Best Of Legacy & Service | Conversations on Giving Back, Community & Purpose

Welcome to the Legacy All Stars podcast. We feature inspirational stories from people who dedicate themselves to helping others. Here is your host, Alan Pavloski.

Welcome to the Legacy All Stars podcast. I'm your host, Alan Pavloski. And today we are featuring a special best of episode with clips from past interviews. Today's focus is Legacy in Service, featuring clips from interviews of Keanu Lavi, Joanne Pasternak, Roger Devine, Noelle and Shawna Felix, and Zan Abrahamson. I hope you enjoy the show.

This clip features Kiaan Alavi from an episode that Originally aired on May 27, 2025.

Can you share a recent success story or project that Maslow helped bring to life?

I mean, there's a lot. There's a lot. Yesterday, our team was very touched by seeing an explosive kind of donation campaign, if you will, around a young person who lost their life due to school violence. And nothing will bring that child home. And when you see a parent get with a sponsor, start a project immediately, stand up all the assets needed and start raising and can start moving forward with whatever recovery and healing means and seeing all of these donations come to them from their loving community. Like, there's, there's nothing that can describe the feeling that you're building technology to support that kind of good from a sponsor level or from a nonprofit level. We have seen fiscal sponsors cut their reconciliation times by 90%. You know, it would take six or seven hours from kind of upper level, you know, in the finance team scrubbing data every month, and then it would come over to the finisher, if you will, that would get it into the accounting software. And there's always a suspense account.

Right.

I don't know what this, this, what this money is for. I don't know who it's from. We have to suspend it until we sort that out, the compliance side. And that's extremely frustrating. And by deploying Maslow, we, we see them getting up to 90% of that back in terms of lost time and more importantly, 100% financial precision.

No more.

Who is this money from? Who is this money for? What are the restrictions on this money? Can I use this money? Did that vendor get paid? Do I have a W9? All the things that come with these workflows just gone.

Gone.

Technology can do it.

That brings a lot of, a lot of simplicity to the world. I mean, I've come from the space where I've had a lot of activity in the nonprofit world. And boy, oh, boy, the cost segregation and all the things you have to do to make sure that you're compliant, making sure as a fiscal sponsor that your project is being accounted for properly while still not messing up your own 990. I mean, that's gotta be. You gotta have a lot of fans that are raving about this, given the solution you're providing.

Fortunately, we do. We have a community forming and really actually informing what we do. So everything we build, we have seen as a pain. And then we go to this incredible learning economy of humans across this country and say, this is what we're seeing as a pattern. Is this what you're seeing and feeling? Tell us what you think, and if there's enough demand and need, we'll move on to bringing it to life and validating it. So everything we have built, literally has been shoulder to shoulder with the non profits we work with and just solving pain after pain after pain.

This clip features Joanne Pasternak from an episode that Originally aired on June 3, 2025.

I mean, knowing you, you've had these conversations privately, but knowing you and your why and why you're in this business, it seems like almost kismet or, or serendipitous that you ended up at Laureus because the perfect fit. Almost. Right. I.

It's. I mean, I like to think it does. It does feel like it. It's, you know, I like the word besher, which means, you know, meant to be. And, and it's interesting because I was running my own consulting firm for about five years, and I had last summer just taken a deep breath and thought about where do I want to be and what do I want to be doing? And I knew I wanted to be a part of a team that was working together to do great things and having the support of great partners. We work with Richemont, which is luxury brands, conglomerate of 29 different maisons, all looking at ways that they can give back and give back together. So that helps. We have Nike, we have Dove, we have all these partners who want to lean in and are relying on us to help make that happen.

So.

So that's fun. I also have a team of 14 people who are in our various cities and also in New York who are so passionate and so dedicated that it's made it feel like it's just fun. It's fun to be able to jump in and do the work and to know that you have the resources behind you to really elevate that. So we're expanding our partnerships, we're expanding our, our board reach. We have athletes who don't even need last names on our board, you know, people like Nadia Cominic and Marcus Allen and Michael Johnson. And we're fortunate to be able to work with them to help bring more visibility to sport as a unified Fantastic.

How active are the individual athletes in the process with you?

