Long Shot Leaders with Michael Stein

Astronaut Clayton Conrad Anderson Shares his Long Journey into the Space Station Retired U. S. Astronaut, Award-Winning Author, Podcaster (The Making of an Ordinary SpacemanTM), and sports lover. Astronaut Clayton –“Astro Clay”– Anderson, Nebraska’s only Astronaut, spent 167 days in space and 38 hours and 28 minutes in executing 6 spacewalks. He applied 15 times before NASA selected him as an Astronaut in 1998, and he spent 30 years working for NASA; 15 as an engineer and then 15 as an Astronaut. Succeeding in one of the most difficult and coveted jobs in the world through perseverance and a never-give-up mantra, Anderson employs NASA’s “Plan, Train and Fly (Execute)” philosophy to his speaking engagements and projects. Coupled with lessons learned in the areas of leadership, persistence, teamwork, and passion, he provides unique and “out of this world” insights for those seeking to achieve results through thoughtful, practical, and successful execution. Clay’s AWARD-WINNING books, The Ordinary SpacemanTM: From Boyhood Dreams to Astronaut, and A is for Astronaut: Blasting Through the Alphabet, along with It’s a Question of Space: An Ordinary Astronaut’s Answers to Sometimes Extraordinary Questions and his newly released children’s book Letters from Space (2020), are all available through www.astroclay.com and www.astronautclaytonanderson.com as well as a special “Astronaut Edition” Fisher Space Pen and other Astro Clay logo merchandise.

How to Become a Fortune 500 Company Leader and Rock Star Coach with Alicia Anagnostou   Alicia Anagnostou is a sociologist, creative nonfiction writer, serves as vice president of Client Loyalty and Retention for a Fortune 500 company, and is the founder of First Edition Coaching, a values-based leadership organization. With more than 20 years of experience in corporate leadership, she has coached and mentored both emerging and experienced leaders in a wide array of industries. Ms. Anagnostou believes in the importance of giving a voice to one's core values through thoughtful word choice, purposeful messaging, and the sharing of powerful life stories. She is a two-time graduate of UCLA with a degree in sociology and a certificate in creative nonfiction writing. Alicia lives in the California Bay Area with her two teenage daughters and Rottweiler, Evie.

With Only $100, limited family ties, and no fluency in English, David Nour Teaches the Secrets of Massive Achievement. A senior leadership/board advisor, educator, executive coach, and bestselling author, David Nour is internationally recognized as the leading expert on applications of strategic relationships in profitable growth, sustained innovation, and lasting change. The author of eleven books, including bestsellers Relationship Economics® (Wiley) – forthcoming in its 3rd edition, Co-Create (St. Martin’s Press), and Curve Benders (Wiley, 2021), Nour serves as a trusted advisor to global clients and coaches corporate leaders. He is an adjunct professor at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University and was named to the Global Gurus Top 30 Leadership Professionals and the Thinkers 50 Radar Class of 2021 lists. A Forbes Leadership contributor on the Future of Work, and an Inc. contributor on Relationship Economics, Nour’s unique insights have been featured in various prominent publications, including The Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fast Company, Huffington Post Business, Entrepreneur, and Knowledge@Wharton. He’s also the host of the popular Curve Benders podcast. Born in Iran, Nour immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager with $100, limited family ties, and no fluency in English. He graduated from Georgia State University with a bachelor’s degree in business management and went on to earn an Executive MBA from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. He resides in Atlanta, GA, with his family.

Discovering the true physical differences with men and women athletes with Stacy Sims   STACY T. SIMS, MSC, PHD, is a forward-thinking international exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist who aims to revolutionize exercise nutrition and performance for women. She has directed research programs at Stanford, AUT University, and the University of Waikato, focusing on female athlete health and performance and pushing the dogma to improve research on all women. With the unique opportunities, Silicon Valley has to offer, during her tenure at Stanford, she had the opportunity to translate earlier research into consumer products and a science-based layperson's book (ROAR) written to explain sex differences in training and nutrition across the lifespan. Both the consumer products and the book challenged the existing dogma for women in exercise, nutrition, and health. This paradigm shift is the focus of her famous "Women Are Not Small Men” TEDx talk. Her contributions to the international research environment and the sports nutrition industry has established a new niche in sports nutrition; and established her reputation as the expert in sex differences in training, nutrition, and health. As a direct result, she has been named: One of the top 50 visionaries of the running industry (2015) by DMSE Sports. One of the top 40 women changing the paradigm of her field (2017) by Outside Magazine.  One of the top four visionaries in the outdoor sports industry (2017) by Outside Magazine - Genius Issue (no electronic version but here is the proof). One of the top four individuals changing the landscape in triathlon nutrition (2017) by Triathlete Magazine Dr. Sims has published over 70 peer-reviewed papers, several books and is a regularly featured speaker at professional and academic conferences, including those by USOC and USA Cycling.  Stacy currently holds a Senior Research Associate position with SPRINZ- AUT University, supervises PhD students, writes academic papers, and is on the advisory board of some cutting edge companies including Tonal Strength Institute, WILD.AI, and EXOS.  She also has her own business (www.drstacysims.com) where she creates and delivers online learning material focused on women training with their physiology across the lifespan.  She currently resides at the beach in Mt. Maunganui, New Zealand with her husband and young daughter.

