Episodes

The Iowa Idea: Chemda “One minute at a time.” In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with Chemda. Chemda was born in Israel and has lived in New York City since she was 4 years old, currently residing in Queens. She is a talk show host, writer and singer. She hosts the What’s My Name show, co-hosts as ‘The Girl’ of Keith and The Girl (KATG), a daily, award-winning comedy talk show with comedian Keith Malley. Navigating her life after having a football-sized tumor removed from her ...

The Iowa Idea: Shonali Bhowmik “Write it down.” In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with Shonali Bhowmik. Shonali is a proud multi-hyphenate — she is a musician, actress, comedienne, filmmaker, and writer. She currently co-hosts her own live variety show podcast series called We Don’t Even Know. She is the leader of the indie rock band Tigers and Monkeys for which she is the songwriter, singer, and guitar player. She is a member of the popular comedy collective Variety Shac, wi...

The Iowa Idea: Bill Veeck “I try not to break the rules but merely to test their elasticity.” In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, Gino Chirio returns as we celebrate October baseball, even though our beloved South Siders were bounced from the playoffs. Gino and I are not talking about his Harvard Business Review article. Instead, we are talking about one of our innovation, customer experience, and baseball heroes, Bill Veeck. Veeck, as in wreck, was a promoter, an innovator, and a romanti...

The Iowa Idea: Dana James “Your voice is valuable.” In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with Dana James. Dana is the founder of Black Iowa News, a website and newsletter, to chronicle the lives of Black Iowans in the era of COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement. She is a lifelong Iowan and award-winning writer. Dana wants you to know three things: We are still in a pandemic, Breonna Taylor still needs justice, and Black Lives Matter. She worked for seven years as a rep...

The Iowa Idea: Cassini Nazir “It’s about people.” In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with Cassini Nazir. Cassini is a designer of conversations, curriculum, and interfaces. He is a Clinical Associate Professor in New College at the University of North Texas where he teaches classes in design thinking and interaction design. Prior to joining UNT, he taught at The University of Texas at Dallas, where he was founding director of the ATEC Usability Lab, which fosters collaborativ...

The Iowa Idea: Michele Williams “2020 Is really the year of sensemaking.” In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with Dr. Michele Williams. Professor Williams, Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa, has taught negotiations to executives, startups, MBAs, and undergraduates at leading schools of management for over ten years. She is co-author of the Four Capabilities Assessment. Michele’s research focuses on negotiation, leadership, sensemaking, and trust, as well as women ...

The Iowa Idea: Gary Kroeger “Life is a journey.” In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with Gary Kroeger. Gary was born in Cedar Falls and attended Northwestern University. In Chicago he helped found The Practical Theatre Company with fellow alums Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Brad Hall. This association caught the eye of Saturday Night Live producers and the three of them became regulars on SNL. A political enthusiast who has run for Congress as well at the State House, Gary continues...

The Iowa Idea: Aaron Proietti “Make the offer.” In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with Aaron Proietti. Aaron is the author of Today’s Innovator. He is an innovation expert with seventeen years of experience innovating in complex organizations. Aaron views innovation not as an activity, but as a core business competency that must be developed, led, and nurtured within both the individual and the organization. Aaron has spoken at numerous conferences on topics related to techn...

The Iowa Idea: Mike Maddock “You can’t read the label when you’re inside the jar.” In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with Mike Maddock. Mike is an entrepreneur, inventor, writer, keynote speaker, and an idea monkey. He is the CEO and founding partner of Maddock Douglas, an internationally recognized innovation consulting firm. Mike has founded six successful businesses. He is a long-time Forbes contributor and the co-author of four books: “Free the Idea Monkey,” “Brand New,” ...

The Iowa Idea: Melissa Murer Corrigan In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with Melissa Murer Corrigan. Melissa was the founding Executive Director and CEO of the Pharmacy Technician Certification Board (PTCB) in Washington, D.C. from 1994-2011. In 2012, Melissa joined the educational assessment leader ACT as an executive leader for the Workforce Development Division. She then took on the role of Vice President of Social Impact in ACT’s Center for Equity in Learning. Melissa cur...

The Iowa Idea: Chris Gersbeck “xxx.” In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with Chris Gersbeck. Chris is a producer, publicist and writer based in Queens, NY. He currently produces and makes regular appearances on comedy podcasts Dave Hill: History Fluffer, Dave Hill’s Podcasting Incident, and So… You’re Canadian with Dave Hill, the latter two of which are on the Maximum Fun network. Chris also produces numerous live comedy events throughout New York City under the banner of Dum...

The Iowa Idea: Alex Hillman “I’m really bad at faking it.” In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with Alex Hillman. Alex is always thinking about the intersection of people, relationships, trust, and business. These days, he splits his time between running Indy Hall (Philadelphia’s oldest coworking space), teaching creative people how to bootstrap their own business, and collaborating with people and organizations towards the goal of helping 10,000 people become sustainably inde...

