Hattie Elliot on Turning 30 and Updating Life and Career Plans

In Chapter 8 of 19 in her 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, female entrepreneur Hattie Grace Elliot answers "How Are Your Personal Experiences Shaping Your Professional Aspirations?"  Elliot shares how she recently turned 30 and how it has put a more immediate timeframe on her personal and professional goals.  From meeting your financial and savings goals to getting married and starting a family, Elliot makes a point to work through what she wants and how she is going to achieve those goals.  Hattie Grace Elliot is the founder and CEO of The Grace List, a social networking company that creates destination events and experiences to forge lasting personal and professional connections across its young professional members. Elliot graduated from the University of Cape Town in South Africa, where she studied economics, philosophy, and politics.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How are your personal experiences shaping your professional aspirations?

Hattie Elliot: Well, I’m getting older. I don’t know if I would say I’m necessarily super wiser, but older. And I think part of that is that, you know, I—there’s certain things that I’ve really wanted in my life, and it’s a lot easier when you’re in your, you know, early 20s, I turned 30 last year, I’m gonna be 31 this year. I’ve really enjoyed getting older, but at the same time you’re not in that position anymore where you’re like, “Someday I’ll have a family.” “Someday I’m gonna buy a house.” Someday this, someday that, like, today is that someday. 

So I think that that these personal aspirations and personal experiences and where you wanna be—especially when it comes to having a business in your professional life, you realize you kind of have to make sure that your professional life, especially in the case when you have your own business is able to provide you or that you’re able to, to the best of your ability, attain the personal aspirations that you want with the professional means that you have. That comes, you know, monetarily, you know, sense of security, because you wanna start building, like, a nest for yourself. A nest egg and be able to take care of yourself, and if you have kids, hope—you know, your kids and your parents as they get older, and your family. You want to be able to just live the life you wanna live. You know, you don’t wanna constantly be nickel and dime’ing it. 

If you wanna travel, or you want to live in a certain area, you wanna be able to actually provide that and be able to build that and do that for yourself and so you have to, you know, be able to—you know, whether it’s you feel like you need more time in order to do so more, personal time to, you know, build real relationships, to build a romantic relationship, to maintain relationships with friends and family to make you happy. You need more money to be able to actually just, you know, live your life the way that you wanna live it, you have to take that into account and structure your professional life accordingly. Whether it’s, you know, having more flexibility time-wise, and, you know, being more disciplined about that, or bringing in, you know, the amount of, you know, fiscal income that you need. So I’ve definitely become, you know, much more aware of that, and become much more strict about it.

Ken Rona on How Aspirations Change as Responsibilities Grow

In Chapter 11 of 15 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Ken Rona answers "How Are Your Aspirations Changing as Your Responsibilities Grow?"  Professionally, Rona points to how he has established trust with his colleagues and bosses to make decisions and solve problems.  This leads Rona to think about ways he could handle larger senior management responsibilities.  However, personally, Rona sees his aspiration as staying in Atlanta and making sure his wife and children are stabled and grounded. 

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 your aspirations changing as your responsibilities grow?

Ken Rona: One of the things that I think I’ve shown is that I can be trusted. I can be trusted with staff. I can be trusted with decisions. I can be trusted with problems. As I’ve kind of proven that trust, I start to say, “well, you know what? Maybe I could be the CEO or COO of a company. Maybe not something the size of Turner, but certainly in the analytic space, I’m probably—“ So I kind of see that vision and I think that’s not something that I saw 3, 4, 5 years ago. But I think that I—I think that I could be a pretty effective, you know, senior C level person at a company that does what I do. That’s not to say a media company. I wouldn’t -- I’m wholly unqualified for that. But you know—or to be like the head of global analytics for something. Like I think that’s—I think that’s where I’m headed and I didn’t see—I didn’t really see that vision 5 years ago certainly. But now I think professionally I do. 

I think the question is, is that gonna be good for my wife and the family? I think that those kinds of jobs might be—Like I would be very interested in it but I’m certainly not interested in it enough to put my family at risk, you know? Or you know, and the family the—or should I say, I’m not interested enough to put the family dynamic at risk. It was quite difficult to get everyone to Atlanta and to a happy place; hopefully we’re there. The thought of trading—to uprooting people for any job right now I can’t really get my head around. So actually part of the aspirations, you know, when you talk about aspirations, I took it as professional aspiration, but I can tell you I have a personal aspiration to stay in Atlanta. 

