Best Of Purpose & Impact | Powerful Podcast Conversations on Legacy Building #legacybuilding

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 purpose and impact, featuring clips from interviews of Shannon Feaster, Neil Duffy, Nancy Economo, Nicholas Malice, and Clayton Banks. I hope you enjoy the show. That's got to be a push. We got to do better than what we're doing now.

Absolutely. And if folks are aware that something that might seem like a, you know, a nagging injury that an adolescent might sustain just from playing outside truly could be something else, it means that you have to go to the doctor regularly and have those baseline levels of their, you know, their blood work done so that if there's inflammation, if there are these spikes and these challenges that they're facing, that it's detected pretty early to your point, and then a specialist referral can occur. Savvy was definitely not expected to survive beyond a year, probably more like a six month diagnosis. We had her for 21 months, nearly two years. We enrolled her in a clinical trial at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York. I moved to New York with Savvy for that period of time. She hit a very nice, you know, she had a remission. She was in remission. And then she. She had a nice stretch where we were like, we can move back to Maryland and we can give her her life, you know, let her set her goals, and we can pursue those with some maintenance monitoring by Walter Reed and. And they stayed in touch with Memorial Sloan Kettering. And also she was treated by folks at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia as well. So we had all that coordination going on daily. They were in touch because it's such a rare type of cancer.

Yeah, yeah. Can you speak to the power of community both in sports and through Savvy's army, and how people have stepped up in ways that surprised you or inspired you?

Yes, absolutely. I think once folks were made aware, both within the racquetball community, throughout my sports and athlete network and beyond, once they were made aware of what our family's journey was and the shock wore off, that it could happen to somebody. They know the amount, the outpouring of support, the. What can we do? How can we help? We know these folks who might be able to host a fundraiser or we've got beyond the donations, the individual donations, just the interest in this issue has been very heartening for us, and it won't stop. And that's one of the reasons why we just needed to launch Savvy's army, because Savvy, as I mentioned earlier, she was an athlete, activist herself. I mean, this. This kid wouldn't want anybody to suffer in any way, for any reason in, you know, animals she cared a little bit more about than people. So she wanted to be a veterinarian when she grew up. And a couple of the program areas that we focused on are based on her specific interest in supporting other children like her, whether they have cancer or another serious illness and require accessing, you know, blood work being done or medication being administered through a port. She wanted to provide this needle relieving device to as many kids as possible. It's called the Buzzy. A buzzy device, and it just vibrates, and you put it between the brain and the pain. So the needle injection site is where the pain is, and put it in between there, and it really, really helped her. And so one of the first opportunities we had for partnership, for truly meaningful partnership through Savvy's army was with the maker of Buzzy, which is pain care labs down in Atlanta. And they locked arms with us, and they said, hey, let's do this. Let us provide you with buzzy devices to give to the mid Atlantic hospitals that treated Savi, and let's scale from there. Let's help as many kids as we can and as many families as we can, because they've got to be accessed and they have to receive their treatment, but they don't have to endure the amount of pain that needle, you know, that injections cause.

You know, it's funny responding to that. I've been around sports a long time, over 30 years of working right in the middle of all the sports events and organizations. I've noticed that the evolution of. Of sports in terms of what is the pure sports love for the love of the game. The. Like you talked about women's sports standing on their own and offering a different product. Well, ultimately, some of the dollars change that, but what it seems to me right now is that women's sports is. Is offering something that college sports used to offer, and that is the love of the game aspect. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Yeah, it's. It's a. It's a very astute insight. And I think the. And you see that in women's soccer, right? The. The. The. The level of engagement from the players, the. That they are. They're there because they Love the game. They wouldn't have carried on playing if they didn't. They've had to. And again, coming back to the breaking barriers project, I mean, they had to overcome a lot of barriers to continue to stay in the game and to be in a position where they're able to compete at the highest level now. But also I think what's an interesting dynamic around women's sport generally is, is this notion that it's a different type of experience to what men's sport has become. Right. So you go with the family. You can't really do that with a lot of men's sports today. I wouldn't feel safe taking my young kids to a lot of men's sports, particularly football today, especially here in Europe. I mean, it's kind of put your life at risk. Right. Without stretching it too much. So that's the other thing that's, it's just kind of like this natural environment where the players want to be there, they're there to play the game and the fans want to be there because they want to be part of that experience. And there's just a different level of intimacy and that sits all around that. And we're seeing with things like, you know, unrivaled and love volleyball and these types of things, I mean, it's just, it's just different. It's refreshing, it's new, it's, it's what people, people are looking for something different.

Yes.