The Iowa Idea: Katie Roche “No one can give you permission to become the person you want to become.” In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with Katie Roche. Raised in rural Eastern Iowa, Katie has always been an advocate for artists and arts the community. She honed her arts-world skills in NYC in the early 2000s, working for record labels, festivals, and venues like The Knitting Factory. She returned to Iowa in 2006, settling in Iowa City. She served as the first Executive Dire...

The Iowa Idea: David Dylan Thomas “It’s not about having more information. It’s about having the right information.” In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with David Dylan Thomas. Dave is the author of the book Design for Cognitive Bias from A Book Apart, serves as Content Strategy Advocate at Think Company and is the creator and host of the Cognitive Bias Podcast. He has developed digital strategies for major clients in entertainment, healthcare, publishing, finance, and retail...

The Iowa Idea: Adam Hansen “The brain is a great goal-seeking instrument.” In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with Adam Hansen. Adam is a Principal and VP of Behavioral Innovation at Ideas To Go, Inc. and a career-long innovation leader, and student. He is co-author of Outsmart Your Instincts: How The Behavioral Innovation Approach Drives Your Company Forward. Adam serves client teams’ innovation needs across the Fortune 200 in consumer-packaged goods, healthcare, and finance...

The Iowa Idea: Andre Perry “How can we better express ourselves through art?” In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with Andre Perry. Andre is an essayist and arts advocate. He received his MFA from the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program and his work has appeared in The Believer, Catapult, and other journals. He co-founded Iowa City’s Mission Creek Festival, a celebration of music and literature, as well as the multidisciplinary festival of creative process, Witchin...

The Iowa Idea: Tim Houlihan “We don’t know our own motivations very well.” In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with Tim Houlihan. Tim is intensely curious about why people do what they do. His understanding of human behavior and his applied experience help policy makers, marketers, human resource executives, and sales leaders make better decisions about their constituencies. Tim founded BehaviorAlchemy, LLC, a strategy, training and design consultancy, to focus the behavioral...

The Iowa Idea: Anne Carter “It takes work. It takes effort. It takes intentionality.” In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with Anne Harris Carter. Anne has more than twenty-five years of experience in corporate leadership. A graduate of Yale, Anne conceived and created diversity strategy roles at two corporations, including the former May Department Stores. We also discuss her work with Iowa’s Healthiest State initiative, with a focus on the “Make it OK” campaign to reduce the...

The Iowa Idea: Andre Wright “The foundation of it is creativity and art.” In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with Andre Wright. Andre is a father, husband, creative, fashion activist, author, entrepreneur, and Iowa native. He is the co-founder of Humanize My Hoodie. Along with Jason Sole, the Humanize My Hoodie Movement originated from a demand to end the killing of Black and Indigenous People across the world. Their mission is to debunk stereotypes by designing an elegant an...

The Iowa Idea: Bob Kasenchak “In a lot of ways, as soon as you name something and classify it, you’ve ruined it.” In this, the 25th episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with Bob Kasenchak, perhaps my favorite taxonomist in the world. Bob is a taxonomist and Senior Manager of Client Solutions at Synaptica, living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After early training in philosophy and a decade studying and teaching music, Bob spent eight years designing and developing information projects bef...

The Iowa Idea: Chris Bernat “Let’s make art!” In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with Chris Bernat. Chris is the lead singer and sometimes rhythm guitarist for the bands Tripmaster Monkey and Chrash. Over the past 20-plus years, I’ve been able to catch Tripmaster Monkey – Chris, Jamie Toal, Wes Haas, and Marty Reyhons. They’ve always put on great shows and have been fun guys to hangout with off stage. So, it was a joy to have Chris talk about creativity and collaboration. Ch...

The Iowa Idea: Aarron Walter “It’s about emotion. Our full range of emotions.” In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with Aarron Walter. Aarron is the VP of design publishing at InVision, drawing upon fifteen years of experience running product teams and teaching design to help companies enact design best practices. Aarron founded the UX practice at MailChimp. He is the co-host of the Webby nominated podcast, Design Better, and the author of Designing for Emotion. Aarron and I ...

The Iowa Idea: Howard Allen Hopefully, you’re listening, learning, and making adjustments. In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with Howard Allen. Howard is the founder and owner of the Caribbean-inspired brand Maroon Sausage Company in Brooklyn, NY. Prior to creating Maroon, Howard spent almost twenty years as a graphic designer and brand strategist developing corporate branding and marketing campaigns. Howard and I discuss his path from growing up in the Midwest, going to sc...

The Iowa Idea: Andy Joynt It’s really a team effort. In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I sit down with Andy Joynt. Andy is the Head Brewer at Big Grove. As a beer nerd and fan of Big Grove, it was a joy to talk with Andy and discuss his craft and approach. Andy has been the head brewer at Big Grove since 2016 and over saw the build out of the production brewery at their Iowa City location. When we recorded this episode Andy and team were in the middle of another major production expans...