Episodes

In this special episode in honor of Black History Month, Chris is joined by Aaron Craig Mitchell. Aaron is the former director of HR at Netflix Animation Studios, where he helped engineer the company's pledge to allocate 2 percent of its cash holdings into financial institutions and organizations that directly support Black communities in the U.S. Aaron describes himself as a tortoise (a nod to the Aesop fable that inspired the episode title) because he learned persistence and resilience from an...

Chris closes out the first season of the podcast with a conversation with Erica Brinker, Chief Commercial Officer and Head of ESG at Array Technologies. Erica is an extraordinary leader who knows how to build a brand and prove her impact. Prior to Array, Erica was CMO at Honeywell, an industrial that historically didn’t believe in marketing. She drove demand through the roof for Honeywell by building a brand campaign that is still driving impact years later. Her insights and approach should pro...

Today, Chris talks to Jake Wood, CEO and founder of Groundswell, an innovative new corporate giving platform that enables companies to empower employees with their own donor-advised funds. As a former Marine sniper who received three meritorious promotions for leading combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, Jake shares how he overcame fear and chaos on the battlefield. And he explains how the lessons he learned in combat can help company leaders face their own fears and unleash the potential o...

In this episode, Chris is joined by Netflix’s Heather Dowdy for a conversation about her work in shifting the narratives that impact how people with disabilities and people of color with disabilities are received in our culture. Heather is a child of deaf adults (CODA) who grew up on the south side of Chicago at the intersection of race, disability, socioeconomic status, and technology. She became an engineer and eventually the first director of product accessibility at Netflix. In that role, s...

In this episode, Chris is joined by a friend, former colleague, and mentor from his time at Amazon Marketplace, Pete Sauerborn. Pete is a seasoned eCommerce leader with impeccable credentials: a VP at Amazon Marketplace, an MBA from Chicago Booth, stints at Apple and McKinsey, and owner of a $300 million P&L at Teleflora. But what sets Pete apart is his customer obsession. That’s a buzzword, for sure, but there is no better phrase for what guides Pete. You’ll hear how Pete’s obsession with se...

Today The Storied Future Podcast welcomes Kyle Arteaga, cofounder and CEO of the Bulleit Group, an award-winning high-tech PR agency. From an early age, Kyle believed that the science fiction of movies and television could become reality—had to become reality. At the core of Kyle and his team’s mission is a recognition of the ways technology has shaped the present, and a determination to tell the stories of the companies that will drive the future. In this episode, Kyle and Chris discuss how ...

Welcome to the seventh episode of The Storied Future Podcast, where Chris talks to Mark Stouse, founder and CEO of Proof Analytics. If you’ve been listening to the show regularly, you know we explore how leaders use narrative to transform the future of a business. Mark has done that many times over, but his story of personal transformation is not to be missed. He also highlights how analytics can be a powerful tool—an empathy engine—that can help marketing leaders become greater multipliers of ...

Today’s guest is Andrew Walsh of Applicate Commerce. As the president and CEO of Applicate, Andrew is at the helm of one of the biggest shifts in the company’s sixty-year history. The company—previously known as Paint Sundries Solutions—had stayed in their lane for decades as a distributor of applied architectural products. But the rise of ecommerce was disrupting their linear supply chain, threatening the market share of brands and local retailers, and training consumers to demand more, bett...

Our guest on the fifth episode of the Storied Future Podcast is Ebbie Parsons, III. Ebbie is the founder and managing partner of Yardstick Management, a renowned Black-owned management consulting firm based in Atlanta, Georgia that helps clients transform their organizations to be more diverse, equitable, and inclusive. They count among their clients some of the top companies in the world, including Netflix, Prudential, EY, Whirlpool, Amazon, Medtronic, and LinkedIn. Ebbie embodies a relentless ...

Our guest today is Julie Brown, the extraordinary leader architecting and executing on a massive transformation strategy for a nearly $7 billion HVAC, Fire, and Security division of Johnson Controls. Julie helps lead a team of folks who are keeping critical systems running smoothly at schools and hospitals across the country. Behind the scenes, though, they’re navigating the uncomfortable upheaval of a digital transformation journey. Julie cares a lot about her work. But she cares even more ab...

In the third episode of the Storied Future Podcast, Chris talks to Bracken Darrell, the CEO of Logitech, about how a design narrative can help any company reinvent itself. In 2013, Logitech was a computer peripheral maker facing a bleak outlook due to due to a plateau in worldwide PC sales. So Bracken hired Nokia design guru Alastair Curtis, moved R&D budget out of mice and keyboards and into sectors with growth potential, and reorganized the company around a set of design principles inspired ...

Welcome to the inaugural episode of the Storied Future Podcast! We’re glad you’re here. In this show, host Chris Hare talks to C-Suite leaders, experts, and innovators who are transforming themselves and their companies through the power of strategic narratives. Our very first guest is the incredible Mary Shea, currently VP, Global Innovation Evangelist at Outreach and a former principal analyst at Forrester. Chris talks to Mary about her unlikely path to becoming a relentless visionary. Along...

In the second episode of the Storied Future Podcast, Chris talks to Jamie Cleghorn and Rishi Dave of Bain & Company about how to create alignment across the B2B organization, from the buyer to the boardroom. Jamie is a Senior Partner focused mainly on growth strategy, go-to-market effectiveness, and organizational alignment. Rishi is an Expert Partner in the firm's commercial excellence practice with deep expertise in B2B marketing and digital marketing. This conversation covers a ton of groun...