I really—I do not think—and that my aspirations have really changed. I mean I—before I thought about moving I’d be perfectly happy myself to be move every 5 years. I think with the family, and the relative, the relative success that I’m enjoying I don’t--really don’t wanna move. I really want everyone to be stable and for my, you know, for my wife to be grounded in Atlanta

Mark Graham on How Getting Promoted Evolves Career Aspirations

In Chapter 6 of 17 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Mark Graham answers "How Are Your Aspirations Changing as Your Responsibilities Grow?"   Graham recalls why he joined VH1 and the creative opportunities the big company offered.  As a managing editor, Graham now gets to manage larger creative teams across different business areas. 

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 your aspirations changing as your responsibilities grow?

Mark Graham: My aspirations continue to be high. One of the reasons that I went to VH1 a couple of years ago is that I saw it as a place where—you know, obviously, VH1 is part of Viacom which is a massive organization and a place where I could really grow and learn new things and try new things out. And so, professionally, I still have lots of aspirations to grow and continue to basically learn, develop more skill sets, and to be able to grow  professionally, to continue to do more things, to be able to put more of a—more of a creative stamp on projects that I do. 

I feel like I’m in a really good place right now professionally. I recently was promoted and because of that I’ve gained some new responsibilities, and right now I feel like I’m still sort of feeling my way out in this and learning to deal with a larger team of people who I’m responsible for, making sure that they’re satisfied and they feel like they’re growing in their lives, professionally speaking. That’s been a new challenge for me, and something that I’ve really, really enjoyed, and, you know, candidly I need to continue to work on as well. So right now I feel like I’m in a place where I’d like to spend a little bit of time in this particular role, learning how to deal more with people on my team, building my way up through the organization, and continuing to grow in that sort of a facet.

Mark Graham on Growing into a New Manager Job Role

In Chapter 11 of 17 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Mark Graham answers "At This Moment in Your Life, Where Are You Seeking Advice and Coaching?"  Graham shares how he gets coaching support from his boss, VH1 editorial director Matt Muro, and Muro's boss, Dan Sacher, VH1 VP Media.  By meeting each week, they help Graham learn to manage, delegate, lead, and grow in his career. 

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: At this moment in your life, where are you seeking advice and coaching?

Mark Graham: It’s simply an active part of what I’m doing. In my new role as a managing editor, I now have a team of people, and I’m learning how to effectively manage them, effectively lead them, to motivate and to grow and to help continue to build our work up. So sort of as a result of that, I’ve been leaning very heavily on both my boss, his name is Matt Muro, he’s our editorial director at VH1, as well as his boss, his name is Dan Sacher, he’s our vice president of digital media, both for VH1 as well as for Logo. 

I really look up to both of those individuals. I think they’ve done excellent work in their career and they’re both at places that ultimately I’d like to be at some point in my career. You know, I’d like to, you know, continue to grow and learn, and they’ve both been very valuable and very helpful to me into helping me recognize things that I’m good at and things that I need to continue to work and improve on in my professional career. So both of those guys I lean very heavily on, you know, we meet on a weekly basis to make sure our goals are being met, we’re on track with certain programs. 

You know, a lot of our content is sort of churned out on a day-to-day basis reacting to things that are happening in the news but we also have longer term plans and initiatives that we’re working on that take, you know, months and months and months to get an idea that, you know, grows ultimately into a product that you can execute on the web. So, you know, really staying in close contact with both of those guys has been very important to me and they’ve both shown incredible support to me through my couple of years in the organization, and are people like I said that I look up to and that I lean on for help and guidance, and sort of, you know, recognizing that you can’t do it all. 

And, you know, one thing that they’ve really been great at helping me realize and understand is, is learning how to effectively delegate responsibilities. And helping me sort of understand and prioritize which things I should be taking out on my own and which things that I can sort of help generate the seed of an idea and then step a little it back and check in on it from time to time rather than, you know, running the ball the whole way through. So that’s something that I’m continuing to learn and grow. 

Candidly, I’ll admit that that’s something that I’m not great at right now. I’ve sort of gotten to this point in my career by seeing projects through very personally and spending lots and lots of time at the office and now that I have the amount of responsibility that I do, I can no longer do that. There just aren’t enough hours in the day for me to balance my professional life and my personal life together in a way that makes sense, so really sort of learning how to hand off responsibilities and to also be able to solicit feedback from my peers and also people that work for me. Really being in close contact with them, understanding ways that I can help them better, ways that they can help me better too, and really sort of understanding that, and understanding the dynamics of how people work in an organization, that’s been very important and I think I continue to learn that.