How Gwen Jorgensen Went from an Introverted Violin Player to an Olympic Gold Medal & World Champion Triathlete

Telling The Secrets of The Divorced with Author and Divorce Lawyer Jill Coil

The Son of Holocaust Survivor and Best Selling Author Joel Poremba Joel was stunned after hearing his father’s story for the first time while sharing his testimony with USC Shoah Foundation for their Visual History Archive in 1998. It took another 21 years and an inspiring trip to Israel for Joel to finally watch his father’s full recorded testimony.  Joel subsequently interviewed his father about the details of his Holocaust survival and authored a book to ensure his story was never forgotten.

How Paul Peck Built a Music Festival Empire Paul is the co-founder and president of Fandiem a fundraising platform for the entertainment industry that amplifies revenue and reach from non-profit campaigns. A veteran festival and concert producer, Paul is the co-founder of the Okeechobee Music & Arts Festival where he served as chief creative officer and head of programming. Prior to that Paul worked with Superfly Presents, where he helped to launch and develop the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival and Outside Lands in San Francisco. During his tenure, Paul was a key member of the booking and programming team, as well as other pivotal areas. Paul is known for his creative touch and producing once-in-a-time collaborative concerts that feature superstar artists and virtuoso players in unique configurations. He has worked closely with artists such as Skrillex, Chance the Rapper, Mumford & Sons, Trey Anastasio of Phish, Miguel, D’Angelo, SZA, Jim James of My Morning Jacket, Brittany Howard of the Alabama Shakes, Solange and Questlove amongst many others. During his final years at Bonnaroo, his Superjam concerts were the top annual story from each year’s event, garnering coverage from New York Times (including multiple times in the year-end, nationwide top 5 concerts of the year), USA Today, Rolling Stone (#1 concert of the event 3 times) and Billboard. Paul also has an extensive media production background as Superfly and Bonnaroo’s creative director of original media where he was responsible for creating and producing media content for broadcast and streaming.

What to know if you want to be an independent filmmaker. C.J. began his career in the entertainment business while in the U.S. Navy, having been discovered by a casting director while stationed in Miami, FL in the mid-1980s. From there, he began appearing in commercials, on television, and in print. Upon his return to Chicago, he re-started his theatrical career, performing with a variety of companies. The culmination of his theater work was when he established Theatre-on-the-Hill in Bolingbrook, Illinois as a premium destination for actors who wanted to perform in rarely staged productions, such as Stephen Adly Guirgis' "The Last Days of Judas Iscariot" and "Den of Thieves", "A Flea in Her Ear!", "God of Carnage", "End Days", and the world premiere of the musical "Zenobia", written by Lorrisa Julianus. During his tenure as President and Artistic Director at Theatre-on-the-Hill, he wrote, produced, and directed numerous corporate videos and movie shorts, skills that have translated directly to producing and directing features.

In his words: I feel dirty. I’m sweating bullets. It’s already been a fourteen-hour day on set in the blazing Los Angeles sun and all I want to do is the shower. That is NOT going to happen. My day was far from over. Every other Thursday that summer of 2004, I would finish shooting Jerry Bruckheimer’s acclaimed TV series Skin and then tack on a four-hour nightcap at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. As tough as my days were, I knew they’d get a lot worse if I skipped my date with four bags of poison at the all-night chemo ward. I would pass the hours of those late-night infusions watching classic 50s reruns, thinking about work, and thinking about life. Where I had been, where I was going, what I’d leave behind. That’s where the seeds of this book were planted: in the desolate basement of Cedar-Sinai, while I waited for my fortnightly poison cocktail to empty into my arm and get to work. Not Just Sunglasses and Autographs follows me from bar bouncing in Boston to working on award-winning television and movies as I made my way up the entertainment industry ladder. It is an endearing story of overcoming the odds through dark humor, tenacity, authenticity, and a smile. I had originally envisioned this as the memoir of a man who’d beaten Hodgkin's Lymphoma and lived to tell the tale, but that was before I was pitched a curveball called Parkinson’s Disease. Equal parts pep-talk and gut-punch, this unvarnished and vulnerable memoir-meets-handbook shares lessons I’ve learned in life and work and encourages readers to keep moving forward, embrace resilience, step out of their comfort zones, and take life head-on. Not Just Sunglasses and Autographs is 70,000 words and stands alone, but I also have stories in mind for a follow-up book. I look forward to hitting the road and supporting this book as I have brought hope and inspiration speaking about the film industry for the last twenty years.   I’ve been in the industry for nearly forty years. Nicknamed “the Irish Bull” by my west coast colleagues, I earned my reputation and secured Assistant Director credits on productions including the film Close to Home, Skin, CSI Miami, the pilot for Desperate Housewives, and many others. I spent the last five years of my film career on location in Chicago, working as First Assistant Director on Chicago PD from 2014-2019. After my Parkinson's diagnosis in 2019, I hung up my AD walkie and returned to the west coast to enlist all of my drive, determination, spirit, stubbornness, and good humor in the second battle of my life.