Adam Carter on Growing a Step-Sister Relationship

In Chapter 13 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "How Are Your Family Relationships Changing With Age?"  Carter talks about building a relationship with his step-sister and taking her on a micro-philanthropy project trip after she graduated high school.  By giving her an opportunity to raise money and do micro-philanthropy, Carter bonds with his little sister and opens her eyes to non-traditional education possibilities, which leads her to do the Global Citizen Year program. 

Adam Carter is a micro-philanthropist currently living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He is the founder of the Cause and Affect Foundation which raises small amounts of financing to provide direct-to-source project funding for individuals and communities in need across the globe.  To date, Carter has traveled to over 80 countries.  He earned an MA in International Development from George Washington University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How are your family relationships changing as you get older?

Adam Carter: Well, in the march of time as we all get older; it’s really interesting to see how our relationships and our roles change with each other, whether it’s between son and mother, son and father or even son and sibling.

In the case of—My father was remarried and had two children so, technically my half-sister, which I affectionately call my sister. My sister is 20 years younger than myself. She was born when I was in college. So when I started traveling the world, she was 2-3 years old.

So as she got older, I can only imagine what ideas she had of her big brother—this guy that would come from faraway lands. Each year he’d come back, he’d look different, he’d have a different hairstyle, he’d have different facial hair, he’d have different clothes, whatever, and so over time, we formed a really wonderful bond.

And as she started to mature, she became more interested in these places that I was going and this lifestyle that I was leading, and I could really sense that interest. So I asked her if she would want to join me on one of these trips, and she said, “of course, how can we make it happen?” We were thinking about— in Illinois, you’re able to take your child out to home school them. So we had spoken with the principal. We had gotten permission to do that. It turns out that that was—would be a challenge because she would have to be learning certain classes while we were doing that, and taking my sister around Latin America and teaching her trigonometry and biology didn’t seem to be too cohesive.

So what we did is she was able to graduate early from high school, and so she graduated a semester early, and then she came and traveled with me for four months, and I really approached this as kind of a, almost kind of like a training session. I mean, I wanted it to be as fun and as enriching as possible, and so first thing that we did is she raised money in Chicago before she left. She made these bracelets that she sews and was able to sell those to friends and family and, you know, members of their congregation, whatever, and came up with $1,200, which is quite a nice sum of money, and she was then able visit projects with me on behalf of Cause & Affect, and not only be an observer, but be a participant. Since this was money that she had raised, I allowed her to have a role in—really just teach her the process from the ground up, which is, okay, here we are.

So we started in Guatemala, and we did some wonderful projects there. We repaired some cleft palates. Some of these babies that are born with cleft palates. Surgery, parents can’t afford it. They can’t afford it throughout the life of their kids, unfortunately, and so a lot of these kids grow up almost as a shame—an object of shame for the families, so we’re able to work with an organization that we partnered with before, and do some of these surgeries, which is incredible. It’s $200 each, so, I mean, simply with $600, she’s able to say, “Okay, look, we just completely changed the life of three of these babies.” I mean that’s the kind of thing that you can really feel that effect. And then I took her down to Panama. She had also had another friend that had amassed all these little teddy bears and things. It’s kind of her own pet project.

So we went down to a children’s hospital there in Panama City, and we were able to distribute these to all these kids, and, you know, that was a wonderful experience also to be able to, you know, see all these smiles. Even though it’s a small gesture for each of these kids it was—it brightened their day. And then from there we went down to Brazil and we spent a month in Rio, and she was volunteering with me at some of the organizations that I worked with, and it was incredible to see. I mean, you know, you grow up with somebody, and this is how you talk about the different relationships, you’re used to somebody like, okay, I changed your diapers and we’re playing hide and seek, and you’re getting older and we’re playing around, and here we are in our house—it’s our comfortable surroundings, right. And all of a sudden, here I am, I’m in the middle of Rocinha, this big favela, and we’re going up to visit this project, and we’re walking through these tight alleyways, or we’re on the back of a, you know, they have these moto-taxis to zoom around, and I kind of had a catharsis at one point, where I’m on the back of this guy’s motorcycle and I see my sister zooming up the hill on the back of this other guy’s motorcycle, and you’re just like, “wow, you know, we’ve come a long way.”