They're fantastic. In fact, two hours ago I was on the call with one of our NFL legends who's a part of our our board, and he just spent time last week in Albany, New York, helping to advocate around a reallocation of funds to support youth sports in urban environments throughout New York. And great stuff. He took a train up to Albany just like everybody else and knocked on doors and met with state legislators and had fun doing it. And that's another component that we always look for with our athlete engagement is not only what are we asking of them, but what is it that they're hoping to gain from the participation? Because that's how you get people to come back again. So my first question to him was, how was it? You know, what, did you enjoy it? He said, never done anything like it and I would do it again in a minute. And he said I felt like I was getting better and better with each conversation. And so when we look at athletes who have been in that professional high profile role, sometimes they are. They find themselves at the crossroads where they're not going to be a professional athlete anymore and they can't figure out what's next. At Laureus, one of the things that we're able to do is to provide them with a forum where they can start to build out some of those skills. So a different kind of muscle, but one that can take them well into their old age.

This clip features Roger Devine from an episode that Originally aired on June 17, 2025.

You know, we talked about this earlier, but not in the episode. But I've talked to you about this before during COVID and now in uncertain funding times. Your approach has helped organizations adapt. What lessons still apply today based on those circumstances?

So right now, nonprofits and charities out there that have professional fundraising talent on their staffs have probably pursued a particular orientation with regards to their fundraising, like let's do things in the most efficient way possible. The most efficient way is to find somebody who's got a fat wallet and not terribly long to live and ask them to write a really big check to us. You know, it's really efficient. If you can find that, if you can do that, go do that. That's a good thing to do. But you know, some of those sources are drying up. You know, certainly Things like government grants are under review or they're being pulled or they're being reallocated. And that removes a pillar of sort of standard fundraising best practices. Private foundations are great, but they're being asked to pick up the slack from government foundations. In times like these, I think you absolutely have got to have a significant part of your fundraising mix that is broadly based, that is about not asking for one guy for $50,000, but is rather about finding 50 guys who can give you $1,000. You know, and this is one of the reasons we really like working with community based nonprofits. I like to think that the most successful of these kind of events have the feel of a community effort to them. It's kind of a barn raising. You know, we're going to all get together. We see the issue in front of us at this school, we have to replace the football field, we have to replace the roof over the shop or whatever it is. You know, we're going to get together and fix our problem here. And that is a type of fundraising that is much less volatile. It's much less volatile to economic conditions, it's much less volatile to the whims of funding sources, larger funding sources out there. Are events sexy? Not to anybody who's got professional fundraising or development training. You know, they're. They're seen at best in some organizations as a necessary evil. We want to just break even on it. It's a way to get our donors some recognition. But you know what? I'll tell you, there's a whole category of nonprofits out there that have figured out that they can be effective fundraisers as well. They can make you money, they know how to do it, and they're sustainable, long term elements of a solid fundraising mix. And those organizations are the grassroots ones. They're the ones that, you know, may have a staff of three and may serve people within a given city or a given neighborhood, and they know how to be lean and mean and efficient and these things work for them.

You know, Roger, it strikes me in this conversation that, you know, if there's anything that could come from exposing your software to people that don't even know it exists, is that some of the people that might hear this message don't really even know that this is available to the general small community based nonprofit. They think that auctions and techniques like auctions are probably too big for them. I hope that people are inspired to take action on this. I'm not promoting a particular product. That's not what I do here. But I think Your message is very clear that if people seize the moment and take advantage of the tools that are available, they could clearly generate more cash for their nonprofit venture and make more impact. And everything is on impact here, for sure.

Absolutely.

This clip features Noel and Shauna Felix from an episode that Originally aired on July 1, 2025.

Let's talk about the power of partnership. What's it like building a mission driven company as a married couple and any lessons you've learned about partnership in business and in life?