How Being Assertive Builds Confidence - Conrad Doucette

In Chapter 19 of 19 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, musician Conrad Doucette answers "Where Are You Becoming More Confident?"  Doucette notes how he is becoming more confident by asserting himself.  He notes how he is becoming more aware in his life and career and the experience that comes with it.  By being more aware, Doucette better knows when to assert himself and take action, which gives him confidence he can do it more regularly and in different aspects of his life.  It teaches Doucette to bring out the best in other people and to identify his own weak points and make them stronger.  As he sets future goals, including releasing and promoting a new Takka Takka album - AM Landscapes - and playing with musicians outside his band. 

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.

Matt Ruby on How Family Supports Creative Career Aspirations

In Chapter 2 of 19 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, standup comedian Matt Ruby answers "Where Has Your Family Been Most Supportive in Your Career Development?"  Ruby found support in his Mom, an artist and arts supporter, who encouraged him to perform.  He also finds family comfort with leaving each other alone a positive in fostering his imagination and creativity.  Matt Ruby is a standup comedian and comedy writer based in New York City.  He produces a video comic strip at Vooza.com, co-produces the weekly show "Hot Soup", co-hosts the monthly show "We're All Friends Here", and writes a comedy blog "Sandpaper Suit".  Ruby graduated from Northwestern University. 

Matt Ruby on Learning the Realities of Working in Comedy

In Chapter 7 of 19 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, standup comedian Matt Ruby answers "How Are Your Comedy Career Aspirations Changing as You Gain Experience?"  As Ruby gains experience performing comedy, he gets more exposure to what life looks like working in comedy.  Experience allows him to look beyond the glamorized life of a working standup comedian.  He learns the costs and benefits of the standup lifestyle and begins finding new options - writing, directing, producing - that emerge as he builds experience. 

Matt Ruby is a standup comedian and comedy writer based in New York City.  He produces a video comic strip at Vooza.com, co-produces the weekly show "Hot Soup", co-hosts the monthly show "We're All Friends Here", and writes a comedy blog "Sandpaper Suit".  Ruby graduated from Northwestern University. 

Garren Katz on What Gets Easier and What Gets Harder

In Chapter 1 of 15 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, business and personal coach Garren Katz answers "What is Getting Easier and What is Getting Harder in Your Life?"  Katz finds himself stressing less and getting more comfortable with the decisions he makes.  As far as what is getting harder, Katz notes a growing challenge in his life is taking on more responsibilities that come with his desire to live better and more fully. 

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. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What is getting easier and what is getting harder in your life?

Garren Katz: I would say life, actually, is getting easier. Trusting myself, trusting that whatever decision I choose is going to work out and it’s going to work out well. Not stressing as much about the little things that really don’t matter. The older I get the more clear, the more in focus priorities become. That’s getting easier. What’s getting harder is as I take on more in life, strengthening that inner accountability to be able to execute, you know, playing a bigger game, living a bigger life. I wouldn’t say that’s dauntingly harder, but it is more challenging. It’s a great challenge but that’s getting harder.

Garren Katz on Finding Nontraditional Career Inspiration

In Chapter 2 of 15 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, business and personal coach Garren Katz answers "What Role Has Family Played in Shaping Your Career Aspirations?"   Katz notes how both his father and stepfather owned their own businesses.  Watching each manage his respective small business teaches Katz to understand job options beyond 9 to 5 careers.  Katz also takes inspiration from his mother, who changes career in her late 40s, and learns to appreciate having a continuing curiosity to expand interest and skills in life.  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. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What role has family played in shaping your career aspirations? 

Garren Katz: You know both my father and my stepfather own their own businesses, so I would say I always, you know, I grew up in an environment where a 9-to-5 job was never the norm, and it gave me a lot of confidence to perhaps not take the traditional -- some of the more traditional paths career-wise. So I think that definitely shaped me the fact that both male—significant male figures in my life own their own business.

