Wow Zone Radio Show

Episode #29: Why Moxie -- Not Money -- Is Most Important in Lauching a Business with Karin Abarbanel

Episode #29

Airdate:  4/13/10

Why Moxie -- Not Money -- Is Most Important in Launching a Business

 

Karin Abarbanel combines her high energy, can-do style with a passion for women’s issues in her latest book, Birthing the Elephant: The Woman’s Go-For-It Guide to Overcoming the Big Challenges of Launching a Business (co-authored with Bruce Freeman).  And, because getting a business off the ground is a lot like birthing an elephant (it’s a HUGE undertaking and it takes about 22 months), Karin wants you to know that without a certain amount of moxie, your project could be permanently grounded.  Join me as Karin draws a unique emotional road map to the make-or-break first 18-22 months on how to stay motivated and get the job done. 

Karin is a published author, corporate marketing consultant, and expert on career issues facing women.  She has four books to her credit and brings extensive marketing experience to her publishing ventures.

Her book, The Dollar Bill Knows No Sex, co-authored with Wendy Rue, is the “rags-to-riches” biography of a female entrepreneur who succeeded against enormous odds, by building a support system for success, innovative marketing and putting dreams to work.  Prior to co-authoring The Dollar Bill, Karin wrote How to Succeed on Your Own, which profiled the triumphs and trials of two dozen women who left the corporate world to plunge into entrepreneurship. 

As an independent marketing consultant, Karin develops communications projects for leading companies and speaks widely on women’s issues.  She has served as a senior marketing director for Booz Allen Hamilton.

 

Episode #28: Your Money or Your Life?: I'll Take Both, Thank You! with Vicki Robin

pisode #28

Airdate:  4/6/10

Your Money or Your Life?: I'll Take Both, Thank You!

 

Vicki Robin wants you to know there’s a big difference between "making a living" and making a life.  And, while times may be tough, it is possible to have an encore career that gives you enough service to feel needed, enough silliness to have fun, and enough money to pay the bills…and then some.  Her classic book, Your Money or Your Life (co-authored with Joe Dominguez) has just been updated with Monique Tilford.  If the money you’re making in your current career is feeling more like you’re making a dying than a living, don’t miss Vicki’s timeless advice on how to create a (marvelously magnificent) encore life on a (fabulously frugal) shoestring. 

Vicki is well-known as the coauthor with Joe Dominguez of the international best-seller, Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship With Money and Achieving Financial Independence, available now in ten languages, now updated for the 21st century.  She currently teaches the Your Money or Your Life approach to money – and life – through teleclasses, lectures and workshops and hosts guest speakers for educational teleclasses on sustainable living. 

She has appeared on hundreds of radio and television shows, including "The Oprah Winfrey Show," "Good Morning America" and National Public Radio's "Weekend Edition" and "Morning Edition"; she has also been featured in People magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Money, Woman's Day, Newsweek, Utne Magazine and the New York Times.  Newspapers around the world have reported on her work on lowering consumption in North America.

Episode #27: From Selling Mortgages to Making Movies with Rochelle Marmorstein

See the trailer of THE SHIFT Movie

Episode #27

Airdate:  3/30/10

From Selling Mortgages to Making Movies

 

Rochelle Marmorstein has mastered telling a human story with depth and meaning.  She is a one-woman creative powerhouse and a visionary producer, sowing the seeds of hope with THE SHIFT Movie: A Love Story about You, Me and All of Us Committed to Our Collective Future. 

This high profile film project includes global leaders, thinkers, scientists and futurists including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Paul Hawken, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Jane Goodall, Brian Swimme, Lynne Twist and Eurythmics musician Dave Stewart – and that’s just the beginning. 

Listen in as Rochelle shares her journey from mortgages to movie-making and find out how a burning passion can drive you right to your encore career.

