Welcome to Catching North Stars! 

Episode 22

Reckless Optimism: Resilience, Leadership, and the Climate Fight with Anna Kelly

Anna Kelly is an award-winning energy leader, strategist, and author recognized as the 2023 International Young Energy Professional of the Year. As Director of Innovation and Strategy at SBW Consulting, she helps organizations turn ambitious climate goals into measurable results. Anna has led coalitions across North America, shaped carbon emissions standards, scaled startups, and authored Climate Champions. She is widely known for aligning strategic vision with operational excellence and driving collaborative solutions to complex energy challenges.  

You can learn more about Anna here: www.annakelly.org

Kevin Wilson is the heart of Ignite Adaptive Sports, at Eldora Mountain Resort in Colorado where he serves as Program Director. A passionate adaptive skier and instructor, Kevin rediscovered his love for the mountains after a paralyzing car accident at 16. Known affectionately as “Ski Bum Kevin,” he brings humor, grit, and contagious enthusiasm to everything he does—whether it’s teaching someone their first turns on snow or rallying the community around inclusion in snowsports. His resilience and joy on the slopes inspire others to push past limits and embrace adventure. 

Learn more about Ignite and the work Kevin is so passionate about here: https://igniteadaptivesports.org/

Episode 19 

Perseverance and Advocacy in Medicine, Mountains, and Beyond with Linda Keyes, MD

Dr Linda Keyes is a board-certified emergency physician, a past-president of the Wilderness Medical Society and current vice-president of the International Society of Mountain Medicine. From the time she was a student at Yale School of Medicine, she has spent her career using science and medicine as an excuse to travel the world. She has partnered with researchers and clinicians on five continents, working to understand the effects of high altitude on the human body. She challenges norms and advocates for gender equity in all aspects of life. She strives to create positive change through collaboration and inspiring others to achieve. The mountains are her happy place. She believes in wilderness as medicine for human health and in conservation for the health of the planet.

Mary Reynolds Thompson, Founder of Live Your Wild Soul Story, is an award-winning author, internationally recognized speaker, and a facilitator of poetry and journal therapy. A pioneer in the spiritual ecology movement, her focus is on the transformative power of landscape archetypes and nature metaphors to reveal our true purpose and right relationship with the planet.

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Author of The Way of the Wild Soul Woman and Reclaiming the Wild Soul, Mary’s writings have also appeared in numerous other publications and anthologies. Through her books, courses, and talks, she reaches creatives, change-makers, and seekers who long to awaken to their most courageous and Earth-connected selves and have the impact they desire. You can find her at www.MaryReynoldsThompson.com 

Sam Isaacson is a thought leader at the intersection of coaching and technology. Recognised as a CoachingTech Pioneer, he founded the Coachtech Collective and AIcoach.chat, and his work has been featured in Forbes, The Daily Telegraph, Coaching at Work, and Choice magazine. Sam advises organisations and coaches worldwide on leveraging emerging technologies like AI, blockchain, and the metaverse to enhance coaching impact and leadership development. Outside of work, he’s a devoted dad to four sons and a passionate tabletop war gamer. 

He has authored numerous books on Coaching and technology as well as science fiction. 

Learn more about Sam here: https://isaacson.uk/

Episode 16 

Radical Self Care for Personal Transformation with Kalia Garrido

Kalia Garrido is a seasoned professional who has worked on the business side of technology companies for 15 years. As the Director of Strategic Marketing and Brand Experience at HIKE2, Kalia is responsible for the company's Thought Leadership Strategy and Execution, Strategic Marketing Direction, Event Management, Partner Marketing Relationships, Demand Generation and Brand Awareness. 

Kalia is also the founder of Healthy Women Leaders, a national collective that promotes healthy living and radical self-care as keys to thriving in a chaotic world. A fitness enthusiast and regular meditator, she believes in bringing mindfulness into daily life. As a married mother of two, marketing executive, public speaker and published author, Kalia maintains her many roles by keeping a dedicated focus on personal and professional balance. Kalia's work at HIKE2 and Healthy Women Leaders showcases her dedication to fostering a healthier, more holistic community. She continues to make a significant impact in both the technology and wellness spheres, embodying the principles of hard work, real rest, true innovation, and healthy living. Her book, The Well Within: Unlocking Your Personal Potential through Radical Self Care distills insights she has gained through her personal and professional journey.

