When it Mattered

Ep.52 — A  15-year old develops a passion for making music mixtapes and revolutionizes the way you listen to music, and now he’s doing it for podcasts / Don MacKinnon, CEO & Founder, Hark.

Don MacKinnon will never forget how he first began experimenting with music mixtapes back when he was a high school student.

“I remember sitting on the floor of my room with the records spread out, organizing them, and making notes about the order I wanted to have the songs appear in. As you recorded it, you dropped the needle on the song and it's recording it in real-time on to the tape,” McKinnon reminisces. “While you're doing that, you're writing liner notes because the beauty of a mixtape is you end up with an artifact. A physical thing you can give to someone.”

His passion for mixtapes led MacKinnon on a lifelong journey to help people around the world serendipitously discover, listen to, share, curate, and build a community around music, videos, and other content.

MacKinnon’s goal has always been to free up music — and any inspiring content for that matter — from the confines of their origins, format, and surroundings, so that the world can appreciate them in all their wonders.

And that idea has led to music curation platforms that we take so much for granted today, such as Spotify.

“What is Spotify, but some giant mixtape?” says MacKinnon. “But there was a time when we walked to school in the snow. There was a time when songs were trapped on vinyl. There were albums were on vinyl. That's where the songs lived. There were radio DJs who mixed it up and play different songs from different albums on shows. But the ability to sit down, and liberate those songs from their albums, and create something new was fascinating to me.”

Since his early discovery of mixtapes, McKinnon has pretty much used that formula over and over again with huge wins as a music producer including the Triple Platinum Grammy Award-winning Ray Charles compilation, Genius Loves Company, Rolling Stones Rarities 1971 to 2003, and Bob Dylan's iconic first recordings of Live at the Gaslight.

Now, MacKinnon is about to transform how you discover, curate, and build community through podcasts using the same concept he pioneered in music — with what else, but mixtapes? Tomorrow, he's unveiling his new stealth podcast curation platform called Hark.

“The idea for Hark at its simplest is to go and find those great moments within podcast episodes. You talking to Nina Totenberg about how as a young girl, she loves Nancy Drew, and how that inspired her to become Nina Totenberg,” says MacKinnon. “There are tons of examples of like, when we find ourselves telling people, all of you podcast listeners, ‘I have that moment where I want you to listen to the whole episode. But you got to hear this one moment.’ That one moment is the genius thing that will be their way in. The idea of Hark is, what if we could create an entire immersive listening experience out of the best moments from great podcast episodes, where we organize those moments into, yes, mixtapes, because what else would it be after listening to me for an hour?”

This is an episode filled with great storytelling. You definitely don’t want to miss MacKinnon’s memories of how, on his 35th birthday, he got to interview every single member of the Rolling Stones. What it was like to interview his idol, Tom Waits, and the irascible Lou Reed. What was his first conversation with Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz? What it was like to work with U2’s Bono on Product Red. And what it was like to listen to Ray Charles and Elton John recording their hit duet, Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word for Charles’s triple-platinum, Grammy award-winning album, Genius Loves Company, the last album Charles recorded before he died, and it was produced by none other than MacKinnon.

You’re going to love this interview with the amazing Don MacKinnon. I know I did.

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Ep. 51 — A young employee gets a mediocre performance rating in her first job and transforms herself into an influential human resources leader and career strategist / Madeline Mann, Founder, Self Made Millennial.

Three months into her first corporate job as a market research analyst, Madeline Mann got her performance review and it was a nasty wakeup call.

Always an academic high achiever, Mann was stunned to see her mediocre work scores.

“And it really was a moment of me realizing, ‘Wait, I do need to work harder. I do need to find more ways to contribute,’ says Mann. ‘I wasn't in those meetings jotting down a bunch of notes of, how am I going to look up these terms later and ask a bunch of questions.’ I was just kind of clueless and aimless.”

Mann realized she just wasn't motivated by her job and through some serious soul-searching, discovered that her true passion actually lay in human capital management, i.e. people.