So it’s been wonderful to see her open her world and help be a part of that consciousness being born, and she’s actually now back in Brazil. She’s doing a really cool exchange program where she’s working with a social organization down there. It’s a program called Global Citizen Year, which is an incredible, kind of like a gap year program. So it’s been really fun to help, kind of propel her into this new adventure, and, you know, so many people have said, “Oh, man, she’s so lucky to have a brother that can take her to do this.” And I said, “Yeah, she is lucky. I wish I had that.” You know, 20 years ago, I definitely had to kind of jump in headfirst and learn the hard way, but, yeah, it’s been wonderful to see that relationship being able to evolve, in that sense.

Ken Rona on How to Be a More Effective Corporate Manager

In Chapter 14 of 15 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Ken Rona answers "How Are You Learning to Thrive in a Corporate Organizational Structure?"  Rona shares knowledge he has gained from management work experience in large corporate cultures.  He notes how being patient has been fundamental to improving managerial effectiveness and helping him achieve goals. 

Ken Rona is a Vice President at Turner Broadcasting, where he leads teams across advertising sales, big data software development and business strategy.  Rona earned a BA and MA in Political Science from Stony Brook University and a PhD in Behavioral Economics from Duke University.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How are you learning to thrive inside a corporate organizational structure?

Ken Rona: If I could give someone one piece of advice around that they were gonna go to a large company, a large kind of corporate, kind of very traditional--traditionally structured company, I would say the critical thing is patience. 

So I use this phrase “the market will clear.” Remember what I said about learning? I have like these little kind of small phrases that I like to use, that’s one of them. “The market will clear.” And by that I mean at some point the right thing will happen. And—because I think people when they’re in companies—when they are reliant on other people to do stuff. You know, you say, “Why are they not doing this? Like it is so obvious. They just need to do this thing and the world will be so much better.” 

One of two things happens, if you’re patient, either one, if—and you’re right. That person does it. So you know you were getting yourself nutty for no reason, that it was gonna happen. Or they don’t do it, you are right, they don’t do it, it becomes obvious that you are right, that person gets kind of either, you know, removed in some fashion or another—someone else comes in and they do it. So by that I mean the market, that’s what I mean when the market clears. If you wait the market, you know, the market will get to its equilibrium. The right thing will happen. 

Sometimes that waiting time can be very long. I’ve certainly seen—I have seen in the case of one of the companies I worked for, it was weird. It was wacky. And me and some of the people I worked with were just like we can’t believe this company is a success. And like they’ve gotta have a contraction, they’ve got—it’s just badly run. And I—you know, and I believed that, and I left. A year later I’m like—They’re still doing fine. I’m like, “How could that be? How could they still be doing well?” Another 6 months goes by, the stock falls 60%, the market cleared. So in my experience, if you are patient and you are trying to do the right thing—if you do the right thing and be patient, if you can. There are certainly times where you need urgency. But in general, my counsel is patience. Just be cool.

Mark Graham on Embracing a Corporate Career Path

In Chapter 9 of 17 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Mark Graham answers "How Are You Learning to Work Across a Corporate Organizational Culture?"  Graham shares how he has learned to embrace working at large corporations, starting with his first two jobs at Borders and General Motors and continuing on to VH1.  Corporate job experience teaches Graham how to manage more effectively across large, diverse teams. 

Mark Graham is currently a managing editor at VH1, an MTV Networks company. Previously Graham worked in editing and writing roles at New York Magazine and Gawker Media.  He graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in English.  

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How are you learning to work across a corporate organizational structure?

Mark Graham: Most people hate corporations but I sort of love corporations, and I think part of it is just that’s sort of the way that I was—that I’ve been raised in my professional career. My first job out of college, I worked for Borders. Rest in peace, Borders. No longer exists as a company, but I did work for a big organization and sort of learned in the marketing—in a marketing role, sort of learned how different areas of organizations interface and how projects get green-lit and budgeted and accomplished and realized. 

From there, I went and I worked at General Motors, another huge corporation. And so I think—and Viacom, again, that’s another huge corporation. For whatever reason, I enjoy it. I like being able to touch lots of different areas of a business, to interface with different people who have different skill sets, different goals, different needs. 

