2012
Seth Goldman Takes Us Inside Honest Tea [December 2012, Be Inkandescent magazine]
By Hope Katz Gibbs
Publisher
Be Inkandescent magazine
There’s a Chinese Proverb painted across the entry wall of Seth Goldman’s Bethesda, MD-based company, Honest Tea: “Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the people doing it.”
Indeed, that belief has been part of the mission of the beverage firm that Goldman started in his house in 1998, with his grad school professor, Barry Nalebuff of the Yale School of Management. It was slowgoing at first, but Honest Tea has thrived for the last decade, with a 66 percent annual compound growth rate—a statistic Goldman attributes to the fact that consumers increasingly prefer healthier food and drink options.
That fact helped Honest Tea land a cash infusion from The Coca-Cola Company in 2008. It owned a 40 percent interest in the company until March 2011, when it acquired the boutique brand for an undisclosed price, a month after its option to buy came due.
“This is a recognition that, especially with early-stage brands, the entrepreneurs continue to be relevant and important,” Goldman told The Washington Post. “We have an amazing opportunity to take our mission to a much broader level.”
Be Inkandescent magazine had the opportunity to sit down for an interview with the graduate of Harvard College (1987) and the Yale School of Management (1995), who also holds an honorary doctorate of laws from American University. Scroll down for our Q&A, and click here to hear our podcast interview with Seth Goldman.
The Importance of Having Empathy: Insights From Bill Drayton, Founder of Ashoka [Be Inkandescent]
By Hope Gibbs
Publisher
Be Inkandescent magazine
Bill Drayton has been a social entrepreneur since he was a New York City elementary school student. He was born to a mother who emigrated from Australia as a young cellist and an American father who, also unafraid to step into the unknown, became an explorer at an equally young age.
Public service and strong values run through the stories of both parents’ families, including several of the earliest anti-slavery abolitionist and women’s leaders in the United States. These family influences, the rich diversity and openness of life in Manhattan—as well as America’s deep cultural concern with equity, which flourished during the Civil Rights years—all interacted with one another and with Drayton’s temperament to plant Ashoka’s earliest roots.
We had the opportunity to sit down with Drayton to talk about the powerful international organization that he founded in 1980—which today is focused on creating a world where every child masters empathy. Scroll down for our Q&A.
We also interviewed Danielle Goldstone, the Change Leader in charge of Ashoka’s Start Empathy Initiative. Click here for her three-part strategy on how to ensure that your child, and your company, are empathetic, in our Tips for Entrepreneurs. To learn even more, stay tuned for our upcoming podcast with both Drayton and Goldstone on Inkandescent Radio.
Can Women Have It All? [Be Inkandescent]
Can women have it all? That’s the question that has been hotly debated since Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote her controversial essay, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” in the July/August issue of Atlantic magazine.
In addition to serving as the director of policy planning at the State Department from 2009 to 2011, she is mom to two teenage boys. To keep all the balls in the air, she lived in DC during the week, returning home only on weekends to be with her supportive husband and kids. And therein lay the rub.
“Eighteen months into my job as the first woman director of policy planning at the State Department, a foreign-policy dream job that traces its origins back to George Kennan, I found myself in New York, at the United Nations’ annual assemblage of every foreign minister and head of state in the world,” she writes.
The Future of Education [Be Inkandescent]
By Hope Gibbs, publisher
Be Inkandescent
Photos by Steve Barrett
When it comes to forecasting the future of education, it’s no surprise that online learning is taking the lead.
Similar to the dot.com boom of the 1990s, venture capitalists are eager to invest in education-technology start-ups.
According to the National Venture Capital Association, investments in ed-tech shot up to $429 million last year, from $146 million in 2002.
In April 2012, the Chronicle of Higher Education hosted a panel of education entrepreneurs on the cutting edge. The lively discussion focused on the following industry changes:
• Technology isn’t just about generating data. It’s about transforming the education experience.
• The proliferation of available data might necessitate a new organizing mechanism, specifically with regard to decision-making when it comes to the vast number of education opportunities.
• There is new momentum for partnerships between the private sector and existing institutions.
Click inside to meet the folks leading us into the future.
Adriana Trigiani's Dance With Fate [Costco Connection]
By Hope Katz Gibbs
The Costco Connection
September 2012
Bestselling author Adriana Trigiani unfurls the epic tale of her grandparents’ love story in her latest book, “The Shoemakers Wife.”
