Finding Founders

A 7 page spread in National Geographic; that was the culmination of years of work, years of cold emailing publications, posting to small online forums, and hoping her photos would get noticed. This passion would take her love of nature from a childhood in Germany, to remote nordic villages, cliffside birds nests, and vulnerable populations in Mongolia. Today, Lana is a National Geographic Explorer who specializes in nature conservation, photography, and biology. But before her first publication, before her journey’s halfway across the world, before she picked up a camera, Lana was the soon-to-be born child of a couple escaping war. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Linda has experienced a lot. She’s traveled the world as an army brat, played piano and sung in Led Zeppelin's tour bus, explored drugs as an “X rated hippie”, and worked to understand her Latin American, Chicano, and Indigenous roots through her art. Through these various paintings, sculpture, and ceramic work Linda embraces her brownness and the world has taken notice. Her work has been shown globally in major galleries and museums, as well as Chicano and Latino spaces. Today, her artwork focuses on encouraging discussion surrounding how class, culture, and the color of our skin intersect, notably in her, “Make ‘Em All Mexican” pieces. But let’s look at where this all started and dive into Linda’s roots. Let's look back to where her family's story began, with her grandparents meeting while working on the railroads. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Laser eye surgery, a seemingly inconsequential, almost routine surgery, that in an instant turned into a nightmare. Sumit Ajwani, who had built a career creating films as head of production for a global ad agency in Canada, discovered he could no longer see. He was a wunderkind. His career was moving fast. He had just been appointed head of the ad agency at 23 years old. But this wouldn’t be the end of his story. Sumit would ultimately create a producer-led collaborative network called ‘Makers’ that would get involved with projects from giving bikes to kids in Ghana, building a Lego City inside a children’s hospital, and working with Habitat for Humanity. To date ‘Makers’ has 11,000 producers around the world in 173 countries. But the building of this collaborative future between creatives started actually before Sumit was born. It started with his father mailing a ring across an ocean over 40 years ago… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jordan had a dream that he thought would take a lifetime, but as he invested all of his energy into making that dream a reality – that reality came more quickly than expected. The crazy thing is… this was just the beginning. Today, Jorden stands at upwards of 345K followers on Instagram, 1M subscribers on YouTube, and a whopping 3M followers on Tiktok – which he firmly believes “anyone can do.” With 8 years worth of traveling, content creation, and friend making in his pocket, Jorden has learned how to leverage the internet to make his passions and interests a career! But before Jorden was a content creator, before he was a world traveler, before he had even set foot outside his home country… we need to take it back to the early days of the internet, and Jorden's love for graphic design. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kyukei Goto was saddled with massive responsibility from birth. He was the first born son to his father of 50, meaning Goto would have to carry the weight of a tradition going back 28 generations. He comes from a lineage that has perfected the art of Kamakura Buri which is a method of carving wood and then coating lacquer to make sculptures, plates, tea sets, cutlery and other household items. But this sentence belies the spiritual and technical intricacies of this art form. Facing the death of his father, Goto dove deeper into his artistry and craft as a way to understand his father, his ancestors, but also as a way to understand and explore his own identity as an artist. He now owns the Kamakura Carving Gallery in Japan, selling pieces and hosting workshops to continue the Kamakura tradition. From his bamboo art to his popular exhibition in the Tokyo Art Museum, Goto strives for perfection in his work, and he’s not alone in the practice. With 28 generations to make proud, Goto shares with us the story of how this tradition came to be in the first place… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a photographer David’s eyes are his livelihood. His vision was everything, but somehow David shrugs it off, he takes it stoically, he has this lack of concern for any roadblocks. I mean David has always believed that he would achieve great things. I think that’s why after traveling around the world to 13 countries at 18, he decided to try and make it as a commercial photographer. He started taking classes at New York’s Parsons School of design, and subsequently tried to make it in the biz, but just faced rejection after rejection. However, obstacles are no match for David… he’d eventually strike out on his own as an artist selling his art to Elton John at one of his first shows. Now he has ten published photobooks, sells his artwork all over the world, and it’s a coveted thing to own a “Drebin”. THis interview is wide ranging and we’ll start with a little steaminess… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

10,000 subscribers overnight and soaring to 50 thousand a few days later, Rachel Southard was shocked to learn that her Youtube video documenting her first week of medical school was gaining attention so quickly. Growing up, Rachel wanted to try everything and after pushing through feelings of doubt in her early school years and seeing the incredible work doctors do, she began her journey to med school. Wanting to document her experience, Rachel starting vlogging and recording her many weeks of hard work in medical school. Not afraid to show the good and the bad, Rachel created a community founded on emotional vulnerabilty and her authenticity. Rachel did not always know that she wanted a career in medicine, instead growing up feeling that she was behind the other kids in her neighborhood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With 10,000 Chapters, 13 million referrals, and 21 billion dollars in business… just in the last 12 months, it’s safe to say that Ivan Misner has had world wide impact. Ivan jumped from law school, to a government job, to a fateful unrenewed manufacturing contract that would transform a small consulting network into a global organization. BNI now has different chapters spanning the globe, all working to develop meaningful business relationships through referrals and networking. Now a successful author, blogger, speaker and businessman, Ivan shares his whirlwind of a journey that started simply… it started with his mother’s gift, a paperweight with the word, “diplomacy” in thick black letters on the top…. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What had started as a fun business idea between college friends had spiraled out of control. Saddled with international shipping costs, low student funds, and no way to market their product, Olivier and Rick hit a logistical wall before they fully began. Luckily, that wasn’t the only idea these two twenty year olds had in their pocket. Now, Olivier Momma is the young cofounder of Ekster, the groundbreaking company behind the most successful smart wallet in the world. Generating 25 million dollars in 2021 and nearly 40 million this year, Olivier’s place on Forbes’s 30 Under 30 seems like a no brainer. But before he was sewing together prototypes in Hong Kong or launching a kickstarter campaign, Olivier cultivated his adventurous spirit in his unusual childhood. With his father’s job sending the family around the globe every couple of years, Olivier’s cosmopolitan outlook grew as he adapted to each new country he called home. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Utter silence. Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz felt the pulse of his racing heart, the countdown from ground control, and the sense that he’s been here before. I mean he’s prepared his whole life for this moment, the moment of lifting off into space. He’s been preparing since he was a kid, from sitting in a cardboard spaceship all the way to launching into space more times than any human in history. But how did he get here? Well Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz is a record breaking NASA astronaut, with 7 flights into space, and the CEO of the AdAstra Rocket Company. He’s managed to move to a new country, learn a new language, graduate at the top of his class, and persistently chase his dream all the way to space. Now, we launch ourselves back to a time, when space travel was only a dream. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices