Advertise on podcast: What's Wrong With: The Podcast

Today in the episode of What’s Wrong With: The Podcast, we are excited to be talking with design theorist, facilitator, and practitioner: Sloan Leo! Leo is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of FLOX Studio, a community design and strategy studio that supports mission-driven organizations to animate the practice of their values. Using facilitation, FLOX Studio engages innovative social impact leaders to collaboratively design their culture, strategy, and organizational development efforts. Rooted in black feminist theory, Afrofuturism, and social justice, FLOX is on a mission to improve the embodied experience of social impact workers and the institutional communities they comprise. Appointed the inaugural Designer-in-Residence at the School of Visual Arts Design for Social Innovation Master’s program, Leo has over 15 years of experience with social impact management and community design.

Today on the podcast, Joseph Heathcott grew up in the Industrial Midwest, and has worked as a dish washer, fry cook, roofer, carpenter, lumber yard grunt, and community organizer. He also has a background as a photographer and radio announcer and producer. These days he is the Chair of Urban and Environmental Studies at The New School, exploring cities within a global, comparative perspective. Much of Joseph’s work over the past decade has been to connect humanities and social sciences with practice fields such as architecture, planning, policy, and urban design. He is the author of Global Queens: An Urban Mosaic, which just came out, and with Angela Dietz he wrote Capturing the City: Photographs from Streets of St. Louis. In addition to his scholarship, Joseph is a practicing curator and artist, and has exhibited his work at the Museum of the City of New York, the Queens Museum, MIT Galleries, Town Hall Galleries in Stuttgart, and the Museo Banco de México in Mexico City. He has also held numerous visiting positions, including: the U.S. Fulbright Distinguished Chair for the United Kingdom; Senior Visiting Scholar at the London School of Economics; the Mellon Distinguished Fellowship in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities at Princeton University School of Architecture; Senior Visiting Scholar at L'École Urbanine, Sciences Po; and Distinguished Fellow at the Advanced Research Collaborative, CUNY Graduate Center. Heathcott is past President of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History, and currently serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Planning Association.

Our guest today on this podcast episode of What’s Wrong With: The Podcast is Jolyon White, the founder and Creative Director of 10 Days - the agency shaking up the ad industry. He is a former employee at Wieden+Kennedy, Mother, and Channel 4. Jolyon famously created the multi-award winning Paralympics campaign - 'Yes I can' for Channel 4 amongst lots of exciting work for Nike, Bumble, MoneySupermarket and Lurpak. Jolyon is also an award-winning film director, and now runs his own creative advertising agency called 10Days, together with his two other brothers from London.

Today on What’s Wrong With: The Podcast, we have the honor to speak with Dan Dickson! Dan Dickson is an urban planner and architect who is interested in how to solve intractable problems rooted in the built environment. He has spent much of his career working in architecture firms on planning and design work ranging in scale from the building to the region, exploring equity issues relating to transportation access, criminal justice, education, and housing affordability. Dan has also worked for NYC’s Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), where he facilitated the funding, construction and maintenance of affordable housing in support of the City’s Housing New York plan. Currently, Dan’s role as Director of Planning and Design at the Battery Park City Authority has allowed him to participate in leveraging public funds to create a more sustainable and resilient New York City with an emphasis on the public realm.

Today in our episode of What’s Wrong With: The Podcast, we are happy to welcome Pilar Finuccio! Pilar (she/her) is the Executive Director of the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP). She was born to a big Cuban family in Miami, where her community design practice began at O, Miami Poetry Festival, designing projects imagined by people throughout Miami Dade County to be created every April during National Poetry month. She studied social design at the School of Visual Arts and previously worked at the Department of Small Business Services and Public Policy Lab. She has a personal bookmaking practice, gives presentations about mangos to anyone who will listen, and loves to talk about CUP's work. She's excited to talk to anyone with a passion and curiosity for the role of design in creating and sustaining more equitable cities and communities.

Today in the episode of What’s Wrong With: The Podcast, we are excited to be talking with Seth James about Artificial Intelligence. Seth has helped startups, non-profits, and enterprises design and deploy virtual assistants to help people make informed decisions. He started building his first bot on a trip to Okinawa in 2018. Since then, Seth has built conversational databases, multimodal brand ambassadors, customer support bots, and other virtual assistants. He's currently working with LLMs to promote sapient political engagement at otherparty.ai Seth's background is in writing. Before he worked in conversational AI, he was a strategist trapped in a copywriter's mind and a Columbia J School misfit. In his free time, he enjoys the open road, explores sustainable building, and philosophizes with his Poodle.

She founded Path Home (formerly Portland Homeless Family Solutions) at the age of 24. For the past 16 years she has served as its Executive Director, working to make shelter and permanent housing a reality for as many families as possible. As of 2023, Path Home remains one of the only Portland organizations focused exclusively on homeless families, with a staff of over 50, an annual budget of nearly $5 million, more than 3,021 families served, and with an track record of remarkable success among organizations serving the homeless: Eighty-eight percent of Path Home families keep their housing long-term. Path Home supports homeless families through a multifaceted model focused on prevention, shelter, wrap-around services, and long-term housing stability. Some of Brandi’s accomplishments include: Brandi spearheaded a campaign to raise $5 million to build Path Home’s Family Village campus. Opened in 2019, the shelter is the first of its kind in Oregon to incorporate trauma-informed design and architecture to help families heal from the trauma of homelessness. Path Home was awarded a five-year, $2.5 million grant from the Bezos Day One Families Fund for its compassionate and innovative work to help more families move back into housing. The funds will allow Brandi and her team to invest in wrap-around services to help families end their homelessness for good. Brandi graduated from the University of Florida in 2005 with degrees in Political Science and Philosophy, and a minor in Organizational Leadership for Nonprofits. She was also awarded a Certificate of Nonprofit Management from Boston College in 2019. Brandi has served on the boards of the Nonprofit Association of Oregon, the National Board of the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network, Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble, and is currently on the board of the American Leadership Forum of Oregon. In her spare time, Brandi enjoys hiking with her dog Sylvie Bear, reading books with her book club, doing yoga and pilates, and exploring the outdoors.

Today on the podcast, we speak with David Brint, Janet Szlyk and Jack Schroeder, three individuals from different companies, who were together involved in the creation of the Foglia residences - affordable housing for people with vision impairment. ‍The developer of the residences is Brinshore Developer, of which David Brint is the Principal and Co-Founder. Besides his role at Brinshore Development, David also presently serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Foundation Fighting Blindness. He also has served as Board Member of the Retinal Degeneration Venture Fund, Past President of the Board Director of the Illinois Housing Council; Former Board Director of The Chicago Lighthouse for People Who are Blind and Visually Impaired; Board Director of Karate Can Do Foundation for Special Needs Children; and Former Member of the Chicago Federal Home Loan Bank Board Community Investment Advisory Council. ‍Dr. Janet Szlyk is President and CEO of earlier mentioned The Chicago Lighthouse, a 117-year-old not-for-profit helping people who are blind, visually impaired, disabled and Veterans build confidence and independence. During her tenure, Janet has expanded The Lighthouse’s social service programs providing education, comprehensive vision care, independent living, employment services and independent living skills training for clients of all ages. LBBA Architects are behind the design of The Foglia Residences. Jack Schroeder is a Principal at LBBA, a team of socially minded architects providing engaging and empathetic solutions for affordable housing and community spaces in Chicago and beyond. Driven by the understanding that each organization and developer have a distinct purpose, each contractor their strengths, and every resident a unique definition of home, Jack approaches each project with enthusiasm and inclusiveness. In his 20+ year tenure at LBBA, Jack has had the opportunity to help the firm grow its team and impact while upholding the mission to empower communities from within.

Luke Williams is a leading business thinker, speaker and author having lectured in 21 countries & addressed the World Innovation Forum & the United Nations General Assembly. He is Professor of Innovation & Design at NYU Stern School of Business and the founder of IdeaSkills™. Williams is the inventor of 30+ U.S. patents & has designed more than 100 products in industries ranging from transportation to finance, and healthcare to consumer electronics. His views are regularly featured in media ranging from Bloomberg BusinessWeek & Fast Company to The Wall Street Journal & The Economist. He is the author of the international bestseller, Disrupt: Think the Unthinkable to Spark Transformation in Your Business.

Patrick MacLeamy is an American architect who spent 50 years at HOK, a leading architecture and engineering firm. Rising from Junior Designer to CEO, Patrick witnessed the company's growth from a single Midwestern office to 27 locations around the world. During his time at HOK from 1967 until 2017, Patrick led many significant projects, including the Moscone Center in San Francisco and King Khalid International Airport in Saudi Arabia. Patrick has been heavily involved in efforts to improve the building industry, serving on various committees and receiving multiple honors for his work. He was a founding member of buildingSMART International in 1994 and now serves as the international chairman. Patrick is also known for the "MacLeamy Curve," which promotes allocating resources early in the design process to optimize the design and correct mistakes early on. Patrick earned his Bachelor of Architecture and Master of Architecture in Urban Design degrees at the University of Illinois at Urbana. He won the Paris Prize administered by the Van Alen Institute in 1965, which allowed him to attend the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the American Academy in Rome. Today, Patrick lives in Novato, California, outside of San Francisco, with his wife, Jeanne MacLeamy, who is also an architect. He continues to serve on the city's Design Review Commission and shares his business tips for architects, engineers, contractors, and designers through his podcast series, "Build Smart."

Nina is an experienced leader in social innovation. She is a global leader in academic and application in design-thinking and integrated design approaches to address complex issues, and has a history of achievement delivering projects with change leaders, policy makers and innovators around the globe focused on the sustainable development goals. Nina holds a PhD in Management by Design, holds several Adjunct Associate professor roles with leading Australian academic institutions. In 2022 Nina was a visiting scholar at Parsons School of Design Strategies, in New York City. Nina is a sought-after public speaker on design, gender equity and sustainable impact. As well as the author of Design for a Better Future: A Guide to Designing in Complex Systems.

Shamichael Hallman is currently a visiting fellow (Loeb Fellow) at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, and a Teaching Fellow at the Center for Impact Strategy at the University of Pennsylvania. As part of his fellowship work at Harvard, he is exploring how design and planning can make for socially inclusive cities and welcoming public spaces. From 2017 to 2022 he served as the Senior Library Manager of the historic Cossitt Library (Memphis Public Libraries). In this role he helped oversee the multi-million-dollar renovation of the library. As part of the Reimagining the Civic Commons initiative, the renovated Cossitt Library features a café, studio spaces, coworking areas, and more. His 2020 TEDx talk "Reimagining the Public Library to Reconnect the Community" garnered international acclaim among library professionals. In 2021 he co-founded Libraries as Bridges; a collective of library professionals focused on understanding, advancing, and evaluating how libraries build social cohesion, promote civic renewal, and advance the ideals of a healthy American democracy. In this role he has convened hundreds of library systems from across country, as well given talks to organizations such as Urban Libraries Council, on the topic of public libraries and American Democracy. Prior to joining Memphis Public Libraries, Shamichael worked at the intersection of faith and technology as a minister, technologist, and organizer. He has co-organized faith-related tech events across the globe and given talks to faith-inspired technologists at companies such as Microsoft and Google. He holds an MS in Nonprofit Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania.