Joe Stump on How to Use Your Passion to Lose Weight and Stay Fit

In Chapter 1 of 14 in his 2012 interview, Internet entrepreneur Joe Stump answers "How Are You Learning to Apply Your Passions in New Ways?"  Stump applies his passion for programming and the software building process to his diet.  As a result, he is able to lose nearly 40 pounds in less than a year.  He compares the software programming process to dieting and the importance of turning bad habits to good habits and making it sustainable.  Joe Stump is a serial entrepreneur based in Portland, OR. He is CEO and co-founder of Sprint.ly, a product management software company.  Previously he founded SimpleGeo, which was sold to Urban Airship in October 2011.  He advises several startups - including attachments.me and ngmoco:) - as well as VC firm Freestyle Capital.  He earned a BBA in Computer Information Systems (CIS) from Eastern Michigan University. 

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: How are you learning to apply your passions in new ways?

Joe Stump: I am at heart a hacker and a tinkerer. I like puzzles. I've always been that way, you know, I was the kid that had more Legos than he knew what to do with it and was always kind of putting them together in different ways. And I've taken that and have kind of started applying it to other areas in my life.

The hacking -- Probably the recent successful hack has been the fact that I've lost about 35, 40 pounds over the last year-ish and I approached it very much in the same way that I approached triaging a software bug. And when you're triaging a software bug, the first thing you do is you get a baseline, right? Where are we at right now? You then get a – you then do logging and statistics and kind of figure out, you know – basically you gather information as much as you can, right? After you’ve established your baseline. And then as you're gathering your information, hopefully you figure out what the problem is and you can then resolve it, right?

And I kind of basically applied that same approach to my diet where basically I started doing research and started tracking all sorts of things. And I actually, when I approached it, I approached it from -- again, in a very similar way to the way I approach bugs. So, when I go and change someone else’s code, I try to be as minimally invasive as possible. Because I don’t know whether or not if I change too much code, I don’t know whether or not that code will be sustainable. I may introduce other bugs. So, with dieting and changing health, like I wanted to change bad habits and the good habits and I wanted it to be sustainable.

And I think a lot of people, you know, you hear a lot of people talk about this with diet where they try and go cold turkey or they try to like do some really extreme diet and they end up falling off the wagon and they end up going back to poor eating habits. So I did things like I tracked how often I biked to work. I didn’t track how far; I just tracked yes or no. Did I ride my bike to work? And my goal was I wanted to ride my bike to work half of the time. I also wanted to cut down on my diet soda intake, so I tracked that. And if I had less than two, cool; if I had more than two, not cool, right?

And then I ended up going and getting really geeky and ended up getting like this thing called a DEXA Scan that tells you all this terrifying information about your body that you don’t want to know, like how much you're intestines weigh and how much muscle mass you don’t have when thought you were all ripped. And having that very objective analytical view into my body and how it worked really helped me approach turning the knobs in a much more nuanced way.

So, rather than going and saying, “I'm going to train for an Ironman and that’s how I'm going to lose 40 pounds.” I was like I’m going to go and bike to work half the time. I'm going to drink a little less soda, I’m gonna cut down my sugar a bit and introduce a very, very small amount of exercise. And it worked out very well. I've been able to sustain that over time. And what was really interesting also was when you overextend your body, you're basically shocking the system and when you shock the system like think about when there's a five-alarm fire, right?

People miss the little things that are happening around them when there's a five-alarm fire and I feel it's the same way with your body. When I introduced small changes, I was able to be a little bit more perceptive about what my body was telling, whereas if I had went really extreme and was like on a fasting diet or total vegetarian, my body would have been like -- and I wouldn’t have been able -- my body overwhelmingly would have been saying, “What are you doing?” whereas if you introduced a little bit more incrementally. It was like, you know, you can basically say, it's almost like committing transactions to a database.

So transactions to a database, you can commit like, you can do something and then if it didn’t work you can roll it back. No harm, no foul, right? And so if you do that incrementally, that’s what I was basically doing. I was like, I'm going to step in here, okay, that worked, cool. And then I'm going to step in here, that didn’t work, roll back, right? It was like a very iterative kind of process and it's allowed me to really be a lot more perceptive to what my body is telling me.