Today, Mann is thriving as a human resources leader and career strategist. She’s known for her rapid-fire career advice videos on her popular channel "Self Made Millennial."

Mann’s work has been featured on Business Insider, Newsweek, and more. She was named a Top 50 person to follow on LinkedIn, and a Top 10 YouTube channel for job seekers. Mann currently also serves as Talent Development Manager at Inspire.

Her HR focus could not be more perfect given the coronavirus. According to Pew Research Center, the U.S. unemployment rose higher in three months of COVID-19 than it did in two years of the Great Recession. Today it’s at a record 11.1%, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Mann says she's helped hundreds of people find jobs despite these grim trends. [Hear Excerpt Below]

“The number one question I'm asked is, ‘Is there even a point in applying right now?’ Or, ‘When should I start pursuing opportunities?’ And those questions break my heart because the answer is yesterday, right? You should still be pursuing opportunities,” says Mann, “But the thing is, a lot of people, it's a different landscape, things are shaken up, they don't know if the company had layoffs or not. They don't know if they're still hiring. They're posting job descriptions, but does that mean, was that just automatic? And, ‘Oh, I had an interview, but then I haven't heard back. But is it okay to even follow up with anyone during these conditions?’… I want you to move from a planning mindset to an experimentation mindset. Just try things, keep moving during this time, don't freeze, don't be in this constant getting ready stage, because while you're doing that, other people are getting these jobs.”

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Chitra Ragavan:

Madeline Mann began her first job as a market research analyst as she was wrapping up her master's degree. But the super driven academic had a disastrous six months on the job. Humbled by the experience, Madeline went into her second job searching for what truly motivated her to perform and to succeed in the workplace. Hello everyone, I'm Chitra Ragavan, and this is When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative.

Chitra Ragavan:

Joining me now is Madeline Mann, a human resources leader and career strategist. Madeline is known for her rapid fire career advice videos on her channel, Self Made Millennial, which has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers across all the major social media platforms. Madeline transformed her own experience as an HR and recruiting leader into advice on how to empower ambitious professionals to fast track their careers. Madeline's work has been featured on Business Insider, Newsweek, Thrive Global and more. She was named a Top 50 person to follow on LinkedIn and a Top 10 YouTube channel for job seekers. Madeline currently also serves as talent development manager at Inspire in Los Angeles. Madeline, welcome to the podcast.

Ep. 50 – A legendary sports agent reflects on an extraordinary career and overcoming seemingly insurmountable personal challenges / Leigh Steinberg, CEO, Steinberg Sports & Entertainment.

Early in his career, legendary sports agent Leigh Steinberg had a crisis of conscience. His clients were suffering from multiple concussions and doctors didn't fully understand the long-term impact of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).

There was one particular moment that was a turning point for Steinberg.

"When we would go to doctors back in that period, no doctor could really tell us how many hits were too many and what the longterm consequences were."

So Steinberg decided to make annual brain health seminars a mandatory part of his core practice. He’s had 16 to date, focused on awareness, prevention, and cure. Steinberg has asked himself whether he’s an enabler of this problem, given his continued representation of athletes, but he believes he is bringing value by working to solve this problem.

Educating his players about the dangers of concussion is just one way Steinberg has mentored 300+ athletes during a 46-year+ career as CEO of Steinberg Sports & Entertainment.

He’s represented  some of the biggest names in football, baseball, basketball, boxing and Olympic sports securing more than $3 billion for his pro athletes and directing more than $750 million to charities around the world.

Steinberg also requires all of his athletes to create structured plans to consistently give back to their communities as a way of life.

Steinberg's blue chip clients include the number one overall pick in the NFL draft for an unprecedented eight times in conjunction with 64 total first round picks. He has represented notable athletes, such as Troy Aikman, Steve Young, Patrick Mahomes, Oscar De La Hoya, and Lennox Lewis, as well as multiple Olympians and professional teams.

Steinberg also helps his clients identify their post-retirement second careers and requires them to give back to their communities.

The inspiration for Tom Cruise in the Cameron Crowe written and directed movie Jerry Maguire (co-starring Cuba Gooding Jr., in an iconic Oscar-winning supporting actor role), Steinberg has overcome tremendous personal adversity including bankruptcy, a decade-long bout of alcoholism, and run-ins with the law. He says he has since recovered from his financial and emotional crises, been sober for more than ten years, and speaks openly of his alcoholism as a way to help others.

“Look, to confront the cravings that come with addiction, it really is necessary in most people's lives to hit bottom, whatever you perceive that bottom is,” says Steinberg. “Your life is so unacceptable that you cannot continue like that.”

Steinberg is focused on helping athletes engage in the Black Lives Matter conversations and adapting to COVID-19, especially coming to terms with the prospect of playing and winning in empty stadiums.

“In football, for example, we had a draft that cut off the scouting process at a certain point. So it required adaptation and using Zoom to interact with teams, or in the case of a client, we had Tua Tagovailoa taping a workout in a pro passing day that would normally have been done in-person. And the first key and priority is safety, obviously. And none of us really know how the pandemic will play out over time, so we're trying to be sensitive to that,” Steinberg says.

“And so for the first time, we're going to have baseball and basketball and hockey with no fans. So that will be different. First of all, it has an economic impact because gate is a large part of the gross revenue. And second of all, we don't know, since performance seems to be tied into home field advantage and stadia filled with screaming fans, we don't know what effect it'll have on the quality of the play.”

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Chitra Ragavan:

Leigh Steinberg was about a decade into his career as a sports agent when he ha...

Ep. 49 — A teenage runaway tries his hand at migrant work and becomes one of the most powerful food safety lawyers in the world / William Marler, Owner & Managing Partner, Marler Clark, LLP.

When Bill Marler was 16 years old, he ran away from home and became a migrant worker for a while, living in squalid cabins, sleeping outdoors, and hitchhiking rides to farms to pick crops.

The low point of Marler’s life came when he lost a gig and completely ran out of money.

For a week, he lived on just a five-pound sack of pancake flour.

“And it has changed my perspective on pancakes I have to admit,” admits Marler, ruefully. “Anytime pancakes come up as something for breakfast, my children have had to hear my pancake story. I think they now avoid making pancakes because they don't want to hear my story again.”

Marler’s brief stint as a farmhand also gave him a lifelong empathy for migrant workers and a deep connectivity to food and food safety issues. More than anything, it also made him realize the importance of a  college education and he went on to become a lawyer.

By sheer happenstance, one day, Marler got a referral for an E. coli case tied to the Jack In The Box hamburger chain.  What started as one case turned into a multi-million dollar class action settlement, putting Marler and his law firm, Marler Clark, LLP., forever on the map on food safety lawsuits and advocacy.

Marler has frequently testified before Congress, resulting in stronger food safety laws and regulations and is a globally sought after public speaker on these issues.

As growing numbers of migrant workers and meatpackers fall victim to #Covid-19, Marler says there are profound ramifications to not protecting these frontline workers from the coronavirus. Ramifications that not only devastate these communities but the entire economy and American consumers as a whole.

“We've already seen the impact of companies not paying attention to the needs of their workers, because we're seeing beef prices go up, we're seeing meat be less available, certain kinds of meats being less available. So you pay for it now by protecting the workers, who also with COVID, go out into your communities and spread the disease throughout the community,” says Marler. “And so it's not just to protect the worker, which I think is the moral thing to do, but it's also to frankly protect yourself. And sometimes profits are the focus and we become so shortsighted about the long term costs to the people, long term costs to the community.”

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Chitra Ragavan:

When William Marler was 16 years old, he ran away from home and became a migrant worker in Washington State. Living in squalid cabins, sleeping outdoors, and hitchhiking rides to farms to pick crops was difficult and dangerous. The low point of Marler's life came when he lost a gig and ran out of money. His stint as a migrant worker gave Marler lifelong connectivity to migrant workers, to food, and most importantly, to food safety issues.

Chitra Ragavan:

Hello everyone, I'm Chitra Ragavan. And this is When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm, helping technology startups find their narrative. I'm joined now by William Marler, managing partner at Marler Clark Attorneys At Law. A national expert in food safety, Marler has become the most prominent foodborne illness lawyer in America, and a major force in food policy in the US and around the world. Marler is a frequent speaker on food safety issues at global events. He has testified before U.S. Congressional committees and his work has led to laws and regulations being passed to make food safer. Bill, welcome to the podcast.

William Marler:

Thank you, Chitra.

Chitra Ragavan:

Why did you run away from home?

William Marler:

Well, it was more like I was out to seek adventures and something different than spending another summer working on the family hobby farm.

Ep. 48 — A close encounter with a Mack Truck on an icy freeway convinces a New York native to move to warmer climes and pursue a career in marketing / Linda Souza, Senior Vice President of Marketing, CareerArc.

Driving home from her martial arts class in the middle of a January snowstorm in Pittsburgh, Linda Souza lost control of her pickup truck on the icy freeway and skidded straight onto the path of a Mack Truck.

Fueled by adrenalin, Souza accelerated into a grassy ditch, narrowly avoiding serious injury even as the Mack Truck slammed into the back of her of pickup, substantially damaging both vehicles.

The close encounter taught Souza a life lesson to trust her instincts in dicey and unpredictable situations.

Needless to say, that was Souza's last winter on the east coast. She moved to Los Angeles where she's now Senior Vice President of Marketing at CareerArc. The company offers technology-based social recruiting and outplacement solutions to help Human Resources leaders recruit and transition employees.

Souza says the unprecedented shutdown and slow resurgence of the U.S. economy because of Covid-19 raises many challenges for HR leaders, including work-from-home policies and pay scales.

“I don't think it will be everybody will permanently work from home at all companies, but I think there's going to be a bigger appetite for that and a bigger demand for that,” says Linda. “And then that opens up things like, "Okay, well does that mean, for example, if I'm in a place where it's very expensive to live and so salaries are elevated, does that open me up to talent in different parts of the country if I don't need someone to physically come in every single day? And that also entails, "Well, now we have to rethink the compensation structure. Do I pay less if I'm hiring in Kansas versus Los Angeles?"

But Souza is seeing one positive trend behind all these murky questions — and that trend is that companies are slowly but surely starting to hire again.

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Chitra Ragavan:

Linda Souza was driving home from her martial arts class one afternoon in the middle of a January snow storm in Pittsburgh. As she merged onto the icy freeway, Souza lost control of her Dodge Dakota pickup truck. The Mack Truck could not avoid hitting the back of Souza's pickup, but she was able to accelerate into a grassy ditch, narrowly avoiding serious injury. Hello everyone, I'm Chitra Ragavan. And this is When it Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Good Story, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative.

Chitra Ragavan:

Needless to say that was Souza's last winter on the east coast. She moved to Los Angeles where she's now Senior Vice President of Marketing at CareerArc, which offers technology based social recruiting and outplacement solutions to help HR leaders recruit and transition employees. Souza is a 7 x tech startup marketer with more than 20 years of experience helping lead early stage and growth stage startups to successful exits. Prior to CareerArc, Linda served as Vice President of Marketing for cryptocurrency and blockchain startup Gem, where she was my colleague. Souza also served as Vice President of Marketing for Deep Six AI, an award-winning artificial intelligence company. Linda, welcome to the podcast.

Linda Souza:

Thank you Chitra, I'm excited to be here.

Chitra Ragavan:

Tell us about that potentially fatal highway accident that January day.

Linda Souza:

So I was training at a martial arts workshop actually. This is back when I was living in Pittsburgh in the early two thousands, and it had started snowing while I was in the class because it was in January. And by the time I got out and had to hit the road to get home, which was a good 30 or 40 minute drive home, it was full on snowstorm. And I was driving a pickup truck at the time, which unfortunately does not have great traction all the time in the snow.

Ep. 47 –  A diplomat’s travel forces his psychologist wife to reinvent her career which she does by talking to terrorists / Anne Speckhard, Director, International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism.

When her husband was named US ambassador to Belarus, Anne Speckhard was forced to give up her thriving private counseling practice in Virginia and reinvent her life and work.

Some security-related projects led her to begin talking to terrorists and it led to a most unique second career researching terrorists.

“When I went into Palestine was the first time I went in and just announced myself. I was very honest about what I wanted. And people told me would be suicide, terrorists are never going to talk to you,” says Speckhard.

But they did.

To date, Speckhard has interviewed and debriefed nearly 800 terrorists and their family members and supporters —  including in Western Europe, the Balkans, Central Asia, the Former Soviet Union, and the Middle East.

“And I was always looking for literally what makes a suicide bomber tick? Why do they get into it? How do they get on the terrorist trajectory?” says Speckhard, “And since I'm a psychologist, I wanted to know, could it have been prevented or can we take them back off of it?”

Speckhard has founded and directs the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism. She and her team have converted ISIS terrorist interviews into counter-narrative videos that have been used to deter terrorist recruiting through more than 125 Facebook anti-terrorism campaigns globally.

With the advent of Covid-19, Speckhard says there's been chatter from some terrorist leaders urging their followers to protect themselves from the coronavirus but also exhorting those who become infected to spread the disease to their enemies.

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Chitra Ragavan:

Anne Speckhard was thriving in her private counseling and research practice in the Washington D.C. area, when her husband was named US ambassador to Belarus. It threw a curve ball into her clinical work and career trajectory. Speckhard got involved in a variety of security related research projects, and she suddenly found herself in the unusual position of talking to terrorists.

Chitra Ragavan:

Hello everyone, I'm Chitra Ragavan, and this is When it Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative.

Chitra Ragavan:

I'm joined now by Anne Speckhard, Director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism or ICSVE. Speckhard is one of the few American national security scholars with substantive access to terrorist groups. She has interviewed and debriefed more than 700 terrorists and their family members and supporters, including in Western Europe, the Balkans, Central Asia, the former Soviet Union, and the Middle East.

Chitra Ragavan:

Speckhard has used many of those interviews to build the Breaking the ISIS Brand Counter Narrative Project. This unique project consists of counter narrative videos that have been used in more than 125 Facebook antiterrorism campaigns globally, with the goal of deterring terrorist recruiting.

Chitra Ragavan:

Anne, welcome to the podcast.

Anne Speckhard:

Thank you, Chitra. Glad to be here.

Chitra Ragavan:

What was it like to uproot yourself from your practice and to go off to Belarus with your husband, Dan, as he launched his diplomatic career?

Anne Speckhard:

Well, Daniel and I decided to see it as an adventure, but it was very disorienting because I'm someone that puts my roots down deeply and we had three kids. So I had to close my practice and become entirely dependent upon him and that was not something I'd ever done before.

Chitra Ragavan:

You're fiercely independent, so that must have been even more difficult.

Anne Speckhard:

It was difficult. And also we were moving on the other side of what I thought of as the ...

Ep. 46 — A chance encounter and an impulse decision takes a public health expert on a wild ride into the world of dangerous pandemics / Julie Schafer, Chief Technology Officer, The Flu Lab.

Julie Schafer was sitting in her tiny office in a big office building in Washington D.C. having second thoughts about how the Presidential Management Fellowship that she had just begun fit in with her career goals.

Then, a chance introduction to Bruce Gellin, then the head of the National Vaccine Program Office and now the President, Global Immunizations, at Sabin Vaccine Institute became the inflection point of her career.