Old traditional models. That's super exciting. And a lot of those things are by their nature purposeful. Right. Women's soccer of itself, the fact that it's providing opportunities and inclusion and equity and all that stuff, it's kind of built into what it is by definition. There's a great case study of purpose leds, sports disciplines that are succeeding despite the environment.

Yeah, great stuff. Let me dovetail a little bit into a different subject. What's one piece of advice you'd offer to younger professionals who want to build a purpose aligned career in sports or business?

I always think it's important who, whatever you do in life to support, surround yourself with people who are going to, you know, help you to get to where you want to get to. Right. I mean, if you surround yourself with a bunch of, you know, gangsters in a hood, you're probably going to end up becoming a gangster. So I would just. My advice would be to seek out those individuals, organizations, teams, leagues, athletes, whatever it might be that kind of have demonstrated a commitment to just be more intentional about acting in a purposeful way. And just do whatever you can to get hooked up with them and to become part of the ecosystem. And just by being in that company, you're going to start to be, going to be exposed to new thinking, you're going to be exposed to new people, you're getting exposed to new opportunity. So I would say that, you know, you can obviously more. I think more and more schools are now offering purpose as a track so you can go and do a sports degree and as part of that they'll have a track around purpose. I haven't seen a pure, I don't know if you've seen one standard, you know, pure purpose LED sports marketing diploma yet. I think it's a matter of time before one comes. But right now I don't think they exist. So, you know, if you go the mainstream, you're going to end up with purpose just being one of several things that you do. And as a junior person in an organization, it's very difficult to drive change, you know. So yeah, I would say find places, just, I mean, find places where you can surround yourself with people who think the same way and then that'll just create open opportunities for you to grow into that space.

Let's talk a little bit more. And you mentioned a little bit about the solar light, but I really want to get a little bit more granular in the solar. Solar light itself. And how does it unlock such a cascade of impact from saving money to improving health and safety, etc.

Yes, absolutely. So I'll go back to. Originally I found a product that was already in the market. It was larger, the light was about this big. It had a wire that connected to the solar panel. And I'm kind of an innovator. So if I see problems, I start hearing things. I'm already like redesigning in my mind. And what I started to see, well, first of all, the large light, I would look at that. I'm like, okay, if I'm going to start scaling, I can't ship air, right? So there's so much air in this product that it's not efficient. And especially where I wanted to go, which was the hidden pour up mountains, over creeks and getting to the, the people that need it the most. So getting rid of the air, additionally the wires. I started noticing that the mice were eating through it. So now they have no access to repair, repairing anything. They have no Internet. There's no way to find out how to figure either have tape or something to fix it. And then additionally, the solar panels were being stolen. So I thought, okay, I need to get rid of the wires. It needs to be small and compact. But really my goal was to make sure that if you tell somebody, especially the ultra poor, which I believe are the best investment in the world, if you're telling them, you. You can change your life. You can start buying chickens and we leave and the light breaks. It throws them into despair. Additionally, I had a local partner. It's not good for my local partner. We get to leave. They have to stay and suffer those consequences. So I had quite a few motivations to make a product that was better. I also saw problems with living in poverty. You don't have glasses. So when I was creating this light, I put the solar panel on the back so that eliminated the wires. I have a large surface right here that you can see is a push and hold. I put the large heart in the center so people without glasses can feel where to turn on the light. But this large push and hold was based on people with disabilities. I was in a leper colony where people didn't have any fingers in Kathmandu, Nepal, and I saw how they struggled turning on buttons and things like that. So I wanted to make sure that anybody with disabilities could turn this on. So you push and hold for five seconds, number one, will last five days of continuous run. That's 40 hours, 30 hours, 10 hours. And then there's the emergency stroke. It also comes on a lanyard. So now it can be worn around your neck. It can also. The lanyard can come off. You can hang it inside of your house as a chandelier, or you can put it on your head for hands free. Hands free was the other thing that I noticed was really essential. Living in darkness, whether it's changing a diaper, preparing food, going to the bathroom, so many simple things at night where you need your hands.

So great innovation, amazing. As somebody like, obviously I try to use reusable containers in every possible way. We have a robust recycling program where I live. Not everybody does. But tell me the difference that that makes to be committed to. Anytime you do have plastics and recyclable materials to actually be committed to recycling them. What is the difference we make as individuals in that regard?

