Joshua Spodek

Small talk and exchanging cards and resumes are poor excuses for connecting meaningfully with people. Meaningful connections lead to job offers, promotions, funding, and more connections. This interactive workshop will give you the skills and experience to connect with anyone any time. Led by a former science geek (PhD in physics) who built a global company, earned his MBA at Columbia, then started and hosts an award-winning podcast with world-renowned guests.

Taking initiative is the route to promotions, raises, greater responsibility, and entrepreneurship. It's the best protection or escape from a boss or job you dislike. Yet we've lost our ability to initiate. Schools teach compliance and following. Shark Tank and business plan competitions turn it into a spectacle benefiting investors, often at the expense of initiators. Our culture promotes one narrow type of initiative. This session will expose the forces keeping you from learning to initiate, profiles people who have learned to take initiative and succeed despite those forces, and walks you through steps to become someone who knows how to initiate, even (especially) if you don't have an idea or know your passions.

The environment is one of the most critical issues ever. With billions of people craving environmental leadership, it's an area ripe for podcasting. This workshop will teach practical, immediately useful skills for podcasting around the environment -- including how to inspire. We will cover finding and booking guests, how to start, the difference between intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, then practice podcasting. Workshop leader Joshua Spodek PhD MBA is an award-winning host of the Leadership and the Environment podcast, bestselling author, and two-time TEDx speaker on environmental leadership.