Past Episodes
March 2010
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Since the end of World War II, we have been living in an expanding economy that showed little signs of letting up. The growth in the standard of living in the U.S has been fueled by the desire of many to attain the American dream. A dream that offers each citizen a better, richer, happier life. This dream has played itself out in new and bigger houses, faster and fancier cars and a landscape filled with shopping malls.
A few years ago this dream began to crumble as the economy slowed, housing prices tumbled and unemployment invaded all areas of the country. The winning 2008 presidential campaign was based upon hope. Hope in part that the American dream can be resurrected. The mantra once again was growth.
All the while some keen observers of the American way of life were seeing a different future. They were diligently foretelling of the economic decline long before it was fashionable. Not only did they accurately predict the downturn, they are saying this is only the beginning.
At Business Matters we are committed to offering differing and sometimes controversial points of view about change. Today, we bring you two of the most articulate writers about the decline of the middle class and the collapse of the American economy, who may be the canaries in the mine of our collective future.
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Joe Bageant | Download MP3
Joe's been in the Navy, an anti-war hippie in communes, a Marxist and a "half-assed Buddhist." He's been writing about the American counterculture and third world issues since 1971. He's lived on an Indian reservation in Idaho as well as in small Central American towns. His newest book is "Dear Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War". He writes regularly at his blog, JoeBageant.com and at the Huffington Post.
Dmitry Orlov| Download MP3
Emigrating from the Soviet Union at 12, Dmitry Orlov became an eye witness to the collapse of the Soviet Union. These lessons have
informed his observations and writing about the collapse of the U.S economy and our preparedness to handle the fallout.
In 2005, Dmitry wrote Closing the Collapse Gap, about how Russia was much better prepared for the collapse after the fall of communism that America is after the fall of consumerism. `He has also written other articles on culture change include The New Age of Sail , The Despotism of the Image, and That Bastion of American Socialism and Thriving in an Age of Collapse
In 2008, Orlov's book Reinventing Collapse was published. It has received numerous awards including the 2009 independentPublisher Silver Medal. His website is cluborlov.blogspot.com. -
We all know about the challenges arising from the Toyota recall, so we decided to look beyond the headlines to understand the implications of this crisis in confidence beyond the numbers of cars involved.
We talked with a customer experience guru to understand the implications of Toyota's actions on the attitude of customers about Toyota. We found that a “cognitive dissonance” has created a confusion with this loyal base that may be difficult for Toyota to change.
We then find out how Toyota has been doing in managing public perceptions from a crisis management expert. In the process, we get a basic tutorial and the "dos and don'ts" of crisis management.
What many may not know is that Toyota's approach to manufacturing and business has been adopted by thousands of companies around the world. This week we'll find out the impact of Toyota's deviation from their well regarded operational blueprint.
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Tom Asacker | Download MP3
Tom Asacker has been teaching and inspiring organizations and entrepreneurs for over 20 years. Tom specializes in marketplace evolution, customer relationships, branding, and innovation. Companies including Procter & Gamble, UPS, Hewlett Packard, and G.E. have called on Tom to shake up their people, fill them with ideas and charge them with inspiration.
Tom is the author of A Little Less Conversation: Connecting with Customers in a Noisy World and A Clear Eye for Branding. He is also author of the soon to be released Opportunity Screams: Unlocking Hearts and Minds in Today's Idea Economy.
Jonathan Bernstein| Download MP3
Jonathan L. Bernstein, president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc. has more than 25 years of experience in all aspects of crisis management - crisis response, vulnerability assessment, planning, training and simulations. Prior to launching what was then known as Bernstein Communications in 1994, Bernstein created and served as the first director of the Crisis Communications Group for Ruder Finn, Inc., one of the world's largest public relations agencies.
Bernstein is publisher and editor of Crisis Manager, a first-of-its-kind email newsletter written for "those who are crisis managers whether they want to be or not," currently read in 75 countries. He is also the author of Keeping the Wolves at Bay: A Media Training Manual
Steven Spear | Download MP3
Steven Spear, five-time winner of the Shingo Prize for research excellence and recipient of the McKinsey Award, is a senior lecturer at MIT and former assistant professor at Harvard. A senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, he is the author of numerous articles appearing in academic and trade publications, including the Harvard Business Review, Annals of Internal Medicine, Academic Medicine, The Boston Globe, and The New York Times.
In particular he is well known for his Harvard Business Review article, “Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System”. More recently he wrote the award winner book, Chasing the Rabbit: How Market Leaders Outdistance the Competition and How Great Companies Can Catch Up and Win
In his consulting practice, Spear works with organizations to develop the capabilities of high velocity about which he writes. This involves developing senior leadership’s understanding and training a cadre of internal process experts whose system expertise compliments the functional expertise that exists within specialties and disciplines. His clients span a broad range of industrial, high tech, software, service, and healthcare organizations.
For Your Consideration | Download MP3
February 2010
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On this week's Business Matters, we're examining at ways for business leaders to use the power of language to be a more effective. We'll talk with a poet and a professor of ethics at Harvard, both of whom have explored how language and storytelling can be used in business.
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Joe Badaracco, Author, Question of Character,
Professor of Business Ethics, Harvard Business School |
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Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr., is the John Shad Professor of Business Ethics at Harvard Business School. He is also Senior Associate Dean and Chair of the MBA Program. Badaracco has taught courses on business ethics, strategy, and management in the School’s MBA and executive programs. Badaracco is a graduate of St. Louis University, Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes scholar, and Harvard Business School, where he earned an MBA and a DBA. He has also been chairman of the Harvard University Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility and has served on the boards of two public companies. Badaracco has taught in executive programs in the United States, Japan, and many other countries and has spoken to a wide variety of organizations on issues of leadership, values, and ethics.
Badaracco's research focuses on business ethics, particularly on leadership and individual decision making, and he has written four books on these topics. These are Business Ethics: Roles and Responsibilities, Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose between Right and Right, and Leading Quietly: An Unorthodox Guide to Doing the Right Thing. His most recent book, Questions of Character: Illuminating the Heart of Leadership through Literature, was published in April, 2006. It presents the lessons for leaders suggested by works of serious literature.
David Whyte, Poet, Lecturer, Author, The Three Marriages;
Founder, Many Rivers Company |
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Poet David Whyte is the author of six books of poetry, and two best selling prose books, he holds a degree in Marine Zoology and has traveled extensively, including living and working as a naturalist guide in the Galapagos Islands and leading anthropological and natural history expeditions in the Andes the Amazon and the Himalaya. He brings this wealth of experience to his poetry, lectures and workshops.
In addition to his six volumes of poetry, including his latest volume River Flow: New and Selected Poems, David Whyte is the author of The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity, an audio lecture series and an album of poetry and music. His newest prose book The Three Marriages: Understanding the Essentials of Work, Self and Relationship.
An Associate Fellow at Templeton College and Said Business School at the University of Oxford, he is one of the few poets to take his perspectives on creativity into the field of organizational development, where he works with many European, American and international companies. In organizational settings, using poetry and thoughtful commentary, he illustrates how we can foster qualities of courage and engagement; qualities needed if we are to respond to today’s call for increased creativity and adaptability in the workplace.
For Your Consideration | Download MP3
Is it possible to have successful businesses that are good for everyone? -
Over the past 30 years dramatic changes have altered the agricultural landscape both here and around the world. Since 1981 we have lost over 750,000 family farms and half of those that are left augment their income from off farm sources.
There is less diversity in our farming (just look a the mile after mile of corn or soybeans on the farms along our highways with no farm animals in sight to see it first hand) that has raised alarms with everyone from environmentalists to economists.
Since the 1950s our government policies have created rewards for farmers who are larger, large agribusiness companies and made it harder to be a family farmer.
The companies selling the essential products in the agricultural food chain like seeds or feed or fertilizer have vertically integrated so that they control things from the farm to the dinner plate. What's the impact of all this change? In our digging around, we have become alarmed. Many experts are raising concerns about risks we face because of this intense consolidation.
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Mary Hendrickson | Download MP3
Mary Hendrickson is director of Food Circles Networking Project, a program of the University of Missouri Extension. She currently is focusing her work efforts on consumer education and community building as well as connecting farmers with distributors and helping food service source locally produced food. Her work has led to several community-based processing activities, making local food programming a strong priority in the Kansas City and St. Louis urban extension programs.
She is the author of The Global Food System and Nodes of Power. Mary also serves as associate director of Community Food Systems and Sustainable Agriculture Program where she works with mid-sized cooperatives in beef and pork processing from initial planning to start-up, researching potential opportunities in direct-marketing to restaurants and establishing connections between distributors and farmers.
Hendrickson was a W.K. Kellogg Foundation Food and Society Policy Fellow. She was awarded the 2001 Cooperative Service Award by the National Farmers Union and received the Family Farm Leadership Award presented by the Missouri Farmers Union.
Doug Gurian-Sherman| Download MP3
Doug Gurian-Sherman is a senior scientist in the Food & Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) where he focuses on agricultural biotechnology and sustainable agriculture. He is the author of numerous papers and reports, including No Sure Fix: Prospects for Reducing Nitrogen Fertilizer Pollution through Genetic Engineering, Failure to Yield: Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops, and CAFOs Uncovered: The Untold Costs of Confined Animal Feeding Operations.
From 2004 to 2006, Dr. Gurian-Sherman was senior scientist at the Center for Food Safety in Washington, DC. Previously, he was founding co-director and science director for the biotechnology project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. He also worked at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) where he was responsible for assessing human health and environmental risks from transgenic plants and microorganisms and developing biotechnology policy. Before joining the EPA, he worked in the Biotechnology Group at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. From 2002 to 2005, Dr. Gurian-Sherman served on the Food and Drug Administration's inaugural advisory food biotechnology subcommittee.
Dr. Gurian-Sherman holds a doctorate degree in plant pathology from the University of California at Berkeley. He conducted post-doctoral research on rice and wheat molecular biology at the U.S. Department of Agriculture laboratory in Albany, California.
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is a leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a safer world. UCS combines independent scientific research and citizen action to develop innovative, practical solutions and to secure responsible changes in government policy, corporate practices, and consumer choices.
UCS began as a collaboration between students and faculty members at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969 is now an alliance of more than 250,000 citizens and scientists. UCS members are people from all walks of life: parents and businesspeople, biologists and physicists, teachers and students. Their achievements over the decades show that thoughtful action based on the best available science can help safeguard our future and the future of our planet.
Vandana Shiva | Download MP3
Dr. Shiva is a physicist, ecofeminist, philosopher, activist, and author of many books, including: Water Wars, Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge and Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply and Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis.
She founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology. This institute is dedicated to high quality and independent research to address the most significant ecological and social issues of our times, in close partnership with local communities and social movements. Vandana Shiva is one of the leaders of the International Forum on Globalization, (along with Jerry Mander, Edward Goldsmith, Ralph Nader, Jeremy Rifkin, etc.), and a figure of the global solidarity movement known as anti-globalization movement.
Vandana is the recipient of the Right Livelihood Award (also known as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize') "...For placing women and ecology at the heart of modern development discourse." -
Periodically our attention is brought to the possible impact of media violence on the behaviors in society. This usually happens when there has been some human tragedy such as Columbine or Virginia Tech. Then we are searching for answers and we then wonder if violence in the media isn't a contributor to the terrible situation. There will be hearings and reports. This is on top of the 50 years of every kind of psychological and physiological study imagined. We will solemnly agree that media violence should be addressed and then we move on to the next high profile crisis.
Yet, with all this evidence and public support as voiced in numerous studies and surveys, we continue to spend increasing amounts on media that is deemed violent. This week we find out about why this disparity exists and what we can do to help children make the best media choices.
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James Potter| Download MP3
For over 25 years, Dr. James Potter has been studying the impact of violence in the media. Jim is a Professor in the Communications Department of the University of California Santa Barbara. His seminal book, 11 Myths of Media Violence has been studied across the US He is a former editor of the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media as well as the editor of the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Media Violence. He has published numerous scholarly articles, book chapters, and 13 other books. He is currently at work on a general of theory of the mass media in which he plans to integrate the theories and research findings about the mass media industries, their content, audiences, and effects into a unified system of explanation.
Michael Mann| Download MP3
Michael Mann is an award-winning storyteller, author, training consultant and speaker, bringing a variety of educational programs and workshops to children and adults. Michael has been an active advocate of the mission of the National Institute on Media and the Family since 1997, originally as a media rater for the MediaWise® KidScore® program.
Michael was a nominee for the Anne Richardson Reading is Fundamental national award and is currently working in the area of storytelling and emergent literacy. As a founding member of Cygnus Storytelling, he worked with the families and staff of the Waldorf Schools to develop a family storytelling curriculum. He is past president of the Northlands Storytelling Network, and on the artist rosters of COMPAS Global Arts Presentations, Artists to Go, and the Minnesota Story Alliance. Michael is an active member of the National Storytelling Network, where he participates in the "Stories in Organizations" special interest group.