So now, what's kind of nice about this is I've been on the road a lot for the last six months and I've been eating – I’ve been cycling basically, eating like utter crap while I’m on the road. It's really hard to eat really healthy when you're on the road to cycling in the good habits. It's like my body tells me basically, “Dude, you're eating sugar. You got to like up your protein,” and I'm a lot better at listening to that now.

Jon Kolko: Why Entrepreneurial Leadership Starts With Passion

In Chapter 5 of 21 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, design educator Jon Kolko answers "What Does It Mean to Be a Leader in What You Do?"  Kolko looks at what he has learned about developing as a leader through the lens of his students.  For him, he sees drive, passion, resiliency and curiosity form the foundation that help select entrepreneurs thrive professionally and lead in their respective fields.  Jon Kolko the founder and director of the Austin Center for Design.  He has authored multiple books on design, including "Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving."  Previously he has held senior roles at venture accelerator Thinktiv and frog design and was a professor of Interactive and Industrial Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).  Kolko earned his Masters in Human Computer Interaction (MHI) and BFA in Design from Carnegie Mellon University.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What does it mean to be a leader in what you do?

Jon Kolko: I think that there are a lot of things around confidence that play into leadership. I think there’s qualities of charisma but I don’t know. I feel like those are ancillary. I feel like there's something else at the core and it might actually have to do with drive and passion. I have a hard time looking at myself through that lens. 

So maybe we could look in some of my students through that lens and the students that are most successful in starting companies, meaning in becoming leaders, seem to have an unending passion for whatever it is they're doing. And so, when you do anything in design or business, it's a constant struggle. When you start your own company, which you know it's a huge constant struggle and it almost feels from one perspective like anything that can go wrong will go wrong over and over and over, and it takes a certain unending passion to get through that because it's very easy and it's almost like the logical thing to do is to give up and at some point to just throw in the towel and say it's easier to go to work for somebody else or do something else. But I've just seen in the students that have graduated that have formed these companies and then going on to be successful, each time something sort of difficult or complicated comes at them or a reason why they should give up, the ones that are truly passionate about it don’t and use it to somehow gain leverage on a situation to turn it into something positive. 

That probably begs the question of what is passion and I'm not sure I have like a ready flip answer for it, but it does seem like just a massive curiosity and a need to know things, and that passion in the context of a business is contained within the business. But generally it's just a thirst to know how the world works right? And how people are and why things are the way they are.

How to Apply Psychology Passion in Business Work - Hammans Stallings

In Chapter 3 of 22 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, innovation strategist Hammans Stallings answers "How Do You Apply Your Passion for Psychology in Your Business Career?"  Stallings' undergraduate education in economics and psychology help him learn how the world works.  For Stallings, his psychology passion helps him generate new approaches and ideas to better understand people and human behavior in a business environment.  This is Hammans Stallings' Year 2 CYF interview.  Stallings is currently a Senior Strategist at frog design.  Previously he worked in business strategy at Dell and investment banking at Stephens.  He earned an MBA from the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, a MS in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business and a BA in Economics and Psychology from the University of Virginia. 

Transcription: 

Erik Michielsen: How do you apply your passion for psychology in your business career?

Hammans Stallings: Psychology has been my -- my secret weapon of sorts, so if you go back to my -- my undergraduate where I spent time to studying economics and psychology, two fields that have not always kind of gotten along. And I spent a lot of time in kind of a state of cognitive dissonance where I was comparing and contrasting how the two fields thought about people and thought about explaining the world.

If you recall, I was very close to going to graduate school for psychology and I'd decided not to because I didn't quite yet know what I wanted to be or how I wanted to make an impact, so -- spent five to six years kind of in the wilderness wandering around before getting to come back to a role where I can work directly upon my background in psychology. That said, when you study those things, those ideas change kind of how you see the world and change how you frame up any situation, as well -- I spent a lot of time studying decision making, cognition and learning and memory.