 And then my mother, she’s the vice president of a college in the Midwest. She really found her stride later in life, in her late-40s and now is extremely accomplished, and I think that even gave me a lot of confidence to understand that, you know, the journey can be long, and it is exactly that, it’s not this scripted, you know, pap-pap-pap-pap-pap and end up here. You can really find yourself in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, the opportunity is always there to find yourself and so I think at whatever age you are, you should still be seeking and looking to hit your stride, and even if you think you’ve hit your stride, continue to look because there’s always fantastic opportunities to expand yourself.

Garren Katz on How Life Coaching Goals Change With Experience

In Chapter 11 of 15 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, business and personal coach Garren Katz answers "How Are Your Coaching Aspirations Changing as Your Experience Grows?"  Katz finds reward building on his 1-to-1 coaching and looking for group coaching, from working with couples to working with business units.  He finds the collective energy a powerful complement to the intimacy he receives in a 1-to-1 relationship. 

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. 

Stacie Bloom on Reflection-Informed Personal Growth

In Chapter 12 of 18 in her 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, Neuroscience Institute Executive Director Stacie Grossman Bloom answers "What Role Has Reflection Played in Shaping Your Personal Growth?"  Bloom shares how reflection has become more important as she gets older.  Now in her 30s, Bloom uses reflection to set more clear priorities in her work and her relationships. 

Stacie Grossman Bloom is Executive Director for the Neuroscience Institute at the NYU Langone Medical Center.  Previously, she was VP and Scientific Director at the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) and, before that, held editorial roles at the Journal of Clinical Investigation and Nature Medicine.  She earned her BA in chemistry and psychology from the University of Delaware, her PhD in Neurobiology and Cell Biology at Georgetown University and did post-doctoral training in Paul Greengard's Nobel Laboratory of Molecular & Cellular Neuroscience at Rockefeller University. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen:  What role has reflection played in shaping your personal growth? 

Stacie Grossman Bloom:  I’ve become a much more sort of reflective person over time. I think, you know, I was in my 20’s, I was running around all the time, I was doing a million things, I didn’t really think about my actions, I just sort of lived for the moment. And now I realize I wanna create a legacy, and I wanna build a great Neuroscience Institute at NYU, I wanna help contribute to an effort that really will bring benefit to people’s lives, and in my own personal life. I want to have a successful relationship with my husband, and I wanna raise great kids. And a lot of that is looking into myself and my actions and my behaviors, and trying to make the best decisions that I can to make sure that I’m gonna be proud of my life.

Simon Sinek on What It Means to Be a Leader

In Chapter 9 of 16 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, author and public speaker Simon Sinek answers "What Does It Mean to Be a Leader in What You Do?"  Sinek notes being a leader means one thing and one thing only: you have followers.  He then shares how leaders create that following by articulating a vision, cause or purpose toward a future that does not yet exist.  He then puts this in perspective of his own leadership, helping his followers work toward waking up inspired to do what they love to do and achieve fulfillment by doing so.  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 does it mean to be a leader in what you do?

Simon Sinek:  To be a leader means one thing and one thing only. It means you have followers. That’s it. You know? It’s not about learning your style of leadership and how to adjust your style to fit the situation at hand, that’s management, right? Leaders only have one thing, they have followers.  A follower is somebody who raises their hand and volunteers to go where you’re going. They raise their hand and volunteer to go in the direction that you’re pointing. And so to lead others, means that you have a clear vision of a world that does not yet exist, a world that could exist, and by articulating that cause, that vision, that purpose, over and over and over again, it inspires people who believe what you believe, who want to see that world built, to join, to go with you, to figure out ways, you know? And so for me in my work, what leadership means, is articulating this world in which the vast majority of us wake up every single day, inspired to go to work, and come home every single day fulfilled by the work that we do. That doesn’t mean we have to like every day, you know, but we can love every day. You don’t like your children every day but you love your children every day, right? And so the more I talk about this world that does not yet exist, because right now the world we live in, the vast majority of people, 90%-plus don’t love what they do, they may like it but they don’t love it. When I talk about this world, it inspires others who believe what I believe and want to see this world built, join up and figure out in their own way how to advance that vision, so it becomes real. My role is to continue to pound the pavement and put that vision out there.

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.

Why Aspire to Be a Good Person - Ross Floate

In Chapter 1 of 20 in his 2012 interview, branding and design strategist Ross Floate answers "To What Do You Aspire?"  Floate notes his aspiration is to "come out on the right side of the ledger" and be a good person.  He does not aspire to become wealthy and grow a large business. While those may come in time, Floate works instead on doing things in an honest, straightforward way to support others.  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.