Rochelle started her first career with famed musical artist Frank Zappa, and for 25 years owned a successful mortgage brokerage company.  Influenced by the teachings of spiritual philosophers like Deepak Chopra, Rochelle cultivated a passion to help others empower themselves.  Dedicated to raising the consciousness through the unparalleled power of media, she returned to the arts, devoting the last 5 years to developing a film that reflects the magnificence of the human spirit in action, and THE SHIFT.  

She has produced and directed two critically acclaimed documentaries: “The Pen Picture” and “Dear Great, Great Grandpa”.  Created by Rochelle, THE SHIFT trailer was released on the Internet and has received a phenomenal response from 144 countries, igniting the yearning for the hope and possibility that to a SHIFT to new worldviews and lifestyles that encourage sustainability, collaboration, love and peace.

 

Episode #26: SPECIAL ENCORE PRESENTATION: Finding Work That Finally Matters with Marci Alboher

Episode #26

Airdate: 3/23/10

Finding Work That Finally Matters

 

Marci Alboher believes when the times get tough, the tough get going – into encore careers.  A former lawyer, Marci is currently championing encore careers as part of her own encore career as Senior Fellow for Civic Ventures.  Civic Ventures is a nonprofit think tank leading the call to engage millions of baby boomers in becoming a force for social change.  Here’s the cool part.  An encore career provides continued income, doing work that is personally fulfilling, and helps address some of society’s biggest challenges at the same time.  Tune in as Marci shares the four stages of an encore career search, as well as practical tips on how to find your perfect encore career.

Marci is one of the nation’s top experts on career issues and workplace trends.  She is a Senior Fellow for Civic Ventures, a nonprofit think tank leading the call to engage millions of baby boomers as a vital workforce committed to solving the world’s biggest problems.  A former blogger and columnist for The New York Times, Marci is the author of One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success (Warner Books, 2007).  She is a regular contributor to the “The Takeaway” on public radio, wrote the blog “Working the New Economy” for Yahoo!, and has appeared on or been quoted by many other outlets including The Today Show, MSNBC, The Nightly News, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, National Public Radio, More Magazine, and USA Today.  She holds an undergraduate degree in English from the University of Pennsylvania and a law degree from the Washington College of Law at American University.

Episode #25: Mentoring New Americans to Succeed with Michele McRae

See the video of this 2008 Purpose Prize Winner

Episode #25

Airdate: 3/16/10

Mentoring New Americans to Succeed

Michele McRae believes doing something small is the best way to start making a difference.  This former English and French professor took a small pilot project engaging older adults as tutors for the wave of refugees being resettled in her community, and turned it into a volunteer operation of more than 500 people who teach not only basic language skills but also help these new Americans get their GEDs, pass driver's license exams, find jobs and more.  The Giving + Learning program is breaking down barriers across age, culture, race and ethnicity.  Tune in and find out how Michele is “bringing together the gifts and wisdom of our oldest generation with the needs of our newest citizens in a win-win situation."

When Michele retired to Fargo, N.D., she wondered what she was going to do.  She discovered a new passion—helping immigrants from around the world settle into American life. 

Michele is director of the Giving+Learning center in Fargo where volunteers help refugees learn English.

Fargo is famous for bitter winters, flat farmland and a population that is mostly white.  One in five is over 55.  But, an influx of refugees from more than 42 countries has changed the demographics, lured by a federal resettlement program and a strong low-wage job market.  The shift has created tremendous challenges. 

Michele thought if she could get just one retiree at a time to help one refugee learn English, things would improve.

“People in Fargo were afraid, but it’s getting less and less.  If you are helping someone work on English words in their kitchen, it’s harder to hate them,” she says.  “It’s very difficult to look at someone you’re helping and think they shouldn’t be here.”

 

Episode #24: What Kids Can Do to Change the World with Dr. Barbara Cervone

See the video of this 2008 Purpose Prize Winner

Episode #24

Airdate: 3/9/10

What Kids Can Do to Change the World

Barbara Cervone doesn’t like that 90% of media stories about youth portray them as problems rather than powerful contributors to society, so she began the nonprofit What Kids Can Do (WKCD) to bring compelling youth voices and action to the attention of the larger media, educators and communities. Her WKCD Web site regularly reports on such stories as Maine teens drawing up forestry management plans or Los Angeles students working against school overcrowding. Small grants from WKCD have also supported more than 50 youth-adult partnerships in which young people from the Rio Grande Valley to the slums of Delhi document their communities and work to make them better. Some projects result in books, such as immigrant students from New York City neighborhoods gathering workers' stories of their "American dreams. Discover the boundless promise of youth, and how Dr. Cervone plans to keep on making it public—refuting false assumptions one story at a time.

Prior to co-founding WKCD, Dr. Cervone coordinated Walter H. Annenberg’s $500 million “Challenge” to reform the nation’s schools—at the time the largest private initiative to reform public education in U.S. history.

Dr. Cervone has served as associate director of the Rhode Island Foundation. She has been a consultant in program evaluation and a principal investigator for several national education research projects. She also has written extensively about school reform.  Early in her career, she worked in the alternative school movement.  She has a B.A. from Radcliffe College, and an M.A.T. and Ed.D. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Dr. Cervone has contributed dozens of articles and book chapters about her work with youth and school reform and edited three photo essay books with youth as co-authors. 

 

Episode #23: From Homeless to Helping Kids Find Their Way Out of Poverty with Ann Higdon

See the video of this 2009 Purpose Prize Winner

Episode #23

Airdate: 3/2/10

From Homeless to Helping Kids Find Their Way Out of Poverty

 

Ann Higdon knows the despair of going nowhere. Homeless as a kid, she grew up with no love for learning and little hope. It took just one teacher's kind words to drive Higdon to try harder and finish school.

Through the years, she has convened a chorus of professionals to similarly inspire high school dropouts in Dayton, Ohio. Ann's organization, which includes three charter schools, helps area dropouts earn their diplomas while training for jobs in health care, construction, computer operations, and manufacturing. In 2009, a ranking of the 62 public schools in Dayton, OH placed the ISUS schools as 2nd, 4th and 15th highest in performance.  Find out how Ann uses her passion to fuel her enlivening encore career.

Ann founded Improved Solutions for Urban Systems (ISUS) in 1992 to develop more effective ways to educate and train underachieving, dropout and court-involved youth. 

The ISUS concept is high school plus.  For a student, the plus means industry certification, apprenticeship, college credits, real work experience and a life changing perspective.  Students alternate between hands-on, academic and post-secondary coursework. Both student and community outcomes are crafted to be impactful. 

Before ISUS, Ann created the public/private partnership in Ohio that replaced food stamps with smart cards.  She managed large national demonstration projects supervising a staff of up to two thousand in twenty-three cities, has been a newspaper columnist, and co-hosted a popular WDAO radio talk program, The Hidden Face of Reality. 

Ann is a former New Yorker and the mother of four adult children.

 

Episode #22: Turning Personal Tragedy into a Force for Global Good with Elizabeth & Stephen Alderman

See the video of these 2009 Purpose Prize Winners

Episode #22

Airdate: 2/23/10

Turning Personal Tragedy into a Force for Global Good

Liz and Steve Alderman turned tragedy into triumph eight years ago after losing their son to terrorists on 9/11 in the Twin Towers. Liz says, “Peter was too young to have decided whether he wanted to leave his mark on this earth.  We have decided to leave a mark for Peter.”  

The Peter C. Alderman Foundation’s mission is to heal the emotional wounds of victims of terrorism and mass violence by training health care professionals and establishing clinics in post-conflict countries around the globe. In just three years, foundation-trained physicians and other personnel, such as psychiatric nurses, village elders, midwives and Peter Alderman clinics, have touched more than 55,000 people – including children from the post-conflict countries of Cambodia, Rwanda, Somalia, and Sudan.

According to Liz and Steve, this is just the beginning.  Tune in to be inspired and touched by these self-described “ordinary” people.

