Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson

Is Your Work Worth It? : A conversation with Dennis Curley is the first of three episodes of Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson featuring interviewees whose stories appear in my new book with Jennifer Tosti-Kharas, Is Your Work Worth It? Because don’t we all, at some point, wonder whether what we get out of our work is worth what we give to it? 

Dennis Curley has sung “Sweet Caroline” at least 1,000 times. That helps to explain why he says, “You can’t base your perception of who you are on what you do.” Listen to what makes Dennis’ work as a music performer worth it. 

Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.

• Sponsored by The Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership.
  • Produced by Britt Cruz
  • Engineered by Tom Forliti

In Search of Careers for the Common Good is a four-part series of candid conversations with professionals across three different career stages – early, middle and encore – discussing the ways in which reality and one’s ideals about careers intersect in the search and struggle to find careers for the common good.  

In part four of this series, Christopher Wong Michaelson has a discussion with John Sullivan, who recently retired from a long and distinguished career as a corporate lawyer but who remains active in volunteer engagement with organizations such as the Minneapolis Foundation and the Matthew Shepard Foundation. Sullivan shares his story about following his interests rather than a pre-set plan in his search for a career for the common good. He says, “I doubt that my legal work will be remembered for long, but I believe that I have helped local nonprofits become more effective and I have created significant change for the lives of LGBTQ+ people and my hope is that those changes will inspire additional changes by future leaders.” 

This series is co-sponsored by the following enterprises at the University of St. Thomas: 

• The Center for the Common Good 
• The Alumni, Career & Corporate Engagement Center 
• The Selim Center for Lifelong Learning  

• Sponsored by The Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership.
  • Produced by Britt Cruz
  • Engineered by Tom Forliti

In Search of Careers for the Common Good is a four-part series of candid conversations with professionals across three different career stages – early, middle and encore – discussing the ways in which reality and one’s ideals about careers intersect in the search and struggle to find careers for the common good.  

In part three of this series, Christopher Wong Michaelson has a discussion with Lindsey Hickey, CEO of Simek’s, who shares her story about thriving in the chaos of balancing a family while leading a second-generation family business in her search for a career for the common good.  

This series is co-sponsored by the following enterprises at the University of St. Thomas: 

• The Center for the Common Good 
• The Alumni, Career & Corporate Engagement Center 
• The Selim Center for Lifelong Learning  

• Sponsored by The Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership.
  • Produced by Britt Cruz
  • Engineered by Tom Forliti

In Search of Careers for the Common Good is a four-part series of candid conversations with professionals across three different career stages – early, middle and encore – discussing the ways in which reality and one’s ideals about careers intersect in the search and struggle to find careers for the common good.  

In part two of this series, Christopher Wong Michaelson has a discussion with recent University of St. Thomas graduate, Katrina Anderson, a park ranger in the Great Smoky Mountains, who shares her story about changing her major, her expectations and her zip code in her search for a career for the common good. She is still figuring out the path to that waterfall but has discovered along the way that she’s allowed to enjoy the view along the journey. 

This series is co-sponsored by the following enterprises at the University of St. Thomas: 

• The Center for the Common Good 
• The Alumni, Career & Corporate Engagement Center 
• The Selim Center for Lifelong Learning  

• Sponsored by The Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership.
  • Produced by Britt Cruz
  • Engineered by Tom Forliti

In Search of Careers for the Common Good is a four-part series of candid conversations with professionals across three different career stages – early, middle and encore – discussing the ways in which reality and one’s ideals about careers intersect in the search and struggle to find careers for the common good.  

In part one of this series, Christopher Wong Michaelson has a discussion with recent University of St. Thomas graduate, Cesar Osvaldo Mendez Portillo, a self-described “banker by accident” who shares his story about the importance of building relationships in his search for a career for the common good.  

This series is co-sponsored by the following enterprises at the University of St. Thomas: 

• The Center for the Common Good 
• The Alumni, Career & Corporate Engagement Center 
• The Selim Center for Lifelong Learning  

• Sponsored by The Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership.
  • Produced by Britt Cruz
  • Engineered by Tom Forliti

In this episode, Michaelson moderates a discussion with each of the 2022 Principled Leadership Fellows from the Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership.

So, how is it that apples, K-Pop and building trust are discussed on the same podcast episode? Listen to learn more from each Fellow as they share their unique research agendas and the connections to leadership and business practice. 

2022 Fellows
Chad Brinsfield, Ph.D, Associate Professor Management. Topic: What hinders manager voice endorsement: The role of voice type, manager dominance tendency, and manager perceived status threat.

Ameeta Jaiswal-Dale, Ph.D, Professor of Finance. Topic: Challenges and potential for community value creation through sustainable food entrepreneurship.

Shinwon Noh, Ph.D, Assistant Professor of Entrpreneurship. Topic: Rise of Cultural Industries from Emerging Markets: Case of K-Pop 2. 

• Sponsored by The Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership.
  • Produced by Britt Cruz
  • Engineered by Tom Forliti

In this episode, Michaelson moderates a panel discussion titled: Family business: How to create meaningful work for the family, employees and betterment of the community, as part of the University of St. Thomas Schulze School of Entrepreneurship Family Business Center breakfast series. 

Panelists include three family business leaders who approach meaningful work in a variety of ways, but always with a goal of making the world around them better: Vikas Narula, founder of Keyhubs and Neighborhood Forest; Kris Kowalski Christiansen, CEO of Kowalski’s Markets; and, Traci Tapani, Co-President of Wyoming Machine. 

Michaelson and panelists explore several topics: How we’ve arrived at the new “purpose economy” or the “passion economy" in an era in which we expect our work to make the world and our lives better and, how family businesses can balance the worthy purpose of supporting family goals and individual passions with business needs and social impact.

• Sponsored by The Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership.
  • Produced by Britt Cruz
  • Engineered by Tom Forliti

In this episode, host, Christopher Michaelson, intermixes his commentary with a recording of a panel discussion taken during an in-person event at the Guthrie Theater in May 2022. The special event titled, A Raisin in the Sun: Panel Discussion and Performance, was an experiential opportunity aimed at helping shape the role of business in cultivating racial justice and social equity in the Twin Cities community.

Esteemed panelists included Austene Van, director of A Raisin in the Sun, founder of the New Dawn Theater Company, and producing artistic director of the Yellow Tree Theater; Dr. Yohuru Williams, founding director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas; and panel moderator, Tina Burnside, cofounder and curator of the Minnesota African American Heritage Museum and Gallery (MAAHMG).

A Raisin in the Sun overview:
"What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"

In 1951, poet Langston Hughes posed these questions, and Lorraine Hansberry answered with a theatrical masterpiece that broke down racial barriers both on and off stage. The play follows the three-generation Younger family as they grapple with different definitions of the American dream and how to achieve it. When the matriarch, Lena, buys a home in an all-white neighborhood, the Youngers are greeted by thinly veiled racism and financial pitfalls that threaten to pull the family apart and push their dream out of reach.  

With special thanks to the generous sponsors for the evenings' events: Guthrie Theater, Robins Kaplan, Ryan Companies, SPS Commerce, Sunrise Banks, Target, US Bank, Verizon, the Racial Justice Initiative, and the Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership.

• Sponsored by The Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership.
  • Produced by Britt Cruz
  • Engineered by Tom Forliti

The Melrose Twin Cities Principled Leadership Award was established in 2021 to honor Ken Melrose, namesake of the Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership and fervent champion of ethics and servant leadership as well as promote an aspirational vision of responsible and responsive leadership in practice.

The 2022 awardee, Erica Neubert Campbell, is the epitome of a principled leader: Empathic, authentic, and driven to serve others. Her commitment to purposefully and positively impact the Twin Cities community through her leadership at the Pinky Swear Foundation is inspiring. Listen and learn more about Erica and her incredible passion and service to the common good.

• Sponsored by The Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership.
  • Produced by Britt Cruz
  • Engineered by Tom Forliti

Work in Progress with Christopher Michaelson, discusses every working person’s work in progress, namely, our quest to be fully human in a working world that all too often makes us feel like machines, in which we often don’t even have time to think, and that, in the words of Studs Terkel, too often feels like “a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”

In this episode, host Michaelson and two guests: The book reviewer, Fordham University Gabelli School of Business Assistant Professor, Santiago Meija, and University of St. Thomas Associate Professor of Marketing & Academic Director of Business in a Digital World, Lisa Abendroth discuss the book Klara and the Sun written by Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro. Klara and the Sun is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend (AF), with incredible observational qualities of humans and humanity; designed to learn and subsequently imitate human behavior, Klara is bought, sold, and tossed into serving as a friend for a girl. While discussing the book's plot, Michaelson, Meija and Abendroth examine its underlying themes including the nature of intelligence, the cost of progress, and the identification and value of "real" relationships.   

This book review was also published in The Journal of Business Ethics (JBE) to answer two questions: "Is this book worth reading?" and "What ideas or questions will this book illuminate for anyone with interest in business ethics?"

With special thanks for the support of the University of St. Thomas Opus College Business in a Digital World Initiative and the Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership.

• Sponsored by The Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership.
  • Produced by Britt Cruz
  • Engineered by Tom Forliti