For Your Consideration | Download MP3
A challenge to parents to increase their involvement in their children's media choices.
Links:
Get a copy of the Kaiser Family Foundation study, “M2 Media in the lives of 8 to 18 year-olds.” -
What's written about the economy seems to change daily. Today it's good news and tomorrow there are storm clouds fast approaching. Most economists missed the downturn and yet they continue to predict the future like they now know what's going on.
To help educate our listeners about what really caused the biggest economic dip since the Great Depression, we devoted our first Business Matters Monthly Dialog to the topic of the innovation and the economy. To help get to the truth in plain English, we invited Michael Mandel, the former chief economist of BusinessWeek, to be our guest. During this one hour dialog, 20 invited callers were able to ask Michael penetrating and sometimes uncomfortable questions. These questions ranged from “how is it that you and your colleagues missed the warning signs” to “how can innovation help get us back on track”.
Michael is well qualified to be our guide during this live conversation. While at BusinessWeek, Michael was responsible for formulating BusinessWeek’s coverage of economic policy. Prior to that, Mandel was economics editor for the magazine. Michael is the author of several books, including “Rational Exuberance”, “The Coming Internet Depression”, and “The High Risk Society”. Michael recently started South Mountain Economics where he writes his blog, Mandel on Innovation and Growth.
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For Your Consideration
This week, a possible explanation for how Fox News has become the "most trusted" media source.
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January 2010
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This week on Business Matters, find out if accountability is possible in world of complexity and political expediency. When you talk to people, they wholeheartedly want accountability. When you ask if they want it in their own workplace, they begin to worry if it is just another way to be blamed when things go wrong.
We explore the adoption of accountability in organizations from three perspectives. First we look at it from the eyes of an academic. Then we talk with the author of the most popular book on the subject. Finally, we talk with a CEO who not only believes in accountability, he practices it big time.
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Joe Badaracco, Author, Question of Character,
Professor of Business Ethics, Harvard Business School |
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Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr., is the John Shad Professor of Business Ethics at Harvard Business School. He is also Senior Associate Dean and Chair of the MBA Program. Badaracco has taught courses on business ethics, strategy, and management in the School’s MBA and executive programs. Badaracco is a graduate of St. Louis University, Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes scholar, and Harvard Business School, where he earned an MBA and a DBA. He has also been chairman of the Harvard University Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility and has served on the boards of two public companies. Badaracco has taught in executive programs in the United States, Japan, and many other countries and has spoken to a wide variety of organizations on issues of leadership, values, and ethics.
Badaracco's research focuses on business ethics, particularly on leadership and individual decision making, and he has written four books on these topics. These are Business Ethics: Roles and Responsibilities, Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose between Right and Right, and Leading Quietly: An Unorthodox Guide to Doing the Right Thing. His most recent book, Questions of Character: Illuminating the Heart of Leadership through Literature, was published in April, 2006. It presents the lessons for leaders suggested by works of serious literature.
- Roger Connors
- Author
- The Oz Principle: Getting Results through Individual and Organizational Accountability
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Roger Connors is a principal and founder of Partners In Leadership, Inc. Over the last twenty years, Partners In Leadership has become a widely respected international leadership and management consulting firm that has implemented consulting and training services in a myriad of organizations ranging in size from small "start-ups" to Fortune 500 companies.
Roger has assisted scores of management teams in successfully Accelerating The Cultural Transition(R) in their organizations to a Culture Of Accountability. He has significant experience in helping management teams facilitate large scale Cultural Transition. In addition, he has worked with numerous management groups to assist them in building teams and in building greater accountability at all levels in the organization.
Roger holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Brigham Young University and a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from Brigham Young University
He is the co-author of the best-selling book, The Oz Principle: Getting Results Through Individual And Organizational Accountability. He is also co-author of Journey To The Emerald City: Achieve A Competitive Edge By Creating A Culture Of Accountability. In 2009, Roger co-wrote, How did that Happen: Holding People Accountable for Results the Positive, Principled Way.
Shawn Boyer, Founder & CEO, SnagAJob.com
2008 National Small Business Person of the Year |
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Shawn Boyer founded SnagAJob.com in 1999, and since then, he has taken the company from being a start-up to the nation's largest part-time and hourly job-posting site. In 2008, Shawn was named the nation's Small Business Person of the Year by the U.S. Small Business Administration. That same year, he also saw one of his most ambitious goals for the company come true when SnagAJob.com was named a Best Small & Medium Company to Work for in America by the Great Places to Work Institute.
Prior to starting SnagAJob, this big thinker and passionate leader was actually a transactional attorney for Brown & Wood LLP (now Sidley Austin, LLP) and Watt, Tieder, Hoffar & Fitzgerald, LLP. He holds a Master of Law in taxation from Georgetown University Law Center, a Juris Doctor from Washington & Lee University, and a Bachelor of Business Administration from the College of William and Mary.
Aside from mowing lawns in middle school, Shawn's first hourly job was in a retail store in his sophomore year in high school. "From day one, that job taught me that the customer is absolutely the organization's lifeblood, that they drive the business, and that you need to bend over backwards to wow them." That same philosophy is embraced throughout SnagAJob.com today.
For Your Consideration
A personal challenge to be accountable for everything.
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The power of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been focused on a national effort to ban the consumption of raw milk. This tireless effort has not been entirely successful. Today raw milk can be purchased at either the farm or retail in 28 states. Wisconsin has a bill currently winding its way through the legislature to legalize farm sales of raw milk.
Those who are on the front line of this issue clearly see that the fight is about more than raw milk. It s about the consumers' right to decide what they eat. This concern has risen with the recent approval by the by the US House of Representatives, known as Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009. This legislation is making its way through the US Senate. This will give the FDA much broader authority particularly in the area of food safety. This wasn't motivated by the raw milk controversy, it came out of other food borne disease issues. The FDA stance on raw milk gives many consumer advocates concern about the impact this legislation will have.
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David Gumpert
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David Gumpert is a journalist who contributes regularly to BusinessWeek, Grist and The Nation. Faced with a diagnosis of prostate cancer, David found out first hand about the business of health care. This motivated him to share what he has learned in his popular blog, The Complete Patient Blog. He has also written a number of books about small business and entrepreneurship, including Burn Your Business Plan! His latest book is, The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America's Emerging Battle Over Food Rights
Peter Kennedy
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Peter is a Sarasota, Fl. Attorney who is the President of the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund Pete works on dairy issues for the Weston A. Price Foundation, particularly, the right of farmers to distribute raw milk and raw milk products direct to consumers. He has represented or assisted in the representation of dairy farmers facing possible state enforcement action in Florida, Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and Indiana. He has helped farmers get started in the business of distributing raw milk and raw milk products in many other states. He has written articles for Wise Traditions Magazine on the interstate ban on raw milk products for human consumption and on the legality of selling raw milk interstate for animal consumption. He compiled the state raw milk laws and state raw milk summaries posted at www.realmilk.com. He is currently working with others to challenge the federal ban on the interstate shipment of raw milk for human consumption.
Max Kane
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Max is a Viroqua, Wisconsin resident who was diagnosed with Crohnes disease at the age of 10. As a young adult Max was 5'11” and weighted just 110 pounds. Finding that traditional medicine wasn't providing a cure, Max went on a raw food diet. It worked. Max gained 80 pounds and is in the pink of health. This experience has motivated Max to be a national advocate for the benefits of raw milk. Last year Max went coast-to-coast on his Ride for Raw Milk. More recently, Max is defending himself in court as the attorney general of Wisconsin is trying to get Max to divulge information on members of a raw milk cooperative* in Chicago named Belle's Lunchbox.
For Your Consideration
Find out who's watching over us when it comes to food safety.
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Since the advent of the industrial revolutions there has been a noble experiment both here and abroad of businesses that owned and democratically controlled by their worker/owners. If you know about these types of businesses, you probably think of them as small and local. For the most part that's true here in the US. However, if we look across the Atlantic we find a very different story.
Since its modest beginnings in 1956 as technical college and a small workshop producing paraffin heaters, the Mondragon Corporation is a worker owned collective of cooperatives that is the seventh largest Spanish company in terms of turnover (almost $2B) and the leading business group in the Basque Country. At the end of 2008 it was providing employment for 92,773 people working in 256 companies in four areas of activity: Finance, Industry, Retail and Knowledge. This model is also prominent in Italy and other countries in Europe. The story in the US has been not so strong.
Today on Business Matters, we will explore the history of the worker owned cooperatives in the US. We will talk with several success stories and a financial collective that provides funding for these type of businesses. Finally, we will talk about a recent remarkable development that links the Mondragon folks and a large US union in a novel experiment.
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- Melissa Hoover
- Executive Director
- US Federation of Worker Cooperatives
The United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives is a national grassroots membership organization of and for worker cooperatives, democratic workplaces, and organizations that support the growth and development of worker cooperatives. Founded in 2004 as the result of several years of organizing on the part of worker cooperatives and regional groups from around the country.
They provide support to their members and educational outreach to the public through conferences and events, resource referrals, and networking and training opportunities. Check out the various sections of their site to connect to resources and see what's happening in the dynamic and growing world of worker cooperatives!
- Erbin Crowell
- Outreach Coordinator
- Cooperative Fund of New England
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Erbin worked for over ten years with Equal Exchange, a worker-owned co-operative marketing fairly traded coffee, tea and chocolate from small farmer co-ops. He is currently working on a pilot program for Domestic Fair Trade. He has served in a number of elected roles with Equal Exchange, including chair of the board and worker-owner coordinator. Erbin brings to Cooperative Fund of New England a commitment to workplace democracy, community-based economics and sustainable agriculture. He holds a BA in anthropology and the visual arts from Brown University, and is currently working toward a Masters in Management (Co-operatives and Credit Unions) from St. Mary’s University in Nova Scotia, Canada.
The Cooperative Fund of New England is a non-profit organization supporting cooperative development in the Northeast area of the United States. The Fund provides alternative financial services and related technical assistance to cooperative organizations at favorable rates and terms. Its policies generally accord eligibility on the basis of community service, need and merit.
Operating on a small budget, the Fund has been successfully assisting a wide variety of cooperatives, non-profits, worker owned businesses, and community groups since 1975. Funds for program lending are provided by "social investment loans" from individuals, religious groups, cooperatives and other organizations. Social investment loans are furnished on a long-term basis at low to moderate rates of interest. This investment option may be of interest to persons with discretionary financial resources who have strong social concerns about the use of their funds. Support may also be provided through tax-deductible contributions.
- Joseph Tuck
- CEO/ General Coordinator
- Alvarado Street Bakery
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Joseph Tuck is the General Coordinator/C.E.O. of Alvarado Street Bakery. Joseph started work at Alvarado Street Bakery in 1981 as a sanitation worker and over the years gained expertise both in the baking business and in worker cooperatives. Joseph has held his current position for over twenty years. In this period of time Alvarado Street Bakery has been fortunate in realizing significant growth both in its revenues and profits. Joseph has assisted the cooperative’s evolution organizationally in ways that meet the needs of their customers while giving good returns to its worker members. Currently the average hourly worker/member earns $30 dollars an hour that is augmented by a robust benefit and 401k plan. On top of the compensation package worker/members have also had yearly redemption of stock dividends that has averaged around $14,000 per year.
Joseph has provided technical assistance to various bakeries and food processors in the Russian Federation. His experience in managing a worker cooperative in a free market economy did give Joseph a unique perspective in terms of assisting Russian businesses during the first years of Perestroika. Before his employment at Alvarado Street Bakery Joseph lived in the western highlands of Scotland and was employed as a shepherd/ghille.
Alvarado Street Bakery is one of the most successful worker-owned cooperatives in the US. It provides quality baked goods to its customers nationwide. For over 20 years Alvarado Street Bakery has been a leader in producing healthy, organic whole grain breads.
Alvarado started producing whole grain organic baked goods for their local community in 1979. Their roots can be traced back to the “Food for People not for Profit” movement in the San Francisco Bay Area. They were originally part of a non-profit organization called Red Clover Worker’s Brigade. The brigade consisted of the bakery, a retail store (Santa Rosa Community Market), a trucking company, and a wholesale warehouse.
In 1981 five brigade workers decided to form a worker cooperative. They purchased the bakery and formed Semper Virens Bakery Food Cooperative. Semper Virens in Latin means “ever green” and is the botanical name for one of our area’s largest treasures, our ancient redwood forests. They decided to change the business name to Alvarado Street due to a serendipitous placement of a road sign stowed away in the bakery.
