Our guest for this episode is Kurt Schmidt, a long time leader in the software development space. He’s a partner at Foundry, an innovation and design firm that helps companies grow through better experiences. Kurt also have a popular podcast the Schmidt List. He’s also an author and expert on networking to grow your career.

In this talk we go a little deep into Kurt's story, how he his start as a pro BMXer, a small business owner and the lessons he learned as the son of a small business owner who was also a pastor.

You’ll also get some great tips on how to be a better listener while networking, and you’ll get a great sense of how a purpose-led leader connects over empathy, honesty and desire to put good out into the world.

Hope you like this convo with Kurt!

You can buy his book "the Little Book of Networking: How to Grow Your Career One Conversation at a Time" on Amazon, here.

You can reach Kurt via:

• His website: https://kurtschmidt.me/
• His consulting group: https://schmidtconsulting.group/
• Foundry: https://www.foundrymakes.com/
• His podcast: https://kurtschmidt.me/schmidtlist/
  
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/schmidtlist

Alison Gretz has been an artist, a designer, a UX expert, a product team leader and, now, a coach and teacher for Human Centered leaders. This is a great conversation about the difference between teacher, coach, mentor and advocate. Also, we learn how to develop a sense of curiosity and fearlessness in your team. Finally, we address burnout and how to get through it.

Alison offers coaching and cohort-driven classes for those focused onhuman-centered work like product leaders, designers and UX teams. Recently, she's introduced an "Accelerator" for design professionals.

You can learn more about Alison and her offerings at designbydesign.co

Today our Guest is Leilani Bloomquist, an independent consultant who focuses on digital transformation, product team leadership and innovation. Leilani is sort of a quadruple threat:

• She knows innovation
• She knows product development and management
• She knows how to guide change in an org
• And, she’s seen the good and bad of digital transformation

I really appreciated this talk. The clarity of Leilani’s thinking, the empathy and intelligence she brings to her work shouldn’t be surprising given all the work she’s done in education and healthcare.

She’s also got unique insights into doing transformational product work in highly regulated industries like healthcare and financial services. I think you’ll find that she’s got a cool ability to help teams be in two places at once: The practical reality of now, and the optimistic opportunity of the future.

And, as someone that has a love/hate relationship with jargon I really liked her points on mentorship, helping teams find a common language to cut through the fog of jargon.