Corinna Freitag, PhD is an Executive Coach, Advisor & Speaker with over 30 years of expertise in natural and human sciences through university, industry, and continuing education.

She holds a Ph.D. in chemistry, is certified as an Executive Coach, and received her Associate Certified Coach (ACC) credential through the International Coaching Federation (ICF) – the gold standard of professional coaching.

She has lived in different countries and worked for over 18 years globally in the automotive and chemical industry in various positions with colleagues on the shop floor up to Senior Vice Presidents, which led to me being the Global Operational Excellence Leader for 5+ years.

Jill has had a long, successful career in financial services and has lived and worked all over the world. 

Jill’s work has centered around fixing complex challenges at some of the largest financial services firms in the world. Jill has led transformation in areas such as Business Risk and Control, Operations, Internal Communications and Technology. 

Jill is also the Executor of the James Weldon Johnson Literary Estate and is the co-founder and Board Chair of the James Weldon Johnson Foundation. Passionately devoted to advancing the legacy of James Weldon Johnson, who is best known for writing the song Lift Every Voice and Sing, Jill manages the permissions for James Weldon Johnson’s papers at Yale’s Beinecke Library and Emory’s Woodruff Library.

Jill is an avid supporter of emerging, mid-career and established artists through the James Weldon Johnson Fellowship in the Arts Residency Program. 

Jill holds a B.A. in History from Harvard College and an MBA from Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management. Born and raised in New York City, Jill currently resides in Westchester, NY with her husband and 19 year-old son

Charlie’s years of experience in the trenches of media include working in advertising in New York, to producing sitcoms and dramas, to event management at the Sundance Film Festival.

After spending several years in corporate law, Charlie segued seamlessly into tech and new media as a web video producer where she co-created and co-produced experimental video projects such as an 8-hour live webathon for the 2008 presidential election and numerous web video series. Soon thereafter, Charlie launched ArtofTalk.tv. 

In 2009, Charlie launched Served Fresh Media™ where her team provides digital marketing strategy, event management, product development, and senior management advisory for companies. 

January 2017, Charlie launched Tech 2025 — a community and platform for professionals to learn about the next wave of disruptive, emerging technologies and to facilitate discourse about the impact of these technologies on society with an emphasis on problem-solving. Having produced over 80 events since they launched, coupled with providing professional services, Tech 2025 has quickly gained a reputation for helping professionals and companies to understand and embrace emerging technologies and the whirlwind changes they bring, and to strategize for the future impact of accelerating innovation.

NADIA NAGAMOOTOO (she/her) is the founder and CEO of Avenir.  She’s a Chartered Psychologist, an MBA and accredited coach with 20 years’ experience in the field of leadership development, culture change and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.  She’s worked globally to provoke powerful conversations at all organizational levels and develop sustainable inclusive leadership practices. 

She is host of the popular podcast show, Why Care?, where she delves deeply into the complex and uncomfortable world of DEI.  Her bestselling book, Beyond Discomfort: Why inclusive leadership is so hard (and what you can do about it) was published in March 2024.

Nadia continues to be publicly recognized for her passion, drive and thought-leadership.  In 2023, she was listed as one of the HR Most Influential Thinkers and named HR Champion of the Year at the European Diversity Awards, and in 2024 she was awarded Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Thought Leader of the Year at the Influential Businesswoman Awards.

Dr. Pamela Larde, a professor, coach, author, and business owner, is committed to engaging in the work of advancing the reach and commitment of the coaching profession to serve and build up heart-centered leaders around the world. Dr. Larde is intentional about integrating values of belonging, human dignity, justice and care for the whole person into every fiber of her work. As a dedicated member of the global community, Dr. Larde is committed to taking the lead in addressing compelling social issues through the Academy of Creative Coaching, which she founded in 2013 as the first black female-owned accredited coaching school with the International Coaching Federation.

Dr. Larde is a certified coach and received training in suicide prevention, motivational interviewing, and substance abuse counseling. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, a master’s degree in College Student Affairs from Azusa Pacific University, and a Ph.D. in Leadership for the Advancement of Learning and Service from Cardinal Stritch University.