- Michelle Matos
- Co-op Development Trainer
- WAGES Cooperative
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Michelle joined the WAGES team in November 2008 as a Co-op Development Trainer, and provides tailored technical assistance and workshops to foster skills for new and existing co-op members. Michelle is a promoter of social justice with over 10 years of experience in organizing, leadership development and facilitation. Together with community-based organizations, Michelle has developed the leadership of immigrant workers and communities of color by conducting issue-based research and facilitating grassroots leadership development, trainings and strategic planning processes for both short-term campaigns and long-term community initiatives. Michelle holds a degree in Cultural Studies from The New School University.In the years that have passed they have continued to grow and reach out to customers that now span the globe. Currently they employ over 100 people and produce and distribute over 30 organic baked goods.
For 15 years, WAGES, Women's Action to Gain Economic Security, has worked with low-income immigrant Latinas to launch green business cooperatives, a model that enables women to work together to succeed.
As co-op members, women have healthy work, good pay, and a voice and a vote in key decisions – and they distribute business profits equitably. WAGES provides training and technical assistance to incubate the co-ops and a framework for continued learning and business growth through our Co-op Network.
In addition to building successful cooperative businesses locally, WAGES conducts community workshops throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and consults with other groups around the country. They offer an in-depth Co-op Development Toolkit to qualified organizations, and we have provided technical assistance for a number of new co-ops inspired by their model.
- Rob Witherell
- Organizer
- United Steelworkers Download MP3
The United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union (United Steelworkers or USW) is the largest industrial labor union in North America, with 705,000 members.[1] Headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the United Steelworkers represents workers in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean. The United Steelworkers represent workers in a diverse range of industries, including primary and fabricated metals, chemicals, glass, rubber, heavy-duty conveyor belting, tires,transportation, utilities, container industries, pharmaceuticals, call centers andhealth care.
The United Steelworkers is currently affiliated with both the American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), as well as several international union federations. On July 2, 2008 the United Steelworkers signed an agreement to merge with the United Kingdomand Ireland based union, Unite, to form a new global union entity called Workers Uniting.
Find our about their agreement with the Mondragon Corporation by clicking this link.
For Your Consideration
Find out about the grass roots campaign to move bank deposits from the "big banks" to community banks and credit unions.
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As we enter the new year, three issues are on the top of our minds - what's really happening with the economy, where will the health care legislation end up and what now after the disappointment of the Copenhagen summit.
We have found over the last year that often the information you get on Business Matters shows up on the network news in weeks or month. So we are continuing that tradition by taking you underneath the covers of these three issues to provide perspectives that you may not be hearing.
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Michael Mandel
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Michael Mandel was until recently the chief economist at BusinessWeek where he was responsible for formulating BusinessWeek’s coverage of economic policy. Prior to that, Mandel was economics editor for the magazine.
Michael is the author of several books, including “Rational Exuberance”, “The Coming Internet Depression”, and “The High Risk Society”. Michael recently started South Mountain Economics and where he writes his blog.
Trudy Lieberman
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Veteran reporter Trudy Lieberman is the president of the Association of Health Journalists, a nonprofit group dedicated to helping the public understand health care issues. She’s also director of the health and medicine reporting program at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. For 29 years she covered economic, health policy, and health financing issues at Consumer Reports, and she’s a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review.
She has won numerous honors and awards, including two National Magazine Awards, 10 National Press Club Awards, five Society of Professional Journalists Deadline Club Awards, a Fulbright Fellowship to study health care in Japan, a John J. McCloy Fellowship to study health care in Germany, a Joan Shorenstein Fellowship from Harvard University to study media coverage of medical technology, and an honorary doctorate of humane letters from the University of Nebraska. She is the author of five books, including Slanting the Story: The Forces That Shape the News and the Consumer Reports Guide to Health Services for Seniors, which was named one of the best consumer health books for 2000 by Library Journal.
Deborah Fleisher
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Deborah Fleischer is president of Green Impact, a strategic environmental consulting practice that helps companies engage employees, strengthen relationships with stakeholders, launch profitable green initiatives and communicate about their successes and challenges. She is the author of Green Teams: Engaging Employees in Sustainability and is a regular contributor tohttp://www.triplepundit.com.
She is a LEED AP with over 20-years of direct experience working with businesses, governmental agencies, and non-profits on environmental and sustainability challenges. She brings deep expertise in sustainability strategy, green teams, stakeholder engagement, program development and written communications. Her background includes a Master in Environmental Studies from Yale University and a Master in Public Administration from Harvard.
For Your Consideration
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December 2009
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"A just peace includes not only civil and political rights -- it must encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want." - President Obama (quoting FDR) as he accepted the Nobel Prize for Peace. You can watch and read the full speech here.
The above is a perfect opening for today's show on the Business of Peace. If peace must, as Obama says, encompass economic security and opportunity, how do we get there? Today on Business Matters we'll look at strategies, (especially economic strategies) for getting us closer to the goal of peace on earth.
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Nicholas Kristof
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Nicholas D. Kristof co-authored the book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn. Find out more about the book and how to get involved here .
Kristof has been a columnist for The New York Times since 2001. He is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who writes op-ed columns that appear twice a week in the Times. Mr. Kristof grew up on a sheep and cherry farm near Yamhill, Oregon. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College and then studied law at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, graduating with first class honors. He later studied Arabic in Cairo and Chinese in Taipei. While working in France after high school, he caught the travel bug and began backpacking around Africa and Asia during his student years, writing articles to cover his expenses. Mr. Kristof has lived on four continents, reported on six, and traveled to more than 140 countries, plus all 50 states, every Chinese province and every main Japanese island. (from the New York Times)
Erik Gartzke
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Erik Gartze is Associate Profesor of Political Science at the University of California in Santa Barbara. His primary area of study involves the impact of information and institutions on war and peace. His research has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Reivew, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Politics, World Politics, and elsewhere. He is currently working on a book on how prosperity and free markets create the basis for amicable politics within (i.e. democracy) and between nations (interstate peace).
Georgia Kelly
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Georgia Kelly is the Founder and Director of Praxis Peace Institute. She recently helped to organize the Economics of Peace Conference in Sonoma, California. She has produced several conferences on peace-building themes in the U.S. and in Europe. She teaches Conflict Resolution, has been active in many political campaigns, and has published several articles on peace related themes. She is also a harpist, composer, and recording artist.
For Your Consideration
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In the week that the UK announced it will tax bank bonuses, and Goldman Sachs has been bullied into changing their policy on bonuses, we at Business Matters, will add our voice to the chorus of anti-big-bank-shouting. This week on the show, we'll explore the clandestine relationship between bankers and the government, and ask we haven't learned our lessons from the Savings and Loan Crisis of the 80's and 90's.
If you were old enough to be reading newspapers in the late 80’s, you may remember the Keating Five. If not, then let us give you a quick refresher. The Keating Five were five senators (including John McCain) who were accused of helping to facilitate the fraud being committed by Charles Keating, the then-president of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. Why would they do this? Because congress people have huge financial incentive (in the form of campaign contributions) to let banks do as they please. Why did it matter? Because it was this type of unregulated fraud that caused the Savings and Loan (or S&L) crisis, and cost the tax payers billions of dollars. Unfortunately, not much has changed since then. Deregulation still rules and our government is still in bed with the banks. We'll talk about all of that and get your business questions answered in our new advice segment on this week's Business Matters.
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Bill Black
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Bill Black is an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri – Kansas City (UMKC). He was the Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention from 2005-2007. He was litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, deputy director of the FSLIC, SVP and General Counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and Senior Deputy Chief Counsel, Office of Thrift Supervision. He was deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement. He is also author of the book, The Best Way To Rob A Bank Is To Own One. You can watch the Bill Moyers interview that Black references in his interview with Business Matters here.
Paul Craig Roberts
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Paul Craig Roberts is an economist and nationally syndicated columnist. You can read many of his articles here. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was also Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal and he’s the author of many books. Most recently, he is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.
Ask Rieva, with Rieva Lesonsky
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We're proud to introduce a brand new segment this week: Ask Rieva! And what are people asking? This week: Does a husband/wife business qualify as woman-owned? Is it wise to take out an home equity loan to buy a laundramat? And more... To learn more about Rieva, and ask your business questions go to our Ask Rieva page.
For Your Consideration
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Business Matters host, Thomas White asks: Why aren't we learning our economic lessons? -
This holiday season we're meeting people who are creating powerful counter-messages to the onslaught of pro-consumption propaganda that we're all bombarded with every year around this time.
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Kalle Lasn - Founder, Adbusters
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-Buy Nothing Day
-Digital Detox Week
Sarah Haskins - Writer, Infomania
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-Infomania: Target Women
-Sarah Haskins on Twitter
Reverend Billy - Anti-consumerism Evangelist
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-The Church of Life After Shopping
-Music from the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir
For Your Consideration for the week of 12-4-09
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November 2009
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Well, it's hard to believe that it's that time of year again. Thanksgiving is less than a week away and although it can be a time of stress, travel, and visiting relatives we might rather forget we're related to, it's also a time to eat, a time to give and share with the people we love, and a time to remember everything we have to be thankful for. That's why this week on Business Matters, we'll be talking about the business of food; the economy of giving; and the value of gratitude.
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Sharon Astyk, Author
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Sharon Astyk is a writer, teacher and subsistence farmer, and the author of two books on Peak Oil and Climate Change — Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front and A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil , the latter co-authored with Aaron Newton. Sharon used to run a small, Jewish themed CSA, but is now concentrating on subsistence agriculture, growing food to share and teaching others to grow food.
Jonathan Safron Foer, Author
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Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of the novels Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. His newest book about not eating meat is called Eating Animals. His work has received numerous awards and been translated into thirty-six languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Lewis Hyde, Author and Scholar, on Giving
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Lewis Hyde is a poet, essayist, translator, and cultural critic with a particular interest in the public life of the imagination. His 1983 book, The Gift, illuminates and defends the non-commercial portion of artistic practice. Hyde is currently at work on a book about our “cultural commons,” that vast store of ideas, inventions, and works of art that we have inherited from the past and continue to produce. Hyde teaches during the fall semesters at Kenyon College, where he is the Richard L. Thomas Professor of Creative Writing. During the rest of the year he lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he is a Fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
Craig Cuccia, Founder of Cafe Reconcile In New Orleans
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Craig Cuccia is the co-founder and executive director of Café Reconcile, a restaurant that provides on-the-job training in the service industry for inner city teens in New Orleans. -
Less than a year since Barack Obama took office as president, but the battle over how to reform our employed-based-insurance health care system has been going on for a half-century. President Obama has made it his top priority to win this battle. Last weekend the House of Representatives passed the most far reaching health care reform bill in a generation, but it seems impossible to cut through the media clutter and see what the legislation is really about. So this week on Business Matters, we are delving into the subject of health care to help you understand what the proposed reform could mean to you and what it would really take to fix our broken system.
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Business Matters News & Michael Mandel, Senior Economist @BusinessWeek
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Michael Mandel is chief economist at BusinessWeek, responsible for formulating BusinessWeek’s coverage of economic policy. Prior to this, Mandel was economics editor. Mandel is the author of several books, including "Rational Exuberance", "The Coming Internet Depression", and "The High Risk Society". He writes the World Economy Blog for BusinessWeek.
Health Care Reform Update: Trudy Lieberman, Contributing Editor @CJR
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Veteran reporter Trudy Lieberman is the president of the Association of Health Journalists, a nonprofit group dedicated to helping the public understand health care issues. She’s also director of the health and medicine reporting program at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. For 29 years she covered economic, health policy, and health financing issues at Consumer Reports, and she’s a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review.
Health Care IT: Dr. Blackford Middleton, Prof. of Medicine
&
John Burklow, Associate Director @NIH Office of Communications & Public Liaison
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Blackford Middleton is Corporate Director of Clinical Informatics Research & Development (CIRD), and Chairman of the Center for Information Technology Leadership (CITL) at Partners Healthcare System, and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health.
John Burklow is the associate director for communications and public liaison at the National
Institutes of Health (NIH), the primary medical research agency in the Federal government. NIH's annual budget is more than $29 billion, which supports a large research facility in Bethesda, Md., and more than 325,000 researchers throughout the United States and around the world. Burklow oversees the news media, editorial operations, online communications, special projects and NIH visitor center functions.
The Mutant Market of Health Care: David Goldhill, Author "How American Health Care Killed My Father" & CEO
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It's hard enough to lose someone to illness, but when that death could have been prevented, it makes it all the more difficult. After losing his father to a hospital-borne infection two years ago, David Goldhill was drawn into trying to understand what makes the health care industry so unlike any other in our country. His article, How American Health Care Killed My Father, telling his story and proposing some reforms to bring more sanity into the labrynthine system appeared in the September issue of the Atlantic Magazine.
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This week: Banksters and Bailout Bandits. Do individuals have a chance against the mighty banking dragons? We’ll talk people who have taken on the banks and learn how community organizations are networking nationwide to fight for economic justice. We'll meet an organizer on Chicago's North Side who's pushing back against the banks who are pushing people out of their homes. Also, we'll hear about how thousands of people converged in Chicago last week from across the country to protest the American Bankers' Association's national meeting.