Since that day 15 years ago, Schafer has held numerous leadership roles including Director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) the federal agency tasked with funding to prevent pandemic influenza and emerging infectious diseases. She also served as Director for Medical and Biodefense Preparedness Policy in the National Security Council (NSC) under President Barack Obama.

Currently the Chief Technology Officer at FluLab, Schafer is consulting with the federal government on strategies and vaccines to stop Covid-19 in its tracks.

She fears that the fall flu season could be a real wakeup call in the already tough fight against coronavirus.

“Something that I think a lot about that doesn't make me the hit at any virtual cocktail party. But there's nothing about this pandemic, this COVID-19 pandemic that in any way lessens the risk of having an influenza pandemic. So we could have the severity of whatever influenza strains that we are presented with next,” Schafer says. “This current pandemic has no bearing on it. So maybe we'll have a mild influenza year or maybe we'll have a really hard one or maybe an influenza pandemic will emerge at the same time. I think that really is very daunting and makes me very worried and hopeful that influenza will cut us some slack this year.”

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Chitra Ragavan:

Julie Schafer was pursuing what she thought was her dream career in public health, when a chance meeting at an impulse decision settle on a wild ride deep into the world of dangerous pandemics. Schafer's expertise could not be more timely given the COVID-19 pandemic. She works to apply new technologies and approaches to an old foe – influenza – and is applying that knowledge fighting this pandemic. Hello everyone, I'm Chitra Ragavan and this is When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Good Story an advisory firm helping technology start-ups find their narrative. I'm joined now by Julie Schafer, the chief technology officer for the organization flu lab, where she seeks to stretch the boundaries of how technology is used to defeat influenza.

Chitra Ragavan:

Julie has held a number of leadership positions in the US government, including Chief of Staff and later Director of strategy for the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority or BARDA at the US department of health and human services. BARDA is the key agency tasked with funding efforts to prevent both naturally emerging and intentional threats. Schafer has served as the director for medical and biodefense preparedness policy in the White House National Security Council under President Barack Obama, where her portfolio included preparedness and response to emerging diseases, such as Zika, efforts to combat antibiotic resistant bacteria and medical countermeasures preparedness. Julie, welcome to the podcast.

Julie Schafer:

Oh, it's such a pleasure to be with you.

Chitra Ragavan:

Tell us a little bit about your background, what you were doing and what was this chance encounter that changed the course of your life and turned you into a lifelong flu and pandemic chaser?

Julie Schafer:

Oh, for sure. I'd love to. Well, so I grew up in Upstate New York. My mom had a bit of a wanderlust and my dad was always game.

Ep. 45 — A U.S. Army Special Operations team leader is haunted by the death of two comrades and devotes his career to data-driven decision-making / Justin Richmond, Founder, and Executive Director, impl. project.

The twist in the road for Justin Richmond surfaced on September 29, 2009, at Camp Bautista — a key Filipino military base in the Southern Philippines — when two of his colleagues were killed in an IED attack.

Richmond was deployed as a U.S. Army Special Operations team leader helping the Filipino army with stabilization, counterinsurgency, and information operations. His superiors had decided to support what would prove to be a disastrous Filipino military mission. A Sergeant at the time and the lowest ranking task force member in the room, Richmond expressed his qualms but lacked the authority to be heard. The casualties of the task force’s decision were Jack Martin and Chris Shaw.

“On the 29th of September, Jack and Chris hopped their Humvee and went to do a water resupply and in the middle of that road was a really big bomb and they drove over it and killed Jack instantly and Chris held on for a little while. He got medivacked over to us, myself, and one of his former teammates were on his Aid and Litter team, got them off the helo and prepared him for the forward surgical team, but the injuries were too significant and he didn't make it after that,” Richmond recalls. “And I look back and I think about the people that were involved in this decision and there wasn't maliciousness, there wasn't guile. It really boiled down to a lot of complacency and hubris.”

Richmond’s inability to convince his superiors to abort the ill-thought-out mission forced him to confront how critical decisions are often made in the U.S. military in the absence of clear actionable data.

