How Jeannette Walls Claimed Her Truth - Author, "The Glass Castle"

Lauren Schiller August 16, 2017

When she was young Jeannette Walls wanted nothing more than to escape her crazy, chaotic family. She grew up in poverty, in a crumbling home, where her parents couldn’t always put food on the table. They moved from place to place and school to school. After putting her past behind her to become a successful journalist and author, Walls finally revisited her upbringing in her memoir, "The Glass Castle." Her book was recently adapted into a film, and this week on “Inflection Point,” Walls discusses her unusual upbringing and how she rose out of a seemingly impossible situation.

Jeannette Walls on the set of "The Glass Castle" photo by Jake Giles Netter

How Sabaah Folayan Is Changing The Narrative of Ferguson, Director of "Whose Streets"

Lauren Schiller August 2, 2017

When Michael Brown was shot by a police officer in Ferguson, MO in August, 2014 and the protests began, Sabaah Folayan felt the media’s coverage was overly focused on the looting, rioting and property damage, and not nearly enough on the stories of the people who rose up. So she dropped everything and went to Ferguson to see for herself what was happening on the ground and to talk with the people who live there. The result is her documentary film Whose Streets? She shares what it was like to be there and how she made her film in such extraordinary circumstances. Whose Streets comes out August 11th.

How to Get Through The Worst, Together - Dr. Kelsey Crowe, Co-founder of Help Each Other Out

Lauren Schiller July 17, 2017

Most of us don’t know what to say when we are grieving or how to reach out when the people we love go through something awful. Dr. Kelsey Crowe’s own experiences with grief helped her realize that so many people suffer alone because the people around them don’t know what to do or say. So Kelsey actually shifted her career focus to understand what grieving people want, and what they don’t. She surveyed 900 people about their experiences with grief, founded Help Each Other Out to provide empathy bootcamps, and wrote a book about what she learned. The title of her book sums it up: There is No Good Card For This: What To say and Do When Life Is Scary, Awful and Unfair to People You Love. Lauren talks with Kelsey about what she learned and how we can all help each other out.

How To Negotiate Like A Woman-Leanne Meyer, Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business

Lauren Schiller July 12, 2017

“The biggest trick is... how do we teach women at any stage to keep knowing what they want and asking for that,” says Leanne Meyer, Program Director of the Carnegie Mellon Leadership and Negotiation Academy for Women. Meyer’s work focuses on two main components that inhibit women’s progress in the workplace: the environments at work and school, and the habits of women themselves. Meyer educates women on the stereotypes and biases holding them back; teaches them to network; how to seek out and make use of the support of sponsors and mentors; and how to understand their environments and not sell themselves short in negotiation.

How Femininity Can Save Humanity-Nina Simons, Co-Founder Bioneers

Lauren Schiller July 5, 2017

What if the root of all the world’s problems is the imbalance of masculinity and femininity in our leadership? Nina Simons, co-founder of Bioneers has spent over twenty years investigating the power of femininity to solve some of humanity’s greatest challenges. We discuss how she discovered that leading with the feminine can help anyone find their purpose and their passion.

And when you’re done, come on over to The Inflection Point Society, our Facebook group of everyday activists who seek to make extraordinary change through small, daily actions.

How To End Structural Racism in Tech-Laura Weidman Powers, Code2040

Lauren Schiller June 28, 2017

Why does the next civil rights movement involve people of color breaking into tech? Laura Weidman Powers, co-founder and CEO of Code2040, talks income inequality, how the jobs future is wrapped up with the tech industry, and how to keep things in perspective while fighting structural racism. Weidman-Powers is working to smooth the pathways for entrepreneurs of color, and in turn to give communities of color a place in the tech-driven economy.

How To Beat Perfectionism-Patti Niemi, San Francisco Opera Orchestra

Lauren Schiller June 21, 2017

What if the thing you really love to do makes you so anxious it gets in the way of doing your job? For Patti Niemi, a percussionist with the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, her first experience with anxiety cropped up while in her second year at at Juilliard, causing her hands to shake uncontrollably. Niemi wrote a memoir called “Sticking It Out. From Juilliard to the Orchestra Pit.” In this episode, hear how she rose to the top of the music world and above her anxiety.

Decoding The Secret To Confidence at GE

Lauren Schiller March 27, 2017

What does Parseltongue have to do with coding? The GE Women's Network put on a day-long STEM event for sixty middle-school girls last November which included design-thinking and coding exercises–with a Harry Potter theme. During this "bring your daughters to work day" the girls learned they could make magic with code. The girls share their #codelikeagirl experience in this piece by producer Megan Jones.

Learn more about GE Girls at ge-girls.com.

Do Successful Teens become Successful Women? - "Teen Hackz" Founders Lisa Allanson & Lisa McDonough

Lauren Schiller March 20, 2017

Lisa Allanson and Lisa McDonough are the founders of Teen Hackz, a program designed to help teens (girls and boys) understand themselves and others--in order prepare for success in life and work. They've taken the principles of how to help adults work better together at companies, and tailored it for teens.

Open Recovery Closes the Door on Addiction Stigma, Fay Zenoff

Lauren Schiller March 6, 2017

Fay Zenoff is the Executive Director of the Center for Open Recovery in San Francisco. Her organization is committed to changing the way our culture thinks about recovery--from something secret to something to be celebrated. She shares her story of how this transformational approach to recovery applies to her own life as well. Listen to our conversation above, or on NPR One.

Inflection Point

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