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Catherine Austin Fitts, President, Solari; Former Assistant Secretary of Housing
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Catherine Austin Fitts has an unparalleled perspective on the current banking crisis, having witnessed the corruption in the market during the first Bush and Clinton administrations. Since then, she’s become the founder and managing member of Solari Investment Advisory Services, LLC.; and President of Solari, Inc. an online media company focused on ethical investment. She’s also been president of The Hamilton Securities Group, investment bank and financial software developer and an Managing Director and member of the board of Wall Street investment banking firm Dillon Read & Co. Inc. (She writes about her experience there in Dillon Read and the Aristocracy of Stock Profits.)
Jordan Estevao, Director, Save the American Dream Campaign
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Save the American Dream is a campaign of National People’s Action (NPA), a network of metropolitan, regional, and statewide organizations that build grassroots power. Since its founding in 1972, NPA has worked nationally to build and strengthen people’s organizations, to develop indigenous leadership, and to advance campaigns for a more just, equitable, and sustainable society. NPA works to build the field of organizing, create permanent alliances, run national campaigns that strengthen organizations and develop grassroots leadership; and utilize technology and communications to take organizing and alliance building to a new scale.
Holly Krig, Lead Organizer, Northside Action for Justice
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Northside Action for Justice (NA4J) is a grassroots, member-controlled organization that builds power for low and moderate income people in order to advance the cause of economic and social justice on the north side of Chicago and across the globe. Holly explains some of the amazing successes that her organization has achieved without a lot of money but with a lot of community organizing.
October 2009
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This week on Business Matters, we're exploring exactly how many Americans are living below the poverty line and how to change it. Find out how our system for measuring poverty was developed more than four decades ago and how we compare to other developed countries in poverty levels. Also, we'll learn about a new strategy to eliminate poverty in Illinois.
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Steven Pressman, Professor of Economics and Finance, Monmouth University
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Steven Pressman also serves as co-editor of the Review of Political Economy, as Associate Editor and Book Review Editor of the Eastern Economic Journal, and a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the journal Basic Income Studies. He has published around 120 articles in refereed journals and as book chapters, and has authored or edited 13 books, including "Women in the Age of Economic Transformation", "Economics and Its Discontents", "A New Guide to Post Keynesian Economics", "Alternative Theories of the State", "50 Major Economists", and "Leading Contemporary Economists". His main areas of research are poverty and income distribution, and government tax and spending policies.
Related Links:
Poverty: Numbers alone don't tell the real story
Maria Cancian, Co-editor, "Changing Poverty, Changing Policy"; Professor of Public Affairs and Social Work; Affiliate, Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin, Madison
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Maria Cancian is Professor of Public Affairs and Social Work, and an affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin. Her research is in the area of domestic social policy, with recent focus on the impact of married women's growing employment and earnings on marriage patterns and the inter- and intra-household distribution of income, the work and income of women who have received welfare, and the implications of child support and custody for the well-being of divorced and never-married families. She and Sheldon Danziger edited the 2009 book "Changing Poverty, Changing Policies" published by Russell Sage. Her articles have appeared in journals including Demography, Journal of Marriage and the Family, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Review of Economics and Statistics and Social Service Review.
Doug Schenkelberg, Associate Director of Policy & Advocacy at Heartland Alliance; Campaign Coordinator, From Poverty to Opportunity
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The "From Poverty to Opportunity Campaign: Realizing Human Rights in Illinois" is a grassroots, human rights campaign to develop the political will and substantive plans to end poverty in our state. The Campaign was established to create a comprehensive vision and a workable plan grounded in human rights standards that will halve extreme poverty in Illinois by the year 2015. The Campaign contextualizes poverty within the human rights framework, facilitates conversations across parties and interests in order to build shared understanding and urgency, uses our collective knowledge to identify solutions, and leverages our collective commitment to human rights to press for real change.
Related Links:
From Poverty to Opportunity Blog -
This week, we're discussing how young people are handling the recession.
If you, or someone close to you has just graduated college and is having trouble finding work, or maybe heading into college and not sure how it would be possible to pay for it you will definitely want to listen to this weeks show. In the first half we'll be talking to two people who are working to improve the financial literacy of young people about how to handle their money, then in the second half of the show we'll find out about an organization that's teaching entrepreneurship to low-income students around the country.
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Bill Pratt, Author, The Graduate's Guide to Life and Money
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Bill Pratt is a former credit card executive turned student-advocate. Bill is a former economist for the U.S. federal government and a former Vice President for one of the largest financial institutions in the world. He holds an MBA in finance. He left the financial industry to focus his efforts on helping others understand money. He is the author of "Extra Credit: The 7 Things Every College Student Needs to Know About Credit Debt & Ca$h" and "The Graduate’s Guide to Life and Money". Bill speaks at colleges to educate and entertain students about real-life issues in money, leadership and success.
Farnoosh Torabi, Author, "You’re So Money- Live Rich Even When You’re Not"; Bank of America’s ambassador for financial literacy
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Farnoosh Torabi is an accomplished television, print and web journalist focusing on a spectrum of money matters, from personal finance and small business to investing and the financial markets. She is best known for her business reports that air on TheStreet.com TV, where she hosts Wall Street Confidential featuring the site's founder Jim Cramer. She's also a business contributor to AM New York, and she writes a monthly investing column in Entrepreneur Magazine. Farnoosh began her broadcasting career as a business reporter and producer for NY1 News, Time Warner's 24-hour news channel in New York City.
Christine Poorman, Executive Director, NFTE Chicago
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The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE or "nifty") provides an entrepreneurship education program to youth in low-income communities. Starting in 2003, NFTE opened the Chicago office and successfully launched a partnership with the Chicago Public Schools, currently in 39 schools. Looking ahead, NFTE Chicago has developed an aggressive growth plan, and aims to reach 10,000 in the coming year.
Zoe Damacela, Founder, Zoe Damacela Apparel; 2nd Place Winner,
2009 OppenheimerFunds/NFTE National Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge
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Zoe Damacela is a 17-year-old senior at Whitney Young High School, she's an entrepreneur and a fashion designer, She's made everything from wedding dresses to handbags and the business she founded, Zoe Damacela Apparel, has sold more than 300 dresses over the past four years. -
So the Dow is back above 10,000, 3rd Quarter GDP growth may be looking good, and Goldman Sachs is making splendid profits, but with rising double-digit unemployment, can this really be the end of the recession? We went searching for the answer to that question this week on Business Matters, and although each of our guests has a different take on where we're headed, there's agreement that this recession is unlike any we've seen before and it's not nearly over.
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Tim Duy, Director of Oregon Economic Forum, University of Oregon
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Following graduate school, Tim worked in Washington, D.C. for the United States Department of Treasury as an economist in the International Affairs division and later with the G7 Group, a political and economic consultancy for clients in the financial industry. In the latter position, he was responsible for monitoring the activities of the Federal Reserve and currency markets. Tim returned to the University of Oregon in 2002. He is the Director of the Oregon Economic Forum and the author of the University of Oregon Index of Economic Indicators and the Central Oregon Business Index.
Ken Goldstein, Economist, The Conference Board
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Ken Goldstein has been an economist at The Conference Board since 1971. His principal responsibilities include analyzing current trends in labor market activity and forecasting near-term economic development. Specifically, he has maintained The Conference Boards Help-Wanted Index—a proxy measure for changes in labor demand. Since 1989, Goldstein has managed the monthly update of the The Conference Board economic forecasting process and has frequently been quoted in both print and electronic media as to where employment, inflation, interest rates, and the economy are headed.
Michael Mandel, Chief Economist, BusinessWeek
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Michael Mandel is chief economist at BusinessWeek, responsible for formulating BusinessWeek's coverage of economic policy. Prior to this, Mandel was economics editor. In 1998, Mandel won the Gerald R. Loeb Award for his coverage of the New Economy. Mandel is the author of several books, including Rational Exuberance, The Coming Internet Depression, and The High Risk Society. Prior to joining BusinessWeek in 1989, Mandel was an assistant economics professor at New York University's Stern School of Business. Mandel holds a PhD in economics from Harvard. He writes the World Economy Blog for BusinessWeek. -
This week we're exploring the business of fakery, when people pretend to be one thing, and advocate some position based on that pretense, and then turn out to be something else. It's not just businesses that get into this fakery, setting up fake grassroots groups (also called astroturfing) or using marketing to mislead consumers about environmental issues. (so-called greenwashing) This is the business that all of us get into sometime of posturing because we want people to think one thing about us and we really are something different. So this week we look at ways that fakery has impacted our public policy debates over the past summer.
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Mark Bowden, an Atlantic Monthly national correspondent; Writer, The Story Behind the Story, October 2009 Atlantic
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Mark Bowden, is an author, journalist, screenwriter, and teacher. He spent 25 years as a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer. His book Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War (1999)—an international bestseller that spent more than a year on the New York Times bestseller list—was a finalist for the National Book Award. Bowden also worked on the screenplay for Black Hawk Down, a film adaptation of the book, directed by Ridley Scott. Bowden is also the author of the international bestseller Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw (2001), which tells the story of the hunt for Colombian cocaine billionaire Pablo Escobar. Killing Pablo is currently being adapted for film, with Bowden again writing the screenplay. Bowden contributes regularly to major American magazines, and he's an adjunct professor at Loyola College of Maryland, where he teaches creative writing and journalism.
Timothy Karr, Campaign Director, FreePress
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Timothy Karr manages all online initiatives for Free Press -- including SavetheInternet.com, StopBigMedia.com and InternetforEveryone.org. Tim speaks and writes about the state of journalism and the future of the Internet. Before joining Free Press, Tim was executive director of MediaChannel.org and vice president of the Globalvision News Network. He has also worked extensively as an editor, reporter and photojournalist for the Associated Press, Time Inc., the New York Times and Australia Consolidated Press. Tim has been quoted in publications across the country and has been featured as a commentator on CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN, NPR and ABC News Radio, among other places. He blogs for The Huffington Post and at MediaCitizen.
Valarie Davis, CEO Enviromedia
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Valerie Davis is cofounder of EnviroMedia Social Marketing — America’s first full-service advertising and public relations firm dedicated solely to improving the environment and public health. Davis, along with business partner Kevin Tuerff, launched www.greenwashingindex.com to fight the forces of misleading advertising. They also provided observations and perspective for Environmental Leader from the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Bali, Indonesia. Among Davis’ key client and project accomplishments: leading the Don’t Mess with Texas campaign to victory in the America’s Favorite Slogan Competition, beating Nike’s “Just Do It” and “Got Milk?”; spearheading research and brand creation for the Governor’s Water Conservation Implementation Task Force and Texas Water Development Board; and overseeing a water-saving education campaign which cut daily peak water-use within one region by 200 million gallons a day. -
This week, we explore the marketplace and culture of youth sports. How are adults and our broader national culture of competition impacting childhood development? How can youth sports help kids grow up to be successful? We'll lay out some of the challenges facing youth sports today and then talk to some innovators in the field to find out new ways for parents, coaches and kids to build healthy emotional and physical skills.
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Mark Hyman
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Mark Hyman is a contributing editor at BusinessWeek and the author of the new book Until It Hurts: America's Obsession With Youth Sports. Prior to joining BusinessWeek, he spent nearly 20 years as a reporter for newspapers including the Baltimore Sun where he was an enterprise and investigative reporter in the sports department. During his time at the Sun, earned his law degree from the University of Maryland. He blogs at youthsportsparents.blogspot.com and also contributes to BusinessWeek's Working Parents blog.
Jim Thompson
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Jim Thompson is the founder and director of Positive Coaching Alliance, a national nonprofit organization of parents, coaches and youth sports organizations dedicated to improving youth sports by developing a positive character building approach. Jim has more than 20 years of teaching, coaching and management experience working with a variety of individuals and groups. He was formerly Director of Stanford Business School's Public Management Program and his experiences as a youth coach led him to write two books on the subject: "Positive Coaching: Building Character and Self-Esteem Through Sports" and "Shooting in the Dark: Tales of Coaching and Leadership".
Frank Fiume
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Frank Fiume is founder and CEO of i9 Sports Corporation. Noticing from his own experience that the amateur sports industry was poorly organized on the local level, Frank applied the marketing and business skills he acquired with medical device companies to create ABA Sports in 1995. Over time, it grew at an astonishing rate, becoming i9 Sports corporation, the nation‘s first complete amateur sports franchise business allowing individuals to organize leagues, tournaments, camps, clinics, train officials, and sell sporting goods and custom uniforms while working with the local amateur organizations and parks and recreation departments.
(this program was originally broadcast on July 3rd, 2009)
September 2009
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This week on Business Matters, we're continuing to showcase one of our favorite topics, small businesspeople and entrepreneurs. Our guests today all have been entrepreneurs themselves, and also devoted their careers to helping others achieve success, both going into business for themselves and being leaders in the organization they're in.