Now I’m on the editorial side but I used to work on the marketing side of the business. I sort of understand how the numbers work and how to really integrate people and understand different goals of different teams within the organization, and be able to navigate that way. So I think just having grown up in corporate environments, I just sort of get it, and I like it, I understand—I sort of understand how things work within those spaces, and it’s something that I feel very comfortable in.

Mark Graham on Planning Digital Content Strategy Working in TV

In Chapter 14 of 17 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Mark Graham "What Role Does Content Strategy Play in Your Work?"  Graham notes cable television remains the foundation of big media business, including his company VH1, and gets the majority of its audience and its advertising income from on-air programming.  He talks about working in strategic content planning and how the work is becoming progressively digital.  Graham offers examples of how media companies are packaging content for consumption across TV, mobile, desktop, laptop, and tablet platforms as consumer behavior trends mature into larger population segments.  From short-form music artist online video interviews to Spotify featured playlists to live streaming events over mobile, Graham paints a picture of the future of how digital media companies will evolve to meet its adapting consumer audience preferences. 

Mark Graham is currently a managing editor at VH1, an MTV Networks company. Previously Graham worked in editing and writing roles at New York Magazine and Gawker Media.  He graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in English.  

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What role does content strategy play in your work?

Mark Graham: It’s of a primary essence in everything that we do. And by that, what I mean by strategy is, VH1 is obviously as of right now a television network, primarily. That’s where advertisers pay us. That’s how we make our money. That’s where we have our largest viewership. But as the cable industry starts to change and evolve, VH1 is probably over the course of the next 5-10 years, will still be a TV station. Hopefully. But we’re also gonna be producing content for other devices in other places. Whether that be mobile, on your iPhone or your iPad, or streaming things on your laptop, people consume content differently based upon the device that they’re using to consume it. 

So when we’re putting together ideas for content, when talent is coming in, we discuss lots of different ways that we can package information for different types of audiences based upon how they’re gonna be consuming it. You know, sometimes it’s a print interview that will run a thousand words, that goes really in depth on certain matters with bands. Sometimes it’ll be little 30-second video clips that are, you know, really get to the point, really gets to the essence, something that’s newsy and timely and makes a good bite and something that’s funny and that people are gonna share. Sometimes it’s, you know, working with an artist catalog, you know, an established artist who’s come out with a new record taking a look back at their career and maybe putting together things like a Spotify playlist that showcases the ebbs and flow of their particular career and how they have sort of arrived at the point they’re at today. 

So we look at content not just in a very—we’re talking to this particular artist and it’s going to be an interview. As we’re developing the strategies for our interviews, we’re really cognizant of the ways we’re putting—we’re actually gonna package that and release that out to consumers at the end of the day.

Anatole Faykin on How to Make the Most of Living in a City

In Chapter 1 of 12 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, entrepreneur Anatole Faykin answers "How Do You Make the Most of Living in the City?"  For Faykin, it comes down to walkable cities.  Cities such as Beijing challenge Faykin because they are not very walkable.  He contrasts this with Shanghai which has more pedestrian and walker friendly neighborhoods.  He finds New York City a very walkable city and as a result has enjoyed exploring it and living in it. 

Anatole Faykin is an entrepreneur currently working on a new startup as part of the Startup Chile incubator program in Santiago, Chile.  Previously, Faykin founded Tuanpin, a Shanghai, China-based daily deals site he grew to 25 employees and sold in the fall of 2011. He has worked for British Telecom in London, Intel in Shanghai, American Express in New York, and Oracle in San Francisco as well as several startups. He holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business and a BS in computer science and biology from the California Institute of Technology.

Anatole Faykin: How Oracle Silicon Valley Job Teaches Work Ethic

In Chapter 11 of 12 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, entrepreneur Anatole Faykin answers "Where Did You Learn Your Work Ethic?"  Starting his career in Silicon Valley teaches Faykin it is not about set working hours or face time and more about getting projects done by deadlines.  His entry-level experience working at Oracle influences his later career choices as an entrepreneur to create flexible workplace cultures. 