“I don’t know how Adriana Trigiani goes into her family’s attic and emerges with these amazing stories, I’m just happy she does,” says bestselling author Kathryn Stockett of Trigiani’s newest release, “The Shoemaker’s Wife.” “If you are meeting her for the first time, get ready for a lifelong love affair.”
That endorsement from the author of “The Help” is typical of the buzz around Trigiani’s epic tale of Ciro Lazzari and Enza Ravanelli—the fictional characters who depict the real lives of her grandparents and their sweeping, international love affair.
Charles Best: Teacher Supplies on Demand [Costco Connection]
By Hope Katz Gibbs
Costco Conntection
August 2012
Photos by DonorsChoose.org
Educator Charles Best came up with a very big idea one day back in 1999 while eating lunch with his fellow high-school teachers in the Bronx.
“My colleagues and I were talking about books that we wanted the students to read, field trips we wanted to take them on, and art supplies that we needed—but we all knew these ideas wouldn’t go beyond the teacher lunchroom because of funding issues,” explains the founder of www.DonorsChoose.org, one of the nation’s first peer-to-peer philanthropic websites, which he created in the year that followed.
Best spent $2,000 to get the beta site up and running—and several platters of his mom’s famous roasted pears with orange-rind dessert to bribe his colleagues to post those projects they had only dreamed of.
Pamela Hartigan On "The Power of Unreasonable People" [Be Inkandescent magazine, August 2012]
What does it take to become a company that is more focused on societal change than financial reward?
That is but one of the questions we asked Pamela Hartigan, the director of Oxford’s Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, which is named for eBay billionaire Jeff Skoll—one of the world’s best known “philanthroactivists.”
Married to an Australian for 40 years, Hartigan was recently featured in an article published in Australia’s Dumbo Feather.com that describes her as talking with rage and energy.
“She also talks no bullshit,” insists reporter Patrick Pittman, adding that Hartigan has “spent a career working to disrupt and change systems from within and from without. She builds bridges.”
Michael Gerber Takes Us Inside "The Dreaming Room" [Be Inkandescent magazine, July 2012]
JULY 2012: BEYOND THE E-MYTH
By Hope Katz Gibbs
Be Inkandescent
When Michael Gerber’s “E-Myth” was published in 1986, he had an inkling that entrepreneurs would take note.
After all, he was offering a solution for the millions of people struggling to understand why their small businesses don’t work and what to do about it.
What is the E-Myth? Gerber defines it like this: “The Entrepreneurial Myth says that technicians suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure believe that because they understand how to do the work of the business they intend to start, they are automatically gifted with an understanding about how to build and grow a business that does work.”
Dr. Esther Sternberg on "The Science of Healing" [Be Inkandescent magazine, June 2012]
JUNE 2012: FINDING THE BALANCE WITHIN
By Hope Katz Gibbs
Be Inkandescent magazine
Photo by Steve Barrett
“There is a turning point in the course of healing when you go from the dark side to the light, when your interest in the world revives, and despair gives way to hope,” writes Dr. Esther Sternberg in “Healing Spaces,” the 2009 book that led her to create the PBS Special “The Science of Healing,” which airs this month.
Internationally recognized for her discoveries of the science of the mind-body interaction in illness and healing, Dr. Esther Sternberg has become a force in collaborative initiatives on mind-body-stress-wellness and environment inter-relationships.
Her books, Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Well-Being, and The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions, are informative and scientifically based inspirations to doctors and laymen alike in dealing with the complexities and 21st century frontiers of stress, healing, and wellness.
Richard Carlson Suggests Six Ways to Create Abundance—And More Fun—In Your Life [Be Inkandescent magazine, May 2012]
MAY 2012: DON’T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF—AND IT’S ALL SMALL STUFF
When Richard Carlson passed away in December 2006, he left behind a legacy of 30 books that have helped millions learn not to let the small things in life get the best of them.
Carlson was considered one of the foremost experts on happiness and stress reduction, and his Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff series made publishing history as USA Today’s #1 bestselling book for two consecutive years. The title spent more than 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and is considered one of the fastest selling books of all time.