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Alexander Muse - Co-Founder, SpringStage, Author, Texas Startup Blog
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Alexander is a serial entrepreneur with more than a decade of startup experience. Alexander’s day job is with Big in Japan, where his team builds cool applications for mobile devices, including ShopSavvy built for Google’s open source Android platform. The Texas Startup Blog has been published by Alexander Muse since 2005. With more than 2000 articles on startups, entrepreneurship and venture capital; the blog has garnered international attention with more than 70,000 monthly readers around the globe. The Texas Startup Blog is part of the SpringStage Startup Community.
Neil Ducoff - Founder of Strategies; Author, "No-Compromise Leadership: A Higher Standard of Leadership Thinking & Behavior"
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Ducoff is the CEO of Strategies, a training and coaching company for small to medium size businesses that he founded in 1993. During the last 38 years, Neil Ducoff has coached over 3,500 businesses, including giants like Aveda, Gillette, Proctor & Gamble, and L’Oreal, on how to achieve the highest levels of success and profitability, while creating a positive, rewarding workplace.
Susan Wilson Solovic - CEO, SBTV.com
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Susan is CEO of SBTV.com is the first and only video news and information destination site for America’s small businesses. Solovic began her professional career as a television news anchor and reporter for NBC and CBS affiliates. Subsequently, she joined a Fortune 100 company where she was named vice president, director of corporate marketing. Solovic is the author of “The Girls’ Guide to Building a Million Dollar Business” which is consistently ranked among the top 25 books for women in business on Amazon and was listed as a “must read” in Entrepreneur magazine. Solovic made her debut as an author with “The Girls’ Guide to Power and Success,” which was originally released in June 2001 and was re-released in paperback in 2003. -
This week on Business Matters we're talking about the economy of free. From ways that large companies are increasingly offering their content either for free, or giving some of it away and charging for the rest of it with a system known as "freemium", to the ways that individuals in their communities are operating networks to offer things for free in a phenomenon that combines recycling and barter.
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Chris Anderson - Editor, Wired Magazine; Author, Free: The Future of a Radical Price
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Chris Anderson is the author of the international bestseller The Long Tail. He is the editor in chief of Wired magazine and was a U.S. business editor at The Economist. He began his career at the two premier science journals Science and Nature. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from George Washington University and studied Quantum Mechanics and Science Journalism at the University of California.
-Chris Anderson's Blog
-Full Free Audiobook Version (zipped mp3)
Judy Brown - Co-founder, The ReUseIt Network
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The ReUseIt Network was launched on July 18, 2007. It serves as a directory of and support system for affiliated community recycling groups around the world. It offers forums for group owners and moderators and people concerned about the 3 R's -- reduce, reuse, and recycle. People join an online group (usually hosted by Yahoo!Groups) near where they live or work. Group members then post an OFFER or WANTED request following guidelines they receive upon joining. There are two main guidelines to follow ... offers and requests made must be free, legal and family friendly.
Dan Hoffner - Co-founder, Couch-Surfing
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Three of the four co-founders, Casey Fenton, Daniel Hoffer, and Sebastien LeTuan, became close friends while working together at a dot com Daniel founded in 1999. Several years later, the idea for CouchSurfing solidified when Casey bought a cheap ticket to Iceland for a long weekend one April. He came up with the 'brilliant' idea of e-mailing over 1500 Icelandic students in Reykjavik and asking them if he could crash on one of their couches. Exchanging emails with many of the students, he then had several groups of friends offer to show him 'their' Reykjavik. After spending an amazing, crazy weekend just south of the Arctic Circle, Casey decided he would never again get trapped in a hotel and tourist marathon while traveling. Casey then invited Dan, Seb, and another friend and colleague of his, Leonardo Silveira, to co-found CouchSurfing.org with him. -
This week on Business Matters, we'll speak with some of the award winners from this years Entrepreneurial Women's conference. The 23rd annual conference is held Wednesday, September 16th at Navy Pier in Chicago, and we spoke with the founder and three of their honorees ahead of the conference to learn their stories about being a successful businesswoman in large and small companies alike.
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Hedy Ratner - Co-President and Founder of the Women's Business Development Center
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Hedy Ratner brings over 30 years of leadership in the women's community including many national and local awards for her visionary approach to women's economic development. In addition to serving s on the boards of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce and many other organizations, she is a presidential appointee to the National Women's Business Council; a gubernatorial appointee to the Illinois Women's Business Ownership Council and the newly formed Governor's Commission on the Status of Women.
Shelley Stern - Midwest Community Affairs Director, Microsoft
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Shelley Stern is community affairs director for the Midwest District, responsible for building community awareness through Microsoft’s Citizenship programs, including grants and software allocations and investing in programs that assist in providing technology education for the disadvantaged. She manages all non profit board relationships, diversity outreach and employee engagement programs for Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin and is responsible for Microsoft’s thought leadership programs on Innovation.
Sharon Castillo - Principal, SB Services Inc.
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Sharon Castillo is the founder and principal of SB Services, Inc. Early on in her career Ms. Castillo spent 10 years with a Fortune 500 corporation, entering the world of consulting in the early 80's. With tenure in several boutique consulting firms, Ms. Castillo founded SB Services, Inc. Ms. Castillo has published numerous articles in industry and trade publications, and has served on both local and national Boards for various non-profit organizations.
Kim Holstein - Founder, Kim and Scott's Gourmet Pretzels
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Kim Holstein co-founded the her pretzel company with her husband Scott in 1995. She appears regularly on QVC, serves as co-spokesperson for the Company in press and television appearances, creates new products and marketing strategies and serves as a coach and mentor to the employees. Kim has participated in the Women’s Business Development Center workshops in Chicago, which helped form the Company. -
With big box music stores closing down left and right, the independent music scene has found a way to thrive and succeed in its market. We’ll speak with “the suits” at Drag City Records about their experiences as a successful indie label and also hear the artist’s perspective with indie rock band, MahJongg.
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(This program was originally broadcast on July 3rd, 2008)
August 2009
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On this week's Business Matters, we bring you a whole show on ways that we can improve our school lunch programs. We'll find out if it's possible to serve healthy, natural and affordable lunches to children in an institutional setting, and give you tips on how you can get your local school district to adopt more healthy and sustainable practices.
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Part 1: Helene York Director, Bon Appetit Foundation | Download MP3
Helene York is director of the Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation, an educational organization whose mission is to educate consumers, chefs, and food service managers about how their food choices affect the environment and the livelihoods of traditional food producers. The foundation was formed in 2005 to help identify sustainable food supply practices, opportunities and to help implement them.
Bon Appétit Management Company, headquartered in Palo Alto, California, provides on-site restaurant services at private colleges, universities, corporations and cultural venues in 28 states. In existence for 20 years, it is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Compass Group, the largest food service provider in the U.S. and worldwide with global headquarters in Great Britain. Bon Appétit is known for pioneering environmentally and socially responsible practices and then sharing operational know-how to sister companies within Compass Group and the food service industry at-large.
Part 2: Chef Bobo Executive Chef, Calhoun School | Download MP3
Chef Bobo (aka Robert Surles), a graduate of the French Culinary Institute is currently Executive Chef and Food Service Director for the Calhoun School on Manhattan's Upper West Side, where he is spearheading a revolution in what kids eat for lunch. He is cooking natural and healthy food that features bold flavors and good nutrition as the cornerstone of his menu plan. Everything is made from scratch with the freshest of ingredients.
Prior to taking the position at the Calhoun School, Chef Bobo, whose nickname is a derivative of Bob, worked for almost two years as an Assistant Chef Instructor at the French Culinary Institute. He is the Chef/Owner of Chef Bobo Catering Co, which he started in 1988. His goal is to develop young palates toward understanding good food so that eating well becomes a lifelong skill. Many of his flavorful and nutritious recipes can be found in his book, Chef Bobo's Good Food Cookbook. (Meredith Books)
Part 3: Bob Bloomer Regional VP, Chartwells Thompson Hospitality | Download MP3
Bob Bloomer manages Chartwells Thompson's contract with Chicago Public Schools. In 2005, they became the first single vendor for Chicago Public Schools' food services, after running several of CPS's 6 regions since 2000. Chartwells, a division of Charlotte-based Compass Group, provides dining services for over 875 colleges, universities, public and private schools around the Country.
Part 4: Amy Audiffred Director of Operations, Bon Appetit Management at Wheaton College & Marco Hetterich Executive Chef at Wheaton College | Download MP3
Bon Appetit Management Company handle the food service contract for Wheaton Colleges, and have been so successful that they were ranked #1 for best campus food from the Princeton Review last year. Producer Jonah Meadows visited Wheaton College to hear how they've been able to do it.
(This episode of Business Matters was originally broadcast February 13, 2009) -
This week on Business Matters we're examining the relationship between fear, the media, and public opinion about health care reform. We'll look at what's behind some of the increasingly extreme anti-Obama and anti-health care reform rhetoric. Also, we'll explore fear has been employed to defeat reform and how can supporters of President Obama counter the fears that have been raised?
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Lester Spence, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University; Author of the forthcoming, Stare in the Darkness: Rap, Hip-hop, and Black Politics
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Lester Spence is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University, specializing in racial politics, black politics, public opinion, and urban politics and how what we watch and listen to, as well as who we watch and listen to influence our ideas about politics, and our public policy preferences. His upcoming book, "Stare in the Darkness: Rap, Hip-hop, and Black Politics" examines how rap not only influences youth attitudes, but also how it reflects and at the same time creates black politics. His work has been published in The Washington Post, the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, Africana.com and Salon.com, as well as academic journals such as The American Journal of Political Science, Political Research Quarterly, Political Analysis, the WEB Dubois Review, and the National Political Science Review. You can also check out his blog at blacksmythe.com/blog/
Joseph Cappella, Professor of Communication, Annenberg School for Communication; Author of Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the conservative media establishment
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Joseph N. Cappella is Professor of Communication and holds the Gerald R. Miller Chair at the Annenberg School for Communication at The University of Pennsylvania. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Northwestern University and a visiting scholar at Stanford. His research has resulted in more than 100 articles and book chapters and three co-authored books in areas of health and political communication, social interaction, nonverbal behavior, media effects, and statistical methods. The articles have appeared in journals in psychology, communication, health, and politics.
David Altheide, Regents' Professor, Justice and Social Inquiry, Arizona State University; Author of Terrorism and the Politics of Fear
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David Altheide, PhD, is Regents’ Professor in the School of Justice and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University, where he has taught for 34 years. His research focuses on how mass media and information technology have powerful roles in social control. His recent work focuses on how news reports about “fear” have evolved over time. Along with his students, he’s been investigating how the language of law enforcement and the military has infused popular culture. He’s identified the critical elements of successful media messages, and how critical consumers of information can better understand “media logic.”
(A longer version of this conversation was originally broadcast in November, 2008.) -
As increasing health care costs and a growing number of uninsured Americans puts financial pressure on both individuals and businesses, we'll return to our ongoing look at the landscape of health care reform. We'll bring you three different perspectives on the current debate raging across the country during the August Congressional recess. First, we look for ways that the proposed health care bills address preventative care. Then, we'll compare the Canadian health care system to the current U.S. system with a Canadian doctor and health policy consultant and later, we'll discuss ways that increasing competition can lower everyone's health care costs.
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Rich Hamburg, Director of Government Relations, Trust for America's Health
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Rich Hamburg is the Director of Government Relations for Trust for America's Health, a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to making disease prevention a national priority. He is responsible for strategizing and implementing TFAH's coalition building and legislative efforts at the federal and state levels. Prior to TFAH, Mr. Hamburg had a number of roles with the American Heart Association (AHA), most recently, as the Director of Government Relations. He also is a past Director of Government Affairs at AHA's New York City affiliate. Earlier in his career, Mr. Hamburg was Staff Director to Assemblyman Denis J. Butler in the New York State Assembly, where he was responsible for drafting and implementing legislation.
Dr. Michael Rachlis, Health Policy Consultant and Physician in Toronto
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Dr. Rachlis practices as a private consultant in health policy analysis. He has consulted to the federal government, all ten provincial governments, and two royal commissions. He also holds associate professor appointments with the University of Toronto and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. Dr. Rachlis has lectured widely on health care issues and been invited to make presentations to committees of the Canadian House of Commons and the Canadian Senate as well as the United States House of Representatives and Senate. He's also the author of three national bestsellers about Canada's health care system, most recently, Prescription for Excellence: How Innovation is Saving Canada's Health Care System.