Her research focuses on race and gender dynamics, self-motivation, joy resilience, and posttraumatic growth. She has written three books, including  Joyfully Single: A Revolutionary Guide to Enlightenment, Wholeness, and Change.

In 2023 Jazz Rasool ran the first foundation programs for helping coaches get ready for using AI in Coaching in compliance with the ethical and legal requirements of the EU AI Act. In February 2024 he set up the AI Coaching Alliance, with hundreds of coaches and researchers joining as members to promote adaptation to AI and its ethical, inclusive adoption. In April 2024 he established the AI Coaching Alliance Standard, the first cross-body Standard for using AI in coaching that integrated human coaching competency sets from the International Coaching Federation (ICF), Association for Coaching (AC) and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC), reframing them for using AI in Coaching through Ethical, Inclusive and Legally compliant best practices and frameworks.

Jazz is an Executive Coach and Director of Energy Diamond, a consultancy that since 2004 has been focused on encoding and delivering interculturally diverse models of psychology into coaching. In 2008, he encoded his models of coaching into an AI Coaching platform and in 2012 began developing best practices and frameworks for using AI in Coaching with clients. His work has led him to work for Unilever, Virgin, British Telecom, Elsevier Publishers as well as the EU, NASA, ESA and the London Mayors Office. His most recent work saw him use AI Coaching best practices to guide over 100 women entrepreneurs in conscious business development programs.

Matija Goljar started a tech company when he was a freshman in college and dropped out. He was invited to lead an entrepreneurship club at his former high school which expanded into Ustvarjalnik, one of the largest entrepreneurship education programs in Eastern Europe. More than 10,000 students in 6 countries took part and the teaching methodologies he created have become the gold standard of business education, receiving worldwide acclaim and multiple awards.

He is perhaps most known in his native Slovenia for a reality TV show he created and hosted that followed young founders starting companies and selling their products in the largest supermarket chain in the country. Start it up Slovenia showed how new products come to be and has inspired hundreds of thousands of people to try launching new products themselves.

Matija is a sought-after consultant, mentor and speaker that works for a local venture capital fund (Silicon Gardens), is a visiting professor at a number of universities and business incubators, and recently completed his MA in Applied Imagination at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London

His time is split between consulting work and lecturing at universities and business incubators in Europe and traveling around the world in a tiny camper van.

Susi is the programme coordinator at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Her responsibilities include facilitating the development and execution of ICAN's key programmes, including the management of ICAN's divestment work and engagement with the financial sector.

For more than a decade, Susi coordinated the Don’t Bank on the Bomb project. She is an expert on nuclear weapons, with over two decades experience working at the intersect between nuclear weapons and human rights.

Susi has contributed to a number of recent books, including Forbidden (2023), A World Free from Nuclear Weapons (2020),  Sleepwalking to Armageddon: The Threat of Nuclear Annihilation (2017) and War and Environment Reader (2018). She has been featured in numerous news outlets.

Susi is a Foreign Policy Interrupted/ Bard College 2020 fellow and one of the 2016 Nuclear Free Future Award Laureates. Susi has worked in PAX's humanitarian disarmament team, coordinating nuclear disarmament efforts. Susi previously served as the Secretary General of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom at their Geneva secretariat.

She was named Hero of Las Vegas in 2001 for her work with Indigenous populations against US nuclear weapons development and nuclear waste dumping. Susi currently lives in Utrecht, the Netherlands with her husband and son. For more about her personal anti-nuclear journey, check out Susi’s Storycorps interview.

Amber Case studies the interactions between humans and technology, and how technology affects culture.
An internationally recognized design advocate and speaker, and author of four books, including Calm Technology and A Kids Book About Technology, Amber spent two years as a fellow at media centers at MIT and Harvard and was a 2021 Mozilla Fellow.
Having received recognition from: Inc Magazine, Fast Company, and National Geographic, she was the co-founder and CEO of Geoloqi, a location-based software company acquired by Esri.