Anatole Faykin is an entrepreneur currently working on a new startup as part of the Startup Chile incubator program in Santiago, Chile.  Previously, Faykin founded Tuanpin, a Shanghai, China-based daily deals site he grew to 25 employees and sold in the fall of 2011. He has worked for British Telecom in London, Intel in Shanghai, American Express in New York, and Oracle in San Francisco as well as several startups. He holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business and a BS in computer science and biology from the California Institute of Technology.

Finding Daily Inspiration Living in the City - Conrad Doucette

In Chapter 5 of 19 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, musician Conrad Doucette answers "How Do You Make the Most of Living in the City?"  Doucette speaks to the daily interaction of coming into contact with artistic, creative and passionate people.  He shares what he enjoyed about getting out of the big city and traveling out of town to Woodstock, New York, where he found musical inspiration.  He realizes how he enjoys both city life and rural life but at his core the city life comes down to daily inspiration that can't be beat. 

Conrad Doucette is a Brooklyn musician and the drummer for Takka Takka, which released its 3rd studio album, AM Landscapes, in late 2012.  He has performed with Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, The National, Alina Simone, and many other leading acts.  When not performing music, Doucette is the communications and brand director at music licensing and publishing startup Jingle Punks.  Doucette earned a BA in History from the University of Michigan.

Garren Katz on Why Travel to Distant and Unfamiliar Places

In Chapter 7 of 15 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, business and personal coach Garren Katz answers "What Have You Found Most Rewarding About Traveling to New Places?"  Traveling to distant and unfamiliar places teaches Katz about people.  He finds this is something he is unable to get by watching TV or movies - being present in a foreign place connects him not only to people he meets but also to humanity in general. 

Garren Katz is a business and personal coach based in State College, PA and advises his national client base on small business management, entrepreneurship, relationships, and personal finances.  He is also an active angel investor in several business ventures.  He earned his BA from Western Michigan University. 

Simon Sinek on Why Travel to Distant and Unfamiliar Places

In Chapter 4 of 16 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, author and public speaker Simon Sinek answers "What Have You Found Most Rewarding About Traveling to New Places?"  Sinek notes how anytime you go somewhere new, exotic or not, takes you away from your day to day life.  Getting exposed to people who think differently and see the world differently you learn new things.  Sinek finds this keeps his mind open while still making close, personal connections in his travels.  Sinek also points out the single most important leadership quality is curiosity.  Simon Sinek teaches leaders and organizations how to inspire people.  His goal is to "inspire people to do the things that inspire them" and help others find fulfillment in their work.  Sinek is the author of "Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action".  He works regularly with the United States Military, United States Congress, and many organizations, agencies and entrepreneurs.  Sinek is an adjunct professor at Columbia University and an adjunct staff member at the think tank RAND Corporation.  Sinek earned a BA in Cultural Anthropology from Brandeis University.

Transcript

Erik Michielsen:  What have you found most rewarding about traveling to new places?

Simon Sinek:  I mean, any time you go somewhere new, it takes you away from your desk, right? And you can’t learn anything when you’re sitting at home seeing the same thing every day. And so, traveling to new places, they don’t have to be exotic places, you can go to, you know, the middle of the country, you know? If you live in New York, that is an exotic place, but—you know, when you’re exposed to the way – to different people who think differently, see the world differently, you know, you learn new things. You find things that you—that have been there plainly obviously before but you never saw them before, right? And so it keeps your mind open, and more importantly, you also find that no matter where you go, you’ll find people that you connect with on a deep personal level. Any culture, any language, you can find close personal connections. And I think that’s—you know, if anybody who’s sort of afraid to venture, it’s the most eye opening thing you could do is to go away. Not to mention the fact that the single most important quality of leadership is curiosity. And so those who are curious about others and curious about the world, it only benefits you in everything else you do.

How Your Social Experiences Can Boost Your Career - Randall Metting

In Chapter 3 of 7 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, brand marketer and on-air radio personality Randall Metting answers "How Are Your Personal Experiences Shaping Your Professional Aspirations?"  Metting talks about how his social experiences - from watching live music to attending sporting events to volunteering at numerous Austin charities - are instructing him how to better bring people together in his life and career.  Randall Metting is an on-air radio personality at 93.3 KGSR Radio in Austin, Texas.  When not on the radio, Metting consults organizations on integrated marketing strategy and brand development.  He also writes the Austin community music and entertainment blog at www.randallmetting.com.  Metting earned a B.A. in Advertising from the University of Florida.