Michael Tanner, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute; Author, Healthy Competition: What's Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It
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Michael Tanner heads research into a variety of domestic policies with a particular emphasis on health care reform, social welfare policy, and Social Security. His most recent book, Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution, chronicles the demise of the Republican party as it has shifted away from its limited government roots. Before joining Cato in 1993, Tanner served as director of research of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation and as legislative director for the American Legislative Exchange Council. -
As increasing health care costs and a growing number of uninsured Americans puts financial pressure on both individuals and businesses, we'll return to our ongoing look at the landscape of health care reform. As the Congress has entered their August recess without yet passing a bill to address health care, we'll look for ways that walk-in clinics and primary health care providers can help solve the nation's health care crisis on this week's Business Matters.
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Part 1: Sandy Ryan, Chief Nurse Practitioner Officer , Take Care Clinic | Download MP3
Take Care Health Systems is a part of Walgreens Health and Wellness division, and it includes both "Take Care Consumer Solutions", at some Walgreens drug stores and "Take Care Employer Solutions," which handles work-based health services. Take Care Health is expanding access to care to the medically underservered, s it attempts to provide access to high-quality, affordable and convenient health care to all individuals able to visit a Walgreens drug store. Currently, there are more than 250 Take Care Clinics around the country, each of which is managed by Take Care Health Services, while Take Care Employer Solutions manages primary care and occupational health centers at over 360 different workplaces in the United States.
Part 2: Kelly Carter, COO, Illinois Primary Health Care Association | Download MP3
Kelly Carter is the Chief Operating Officer of the Illinois Primary Health Care Association (IPHCA,) a nonprofit trade association that serves as Illinois’ sole primary care association and a member of the National Association of Community Health Centers. IPHCA represents the community health centers (CHCs) that were created by Congress in the 1960's to provide health care to under-served communities and high-risk patients, regardless of their ability to pay.
The IPHCA is taking part in the Access for All Americans plan to raise--from 18 to 30 million--the number of Americans served by community health centers. As this plan, the IPHCA launched Access Illinois, which aims to provide a medical home to 2.1 million Illinoisans by the year 2015.
Part 3: Jay Parkinson, MD, Doctor, Hello Health | Download MP3
Jay Parkinson is a doctor at Hello Health, a clinic in New York City that's using information technology to increase doctor-patient contact and provide affordable health care and medical services to more patients on a flexible schedule. For example, Hello Health uses e-mail, instant messaging and video chat to handle simple questions and follow-ups and allow patients to maintain a relationship with a team of doctors.
(This program was originally broadcast on February 20, 2009)
July 2009
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This week, we bring you the stories of 4 women entrepreneurs and explore how men and women approach business. Find out why women are starting businesses at a higher rate than men and how women stay true to their values as the companies they lead show excellent financial results.
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Deb Parsons
Co-Director, Investor's Circle
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Deb is Co-Director of Investors' Circle, a group made up of angel investors, professional venture capitalists, foundations, family offices and others who are using private capital to promote the transition to a sustainable economy. Prior to joining IC, Deb served as a member of SJF Ventures and Good Capital. For the past two years she was Vice President at Good Capital, where she managed the fund's operational aspects, investor relations, and deployment of capital. Deb was formerly an associate at SJF Ventures, a community development fund focusing on cleantech and the LOHAS sector. Before that, she spent six years in business development, marketing, and partner management at WGGH, Intuit, and North Face.
Sheryl O'Loughlin
Co-Founder and CEO, Nest Collective
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Sheryl spent six years in brand management with General Foods, Quaker Oaks, and Gatorade. She then joined CLIF Bar, where served three of ten years as CEO. While there she spearheaded Luna Bar, the first and top-selling energy bar for women. Now, as Co-Founder and CEO of Nest Naturals, Sheryl provides consumers with food, home, and body products to nurture both body and spirit.
Stephanie Bernstein
Founder, To-Go Ware
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Stephanie Bernstein founded To-Go Ware and Eyes of the Forest, Inc. in 2004. Previously, Stephanie worked for Guayaki Yerba Mate, Manitoba Harvest Hemp Foods, and Pangea Organics Bodycare. Stephanie was named Rocky Mountain Regional Accounts Director for World of Good, a fair trade import company that takes artisan crafts to high-volume, mainstream channels of distribution. She hosts socially conscious television shows like Sourcecode on Free Speech TV and pledge drives for LinkTV. Stephanie has also written and modeled for magazines such as Alternative Medicine and Yoga Journal, and is currently featured on boxes of Yogi Tea.
Suzanne Sebion
Founder, Sibby's Ice Cream
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After spending 19 years as a parcel delivery truck driver, Suzanne Sebion caught the bug for the organic farming movement in Wisconsin’s Kickapoo Valley. In 2001, Sebion began producing Sibby’s Homestead Organic Ice Cream. It’s free of preservatives, chemical additives and genetically engineered ingredients. She makes her specially-crafted ice cream daily at the 3,500-square-foot homestead creamery she built on her 150-year-old family farm. -
This week we're examining how businesses can expand and stay strong even in rough economic times through the cooperative model. In time of diminished trust in remote corporate and financial institutions, co-ops provide a model for how to increase the level of trust in every level of business relations. From consumers knowing that their dollars are benefiting local economies to members gaining strength through numbers, we'll find out ways co-ops can be the most democratic business model around.
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Paul Hazen
President, National Cooperative Business Association
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Members of the NCBA range from large Fortune 500 companies to small consumer food cooperatives located in small towns across the United States. In addition to being President of the NCBA, the only cross-sector member association representing all cooperatives in the US, Paul is on the board of the International Cooperative Alliance.
Tom Knox
Director of Retail Development, ACE Hardware
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Founded in Chicago in 1924, Ace is the largest retailer-owned cooperative in the industry with 4,600 stores in all 50 states and 60 countries generating annual retail sales of more than $13 billion.
Theresa Marquez
Chief Marketing Executive, Organic Valley
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CROPP Cooperative, and its brand, Organic Valley Family of Farms is the largest organic farmers cooperative in the United States, CROPP consists of over 700 small and mid-size family farmers. Theresa Marquez has been involved in food and farming since the mid 1970s, and she joined the Cooperative in 1995 and has helped to grow the business from $5 million to $209 million in 2004.
-This Weekend: July 25-26, 6th Annual Kickapoo County Fair -
This week, we'll talk with regional winners of Small Business Administration awards for outstanding small businesspeople in several different categories from all over the country. Each of our guest has been honored in different fields and in different regions, but by listening to their stories together, we'll explore the most important and consistent elements that make a small business successful.
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Oscar and Melinda Vizcarra,
Owners of Becker Farms & Vizcarra Vinyards
Winners of the Family Owned Business Award for Buffalo Region
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Becker Farms and Vizcarra Vineyards is a 5th Generation family owned 340 acre working fruit and vegetable farm that sells most of their products directly to the public. For the past 100 years Becker Farms has harvested its own fruits and vegetables to provide fresh produce and a wide variety hand-made products. In the last two years Becker Farms has adopted a field to table approach with all of its catered events serving items grown and picked for the occasion right from the farm or brought in from other local growers within a 100 mile radius of Becker Farms.
Robert Beadle, Founder Northeast Public Relations
Winner of the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for New England
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Robert Beadle is president of Northeast Public Relations, Inc., (NEPR) a communications firm that helps organizations become successful by enhancing their public image. NEPR specializes in a variety of public relations and marketing services including new media and Web 2.0 strategies, news releases, social media outreach, Internet video and corporate social responsibility programs.
Dalen Gunn, Owner BulletTools
Winner, Small Business Exporter of the Year for Northwest Region
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Gunntech Manufacturing/Bullet Tools began in 1998 when Dalen Gunn, after working in the various facets of the floor covering industry for more than 25 years, invented a tool called the Skimmer. The tool was an instant success and was sold throughout the U.S. and around the world. The BulletTools brand has earned a permanent place in the flooring tool market, helping installers and distributors become more profitable through time saving innovations. -
This week, we'll examine ways that large and small companies can maintain sustainable practices for combining sustainable practices with a for-profit business model. First, we'll talk to two entrepreneurs from sustainable start-ups and then hear about a new initiative by one of the world's largest corporations to be greener by building smarter technology.
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Dan Tefft - CEO, Treebanking
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Rob Brazzele - CEO, Safety Power
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Matt Preschern - VP of Ecosystem Communications, IBM
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Jack Mason - IBM Smarter Planet Initiative
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This week, we explore the marketplace and culture of youth sports. How are adults and our broader national culture of competition impacting childhood development? How can youth sports help kids grow up to be successful? We'll lay out some of the challenges facing youth sports today and then talk to some innovators in the field to find out new ways for parents, coaches and kids to build healthy emotional and physical skills.
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Mark Hyman
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Mark Hyman is a contributing editor at BusinessWeek and the author of the new book Until It Hurts: America's Obsession With Youth Sports. Prior to joining BusinessWeek, he spent nearly 20 years as a reporter for newspapers including the Baltimore Sun where he was an enterprise and investigative reporter in the sports department. During his time at the Sun, earned his law degree from the University of Maryland. He blogs at youthsportsparents.blogspot.com and also contributes to BusinessWeek's Working Parents blog.
Jim Thompson
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Jim Thompson is the founder and director of Positive Coaching Alliance, a national nonprofit organization of parents, coaches and youth sports organizations dedicated to improving youth sports by developing a positive character building approach. Jim has more than 20 years of teaching, coaching and management experience working with a variety of individuals and groups. He was formerly Director of Stanford Business School's Public Management Program and his experiences as a youth coach led him to write two books on the subject: "Positive Coaching: Building Character and Self-Esteem Through Sports" and "Shooting in the Dark: Tales of Coaching and Leadership".
Frank Fiume
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Frank Fiume is founder and CEO of i9 Sports Corporation. Noticing from his own experience that the amateur sports industry was poorly organized on the local level, Frank applied the marketing and business skills he acquired with medical device companies to create ABA Sports in 1995. Over time, it grew at an astonishing rate, becoming i9 Sports corporation, the nation‘s first complete amateur sports franchise business allowing individuals to organize leagues, tournaments, camps, clinics, train officials, and sell sporting goods and custom uniforms while working with the local amateur organizations and parks and recreation departments.
June 2009
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This week, we bring you the stories of 5 women entrepreneurs and explore how men and women approach business. Find out why women are starting businesses at a higher rate than men and how women stay true to their values as the companies they lead show excellent financial results.
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Jody Weiss
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Jody Weiss is a former sports agent who has decided to dedicate her life to promoting peace in the world. She took some of her righteous anger from a first marriage, a politically divided nation, and a violent world and decided that she wanted to take Madison avenue dollars to teach about real collaborative giving. To raise awareness about real urgent human rights issues affecting women that in all parts of the world, she founded Peacekeepers, a socially conscious cosmetics company.
Melissa Hardy
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Melissa is one of the co-owners of the cooperative, BioFuel Oasis, which pumps and sells high-quality Biodiesel fuel in Berkley California. She's also member of the City of San Francisco's Biodiesel Access Task Force and she's been teaching about Biodiesel and vegetable oil fuels since 2002.
Evelyn Contre
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Evelyn is the Founder and Managing Director of Springleaf Strategies, a marketing consulting firm specializing in the real estate and sustainability industries. With 12 years of diverse professional experience, her work includes strategic marketing activities, project management, and communication planning. Prior to founding Springleaf Strategies, Evelyn served in multiple roles at Greenfire Development and Highwoods Properties.
Karen Bantuveris
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Karen Bantuveris, a management consultant working-mom, was shocked at all the ‘little things’ that made volunteering a hassle. As an active parent in her daughters school community and frustrated by reply-all emails, clipboards, Online! Groups, and late night reminder messages…she decided to do something about it and launched VolunteerSpot with the mission of enabling ANYONE to quickly mobilize and coordinate volunteers in their community, congregation and social network.
Kira Reidel
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Kira Riedel is the founder of CFO Services, an a la carte financial services small business, Kira has been a secretary, fund controller, financial analyst, and CFO. She's a single mom of an 8 and 11 year old boy and girl, multi-pitch rockclimber, outdoor enthusiast, agnostic ex-Jehovah’s Witness, music lover, and occasional dater, she brings fresh perspective, intelligence, pragmatics and a dose of dry wit to a variety of topics. -
This week, we'll talk to agents of change in business. Our guests give companies new ways to think about their value and customer relationships. We'll explore how some businesses thrive while others falter in an increasingly technological and transparent environment.
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Seth Godin
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Seth Godin was called "the Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age" by Business Week. He is a popular public speaker, writes the #1 ranked marketing blog, and has authored ten bestselling books. His most recent is Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. Seth founded Yoyodyne, the industry's leading interactive direct marketing company.
David Meerman Scott
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David Meerman Scott is a marketing strategist, keynote speaker, seminar leader, and author of World Wide Rave. His previous book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR is an award-winning BusinessWeek bestseller. He worked as VP of marketing for two publicly traded technology companies and was also Asia marketing director for Knight-Ridder.