Case is the founder of The Calm Tech Institute, a non-profit foundation that establishes new standards for designing harmonious human-tech interactions that improve our lives. She works on design, governance, and AI through her position as a Research Director at the Metagovernance Project.

You can follow her work on Medium: https://medium.com/@caseorganic and on X @caseorganic. Her Ted Talk is here

Asher Jay is a National Geographic Explorer turned tech entrepreneur and is the founder and CEO of Henoscene, a consumer-facing impact campaign application for brands to deliver on their Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives with transparency and accountability. Jay is on the expert council of Open ESG, serves on two nonprofit boards, and the advisory boards of three other nonprofit organizations. An artist, systems designer & thinker, she uses her holistic, laterally associative approach to advise corporations on how they can best model their strategies, outreach and operations after nature. Her goal is to incite action on behalf of wildlife and marginalized communities. 

 Henoscene  helps sustainable brands run impactful campaigns that co-create products, stories, and outcomes with purpose-driven content creators and customers. 

Links to Jay's talks

Ty Tashiro transforms psychological research into pragmatic solutions for common interpersonal problems. In The Science of Happily Ever After, he explains a smarter, research-backed approach to dating. In his second book, Awkward, he explains socially awkward individuals' social challenges and unique capabilities.

As a Chief Science Officer, Ty has developed psychometric strategies for online dating apps and artificial intelligence strategies for therapy platforms. He has also led research and development for social responsibility initiatives.  

Ty received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Minnesota, and he has twice been an award-winning professor. He is a frequent keynote speaker at conferences, corporate events, universities, and schools.  

He lives in New York City.

Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz is a professor of English Education at Columbia University Teachers College, an advocate for racial literacy and a proponent of her Archaeology of the Self model. Long-time facilitator of racial literacy groups, she uses poetry as both personal praxis and artifact of reflection in her on-going Critical Love work. Yolanda collaborates with musicians, other educators, and organizational leaders on this work. Her TedX Talk Truth, Love, and Racial Literacy provides an introduction to her work.  

President of the Center for Transformation and Change, Dr. Kathy Obear is nationally recognized as an expert in helping leaders, change agents, and facilitators develop the capacity to create equitable, inclusive, and racially/socially just organizations. Over the past 35+ years, she has spoken to hundreds of audiences to increase the passion, competence, and commitment necessary to create inclusive, socially-just environments and services for all members of the organization and those they serve.

Kathy has published numerous books, including the most recent White Accountability Groups and generously shares resources on her website.   

Eric Zimmerman is a game designer and Arts Professor at the NYU Game Center. He designs games on and off the computer that invent new forms of play. A three decade veteran of the game industry, Eric was the co-founder of Gamelab, as well as the Institute of Play, a non-profit that created schools based on games and play as the model for learning across the curriculum. Italian architect Nathalie Pozzi and Eric have designed installations for MoMA, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, etc. Recent projects include Dear Reader, a game published by Apple that uses classic literature as the basis for word puzzles, and The Green Games Guide, an industry initiative to design and manufacture environmentally sustainable tabletop games. Eric is the co-author of Rules of Play with Katie Salen and more recently The Rules We Break, a book full of the ways he uses games and play to teach design.

Aicila Lewis (EYE-ee-sila) (she/they), is Founder and Director of Motivation at BiCurean Consulting which works with non-profits and mission driven organizations on organizational strategy, development and implementation. Her podcast, Business as UNusual, is focused on the power of business to create our new normal.

Dr. Reece Akhtar is a co-founder and CEO at Deeper Signals. He is an organizational psychologist specializing in applied personality assessment and computational psychometrics. As a lecturer at NYU and University College London, he has published scientific articles on personality and machine-learning, talent management, and leadership. Links to HBR articles on the role of AI in the future of jobs, the use of assessments in the hiring process, and motivating creative employees 

Dr. Asia Lyons is founder of Lyons Educational Consulting.  In partnership with communities, organizations, and schools, LEC supports co-creating truly inclusive environments that assist youth and Black educators toward self-actualization through creating wellness spaces. Dr. Lyons's research addresses the impact of racism-related stress and racial battle fatigue on Black educators and families. She supports Black educators through the Black Educator Wellness Cohort her podcast: The Exit Interview: A Podcast for Black Educators.