What Gets Easier and What Gets Harder - Randall Metting

In Chapter 4 of 7 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, brand marketer and on-air radio personality Randall Metting answers "What is Getting Easier and What is Getting Harder in Your Life?"  Metting notes how after five years in Austin and putting himself out there in the community, it is getting much easier to network.  He is challenged with thinking about the next step in his career - from doing radio to serving charities to working in marketing, Randall looks to put his passion for work carving out a job that matches his interests.  Randall Metting is an on-air radio personality at 93.3 KGSR Radio in Austin, Texas.  When not on the radio, Metting consults organizations on integrated marketing strategy and brand development.  He also writes the Austin community music and entertainment blog at www.randallmetting.com.  Metting earned a B.A. in Advertising from the University of Florida.

Why Traveling Abroad Can Help You Understand Home - Ross Floate

In Chapter 8 of 20 in his 2012 interview, branding and design strategist Ross Floate answers "What Have You Found Most Rewarding About Traveling to New Places?"  Floate finds traveling to distant places helps remind him about what is good about his home, Melbourne, Australia.  He grounds this in a concept from Sigmund Freud called the narcissism of small differences.  Travel experience teaches Floate to determine the amount of time he needs to travel to be successful in business.  Ross Floate is a principal at Melbourne, Australia-based Floate Design Partners.  Experienced in branding, design and both online and offline publishing, Floate and his team provide marketing services to clients seeking to better communicate business and culture goals via image, messaging, and story. He is a graduate of RMIT University.

How to Fix Entrepreneurship Skill Gaps in Education - Richard Moross

In Chapter 8 of 17 in his 2012 interview, London entrepreneur and Moo.com CEO Richard Moross answers "How Can the Education System Better Prepare Entrepreneurs?"  Moross notes the high occurrence of the education system failing to educate entrepreneurs.  He notes the importance of education teaching core skills such as how to argue, how to make a case and how to plan strategy.  He finds it is less about teaching students how to start companies and more about providing access and training to core skills, especially programming or writing code, as well as a broader cultural education that starting a company is a viable career option.  Moross is founder and CEO of Moo.com and a leader in the London startup scene.  Before starting Moo.com, an award-winning online print business, Moross was a strategist at Imagination, the world's largest independent design company.  He graduated from the University of Sussex, where he majored in philosophy and politics.

Adapting British Business Culture for U.S. Expansion - Richard Moross

In Chapter 12 of 17 in his 2012 interview, London entrepreneur and Moo.com CEO Richard Moross answers "What Has Working Internationally Taught You About Communicating Across Cultures?"  Moross discusses taking his London, UK based company into the United States and the cultural and customer differences that have come with it.  He discusses the importance of understanding employees on their terms, for example knowing about commutes, and doing the same for customers, in particular how product demand varies by region.  Moross is founder and CEO of Moo.com and a leader in the London startup scene.  Before starting Moo.com, an award-winning online print business, Moross was a strategist at Imagination, the world's largest independent design company.  He graduated from the University of Sussex, where he majored in philosophy and politics.

Joe Stump on How to Break Out of a Comfort Zone

In Chapter 5 of 14 in his 2012 interview, Internet entrepreneur Joe Stump answers "What Is Your Comfort Zone and What Do You Do to Break Free of Living in It?"  To break free of his comfort zone - beer, women, and large scale web infrastructure - Stump finds ways that give him a window into new parts of the world he has yet to experience.  This starts at a young age when Joe reads encyclopedias for fun.  It continues into his adult years as Stump adventures into different cultures, foods, and places and incrementally takes steps to get him out of his comfort zone.  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: What is your comfort zone and what do you do to break free of living in it?

Joe Stump: I'm a very simple man. I like three things: beer, women, and large-scale web infrastructure. So that’s my comfort zone. And to get out of that, I do a lot of things. I like to -- I do a lot of random reading. I’ve always -- even as a kid, I read encyclopedias for fun just because I liked learning about new weird things. So, I do a lot of that. I take in a lot of information that has nothing to do with what I do.