May 2009
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This week we explore what happens after spending hundreds of billions of dollars on bailing out financial institutions. Can we expect any improvement in the credit market or unemployment rate? These week we'll get alternative views on the possible side effects of the federal governments policy of running ever-larger deficits in the midst of world economic crisis.
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Paul Craig Roberts
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Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal and he's the author of many books. Most recently, he is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.
"Ilargi"
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"Ilargi" is the author of the blog, The Automatic Earth, a popular financial blog that puts our economic crisis in historical perspective. It provides an in-depth analysis of the trends behind the numbers of increasing debt and decreasing fossil fuel production. -
Over the past twenty years, the landscape of broadcast and print journalism has changed dramatically. With the consolidation of media ownership, closing of outlets and wholesale firing of reporters, few sources of unbiased journalism remain.
This change preceded the decline of advertising revenue that fueled these media machines and the rise of the dissemination of free content through the Internet. With the proliferation of “citizen journalist” as bloggers and YouTube creators, what is the future of the news and information we need to be an informed public?
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Catharine P. Taylor
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Cathy writes about media, advertising and marketing. Her work has been featured in Advertising Age, Business Week, Newsweek, strategy+business and Wired. Currently, she writes a daily posting for BNET Media and is the Social Media Insider for Mediapost.
Amy Goodman
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Amy is the co-host of Democracy Now, which she helped launch in 1966. She has received many awards as an investigative journalist for works such as Massacre: The Story of East Timor and Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria’s Oil Dictatorship. Amy is the author of three best selling books including her most recent, Standing up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times.
David Weir
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David has been a professional journal for 40 years, writing for Rolling Stone, The Economist, LA Weekly, Mother Jones, The Nation, The New York Times, New York Magazine and Salon.com. In 1977, he was a co-founder of the Center for Investigative Reporting. David has also taught journalism at the University of California Graduate School of Journalism and Stanford University.
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This week on Business Matters, we're exploring how the our capitalist system shapes our human interactions and we're looking for ways for people to create solutions through dialogue. Join us as we find out how our relationships and humanity are shaped by the underlying economic reality.
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Margaret Wheatley
Author, Turning to One Another
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Joe Bageant
Author, Dear Hunting With Jesus
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Six women who had careers in the world of traditional business decided to become entrepreneurs. We learn their stories, find out about their challenges and realize the exceptional qualities of these women.
We also develop an understanding of how men and women approach business and find out that women are starting businesses at a higher rate than men and that women lead companies are showing excellent financial results while they stay true to their values and vision.
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Margaret Heffernan| Download MP3
Margaret Heffernan is an entrepreneur, chief executive and author. She was born in Texas, raised in Holland and educated at Cambridge University. In 2004, Margaret published "The Naked Truth: A Working Woman's Manifesto about Business and What Really Matters" and in 2007 she brought out "How She Does It: How Female Entrepreneurs are Changing the Rules for Business Success".
Amy Nichols | Download MP3
Tired of her unfulfilling executive position, Amy decided to follow her passion. Amy realized their was opportunity to help alieve the guilt dog owners had when they left their pets confined while they worked. To fill this need, Amy started Dogtopia, a dog day care center. Today Dogtopia is a successful and rapidly growing nation-wide franchise.
Nancy Procunier | Download MP3
Another woman who left a successful career, Nancy realized that busy professionals were lost in how to provide their grandchildren, nieces or nephews with a meaningful thought that conveyed their care. Nancy started SparkSprite that regularly sends small gifts to children that are both fun and full of surprise.
Simone Brummelhuis | Download MP3
Simone Brummelhuis worked as a successful lawyer before becoming an entrepreneur by setting up her own B2B publishing company Brummsbooks. She created TheNextWomen after a series she wrote about Female Internet Heroes at thenextweb.org , proved successful.
Jill Salzman | Download MP3
Jill Salzman is the "Momtreprenuer Maven, "she started Paperwork Media LLC, a music media firm. She went on to co-create The Bumble Brand, LLC, which currently sells Bumble Bells, Jill now consults with momtrepreneurs, writes a column for The Dabbling Mum, and speaks to corporations, universities and other organizations about social media and why everyone should be paying more attention to their mothers.
Susan Wilson Solovic | Download MP3
Susan Wilson Solovic is CEO of SBTV.com – Small Business Television. SBTV.com is the first and only video news and information destination site for America’s small businesses. Solovic began her professional career as a television news anchor and reporter for NBC and CBS affiliates. Subsequently, she joined a Fortune 100 company where she was named vice president, director of corporate marketing, of the firm’s international asset-based lending division.
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April 2009
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There is common agreement among economists and politicians that small business and startups are the driver for economic recovery in the U.S. You would think this would mean that capital would freely available to help startups get off the ground and fund the expansion plans of existing small businesses. The second point is particularly important if many of these small businesses can take advantage of opportunities that come from the stimulus spending recently authorized by congress.
We found that getting money for both small businesses and startup isn't easy. In fact, small business owners who have good track records with their banks and excellent credit scores continue to be out in the cold when it comes to financing. We also looked at the traditional flow of money into technology companies from venture capital to see how the rule of the game have changed.
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Accion | Download MP3
We talk with Jonathan Brereton, CEO of Accion Chicago; Jessica Horn, Senior Lending Officer of Accion Chicago and Sharon Stetzer, Owner of Lady Lighting and Contracting Company of Naperville.
We also add a national perspective by speaking to Laura Kozien, who is the Director of Communications of Accion USA.
David Carlick | Download MP3
Listen to our conversation with David Carlick a co-founder of Doubleclick, former Managing Director of Vantage Point Venture Partners and a leading innovator in on-line media and marketing about the changing landscape for startup financing and the new rules of online marketing.
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This week on Business Matters we explore personal and corporate authenticity. As the world of work evolves, each of us is challenged to think of ourselves as a personal corporation. We are responsible for our personal authenticity and transparency. By dong so, we challenge the organizations we work with to live by those standards as well. We also explore the role that social media is playing to bring greater personal and corporate truthfulness.
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Dan Schawbel | Download MP3
Dan is the author of the recently released book, Me 2.0 Build a Powerful Personal Brand to Achieve Career Success. At the ripe age of 25, Dan shows the power of a clear vision, intense focus and a sense of understanding of himself and the way that his work can impact the lives of many. While this book is targeted to Gen Y, we have found it helpful for anyone in the workplace.
Rohit Bhargava | Download MP3
Rohit is the Senior Vice President of Olgivey 360 Digital Influence and the author of the book, Personality Not Included, Why Companies Loose their Authenticity and How to Get it Back. We explore underlying social and organizational influences that move our organizations away from being honest with themselves and their customers, what the cost has been and what steps organizations can take to bring back authenticity before its too late.
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This week on Business Matters, we bring you two stories of how individuals have fought legal struggles against massive corporate opponents who have been determined to avoid accountability for their business practices. It may seem like common sense that you have some rights when your livelihood or even your life is threatened by the actions of a major company. But for our guests today, getting a corporate Goliath to admit responsibility is a constant struggle.
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Percy Schmeiser vs Monsanto | Download MP3
Percy Schmeiser is a Canadian farmer whose fields were contaminated by Monsanto's genetically modified crops, beginning a decade-long legal struggle that went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. His fight for farmer's rights to the crops that they've spent years creating has made him a hero to farmers and opponents of GMOs around the world.
The DeGroh Family vs Medtronic | Download MP3
After three-year old Avery DeGroh was shocked 9 times by her implanted defibrillator, Medtronic refused to compensate her family for their medical bills. We spoke to the Avery's father Alex while the family was visiting Washington DC to lobby members of congress to pass the Medical Device Safety Act to restore their rights. First, we asked Sue Steinman from the American Association for Justice to explain what created a need for the law.
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March 2009
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This week we're looking at business beyond the number. Join us as we explore how an over-reliance on numerical formulas and data analysis has blinded many businesses to the importance of human interaction. We'll look at how empathic connections build successful company cultures and the cost some businesses pay for ignoring the human side of their employees and clients.
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Dev Patnaik, Author, Wired to Care,
Founder & CEO, Jump Associates |
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Shawn Boyer, Founder & CEO, SnagAJob.com
2008 National Small Business Person of the Year |
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On this week's Business Matters, we're examining at ways for business leaders to use the power of language to be a more effective. We'll talk with a poet and a professor of ethics at Harvard, both of whom have explored how language and storytelling can be used in business.
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Joe Badaracco, Author, A Question of Character,
Professor of Business Ethics, Harvard Business School |
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David Whyte, Poet, Lecturer, Author, The Three Marriages;
Founder, Many Rivers Company |
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This week on Business Matters, we're examining entrepreneurship and venture capitalism in the new economic world. Find out how things are changing in the world of start-ups, and why they are so vital to producing the jobs we need in the United States. We'll talk to a regional head of the US Small Business Administration and the director of the entrepreneurship program of one of the country's largest foundations, as we look at ways for entrepreneurs to weather the economic storm and take advantage of emerging opportunities.
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Part 1: Thom Ruhe, Director of Entrepreneurship, Kauffman Foundation| Download MP3
Part 2: Judith Roussel, Acting Regional Director, Small Business Administration | Download MP3
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February 2009
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As increasing health care costs and a growing number of uninsured Americans puts financial pressure on both individuals and businesses, we'll return to our ongoing look at the landscape of health care reform. As the Obama administration prepares to address health care, we'll look for ways that walk-in clinics and primary health care providers can help solve the nation's health care crisis on this week's Business Matters.
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Part 1: Sandy Ryan, Chief Nurse Practitioner Officer , Take Care Clinic | Download MP3
Part 2: Kelly Carter, COO, Illinois Primary Health Care Association | Download MP3
Part 3: Jay Parkinson, MD, Doctor, Hello Health | Download MP3
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On this week's Business Matters, we bring you a whole show on ways that we can improve our school lunch programs. We'll find out if it's possible to serve healthy, natural and affordable lunches to children in an institutional setting, and give you tips on how you can get your local school district to adopt more healthy and sustainable practices.
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Part 1: Helene York Director, Bon Appetit Foundation | Download MP3
Part 2: Chef Bobo Executive Chef, Calhoun School | Download MP3
Part 3: Bob Bloomer Regional VP, Chartwells Thompson Hospitality | Download MP3
Part 4: Amy Audiffred Director of Operations, Bon Appetit Management at Wheaton College & Marco Hetterich Executive Chef at Wheaton College | Download MP3
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On this week's Business Matters, we bring you the second of a two-part series on the social and economic costs of our addiction to sweeteners. We'll delve into the economic costs of having so much of our population obese. How much is it costing us in increased health care costs and lost productivity? Is there anything we can do to turn back the trend line?
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Part 1: Kenneth Stanton Economist, Obesity, Business and Public Policy | Download MP3
Part 2: LuAnn Heinen Vice-President, National Business Group on Health | Download MP3
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January 2009
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We'll explore the vast industry that keeps our food sweet and our children obese: Sugar. We'll help you become a food detective and offer some alternatives for your own cooking and shopping on next week's Business Matters.
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Part 1: Anne Louise Gittleman PhD. Diet Expert | Download MP3
Part 2: Nancy Appleton, PhD, Nutritionist| Download MP3
Part 3: Cori Brackett, Producer, Sweet Misery| Download MP3
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With soaring health care costs becoming an increasing drag on the pocketbooks of individuals and businesses alike, we'll explore why medical costs have climbed so far and what can be done about it. With all the talk of a new administration reforming health care, we'll help explain what is in the realm of possibility and what are pipe dreams on this week's Business Matters.
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Part 1: Trudy Lieberman, President, Association of Health Journalists| Download MP3
Part 2: Kevin Scanlan, CEO, Metropolitan Chicago Healthcare Council| Download MP3
Part 3: David Erickson, Hudson River Health Care | Download MP3
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The $50 million ponzi scheme of Bernard Madoff is just the latest financial scam that has cheated those investors who would look for high returns without asking the right questions. This week on Business Matters, we're looking at the Business of Scams: how they're run, why people fall for them, and how to avoid them.
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Part 1: "Jack Smith," Scam-Warner | Download MP3
Part 2: Steve Bernas, President & CEO, Chicago BBB | Download MP3
Part 3: "Bob Roberts," Former Medical Device Salesman | Download MP3
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This week, we're returning to some of our favorite guests from 2008 to examine the year in review and to look forward at what's coming up for the year ahead. We'll explore the 2009 forecast for jobs, energy, food and small businesses and offer practical tips for how you can prepare for what's next.
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Part 1: Ron Hira, Outsourcing Expert | Download MP3
Part 2: Matt Simmons, Energy Expert | Download MP3
Part 3: Sharon Astyk, Author of A Nation of Farmers (And Cooks)| Download MP3
Part 4: Jim Tracy, CEO of America's Best Companies| Download MP3
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December 2008
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In her book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein delves into the secret history of capitalism, and explains how the "free-market" has expanded by exploiting periods of shock and crisis. She spent years traveling to disaster zones to see how the policies forced through in crisis impact people on the ground, and her insight is particularly valuable in this time of crisis in the US and world economy.
