“More start-ups can massively benefit from the wisdom, gravitas and experience of older people.” Lara Jeremko

If there’s one fate none of us can escape, it’s aging. It happens daily, incrementally, and we don’t notice it until our circumstances change significantly — we retire, we become infirm, and steps must be taken to care for our well being actively.

This is not something that only happens to other people — it’s a fate awaiting all of us (unless we’re unfortunate enough to die young). Our elders demonstrate the indignities and challenges of aging most vividly. I think of my grandmother…

“Inclusivity is key to doing sustainable good.” Tracie Dean Ponder.

You’ve probably seen the cartoons demonstrating the difference between equality and equity. Three kids — one tall, one medium height, and one short — want to watch the ballgame, but they can’t see over the fence. Equality gives each of them a wooden box to stand on. Now the tall kid can see over the fence, but his siblings, although higher up, still cannot.

Equity is different — it provides everyone with assistance in proportion to their differing needs. In the cartoon illustration, equity hands a bigger box to the…

“Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”

– Buddha

I met Espree Devora fifteen years ago during a very challenging time in my life. I had a three-year-old daughter, an unfunded startup, and had just discovered that my marriage was ending under the worst of circumstances. My business partner and I were working out of my garage, and due to my very sudden change of residence, that was no longer an option. We moved into a tiny, brick-walled room with concrete…

“People easily understand that ‘primitives’ cement their social order by believing in ghosts and spirits, and gathering each full moon to dance together around the campfire. What we fail to appreciate is that our modern institutions function on exactly the same basis.”

― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

If you ask a dozen people what “brand” means, you will likely get just as many different answers. The media expression of brand stories has changed dramatically over the last couple of decades. Still, the psychological levers that cement a brand narrative in the minds of consumers have…

Here’s what I don’t think works: An economic system that was founded in the 16th century and another that was founded in the 19th century. I’m tired of this discussion of capitalism and socialism; we live in the 21st century; we need an economic system that has democracy as its underpinnings and an ethical code.
- Michael Moore

Like most life experiences, deep academic work can have dramatically different effects on various personalities. For some, life gets very narrow. A particular area of interest might result in a very myopic worldview and set of experiences. For others, going down the…

One of my fondest childhood memories is that of weekend visits from my grandmother. She only lived 20 minutes away, but having her stay over for the entire weekend was an exceptional treat for my siblings and me. The best part? My sister and I would come into her room early in the morning with a stack of books. We’d get in bed with her and go through each one, relishing every sentence that would be indecipherable to most through her thick Hungarian accent.

Much earlier, before my sister was born and my mother was pregnant with me, my grandmother…

“Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes

Seeds have nearly everything within them that they need to survive. It’s not as if the germination process provides any physical feature that the seed did not previously have within it. Germination is just a period of time where a sprout is placed in the proper environment to grow into a spore. From there, the spore, with all the matured material from the seed, develops into a plant. However, the key is to make sure the seed is in the…

If you are one of the country’s most fortunate citizens to have healthcare coverage, then you are also not likely a stranger to mountains of paperwork. Even within the same insurance provider, you will often fill out additional heaps of redundant paperwork when seeing a specialist. If you have children, scale the paper trail proportionality with the number of dependents. …