So, it was always something that I could benefit directly from myself and so I can -- I could always understand that there were any heuristics and biases that might be kind of falling but from a less, say selfish introspective kind of use in psychology toward using them, using those tools and frames as a way to kind of understand other people. I find that business tends to -- to lack I would say, that kind of theoretical framework around people and tends to use one of oversimplification, say marketing is a field. It has people do a lot of self-reporting. We know from psychology that that's really quite bogus yet the entire subcategories in marketing really rely on that assumption being true and it's not. So, I would say that my passion for psychology allows me to -- to sort of see through that, and to see through the self-report and other kind of assumptions like that as bogus. To create new things that maybe are in better fitting with what I know about people.

So it means creating new tools. It means creating a new way of framing up how people are responding, and how they're using things. So, having a background and a passion in psychology for me means that I'm able to generate new things, generate new ideas, whereas, a lot of people I think accept the tools of their field as kind of a given and they don't understand the -- the limitations of those tools. So having a background in a field that, I'd say, should be like a lingua franca for -- for applied social science means that you could actually do cutting edge, you know, creating new tools and new perspectives on -- on people.

How Reading Passion Shapes Learning Style - Hammans Stallings

In Chapter 8 of 22 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, innovation strategist Hammans Stallings answers "Where Did Your Passion for Reading Originate?"  Stallings shares how he read for escape during summer camp as a kid.  As he grew up, he learned to read to get into the minds of people he would not necessarily have the chance to meet.  He finds great value in gaining insight into the thought process of those he reads about.  This is Hammans Stallings' Year 2 CYF interview.  Stallings is currently a Senior Strategist at frog design.  Previously he worked in business strategy at Dell and investment banking at Stephens.  He earned an MBA from the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, a MS in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business and a BA in Economics and Psychology from the University of Virginia.

How to Make Learning a Lifetime Pursuit - Hammans Stallings

In Chapter 9 of 22 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, innovation strategist Hammans Stallings answers "What is Your Approach to Lifelong Learning?"  Stallings notes how he chooses to work in areas where new problems constantly appear.  This forces him to constantly learn new things so he is better prepared to resolve problems.  He references his work applying behavioral psychology for retail consumers to business model design.  This is Hammans Stallings' Year 2 CYF interview.  Stallings is currently a Senior Strategist at frog design.  Previously he worked in business strategy at Dell and investment banking at Stephens.  He earned an MBA from the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, a MS in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business and a BA in Economics and Psychology from the University of Virginia. 

How Strategist Improves Creative Career Skills - Hammans Stallings

In Chapter 11 of 22 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, innovation strategist Hammans Stallings answers "How is Your Creative Toolbox Changing?"  Stallings pushes himself to learn from peers to learn new ways to communicate and solve problems.  Through the process he focuses on not only learning new skills but finding ways to connect his skills together.  This is Hammans Stallings' Year 2 CYF interview.  Stallings is currently a Senior Strategist at frog design.  Previously he worked in business strategy at Dell and investment banking at Stephens.  He earned an MBA from the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, a MS in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business and a BA in Economics and Psychology from the University of Virginia. 

Why Use Varied Perspectives to Solve Problems - Hammans Stallings

In Chapter 19 of 22 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, innovation strategist Hammans Stallings answers "What is the Importance of Understanding a Problem from Different Perspectives?"  Stallings shares a quote how the same mind that led to the creation of a problem is rarely the one that leads to the resolution of the problem.  Stallings discusses the importance of bringing a different set of eyes, experiences, and tools to a problem.  He uses a Swiss Army Knife in a problem solving analogy and how different tools have varying impact on successfully resolving a problem.  This is Hammans Stallings' Year 2 CYF interview.  Stallings is currently a Senior Strategist at frog design.  Previously he worked in business strategy at Dell and investment banking at Stephens.  He earned an MBA from the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, a MS in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business and a BA in Economics and Psychology from the University of Virginia. 

3 Ways to Better Understand and Solve Problems - Hammans Stallings

In Chapter 21 of 22 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, innovation strategist Hammans Stallings answers "How Do Listening and Research Help You Understand and Solve Problems?"  Stallings notes how listening is a form or research.  Stallings finds the most important listening skill to be what is not said.  Also, he looks for implicit assumptions that are present.  Lastly, he makes a point to get a high level, or meta, understanding of the situation.  This is Hammans Stallings' Year 2 CYF interview.  Stallings is currently a Senior Strategist at frog design.  Previously he worked in business strategy at Dell and investment banking at Stephens.  He earned an MBA from the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, a MS in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business and a BA in Economics and Psychology from the University of Virginia. 

Advice from Courtney Spence on Starting Career in Social Entrepreneurship

In Chapter 19 of 19 in her 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit executive Courtney Spence answers "What is Your Advice to Aspiring Social Entrepreneurs on How to Start a Career?"  Spence details the importance of curiosity and cultivating it through research and conversations.  After gaining enough inputs Spence notes how aspiring social entrepreneurs will be better prepared to take action on the knowledge gained.  Courtney Spence returns to CYF for her Year 3 interview.  As Founder and Executive Director, Spence leads non-profit Students of the World to empower college students to use film, photography, and journalism to tell stories of global issues and the organizations working to address them.  Spence graduated with a BA in History from Duke University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: What is your advice to aspiring social entrepreneurs and how to start a career?

Courtney Spence: One of the essential qualities of really great entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs – the essential characteristic is that of curiosity. I think that we are all curious human beings but I think entrepreneurs, in general, are -- tend to be more curious than others, and so really understanding how to cultivate that curiosity and how to encourage that curiosity, and I think the ways to do that are by reading, and by meeting with new people, and going to new places, and really – as you’re trying to incubate your idea, really seeking out advice from as many people as you can, from as many diverse fields as you can.

I mean if you’re gonna go create a non-profit, don’t just go talk to people that run non-profits, you know? That’s why I think, you know, South by Southwest is such a great conference and a time to be in Austin irregardless of whether or not you’re in tech or communications or music or film, I think that you come here and you’re emotionally and intellectually stimulated in so many different ways and if you are an entrepreneur, and you’re coming up with an idea or a plan to change the world, you need to be stimulated in a lot of different ways, and in ways that you’re not anticipating right now. Because if you only cultivate that one aspect of what you’re trying to do, you put blinders on and you limit not only what you could really go out and do but how effective you can be in your mission and what you’re trying to achieve.

So really cultivating that curiosity and really soaking up as much information and knowledge and reading and conversations, and then knowing when to stop. Because at some point you will find that everybody has an opinion and everybody is giving you advice and some people say go right and some people say go left, and some will say go up, and then others will say go down. You will always get conflicting advice, and at some point you have to know, okay, I’ve taken in a lot, I need to retreat and really reflect on the advice I’ve been given, on the articles that I’ve read, on the books I’ve been reading, and figure out where is the right direction for me to go with this idea, this organization or for myself.

How to Use Your Network to Make Better Decisions

In Chapter 12 of 15 in her 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, entrepreneur Audrey Parker French answers "How Do You Use Your Network to Get Help Making Career and Life Decisions?"  She shares how her network provides her additional information she does not have personally.  She notes the importance of discerning matching requests to expertise in her outreach.  She notes how this allows her network to shift and evolve over time.  Audrey Parker French returns to CYF for her Year 3 interview after a one-year sabbatical from work and getting married.  She co-founded CLEAResult, an energy management consulting firm.  In 2010, CLEAResult ranked #144 in the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing private companies.  In late 2010, CLEAResult was sold to General Catalyst Partners.  She graduated from Wake Forest University. 

“There is, I believe, a certain kind of a magic that can happen with a network. People introducing you to the right people who have the right opportunity that you didn’t even quite realize you were looking for...”

— Audrey Parker French

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How do you use your network to get help making career and life decisions?

Audrey Parker: Well, I use my network as a sounding board. I think about something. I do my best to work it out or to piece something together. And then what a network does is it provides additional information that I can’t get to in my own head. So if and when I need advice or I’m looking for advice about a decision in my life, I think, “Okay, who in my network can help me with this decision? Who’s gonna be a good person to call?” And in the past, I learned the hard way that I need to be careful with who I ask for feedback in a net—I mean we all need to be careful, you know, if we ask someone who has an expertise in dentistry for help with you know, what shoes to buy, that’s probably a mismatch. But if you go to someone who has an expertise in home design and you really want someone to help you design your lifestyle and your home, that’s gonna be a better fit.