The crisis of faith led Richmond to first join USAID, then Palantir, and then to set up a non-profit called impl. project to use data to drive community outcomes in some of the most dangerous parts of the world.

Abruptly grounded in his global mission by Covid-19, Richmond turned his sights to the U.S. and is using data to identify and address the socio-economic impact of the pandemic, in particular, the skyrocketing rise in domestic violence.

“The quarantines have forced families into situations that they wouldn't have gone into otherwise if there wasn't COVID and there wasn't quarantines. And I'm a huge believer in the quarantines, I think they should have happened faster and I think they should stay longer because it's the only way we're going to save lives. Having said that, this puts people that are already in vulnerable relationships, really in the cross-hairs of their abusers, and requires them to essentially shelter in place with people that don't have their best interests in mind,” Richmond says. “So domestic violence hotlines across the country are just exploding. I know in Virginia, we're seeing 75% more calls than we did at this time last year . . . and we realized that this is something, a need that a lot of women have.”

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Chitra Ragavan:

Justin Richmond's twist in the road surfaced on September 29, 2009 at Camp Bautista, a Filipino military base in the Southern Philippines. Richmond was deployed there as a US army special operations team leader, helping the Filipino army with stabilization, counterinsurgency and information operations. Richmond's inability to convince his superiors to abort the ill-fated mission, forced him to confront the dissonance between America's promises and America's actions.

Chitra Ragavan:

Hello everyone, I'm Chitra Ragavan, and this is When it Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory and advisory firm, helping technology startups find their narrative. Joining me now is Justin Richmond, founder and executive director of impl. project, a scrappy little nonprofit with a global vision and mission to use data to drive community outcomes....

Ep. 44 — A mentee takes up her mentor's mantle and devotes her career to diversity and inclusion in banking / Karen A. Clark, Senior VP and Multicultural Strategies Manager, City National Bank.

When Karen A. Clark got her first management assignment as a young banker at Bank of America in Los Angeles, she was blown away when a senior executive and Chinese immigrant named Regina “Reggie” Chun flew in from San Francisco to take her to lunch.

Chun told Clark that she had a unique opportunity to help other minorities rise in corporate America and she reminded Clark that if a person in her position didn't help them, then who would?

Clark took Chun's rhetorical question to heart and devoted her career to fostering diversity and inclusion in the traditionally white and male-dominated banking industry and financial services sectors.

Today Clark is a Senior Vice-President and Multicultural Strategies Manager at City National Bank in Los Angeles. She and her team are working in overdrive to help minority-owned small businesses get fair access to the federal COVID-19 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). Clark says the government's flawed rollout of the program has failed to help businesses. [Hear Excerpt Below]

Clark finds her work both rewarding and exhausting but also vital given the rising anti-immigrant sentiment and coronavirus-fueled racism against minorities particularly in the Asian communities and the unequal access to banking services and federal stimulus funds.

"The lack of access for small businesses, through this PPP process, has been horrendous. It's been horrendous. Every day, you can read... We have two people at City National Bank, who capture all of the media stories around PPP and put them out there for us, every day. And there are very, very few good stories,” Clark says. "I think it could have been a little better thought out by the federal government to ensure that there was a tranche and an opportunity and a procedure for these small businesses, those who needed funds. Even under a $100,000, $50,000, $40,000, it should have been a process to ensure that those people have the opportunity to apply. And there wasn’t."

Clark says she owes her success to her parents, especially her father who she says, taught her and trained her to “swim with sharks” from an early age, which positioned her for success both in banking and corporate boardrooms and in the highly male-dominated commercial lending division for the construction industry.

Throughout her banking career, Clark has made time for her other passion, singing, writing, and producing through her entertainment company, The Karen A. Clark Project.

