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One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it is worth watching.
One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it is worth watching.
Judy MacDonald Johnston: Prepare for a good end of life
Judy MacDonald Johnston: Prepare for a good end of life
Thinking about death is frightening, but planning ahead is practical and leaves more room for peace of mind in our final days. In a solemn, thoughtful talk, Judy MacDonald Johnston shares 5 practices for planning for a good end of life.
By day, Judy MacDonald develops children’s reading programs. By night, she helps others maintain their quality of life as they near death.
WHY YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO HER?
Judy MacDonald Johnston is the Publisher and Cofounder of Blue Lake Children’s Publishing, which develops educational reading tools for preschoolers through a program called the Tessy and Tab Reading Club. Johnston’s credo, “love words early,” and her focus on the earliest years of life, is an interesting foil for her other passion: Planning for end of life. Johnston’s side project, Good [End of] Life, deals not with happy babies decoding symbols, but with a much more morbid topic: Death. Good [End of] Life is a set of online worksheets and practices that aim to help deal with difficult questions — like who should speak for you if you cannot speak, and whether to fill out a do-not-resuscitate form — before it’s too late.
In the past 15 years alone Johnston has founded two other companies in addition to Blue Lake Children’s Publishing: PrintPaks, a children’s software company, and Kibu, a social networking site for teenage girls. Previously Johnston was a Worldwide Project Marketing Manager at Hewlett Packard.
“[Johnston]’s leveraged every single advantage she’s been given into creating a hundred times that for others, never holding tight to wisdom or resources, but investing them where they’ll do the most good next.” from 50-for-50
Running a Family Business | Jo Macsween, Owner & Director at Macsween of Edinburgh
Running a Family Business | Jo Macsween, Owner & Director at Macsween of Edinburgh
Jo Macsween, Owner & Director at Macsween of Edinburgh, shares how collaborating with other business leaders in her Vistage group helped her to gain confidence in her decision making, improve her personal development and provided emotional support in order to grow the business and overcome any challenges along the way.
“… When you work in a family business, as I have for 20 years, you have no external reference from having worked in another company, so it gives me access to other people that say keep going and especially when you’re a growing business, you just face challenges that you have no idea how to overcome, so by sharing it you get some insight into how to resolve the problem.”
Juan Enriquez: Your online life, permanent as a tattoo
Juan Enriquez: Your online life, permanent as a tattoo
What if Andy Warhol had it wrong, and instead of being famous for 15 minutes, we’re only anonymous for that long? In this short talk, Juan Enriquez looks at the surprisingly permanent effects of digital sharing on our personal privacy. He shares insight from the ancient Greeks to help us deal with our new “digital tattoos.”
Juan Enriquez thinks and writes about profound changes that genomics will bring in business, technology, and society.
WHY YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO HIM?
A broad thinker who studies the intersection of science, business and society, Juan Enriquez has a talent for bridging disciplines to build a coherent look ahead. Enriquez was the founding director of the Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project, and has published widely on topics from the technical (global nucleotide data flow) to the sociological (gene research and national competitiveness), and was a member of Celera Genomics founder Craig Venter‘s marine-based team to collect genetic data from the world’s oceans.
Formerly CEO of Mexico City’s Urban Development Corporation and chief of staff for Mexico’s secretary of state, Enriquez played a role in reforming Mexico’s domestic policy and helped negotiate a cease-fire with Zapatista rebels. He is a Managing Director at Excel Medical Ventures, a life sciences venture capital firm, and the chair and CEO of Biotechonomy, a research and investment firm helping to fund new genomics firms. The Untied States of Americalooks at the forces threatening America’s future as a unified country.
In his TED Book Homo Evolutis (written with Steve Gullens), Enriquez explores the far reaches of human change, and asks: Are we done evolving?
“Juan Enriquez will change your view of change itself.” Nicholas Negroponte
America’s oldest family business- Zildjian cymbals
America’s oldest family business- Zildjian cymbals
America’s oldest family business- Zildjian cymbals
Managing a Family Business in Africa
Managing a Family Business in Africa
Part 1
According to the Small Enterprise Development Agency, family-owned businesses make up close to 50% of the economic growth of South Africa. Though only a few of the country’s iconic family companies have managed to remain in business over the decades. The trend is also relevant to the rest of the continent with the majority of SME’s operating as family-owned entities. How do you make sure that your family business retains its longevity across generations and are they the type of investments you should be looking at?
Part 2