It's a very important piece of the problem. But I would say the biggest thing we can do steps one step sooner, and that is, you know, really rethinking about how much unnecessary single use plastic we are using in the first place. So plastics are an incredible material when used in the right applications. But we know time and time again that things, as you mentioned, whether it's water bottles, whether it's takeout, grocery bags, food and beverage packaging to go packaging, all of these single use plastics that we know there are suitable alternatives for or in some cases we just don't need an alternative altogether. That is the first step in significantly reducing what ultimately is getting into the waste stream and far too often getting into the ocean onto beaches or onto places like Midway and Ocean Conservancies, International Coastal Cleanup, which we're unfortunately we're celebrating our 40th anniversary this year, meaning we've needed to clean beaches and waterways for 40 years. Every year the most common items that are, you know, the top 10 most common items of debris found around the world are single use plastics. And so that rethinking or reducing is the first step. And then after that, for the plastics that we do need, whenever possible, finding a way to responsibly dispose them into recycling stream is a critical next step of the equation. So as we say, like recycling alone cannot solve this problem, but we absolutely need to be part of the solution.

Nick, what surprised you most about when you moved from science into conservation advocacy?

Yeah, I think I still at heart I am, I'm a scientist, Marine ecology, shark research is kind of where I got my start. And I think the biggest step is really coming to the awareness or having that light bulb moment where it doesn't matter how good the science or information is at the end of the day is how do you actually tell that narrative and use that information in a compelling way that moves the audience you need to move, whether that's individuals, whether that is members of corporate sustainability teams or whether that is legislatures. How do you take that critical information, science or evidence and package that in a way that actually motivates people to ultimately take action in a way that moves the needle, that creates the positive change that has downstream benefits for our ocean or whatever environment or cause you might be working. So I think it's that, you know, can't you see the science? The science is clear. Yeah, the science might be clear to a bunch of us, but how do we actually then translate that in a way that motivates and compels change? And I think that is always the key piece to trying to affect change regardless of the issue you are working with on.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you and I used to really frequent the basketball courts in some pickup ball back in the day. We were good friends from way back then. Not going to say what year because it'll date us, but we go back to our college days and it's such A pleasure to have you on. Yeah.

And what has happened as a result of that, of having that kind of relationship that we've had and so many things that we both enjoy doing. It really helped me to understand as I got older and older and older, and most that I could do with my life and what I could do with others. One of it is I figured out that as what we did, what we did at Bulletin, but it helped me to start thinking about digital equity, you know, and I've been reading a little bit about some of the work you're doing with schools and things of that nature. But also it became very clear to me that as world was moving, Internet came along and it showed me that broadband was a very important thing. It may be the most essential thing, but it needed to have to make sure that everyone is getting access to the broadband. So that became number two, and then number three was I started thinking about how can we be even better for communities, really. Right. So so much innovation is happening, whether it's AI, whether it's all types of technologies that are going on. We have to figure out how we can help communities get that kind of same action. And the more that we have in those type of communities, the more will be for all of us. So that's just sort of, I think a lot about how Alan and I did so much back in those days. Maybe we didn't see those kind of words and those kind of things, but we had this inside of us. And that's why I'm happy to be here right now.

Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned some of this, but you and I go way back. Let's start with your story. What shaped your early perspective on equity, technology and opportunity?

Well, if you can go back in the back, if you remember, I also was very much into everything at the school. Right. So it was sports, it was certainly working, and all that kind of stuff. But also I was really focused on how do we make sure that everyone is getting the same kind of access, even at our campus. I can remember, I hope I don't scare everybody here, but I got into more and more conversations with so many different types of people. But there was a particular thing that happened at our campus. You may or may not remember this, but there was some really rough people that wanted to be on our campus to do sort of events and things of that nature. And I would hear about some of it, and it didn't seem like the right thing to do. It was from the Ku Klux Klan. And the Ku Klux Klan quite in A lot of ways felt like, why not we should just do a thing on your campus? And I had a big issue about it and to the point where I had to go to the president of the school and all sorts of stuff. And I ended up getting scared in some ways because they were sure they're going to shoot me and stuff like that, but it was very important to do something like that, you know, and we were able to win, to not let them do that on the campus. And I'm just saying that to say that when you're at, you know, that kind of age where you're willing to do damn near anything, I try to do the best I could. And what that does, it allows me to create a new sort of way of thinking of where I'm going to live in my life. A lot of it was. I always felt like I was not mad about nothing. I was great. My parents were excellent. I grew up in a beautiful situation. But I did find a lot of people that were not. And I did not realize how different everything could be. So school was that part, after school came into jobs. And I call myself, in a lot of ways, lucky. I've just been lucky. I mean, really. I mean, that's a little much to say. But I'm just saying, you know, when I graduated, I thought to myself, I don't want to just get a regular old job. And there was a lot of companies that would come after me and all that kind of stuff. But then I came out of the school with what I wanted to do, which was technology and more importantly, even this, like, information and how I can help people and all sorts of stuff. And I had all these jobs coming at me and I said no. I told my parents, they were a little scared. They're like, what are you doing? And I found a job that I wanted to do. It was really around not only technology, but also how we could help more people talk correctly to get something through.

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.