Category Archives: Podcast

04.25.11
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Podcast: Lara Galinsky of Echoing Green, “Heart + head = hustle”

featuredThis week, Lara Galinsky, Senior Vice President of Echoing Green, is launching an inspiring career guide for social impact work called Work on Purpose.

We interviewed Lara about her new book. Click here to listen now!

Each chapter of Work on Purpose asks key questions for career seekers; illustrates the impact of these questions in the lives of Echoing Green community members; and offers a place for notes at the end for you to jot reflections from your own life.

In this episode of the Idealist Careers Podcast, Idealist’s Amy Potthast chats with Lara Galinsky about the central message of Work on Purpose: finding work that uses your “Heart + Head = Hustle.”

Click here to listen:
http://player.wizzard.tv/player/o/i/x/130357654730/config/k-e70ce4f1f0cc058e/uuid/root/episode/k-4d9e55e43cfbe69a.m4v

p.s. In the podcast, Lara shares the stories of the five people who illustrate this message:

  • Cheryl Dorsey, President of Echoing Green, who graduated from medical school and Kennedy School of Government, and chose social-justice over medicine.
  • Mark Hannis, founder of the Genocide Intervention Network and the child of Holocaust survivors, who discovered as a college student that genocide still occurs, and that he could mobilize action to end it.
  • Mardie Oakes, founder of Hallmark Community Solutions, combined her background in architecture, community housing, and finance to develop housing for people with special needs.
  • Socheata Poeuv, creator of the film project Khmer Legacies, which documents interviews between Khmer Rouge survivors and their adult children.
  • Andrew Youn, Founder of the One Acre Fund, who started out in a corporate consulting job but later used his business skills to develop a market system for farmers in a region of Kenya to prevent annual famines.

Click here to learn more about Work on Purpose.

Cross posted from Idealist.org.

03.04.10
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Emerging Corps: Blue Engine’s Nick Ehrmann

Blue Engine's Nick Ehrmann

The New Service podcast show features a service program tackling the challenges of college completion for students from low income families. Blue Engine is now accepting applications for its 2010-11 corps.

In 2010, a new national service corps is getting off the ground. Blue Engine, based in New York City, aims to recruit a corps of about a dozen fellows for the 2010-2011 school year to facilitate daily, differentiated, small-group instruction for high school freshmen.

Our guest is Nick Ehrmann—Blue Engine’s engine and a Teach For America alum— who says that we know how to get high-needs kids into college, or getting them “college eligible” — nonprofits and schools have been targeting and tackling hurdles like high school completion, college admissions, and financial assistance.

But, while the high school drop-out problem is far from solved, groups are paying far less attention to college completion rates for high-needs kids, or “college readiness.”

Blue Engine aims to close the gap between college eligibility and college readiness.

After graduating from Northwestern University in 2000, Ehrmann began his career in education as a Teach for America corps member in Washington D.C. In 2002, he joined forces with local philanthropists to launch the nonprofit “I Have a Dream” Project 312, a youth development program for Nick’s fourth-grade students. In the fall of 2003, he began doctoral work in sociology at Princeton University as a William G. Bowen fellow.

Over the past three years, Nick spent months shadowing his former students in high school classrooms, living with their families, and conducting extensive interviews in the local community, where he has witnessed firsthand the negative effects of academic underperformance on the transition from high school to college. His dissertation—Yellow Brick Road—is scheduled for defense in the spring of 2010.

Idealist’s Amy Potthast talks with Nick about the Blue Engine fellowship, its application deadlines (March 10 and April 28, 2010); the gap between college eligibility and true college readiness; and why it’s crucial to expect more out of high schoolers in order to prepare them for high school and college success, and beyond.

Listen to the show here.

01.19.10
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Points of Light’s Michelle Nunn: MLK Day, Haiti Relief Efforts, and Getting Hands On in Your Community

Today’s guest on The New Service podcast is Michelle Nunn, CEO of the Points of Light Institute and Co-Founder of the HandsOn Network.

Points of Light Institute inspires, equips and mobilizes people to take action that changes the world. In 2007, the Points of Light Institute grew out of the merger between the Points of Light Foundation and the Hands On Network, creating the largest volunteer management and civic engagement organization in the nation. HandsOn Network includes more than 250 HandsOn Action Centers around the United States and ten other countries.

Idealist’s Amy Potthast chats with Michelle Nunn the Friday before MLK Day about the first-ever national MLK Day Virtual Town Hall Meeting, how people throughout the United States can take action in their own communities through Hands On Action Centers, how people can respond to the Haiti earthquake of January 12th, and the upcoming National Conference on Volunteering and Service to take place in New York this summer.

Direct download: Points_of_Lights_Michelle_Nunn.mp3

10.30.09
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New Jersey Nonprofit Leader: Heather Calverase, Teach For America

Posted as part of Nonprofit Career Month, featuring the diversity of career opportunities in the nonprofit sector. Listen to more shows in this series.

Today’s guest is Heather Calverase, Executive Director of Teach For America’s Newark, New Jersey region where she is responsible for growing sustainable base of financial, community, and district awareness and support including cultivating and stewarding donations, building strong ties with local school districts, and recruiting corps members.

Prior to her position with Teach For America, Heather worked in the business sector, including nearly a decade with Kaplan, best known for its test preparation books and classes.

Amy Potthast chats with Heather about what is appealing about what Heather brings to the nonprofit sector from her business sector experience, as well as her background on educational issues.

Podcast transcript coming soon.