So really the way that my network helps me is that depending on the advice or the guidance that I need, I pick out the people who are going to help me get there and what’s interesting is it helps my network shift as I ask those questions. So I’ve met – over the last year, I’ve met a lot of new people because I went to my network to certain people that I knew and I said, “Hey, I’m looking at this.” Or, “I’m curious about that.” And the people that I automatically have gotten connected to through those circles take me further down the road where I’m wanting to head anyway.

So there is, I believe, a certain kind of a magic that can happen with a network. People introducing you to the right people who have the right opportunity that you didn’t even quite realize you were looking for and that actually is the way that I met my husband. I have to thank my network on that one. A friend of mine invited me out and I met someone who knew my husband and the next time I went out with, you know, the same kind of people, he was there, and we met, so, you know, I didn’t realize that I was even looking for, I mean I knew on some level but I hadn’t gone to that friend for that reason, but networks can definitely bring you what you’re looking for in ways that you – we just can’t see.

How to Seek Advice When Preparing for Parenthood - James McCormick

In Chapter 3 of 18 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, legal career advisor James McCormick answers "How Did You Go About Seeking Advice as You Prepared for Parenthood?" McCormick shares who he approached and what he asked them about.  Understanding each parenting experience has its unique moments, McCormick shares where the knowledge gained in the conversations was most useful.  James McCormick is a Partner at Empire Search Partners in New York City.  Previously, he practiced law as an employee benefits and executive compensation attorney for Proskauer Rose and Jones Day.  He earned a JD at Tulane Law School and a BA in History at the University of Michigan. 

How to Break Out of a Comfort Zone - James McCormick

In Chapter 18 of 18 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, legal career advisor James McCormick answers "Where is Your Comfort Zone and What Do You Do to Break Free of Living in It?"  McCormick shares how routines provide comfort and how they sometimes can be too comfortable.  He shares a perspective on taking initiative to learn and try new things to balance the routines.  James McCormick is a Partner at Empire Search Partners in New York City.  Previously, he practiced law as an employee benefits and executive compensation attorney for Proskauer Rose and Jones Day.  He earned a JD at Tulane Law School and a BA in History at the University of Michigan. 

Developing a Creative Leadership Style - Jason Anello

In Chapter 8 of 20 in his 2012 interview, creative director Jason Anello answers "What Does It Mean to Be a Leader in What You Do?"  He finds leadership comes at the intersection of communication and curiosity.  By honing his approach to finding and presenting ideas he earns the respect of those around him and create a demand for his services.  Jason Anello is a founding partner and creative director at marketing services agency Manifold Partners.  He is also the co-founder of the Forking Tasty Brooklyn supper club.  Previously, Anello held creative leadership roles at Yahoo! and Ogilvy & Mather.  He graduated from the University at Albany. 

Learning Cooking Skills Staging in Restaurant Kitchens

In Chapter 5 of 16 in her 2012 interview, author and food writer Cathy Erway answers "How Did You Decide to Stage in California Restaurant Kitchens and What Did the Experience Teach You?"  Erway finds it highly educational immersing herself in kitchens, be they restaurants or supper clubs.  She takes a trip to California, where she stages, or interns, at several restaurant kitchens, including Tartine Bakery and Chez Panisse. 

“I like the idea of being silent and being told what to do and just doing something manually for a long time. I think that’s a good intern at a restaurant—just listen, just zone out and like listen to everything that’s going on. ”

— Cathy Erway

Cathy Erway is an author and food writer living in Brooklyn.  Her first book, "The Art of Eating In" developed from her blog "Not Eating Out in New York".  She earned a BA in creative writing from Emerson College.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen:  How do you decide to stage in California restaurant kitchens, and what did the experiences teach you?

Cathy Erway:  Oh, man, I love staging, so I just love butting into kitchens, no matter if it's a real restaurant or a supper club production of some sort, or my friend's dinner party. So I was in San Francisco for a month and I really wanted to stage at Tartine Bakery. And they were doing some renovations. They were like, "Yeah, come back tomorrow." "Okay, yeah, I'll come back to tomorrow." I was like, "Shoot."