But I do that because it gives me a window into areas of the world that I may not ever be able to experience. And may not even really have any interest in experiencing. I also like to travel a lot. I think that that definitely gets people out of their comfort zone because you're usually experiencing new cultures, new language, new environments, new weather, new locales. So I'm a big fan of traveling. So, those are the main things.

I have a general rule that I’ll try anything once as long as it doesn’t represent severe possible danger to my body. But yeah, I think the world would be a lot better place if people had – if they were open-minded enough to just try it. Just try it. Trying that new cuisine that you’ve never tried, like, you know, Indian cuisine is a common example.

We're from the Midwest, right? You tell people that you went out and had – or sushi. Sushi in the Midwest, you might as well tell people that you're like eating babies for breakfast. Right? They're like, “Ugh! Oh God!” Like just try it. Millions of people eat sushi every day and they all live to tell about it. You're not going to die if you have one piece of sashimi. So, I think that’s a really good rule, too. Take incremental steps outside of your comfort zone and next thing you know, you’ve taken big strides outside of your comfort zone.

Jon Kolko on How to Design Culturally Relevant Social Solutions

In Chapter 16 of 21 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, design educator Jon Kolko answers "How Have You Learned More Effectively Across Cultures?"  Kolko notes how design work is culture-dependent.  He notes how impact-based design is local and often constrained by the cultural environment.  This often limits scalability yet allows students to better focus their solution design for the communities it will serve. 

Jon Kolko is 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: How have you learned to work more effectively across different cultures?

Jon Kolko: Design work is explicitly tied to culture and in a super nuanced way. So, a design solution that works in this particular culture may or not work in a different culture and I don’t necessarily mean country or geographic boundary. It can be culture as defined by style, as designed by fashion, anywhere there are shared values. And so, when you're dealing with design for impact, it's really, really local and micro-driven, which is directly at odds with most impact investing and a lot of the places where you will find big money like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation who are looking to fund scalable solutions, solutions that aren’t going to affect 500, or 1,000, or 10,000, or even 100,000 people, that are going to affect 10 million people, 100 million people, a billion people. And I don’t claim to know if that’s a good or a bad process for them. I don’t know anything about their inner workings but for where my students are, which is nowhere near that in terms of impact, their solutions can’t, by definition, can't scale outside of a certain locale without changing.

It's not to say they can't change, but it's not a cookie cutter approach and traditionally design has been all about cookie cutter approaches. That is what design for manufacturing is about. It's about taking a single part and mass producing it exactly the same a hundred million times with no defects, shipping it all over the world. You can see where that breaks down in a really, really obtuse and dumb way with adapters on PCs that the same PC, the manufacturer has to make six or seven different ends to plug the thing in, in different countries. That has nothing to do with culture, it has everything to with these Legacy electric grids but that’s the equivalent of how prepared designers are to deal with that issue. It's like that’s all they know. Well, we got to localize it by changing the language and by using a different cord. No, no, no, it's so much deeper than that. The homeless in Belo Horizonte and the homeless in Austin, it's a different world. And to say somehow, “Yeah, I conducted a thousand hours of research with homeless in Austin and therefore my solution transfers to the middle of Brazil,” is just ridiculous. And so, I don’t know how my design work has changed as a result of that but my philosophy toward it is certainly crystallized around this idea of local design decisions being okay, that we don’t have to design for scale en-mass right away.

The Personal Rewards of Traveling for Work - Hammans Stallings

In Chapter 6 of 22 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, innovation strategist Hammans Stallings answers "What Have You Found Most Rewarding About Traveling to New Places?"  Stallings specifically discusses work travel and how it has given him the ability to quickly and repeatedly immerse himself into and appreciate different cultures.  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 Prepare for an International Work Project - Hammans Stallings

In Chapter 7 of 22 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, innovation strategist Hammans Stallings answers "What Has Working Internationally Taught You About Communicating Across Cultures?"  Stallings shares notes from his work projects in Ukraine, Germany, and Australia and how he has made it a point to arrive early and normalize himself in the culture before work begins.  He references Margaret Mead and the necessity to sit in a culture until no big surprises remain.  Stallings also learns to embrace the human bonds that connect all cultures.  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.