Well, for me, I know that my wife is very competitive and so am I. And I mean, we met in college in study table. I was a freshman and she was a sophomore at Fresno State. And so we had that in common. Just that competitive drive, but also the teamwork aspect where it's like, you know, I'm doing this and she's doing this. And then we come together and we figure out what's best for us to move together. And I think give culture is big for us in doing that. We talk about different words. Like today, my words, encouragement. I choose to give encouragement every single day as a teammate in my marriage. So when we go out, I lead with that. When she goes out, she leads with that. And we. The good thing about that, Alan, is when we are on that page, whenever we go through anything together, we recover quicker because the biggest point is to lead with kindness in house. Like the thing about give kindness, I can't be kind to anybody else unless I'm kind to myself. So if I'm going out there leading with kindness and I'm coming home mad, that's a lack of integrity on my part and I'm not really fulfilling the peace that I deserve to have, which is to take care of home first. So Sean and I, we try to stay on the same page when it comes to how we deal with people outside that. A lot has to do with our teamwork and it has a lot to do with our competitive spirit to say we want to do right by what we're saying. We can't just talk about giving kindness. We have to live it every single day. And so that's kind of how we've done it. And we hold each other accountable that.

Way so we can. So we can win the day.

Yeah.

And I. And he does a really good job. Like, I really feel so blessed. Unfortunate because my husband doesn't mind taking over a dinner or taking over breakfast if I have somewhere to be or taking care of the kids and doing all the things that I would usually do all day when it comes time for me to step into, you know, put my, my business hat on and go out into the community. Has no problem taking over all the roles that I would usually fill at home.

This clip features Zan Abrahamson from an episode that Originally aired on October 14, 2025.

About mentorship. You and I have talked about this before, but do you seek out people to mentor or do you encounter people that you see that might appear to you to need mentoring and then step in when asked?

You know, I don't think I've ever offered to be a mentor. And I do also think that there's a fine line between telling someone you want through something and, and making them believe that you don't think they're smart enough. So I try to say, hey, you're doing great. And hopefully if they would like some feedback from me, I'm happy to mentor. I would also say that at my age, now 30 years into a legal career, I'm actually looking for mentors myself. I'm looking for younger mentors. I'm looking for 20 year olds and 30 year olds to talk to me about how businesses differ. I learn every day from them. So I'm actively seeking out mentors for me and I'm trying to make myself, myself available for people to ask me for guidance. And that has been a successful strategy.

That's super cool. I love that. And I totally agree with that philosophy, of course.

Thank you. It's the Denzel philosophy, right? What is it that Denzel Washington says? He says, in the first part of your life you learn, in the second part of your life you earn, and in the third part of your life you return. And so I'm really at that returning stage right now. But sometimes I need a little help too. And so that's why I'm actively seeking out mentors myself while I make myself available.

Yeah, you've been really intentional about giving back with what I've known about your activities. Where does that drive to serve and support others come from?

Parents. Right. Parents Raised in the Bay Area, born in Berkeley. Both my parents were activists in the 60s and 70s. And we talked a little bit a few minutes ago about being a brown person, about being a woman. But the truth of the matter is I come from so much privilege. I have been well educated, I have been nurtured as a child. I did not come from a war torn country. I was actually able, didn't have the money, wasn't raised wealthy, but I managed to pay off my student loans. I consider that a privilege, not a burden. And so when you begin to look and when you have parents who educate you in this way, when you begin to look at why people fail, they typically don't fail because they don't have the drive to succeed. They don't fail because they don't have opportunity. And so to the extent that it takes so little effort on my part to create an opportunity for them, I need to do the actual. Because that's the way that we, you know, the rising tide lifts all boats philosophy, and that's how I truly feel.

Yeah. How do you balance your professional role in protecting ideas with your personal passion for protecting people?

I conflate them. You know, there's a lot going on in the world right now, and one of the things that I can do to both protect people and protect the world, protect freedom, protect our country, and what many of our ancestors have worked hard to build here is to make sure that we create space. I know that that is such a charged word. It's so I know when I say create space, I have to snap my fingers instead of clapping and stuff because it's, you know, it's a little Gen Z. But protecting people's ideas, their works of authorship, is also protecting the incredible diversity that we have in this world by allowing people to actually get something for what they're doing. And going all the way back to what we talked about at the very beginning of this discussion, sort of bringing it full circle. We are doing exactly what the creators of intellectual property laws intended, which is giving the world a far better, more creative, more interesting, more beautiful, more scientifically advanced, more healthy world.

I hope you enjoyed today's best of episode. I encourage all of you to build your legacy with intention. Don't forget to subscribe to be notified of new episodes. I'm Alan Pavloski signing off for Legacy All Stars.