it.

 In 2015, in the middle of living her best life, 45-year-old, New York-based branding executive and former Armani & Calvin Klein model, Alisa Jones woke up in the hospital after having shattered her face, jaw, and severely damaged her right eye during an epileptic seizure in the grocery store on the upper west side of Manhattan. Unable to speak, fired from her job, and now permanently disfigured, Alisa found herself trapped in a narrative loop of grief and anxiety she could have never anticipated—one that’s still deeply impacting how she comports herself in interviews and meetings.


You can listen to the full episode of break*through on our website: theidealistspodcast.co

Join the conversation about THE IDEALISTS. and break*through. 

At our website: https://www.theidealistspodcast.co/
On Instagram: @theidealistspodcast_
On Twitter: @theidealistspod
Help us grow! Leave a review of the show on Apple or Spotify
Order a copy of the*journal

This week, THE IDEALISTS. podcast host and entrepreneur Melissa Kiguwa speaks with world-renowned Biological Anthropologist, Dr. Helen Fisher. As the Chief Science Advisor for Match.com and as one of the foremost researchers in the area of the neuroscience of love, sex, and relationships, Helen has conducted extensive research and written six books on the evolution and future of human sex, love, marriage, and gender differences in the brain. As a Senior Research Fellow at The Kinsey Institute, she studies extensively how personality style shapes who you are and who you love.

In this rich, revelatory episode, Helen and Melissa dive deep into Helen’s vast, peer-reviewed learnings around the science of romantic love, attachment, and the evolution of courtship.

Highlights:

- Helen leads off the episode by painting a picture of the history of gender roles and relationship paradigms as the human race shifted from a hunter-gatherer society to an agrarian one, and then evolved again with the industrial age to where we are now.

- Next, she discusses her broad sweeping research survey across a sample of millions. While the neurology of love is largely the same across culture, race, and sexual preference, courtship continues to evolve in new and compelling ways—from shifts in power dynamics of arranged marriages to those of video chat dates during the pandemic.

- Building on that, she discusses the different relational dynamics at play with the different brain systems and chemicals involved, when it comes to romance, sexual attraction, and deep attachment. She also touches on the different personality types who tend to do better together.

- Lastly, she shares her audacious wish for her work in personality science to break new ground in the business space. She believes understanding mother nature’s recipe for the brain can help in how we reach different people, build better teams, lead, innovate, and ultimately win.

Join the conversation about THE IDEALISTS. and break*through. 

At our website: https://www.theidealistspodcast.co/
On Instagram: @theidealistspodcast_
On Twitter: @theidealistspod
Help us grow! Leave a review of the show on Apple or Spotify
Order a copy of the*journal

In this unique crossover episode of break*through and THE IDEALISTS, we lean into raw and intimate when our host, Melissa Kiguwa, puts herself in the hot seat. On today’s episode, you will go behind the scenes to hear Melissa’s breakthrough… but, not in the way you think. As Executive Producer, it is Melissa’s responsibility to ensure our coaches and guests have all they need before they meet. Producing the show means curating a space of intense vulnerability, which has a lot of ethical considerations. In the case of this week’s episode, something broke down during the process. After the episode, Melissa sat down and debriefed with our guest, opening up a whole new level of insight, exploration, and accountability. This conversation ultimately turned out to be the show.

For the purposes of maintaining confidentiality, names and some identifiable characteristics have been removed. To provide a bit of context, our guest is a new Managing Director of a venture capital fund and is seeking coaching as she establishes herself as a leader in her industry.

Episode Highlights:

- We begin our debrief by digging into the guest’s immediate emotional reaction to the session as she deals with her immense disappointment and overwhelming feeling of “this always happens to me.” That people don’t show up and deliver for her—even when they’ve agreed beforehand.

- Next, we move on to how there is no breakthrough without safety, and we talk through what specific measures can be taken to address power dynamics so that the guest feels comfortable being fully vulnerable.

- Building on this, we deep dive into the guest’s yearning to feel seen by her peers and to experience authentic accountability, connection, and grace when things go awry—as she’s often felt repeatedly let down by other women in her community and the VC community at large—given its competitive tenor.

- Lastly, we discuss the ancestral imperative she feels around her work—and how she needs a coach who gets that she is doing something that’s never been done by the women in her lineage and that it’s work that is urgent, necessary, and a priority. This is not just another VC job—this is her calling and her mission. 

Join the conversation about THE IDEALISTS. and break*through.

At our website: https://www.theidealistspodcast.co/
On Instagram: @theidealistspodcast_
On Twitter: @theidealistspod
Help us grow! Leave a review of the show on Apple or Spotify
Order a copy of the*journal