So I went around town asking to stage other places, and in one case, it was actually like a no-brainer. I was sitting at a bar, having a beer, and then somebody walked in wearing a chef's coat and sat down and like drank a beer in like 5 seconds and then got up and was about to leave to go back to cook. And I was like, "Oh, what restaurant?" He's like, "Oh, this place in SoMa district and," you know, he described it, and I was like, "Can I come cook sometime?" He's like, "Yeah, sure." And it was great. And then I made some friends or I had some friends in the area, who very graciously -- I think that it's a small world or in the food scenes, I don't know, but he knew everybody. So he hooked me up with a stage opportunity at Chez Panisse, which was pretty amazing. Loved it.

Erik Michielsen:  What did you learn?

Cathy Erway:  Well, I feel like I have a good sense of the differences of California cuisine and New York cuisine. They use so many herbs, it's insane. Like going into their walk-in, there's like a whole walk-in just for herbs. And there's like drawers of like every single kind of herb. Chervil? Who uses chervil in New York City? I don't know of too many. But they all have this. And sometimes salads are just like simply a pile of beautifully fluffy fresh herbs. And I mean, they're lucky they can grow it anywhere. It's temperate. They have it all year round, you know, kind of spoiled, right? But, yeah, I mean, that's -- and that's naturally what they cook with, you know, all these--you know, sometimes wild fennel because it grows everywhere, we used that -- and oh, Chez Panisse, there was a great dish where they pounded the wild fennel in this mortar and pestle.

Chez Panisse is really into using archaic instruments too. At one point, we were pounding roasted red peppers with the mortar and pestle and I was like, "Why aren't we using a food processor?" But that's -- you know... It's all about doing things by hand.

Erik Michielsen:  And what questions did you ask?

Cathy Erway:  Aside from "Why don't we use a food processor?"  I don't -- I didn't really want to ask too many questions. I like the idea of being silent and being told what to do and just doing something manually for a long time. I think that's a good intern at a restaurant--just listen, just zone out and like listen to everything that's going on. 

What Gets Easier and What Gets Harder - Doug Jaeger

In Chapter 1 of 17 in his 2012 interview, entrepreneur Doug Jaeger answers "What is Getting Easier and What is Getting Harder in Your Life?"  He finds learning is getting easier and is pushing himself to learn coding and filmmaking.  Jaeger also notes how getting older affects energy levels and the need for rest.  Doug Jaeger is the co-founder of JaegerSloan, a multimedia design services firm in New York City.  His street front office doubles as the JS55 Gallery. Jaeger is also an adjunct professor at the School of Visual Arts (SVA).  He graduated from Syracuse University.

How Curiosity Stimulates Creativity - Doug Jaeger

In Chapter 10 of 17 in his 2012 interview, entrepreneur Doug Jaeger answers "How Does Changing Your Surrounding Fosters Creative Thinking?"  Jaeger notes two ways to stimulate new ideas, creativity and curiosity.  He shares how changing surroundings opens new avenues for curiosity that translates into creative thinking.  Doug Jaeger is the co-founder of JaegerSloan, a multimedia design services firm in New York City.  His street front office doubles as the JS55 Gallery. Jaeger is also an adjunct professor at the School of Visual Arts (SVA).  He graduated from Syracuse University.

How to Use Customer Feedback to Improve Product - Julie Hession

In Chapter 20 of 21 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, food entrepreneur Julie Hession answers "What Tools and Processes Do You Find Most Useful in Measuring Business Performance?"  Hession relies on customer feedback to evolve her product marketing.  By doing in-store sampling demos of her granola, she gathers feedback on product positioning and quality.  Julie Hession is the founder of Julie Anne's All Natural Granola Company.  Passionate about food since childhood, Hession has developed her career by food blogging, cooking contests, and starting fine food companies.  Hession earned an MBA in Marketing from Duke University and a BA from UNLV. 

When to Stop Learning and Start Doing - Kyung Yoon

In Chapter 3 of 19 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, non-profit executive Kyung Yoon answers "What is Your Comfort Zone and What Do You Do to Break Free of Living in It?  Yoon finds her comfort zone is learning something new, as evidenced in her immersion across varied careers in economic analysis, journalism, and, now, philanthropy.  Excited by learning, Yoon makes it a priority to then apply that learning in her career.  Kyung Yoon is the executive director of the Korean American Community Foundation (KACF) in New York City.  An award-winning journalist and documentary film producer, Yoon earned an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in History and Political Science at Wellesley College.