Today, we are in such a time of political upheaval and economic crisis. Just as outlined by Naomi Klein, in this time of shock, large banks and financial interests are trying to push through corporate-friendly policies. Can we somehow break the cycle of shocks with a new administration? This week, Business Matters will explore how the lame-duck Bush Administration and the Federal Reserve are applying a kind shock therapy to the economy, and we'll spend the hour with the best-selling author of The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein.
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Naomi Klein, Author of The Shock Doctrine | Download MP3
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As the Black Friday kicked off the holiday shopping frenzy this year, 3 people died in shopping-related deaths. Even as the credit crisis and waves of layoffs pressure the pocketbooks of millions of Americans, advertisers desperately attempt to find our unfulfilled needs. How does consumerism shape our society? As new generations of parents mold a new generation of consumers, how are businesses working to extend their brand to children?
This week, we're looking at the past and future of consumerism in America. We'll delve into the psychological elements of consumer behavior, and explore how the relationship between parents, businesses and children shapes our consumer culture.
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Part 1: Jackson Lears, Cultural Historian | Download MP3
Part 2: John Cacioppo, Social Neuroscientist | Download MP3
Part 3: Dan Cook, Child Researcher | Download MP3
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Instead of letting big banks do whatever they want with out money , how can we start to harness our own financial power? Our guest today, Catherine Austin Fitts, is committed to bringing people together to resist the economic tyranny of large banks and corrupt government officials. She's been in both the private and public sector, working as Assistant Secretary of Housing in the first Bush Administration, a former investment bank president, and now president of the financial education company Solari, Inc. Catherine's experiences on Wall Street and in Washington D.C. are chronicled in Dillon Read and the Aristocracy of Stock Profits.
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Catherine Austin Fitts, President, Solari; Former Assistant Secretary of Housing | Download MP3
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The next president has been elected on a wave of popular demand for change. How can leaders move from inspiring their business or community to sparking action to enact the change? We'll find out what steps are necessary to enact fundamental change in corporations, non-profits and communities on Business Matters this week.
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Part 1: Richard Strozzi-Heckler, Founder, Strozzi Institute | Download MP3
Part 2: Rob Paterson, Social Media and Network Consultant| Download MP3
Part 3: Peter Luzmore, Founder, Synthesis | Download MP3
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November 2008
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The US military budget is bigger than the rest of the world's military spending combined. That's not even counting the private contractors who rely on war in the Middle East in order to stay in business. As it turns out, politicians and investors rely on these companies to sustain the already troubled economy. This week on Business Matters, as a new administration prepares to take over the Pentagon, we’ll speak with foreign policy analyst Conn Hallinan about the unfortunately healthy business of war as well as Massie Ritsch of the Center for Responsive Politics.
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Part 1: Conn Hallinan, Foreign Policy in Focus | Download MP3
Part 2: Massie Ritsch, Center for Responsive Politics | Download MP3
Part 3: Winslow Wheeler, Center for Defense Information | Download MP3
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Fear can be the most powerful motivating factor in business and politics. This week, Business Matters explores how fear can be manipulated, overcome and understood. We'll meet someone whose been studying the media's use of fear for decades and an entrepreneur who explains how fear can sometimes have positive effects. We'll help you develop the tools to understand how it's used, who uses it, and how to remain unafraid when you are bombarded with fear messaging.
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Part 1: David Altheide, Author of "Terrorism and the Politics of Fear" | Download MP3
Part 2: Paul Borgese, Creator of FEAR Selling | Download MP3
Part 3: Naomi Klein, Author of "The Shock Doctrine" | Download MP3
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October 2008
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Whoever becomes the next president, he'll be facing an economic crisis more threatening than any other since the Great Depression. Plus, he'll inherit two wars, a degrading infrastructure and a declining global image. So this week we'll try to find out what kind of leadership qualities and techniques are needed and what sort of policy challenges the next administration will have to confront. We'll ask experts on public policy and leadership how the 44th President can begin to solve the pressing challenges of our time.
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Part 1: James Galbraith, Economist |Download MP3
Part 2: Peter Block, Leadership Consultant | Download MP3
Part 3: Lewis Pitts, Public Interest Attorney | Download MP3
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After the Treasury Department's proposal for $700 billion to buy up the distressed assets in the financial system was approved by Congress, the markets continued their historic free-fall. Find out why this solution was the only one considered in Washington, as we explore the root causes of the crisis as well as innovative new solutions. First we'll talk with a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury to learn how we got into this national financial donnybrook. Then, hear from an economist who has an alternative solution that offers to cost taxpayers far less and reduce the risk of moral hazard.
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Part 1: Paul Craig Roberts, Father of "Reagenomics"
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Part 2: Luigi Zingales, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business
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For the first time in nearly a hundred years, our water resources, both at home and abroad, are up for grabs. Many are suggesting the demand for water resources is becoming the 21st Century's quest for fossil fuels. We'll discuss not only the quality of our drinking water, but who owns it and what they are doing with it. Find out who's trying to control our water, why this is a concern, and what you can do about it.
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Part 1: Interview with Alan Snitow, Co-Producer and Co-Author, Thirst |
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Part 2: Interview with Sam Finkelstein, Great Lakes Organizer, Food & Water Watch |
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Part 3: Interview with Stephen Estes-Smargiassi, Director of Planning, MWRA |
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Small businesses make up over half of the economic output of the United States. Today we'll ask: How do you start them? What makes them successful? What does it take to stay competitive? We’ll start by meeting the winner of an award for being “Best Small Company to Work for in America.” Then, we’ll meet the owner of a neighborhood coffee shop in Kansas City that was challenged by a Starbucks moving in next door. Hear how they managed to keep their small business successful even when a giant chain showed up. Also, host Thomas White explains what he’s learned from his experience starting small businesses himself and helping other businesses succeed.
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Part 1: Interview with Lauren Dixon, CEO Dixon Schwabl | Download MP3
Part 2: Interview with Jon Cates of Broadway Café in Kansas City | Download MP3
Part 3: Interview with Thomas White | Download MP3
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September 2008
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The current rise in food costs in the US and shortage abroad seemed to have happened suddenly. This week we explore the factors that led to this situation and when they actually began. Is this a temporary condition or will it worsen? Find out what you can do to deal with the impact this crisis. With Sharon Astyk of the blog Casaubon's Book and author of "Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front," Bettina Luescher from the U.N.'s World Food Program, and Janet Larsen of the Earth Policy Institute.
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Part 1: Interview with Bettina Leuscher | Download MP3
Part 2: Interview with Janet Larsen | Download MP3
Part 3: Interview with Sharon Astyk | Download MP3
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August 2008
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From climate change to food shortages to high energy costs, globalization is proving itself to have a negative impact on our world. There's a group who believes that thinking locally is not only the best form of protest--but the only sure-fire way to survive. With Post Carbon Institute's Celine Rich, Path to Freedom's Jules Dervaes, and Small-Mart's Michael Shuman, leaders of the Relocalization Movement.
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Celine Rich is the Executive Director of Post Carbon Institute and has been working there since its inception in 2001. She worked for 3 years as a Research Strategist with the University of British Columbia's Development Office. In addition, she created and led community cultural development projects in Vancouver for six years. Celine has a MA in Design for the Environment from the Chelsea College of Art and Design, UK; a BA in Fine Arts from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Canada, and a Certificate of Marketing from Kwantlen College, Canada. Celine currently lives in Sebastopol, California, USA.
Visit PostCarbon.org and Relocalize.net for more details about Celine's work.
Part 1: Interview with Celine Rich | Download MP3
Michael Shuman is vice president for Enterprise Development for Training & Development Corporation (TDC). An economist, attorney, author, and entrepreneur, Shuman has authored, coauthored, or edited seven books, including The Small Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition (Berrett-Koehler, 2006) and Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in the Global Age (Free Press, 1998). Shuman is helping to lead development of TDC's Worksphere Program, a national effort to support worker well-being through a variety of programs promoting "sustainable employability" and "global community capitalism." He received an A.B. with distinction in economics and international relations from Stanford University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. Shuman has given an average of more than one invited talk per week for 25 years throughout the United States and the world.
For more information about Michael, his book, and his other writings, visit Small-Mart.org.
Part 2: Interview with Michael Shuman | Download MP3
Jules Dervaes is the founder of Path to Freedom, a family-operated, viable urban homestead project established in 2001 to promote a simpler and more fulfilling lifestyle and to sow a "homegrown revolution(tm)" against the corporate powers that control the food supply. Since the mid-1980s, Mr. Dervaes and his three adult children, Anaïs, Justin, and Jordanne, have steadily worked at transforming their ordinary city lot in Pasadena, CA, into a thriving organic garden that supplies them with food all year round. These eco-pioneers also run a successful business providing fresh produce to local restaurants. This helps them fund their purchases of solar panels, energy-efficient appliances, and a biodiesel processor to further decrease their homestead's reliance on the earth's non-renewable resources.
The family has been the subject of numerous articles in newspapers around the world, including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), and was recently featured on ABC's Nightline and CNN.
For more information, please see www.PathtoFreedom.com, the blog Little Homestead in the City, and social networking site for backyard gardeners, Freedom Gardens.
Part 3: Interview with Jules Dervaes | Download MP3
Technorati Tags: climate change, Peak Oil, Self-sufficiency, Relocalization, Security
July 2008
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With big box music stores closing down left and right, the independent music scene has found a way to thrive and succeed in its market. We'll speak with "the suits" at Drag City Records about their experiences as a successful indie label and also hear the artist's perspective with indie rock band, MahJongg.
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June 2008
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With rising fuel costs taking the fun out of the classic summer road trip and stressed airline companies struggling to transport even more stressed passengers, is there any chance for enjoyment while traveling anymore? We'll speak with a spokesperson for Virgin America Airlines, the founder of CouchSurfing.com, and the President and COO of Megabus, three businesses that are putting a positive spin on the way people travel around the country.
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In the second half of our two part series on the oil crisis, we continue our discussion of the impending circumstances of peak oil and the future of energy in the U.S. and beyond. We will speak with some of today's top forward-thinkers, including TheOilDrum.org editor Glenn McAnanama and Catherine Tryzbinski workshop leader teaching more about reducing energy costs along with her 10 simple tricks to reducing energy wastefulness at home and the office.
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Summer is here and with it comes high gas prices. However, when the pumps are already maxing out consumers' pocketbooks, what can anyone do except grin and bare it? We'll speak with Matthew R. Simmons, CEO of one of the largest investment banking firms serving the energy industry and Daniel Lerch, Program Manager for the Post Carbon Institute's Post Carbon Cities program, in search for life after oil, and get the scoop from those inside the industry who have faith that we're still stocked for the future.
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Many of us have believed that we had a basic understanding of how our economic system works. This knowledge helped us make good decisions for our businesses and ourselves. The recent credit crisis was a wake up call that the rules have changed. This week, we will bring you a basic primer on the New Economics with Catherine Austin Fitts and what you need to know to succeed.
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May 2008
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In our May 8th episode, we examined the dramatic change in job market in the U.S. This change will not only continue in the manufacturing sector, it will become pervasive with many service jobs as well. The old adage, “get a college degree” and you can get a good job” is no longer valid. We look at the failing of our schools to prepare our children and adults for the world we will soon encounter.
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The current rise in food costs in the US and shortage abroad seemed to have happened suddenly. This week we explore the factors that led to this situation and when they actually began. Is this a temporary condition or will it worsen? Find out what you can do to deal with the impact this crisis.
Listen to the Full Episode | Download MP3
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There is a commonly held belief that if you do good things for others as a business, you will have a hard time making money. This week, we talk to some entrepreneurs who are going to blow you socks off. Their companies are helping some of the most needy people on the planet and they are making a reasonable profit at the same time.
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In the current political debate, there is a lot of talk about protecting our jobs and the terrible impact NAFTA is having on the economy. This week, we look at what is the real impetus for job transfer from the U.S. in both the manufacturing and service sector. With a clear perspective on the real causes of these shifts, we will get a picture of the future for jobs in America.
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We explore the changing standards for honesty in business. Are we so different that 30 years ago? What are the factors that are driving dramatically lower levels of trust of corporate leaders? What is the impact of this environment on the personal ethics? What happens to people who have the courage to stand up for honesty in the workplace?
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Business Matters is a weekly radio program that offers its listeners admission into the inner circle of thought-leaders, entrepreneurs and executives from the worlds of business, government and non-profit. Through unbiased dialogue we explore the decisions and actions of their organizations and the impact they have on the economy, culture, the environment, public policy and international relations.
We bring our listeners a portal into the future. We feature guests who are breaking down old paradigms and creating new models for success through innovations in the areas of science, technology, philosophy and management.