To inspire—and calm yourself—click inside for six excerpts from Carlson’s 100 practical tips.* Illustrations by Michael Gibbs
A Haunting Divinity [Costco Connection, April 2012]
By Hope Katz Gibbs
Costco Connection
April 2012
“In the beginning, the boy thought he saw his father everywhere. Outside the latrines. Underneath the showers. Leaning against barrack doorways. It was 1942. Utah. Late summer. The wind was hot and dry and the rain rarely fell and wherever the boy looked he saw him: Daddy, Papa, Father, Oto-san.”
And so begins the third and title chapter of Julie Otsuka’s incandescent novel, “When the Emperor Was Divine,” a bittersweet glimpse into the internment of a Japanese-American family durinag World War II.
The boy, Otsuka says, is her favorite character.
Insights Into How to Live the Life of Your Dreams from Life Coach Martha Beck [Be Inkandescent, April 2012]
By Hope Katz Gibbs, Publisher
Be Inkandescent magazine
“How the hell did you get here? What the hell are you going to do now?” These are the questions that Life Coach Martha Beck asks—and helps readers answer—in Finding Your Way in a Wild New World, which is her newest book.
A sociologist with three degrees from Harvard, Beck is the author of several bestselling books that help readers map their way to a more joyful life: Finding Your Own North Star (2002), Steering by Starlight (2008), and her latest, Finding Your Way in A Wild New World.
Beck was named one of the country’s first life coaches in 2002, thanks to an article by USA TODAY. It explained that life coaching guides “give clients the confidence to get unstuck—to change careers, repair relationships, or simply get their act together.” In the last several decades, her national and international workshops, and sophisticated coaching training program, have helped millions bridge the gap.
Mara Bartiromo Helps Us Find the Secret to Success [Be Inkandescent, March 2012]
By Hope Katz Gibbs
Publisher/Founder
Be Inkandescent magazine
When it comes to the challenge of finding success, financial reporter Maria Bartiromo admits she had two things going against her.
“I was a reporter with a camera, and I was a woman,” she shares, noting she persevered through the early days reporting live from the testosterone-fueled boys club on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. “Then one day, I was standing by the General Electric post and there were maybe 25 guys within earshot when one of them who was about three times my age said, ‘Run along, little girl, and don’t come here again.’ I had knots in my stomach. I looked at him and said, ‘Don’t talk to me that way’—and I ran along! But I came back! And I kept coming back. And 20 years later, I’m still here.”
Indeed. And so are many other female financial reporters, thanks to Bartiromo’s fearless determination. Not only is she the anchor of CNBC’s “Closing Bell with Maria Bartiromo,” and the host and managing editor of the nationally syndicated “Wall Street Journal Report with Maria Bartiromo,” she is the author of three books, including the one we are focusing on this month, The 10 Laws of Enduring Success.
Bestselling Author Ridley Pearson Tell Us How To Write A Book [Be Inkandescent magazine, February 2012]
By Hope Katz Gibbs, Publisher/Founder
Be Inkandescent and
Inkandescent PR
What child hasn’t wanted to fly to the “second star to the right, and straight on till morning,” to find themselves on the island of Neverland?
“Certainly no one I’ve ever met,” says bestselling author Ridley Pearson, whose novels cover a lot of ground, from the paranormal to the Peter Pan prequels, which he co-authored with humorist Dave Barry. Pearson is perhaps best known for his crime fiction novels, which have been translated into 22 languages and sell in 70 countries: ridleypearson.com.
What makes Pearson’s novels so engaging, critics agree, is his ability to pull in readers in the first paragraph—and keep them hanging on until the last page.
Reebok's President Uli Becker Jumpstarts the Shaping Up of America [Be Inkandescent Magazine, January 2012]
JANUARY 2012 CEO OF THE MONTH: REEBOK’S ULI BECKER
By Hope Katz Gibbs Publisher
Be Inkandescent magazine
“I do and say what I believe in,” Uli Becker told me when we met in his office at Reebok’s corporate headquarters in Canton, Mass., in December.
That attitude undoubtedly has helped the current president of Reebok International chart new territory for the firm that he says was in the hospital, on life-support, when the new parent company, the Adidas Group, bought it in 2006.
The German-born Becker, who has worked for the Adidas Group since 1990, explains: “We found that Reebok was not in its best shape based on lowering of price points, and distribution channel dilution. The brand itself also wasn’t a high flier, because it was at the border of being a branded but unbranded business, in terms of how the public perceived it.”