Jaclyn Orent, co-founder and CEO of Cultural Catalysts Network, provides practical insights to the seasoned corporate leader to the recent high school graduate on how to improve the world by mastering self.  Listen to see how sharing your vision, compassion, and energy will widen your scope and deepen the impact you have in improving the world.  

Shepherd leadership is a better model than servant leadership.  The servant model detracts from leadership by its redundancy, passivity, and limited scope.  If you are not willing to serve, you are unfit to lead.  Shepherds are proactive protectors who do not wait for instructions to lead their flock to safety and pastures where they can prosper.   

The Japanese art/architecture form of kigumi builds houses without nails.  Nail-less structures have the space and flexibility to absorb the shock of earthquakes, are less likely to have wood splitting from changes in humidity, and accommodate seamless assembly and replacement.  

Have you built your relationships to withstand stressful forces?  Do you lead by joining people together as opposed to fastening together with metaphoric nails?  Listen to build a stronger legacy without nails. 

Approximately 12.5 million Americans are solo agers.  Some never planned to spend their latter years alone.  Changing trends in active disengagement reduce the reach of our social networks and strain community cohesion.  Many will be left wondering what their legacy will be.  Listen to transition from life planning to legacy building.  

We are flawed beings who stumble on our journeys.  Often, we looked for a way to correct our course.  We can supply each other with that by designing offramps of grace and mercy.  Listen to be a beacon of humanity to those who are at points of great need.  

Danielle Philips created the They Were Here Foundation to build a legacy for her daughter Angelina, who died from cancer.  The foundation provides a space for grieving individuals to keep the voices of departed loved ones alive through storytelling.  Listen to hear how others are choosing to honor lost family and friends by bringing memories to life.  

A composite baseball bat is a technological wonder that compensates for a hitter's limited skill by producing towering homeruns that surprise even the hitter.  A wooden bat is less forgiving when the hitter fails to execute.  Contact at the wrong place can lead to a spray of wood in the field with the batter walking back to the dugout with only the handle in hand.  The wood bat has heft that provide honest feedback of your efforts.  Choose the wood bat in the game of life and you will be rewarded with a crack that will bring everyone to the feet.  

Explore your legacy as cinema.  Produce your life story as a filmmaker. Develop a script from a vision, "cast" the people in your life by building meaningful relationships, and collaborate with other artists to enrich and to clarify your story.  Make your legacy the best picture possible.  

Stained glass was referred to as the "Bible of the poor."  We can use the process of creating stain glass as a model for designing and building our legacies.  Is your legacy accessible and understandable to the masses?  Does it reflect, reflect, and diffract sunlight into a dance that fills dark rooms with hope and joy?  Listen to infuse your legacy with the beauty of the rainbow's richness.

Garbage in, garbage out.  This is the essence of system designs.  Pivot to beauty in, beauty out for your legacy design.  Listen to blend and balance design concepts from art and engineering to build your intended legacy and a reserve for recentering it when things go awry.