Why to Choose a Self-Employed Career Path - Ross Floate

In Chapter 4 of 20 in his 2012 interview, branding and design strategist Ross Floate answers "What Role Has Family Played in Shaping Your Career Aspirations?"  Floate notes how his parents experience being self-employed influenced his own pursuit of autonomy and independence in his career.  He values that freedom highly and understands the trade-offs, in particular building wealth, that come with pursuing it.  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.

Using Design Passion to Make the World Better - Ross Floate

In Chapter 13 of 20 in his 2012 interview, branding and design strategist Ross Floate answers "What is the Source of Your Passion for Design?"  Floate defines design as more of a problem solving-based than an aesthetics-based discipline.  After establishing his career, Floate finds his work is less about the technical elements of design and more about problem solving as it relates to communication and process efficiency that creates .  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.

Jon Kolko on What Makes Design Work Meaningful

In Chapter 2 of 21 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, design educator Jon Kolko answers "What Makes Your Work Meaningful?"  Kolko finds meaningful work in design work that is done well.  He understands all projects may not be meaningful to him but still finds meaning in the process of design and problem.  In his initiative starting a design school, Kolko pushes the conversation to understand how to encapsulate meaning in a way that makes sense for all people in a group and the social entrepreneurship methodology helping to enable it. 

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 makes your work meaningful?

Jon Kolko: For me, meaningful work is extremely simple. It’s design work that’s done well and in a weird sort of way, I can feel that way about work that is meaningless and I feel bad about it. 

And so as an example, I can pick up contract work, and I have over the last three or four years – for let's call it like giant conglomerate company that sells ringtones or big, fat, company that sells computer parts, and screens, and LCDs and stuff. And that’s meaningless work. But I can lose myself in it as in any other design or creative sense and it will be meaningful to me. I will feel great as a result of doing it. It's only when you take that sort of step back and go, “What am I'm doing? Why is this worth it? Why is this worth my time?” 

So the larger conversation that we have at AC4D a lot is around how do you encapsulate meaning in a way that makes sense for all of the people that are part of that group? And we've come to this very simple tool that we stole from policy and fields of social entrepreneurship called “Theory of Change” and a theory of change is a logic model. It's a way of saying that the world will be better if. It's a hypothesis. The world will be better if there were no homeless people. Ok, that’s a statement. It's probably impossible for me to ever achieve that goal in my life and I don’t even try. But if we back off of that, you can say, well, in order to get to a point where that is true, homeless people need to have houses and feel empowered to get jobs and stop doing self-destructive behavior. Ok, well either -- any of those three are too big to think so let's back off of that. Alright, self-empower, how do we get there? Well, I can start to think about how design can drive something to help somebody be self-empowered. So that’s a theory of change. 

And so, I can start to vet projects within that theory of change and say do they support that logic model or not? And if they do, then that’s work worth doing and that’s meaningful. And if they don’t, then it's not.

Idan Cohen on Aspiring to Leave a Legacy Behind

In Chapter 2 of 19 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, Boxee co-founder and head of product Idan Cohen answers "To What Do You Aspire?"  Cohen aspires to create work that will be remembered when he is gone, referencing great art and architecture, from the Pyramids to Le Corbusier, to small tombstones.  

This is Idan Cohen's Year 1 Capture Your Flag interview.  Cohen is co-founder and head of product at Boxee Inc, an online video software company.  Previous to Boxee, Cohen held telecom software innovation and developer roles at Comverse.  He was a Captain in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and graduated from Tel Aviv University with a Bachelors of Science degree in Geophysics and Art.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: To what do you aspire?

Idan Cohen: I think I wanna be remembered after I’m gone. I was always fascinated with architecture because I think that that’s one of the only things that really survive—like that’s one of the few things that can really survive after you’re, you know, after you’re gone. And, so you can look at it from wherever, from the pyramids to, you know, Le Corbusier, in New York, or wherever. It’s kind of like the most amazing phallic thing that you can put out there and people will never be able to kind of forget it. And in some ways—Well, it will sound really weird but like tombstones are like very small architectural leftovers of—It might sound weird, but like of small people, and then big people can just get, you know, cremated and their ashes can be spread around, but they have these massive things that are remembered after they’re gone, or at least for a few hundreds of years. So, in some ways, I think that we all want—or I hope—I don’t know, for me, I know that I want to be—I wanna leave something behind me.