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Chitra Ragavan:

When Karen A. Clark got her first management assignment as a young banker at Bank of America in Los Angeles, she was blown away when a senior executive and Chinese immigrant named Regina Chun flew in from San Francisco just to take her to lunch. Clark never forgot Chun's advice. Indeed, she has devoted her entire career to fostering inclusion and diversity in the banking industry. Hello everyone, I'm Chitra Ragavan, and this is When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. Joining me now is Karen A. Clark. She's senior vice president and multicultural strategies manager at City National Bank in Los Angeles. Clark is currently working to ensure that minority owned companies in and around Los Angeles get fair access to COVID-19 federal stimulus funds. In her free time, Clark also is a singer, songwriter and producer of her entertainment company, The Karen A. Clark Project. Karen, welcome to the podcast.

Karen A. Clark:

Chitra, thank you so much for having me.

Chitra Ragavan:

You were an Air Force brat. You traveled all over the world with your parents and it was quite a formative experience for you. Tell us about your parents and what that childhoo...

Ep. 43 –– A physics major pursues a grounding in philosophy and finds his niche in Silicon Valley / Courtney Bowman, Director, Privacy and Civil Liberties Engineering Team, Palantir.

Courtney Bowman thought he was destined for a career in physics until he took a philosophy class. It triggered a deep skepticism of the ability of hard sciences to solve mankind's biggest problems.

When Bowman told his academic mentor and family about the desire to pursue philosophy, they were alarmed and tried to dissuade him, fearing a dead end to his career.

But Bowman went with his gut and ignored conventional wisdom and it paid off strangely enough in Silicon Valley where Bowman found his niche in a one-of-a-kind Privacy and Civil Liberties Engineering team that he leads at Palantir, the big-data analytics platform deployed by the U.S. government and other governments around the world to contain the spread of #coronavirus.

#COVID-19 raises unprecedented legal, ethical, moral, even existential questions around the use of mobility tracking, contact tracing, immunity passports, and other powerful big data tools.

"We're talking about contact tracing applications that rely on mobile phones and specific applications on mobile phones. But not everyone carries a mobile phone. Not everyone has a mobile phone, or is technologically savvy and use of their mobile phones. So then you raise all sorts of issues about the 'digital divide.' Does this mean that the people who maybe are most advantaged and most privileged because they have access to technology, are going to get a disproportionate advantage in the use of that technology?” asks Bowman. "Meaning that some of the most vulnerable communities that are less technology savvy are not receiving the public health benefits of something like contact tracing. And those are real concerns, particularly when you have kind of disproportionate spread of a disease and disproportionate accessibility and availability of public health resources. So there's real, kind of, broader cultural and sociological, and environmental concerns that come into play when you're talking about applying this type of technology to the real world."

That's where Bowman's unique philosophical grounding and non-traditional perspectives come in handy as nations around the world ponder these weighty questions over how to put the lid on the pandemic.

Note: I was a senior advisor at Palantir Technologies from 2007-2015 and own equity in the startup.

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Chitra Ragavan:

Courtney Bowman thought he was destined for a career in physics until he took a philosophy class that triggered a deep skepticism of the hard sciences and the ability of science alone to address the issues raised by technological advances.

Chitra Ragavan:

Bowman decided to pursue his quest for a philosophical underpinning for his life and work, which unexpectedly gave him the tools to address some of the most challenging and salient technology questions of the day.

Chitra Ragavan:

Hello everyone. I'm Chitra Ragavan, and this is When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. I'm joined now by Courtney Bowman, a former colleague and Director of Privacy and Civil Liberties engineering at Palantir Technologies. Bowman's work addresses complex issues at the intersection of policy, law, technology, ethics, and social norms. Bowman is working closely with the U.S. government and governments around the world to address the issues around the collection and analysis of massive amounts of data from the COVID-19 pandemic. Courtney, welcome to the podcast.

Courtney Bowman:

Chitra, thank you so much. It's an honor to be invited to your podcast and I really appreciate it.

Chitra Ragavan:

So what were you doing in life when you first began to understand the need for philosophy as an underpinning for your life and work?