After the agonizing loss of their son on 9/11, a segment on Nightline documenting the mental anguish of refugees helped Liz and Stephen Alderman begin to turn anger and devastation into healing - for themselves and, eventually, for nearly 100,000 victims of violence, terrorism, and torture around the world through the Peter C. Alderman Foundation (PCAF). 

Since 2003, more than 200 indigenous doctors and other health care professionals from 21 countries have been trained by PCAF – on four continents – and they in turn have trained countless health care workers. PCAF has also opened nine Peter C. Alderman Trauma Treatment Centers in Africa, Asia and Haiti. 

Liz Alderman is a former Special Education Teacher and Co-chair of the Memorial Committee for Families of September 11th.  Stephen Alderman, MD, is the former Chair of the Radiation Oncology Departments at Roosevelt-St. Luke’s Hospital, Catholic Medical Center and White Plains Hospital Center.

 

Episode #21: Fighting Illiteracy One Couple at a Time with Nasrine Gross

See the video of this 2008 Purpose Prize Winner

Episode #21

Airdate: 2/16/10

Fighting Illiteracy One Couple at a Time

 

 

When Nasrine Gross grew up in Kabul, she had books, attended school, and her mother was a member of Parliament. 

Today, eight out of 10 people in Afghanistan are illiterate, with women having virtually no access to education. So, she became an advocate for women's rights in the face of oppression from Taliban rulers. 

After the fall of the Taliban in 2002, Nasrine came up with a simple, but radical idea: teaching literacy classes in tents and homes in a socially acceptable format – with couples as her students. Since women require their husband's permission or presence to do most things, men are invited to learn to read as well.

Gross now lives nine months of the year in a small village outside Kabul and has graduated nearly 500 students ages 15 to 82. She has also expanded her classes to cover math, health, family issues and political education. Meet this extraordinary woman and find out what drives her.

Nasrine left her home in Kabul after high school to attend American University in Beirut, where she met and married an American. After raising their son she returned to activism for women's rights.

Her first book, Memories of the First Afghan Girls' High School, was published in 1998, at the height of Taliban power. Three more books, on women in the Koran, women running for political office, and Afghan peace building responsibilities have followed. 

In 2001, she helped draft the Declaration of Essential Rights of Afghan Women, which laid the foundation for the section on women's rights in the present Afghan constitution. Prior to the 2004 Afghan elections, where 25 percent of the seats in the House of People would be filled by women, Nasrine ran a training seminar for female candidates.

She is the founder of Kabultec in the U.S., and its sister organization, The Roqia Center for Women's Rights, Studies and Education in Afghanistan.

 

Episode #20: Fun, Funds & Fulfillment for the Rest of Your Life with Jeri Sedlar

Episode #20

Airdate: 2/9/10

Fun, Funds & Fulfillment for the Rest of Your Life 

 

Jeri Sedlar doesn’t want you to fall into the traditional retirement trap. She knows that when it comes to life planning for your future, one size does not fit all.  After years of research she’s discovered the top reasons, or what she calls drivers, of why people say they work beyond the money.  Jeri is America’s “rewiring® expert”.  She’s provocative, fun and grounded in “realistic optimism”.  Tune in as Jeri helps you identify your drivers so you can select work and life activities that will give you fun, funds and driver fulfillment for the rest of your life.

Jeri is an expert on the realities of an aging society that is healthier, more educated and more vibrant than any other generation ever in history.  As co-author of Don’t Retire, Rewire! and Senior Advisor to The Conference Board on the Mature Workforce, Jeri travels the country inspiring individuals and organizations to "get creative" and rewire their thinking and action when it comes to planning for the future.  With today's global economy and aging workforce, her mission is to ensure that both individuals and organizations discover how to leverage the opportunities created by The New Retirement model.  Jeri is also the former Editor-at-Large of Working Woman magazine and for ten years was a partner in her own executive search firm.