In this episode, Matt Auron, Managing Director at Evolution, sits down with Rudy Nickens, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Sustainability Partner at Evolution for a lively discussion of diversity, leadership and community development.

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About Rudy

Rudy is an executive coach, facilitator, educator, entrepreneur and thought leader with expertise in cultural diversity, business management and community development. For over two decades, Nickens has consulted, educated and trained hundreds of local, national and international organizations in workforce diversity, leadership development, cultural competence and conflict resolution. He specializes in efforts to eliminate the effects of internalized racism and sexism and violence against women.

Prior to joining Evolution Rudy was the Director for Equal Opportunity and Diversity for the Missouri Department of Transportation which has a budget of over $2.6 billion and more than 6,000 employees.  In the wake of the death of Michael Brown, Jr in 2014 , the governor of Missouri asked for Rudy to work with the Ferguson Commission whose mission was to conduct a “thorough, wide-ranging and unflinching study of the social and economic conditions that impede progress, equality and safety in the St. Louis region.”  

Rudy  also served as Executive Director of The St. Louis Black Repertory Company and Vice President of St. Louis 2004, a civic organization created to act as a catalyst for community development.  Beyond his organizational leadership roles, Rudy owned and operated The Sunshine Inn for years which in addition to having great food was an institution that proved a place and resources for all kinds of community activity from art to politics to community organizing.

Rudy  earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. A Rockefeller Foundation Next Generation Leadership Fellow, he received the Ethics Project’s Inaugural Ambassador Andrew Young Award for outstanding leadership and the Robert Bradley Award for distinguished service. 

In this episode, Matt Auron, Managing Director at Evolution, sits down with Evolution Partners Simon D'Arcy and Todd Emaus to discuss their new book: Scale Without Losing Your Soul: The Startup Culture Guide

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About Simon

Simon is a speaker, author, executive coach, Founder/CEO advisor, and partner at Evolution, a coaching, consulting and investment firm, where he focuses on helping companies scale without losing their soul. For more than 25 years, he has been part of company-wide culture transformation efforts at Fortune 500 companies and has helped early-stage startups discover and cultivate cultural identities from their earliest days. 

Simon has consulted and coached leaders at over two hundred companies, including startups like Slack, Glassdoor, Dropbox, Yahoo, Iterable and Bandcamp. He has also coached leaders atFortune 500 companies such as ConocoPhillips, Rohm & Haas, and Genentech. He’s seen how culture building can be the difference between creating a mediocre company and creating something  iconic and lasting. 

 About Todd 

Todd Emaus is a venture-backed startup founder focused on supporting other founders and leaders in their journeys.

As a coach and culture builder, Todd helps his clients move past obstacles, win the mental game, build effective teams and lead companies that matter. His experience founding multiple businesses, raising venture capital, and leading rapidly growing teams provides the backdrop for a deep empathy for today’s leaders and the challenges they face.

He is a partner at Evolution, a coaching, consulting and investment firm. His clients have included founders and leaders at some of the most iconic and ambitious organizations of our generation, including Twitter, Slack, Bandcamp, Iterable, Magic Spoon, Snapdocs, Conductor, Tilt, Bond Pet Foods, Firstbase, and others.

In this episode, Matt Auron, Managing Director at Evolution, sits down with Jacob Little, People Business Partner & Head of People Experience and DEI at Glassdoor to discuss the impact of DEI on company culture and success.

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About Jacob

Jacob Little is the People Business Partner & Head of People Experience and DEI at Glassdoor. Jacob grew up in Russia and Germany as the child of Baptist missionaries, and his coming out process was more difficult than it should have been. 

Alongside his career in Talent and Organizational Development, Jacob has been involved in ERGs for over a decade, as the co-chair of Walmart Pride, Levi's Pride, and as the Vice-President of the Board of Directors of San Francisco Pride. Jacob is passionate about creating cultural transformation by evolving mindsets, systems, and processes.

In this episode, Matt Auron, Managing Director at Evolution, sits down with Claire Schmidt, CEO of AllVoices to discuss the organizational challenges that come from rapid growth and how to build trust with employees so that they can provide necessary feedback about the organizational culture.

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About Claire

Claire Schmidt is the founder and CEO of AllVoices, a tool that enables anyone to anonymously report workplace issues directly to leadership.

Before founding AllVoices, Claire served as Vice President of Technology and Innovation at 20th Century Fox. Previously, Claire led social impact at Thrive Market, an e-commerce company focused on making healthy food accessible and affordable.

In 2010 she helped found and lead Thorn: Digital Defenders of Children, a nonprofit organization which deploys technology in innovative ways to fight child sex trafficking.  She has also worked at The Wonderful Company and the Parthenon Group as a strategy consultant.

Claire graduated from Stanford with a degree in Economics in 2006. She was the curator and vice-curator of the World Economic Forum's Global Shapers Los Angeles, and in 2015 won a Mic50 award for her work at Thorn.

In this episode, Matt Auron, Managing Director at Evolution, sits down with Erin Rocchio, Partner at Evolution to discuss how self-discovery and personal growth come from understanding core motivations, emotions and behavior patterns.

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About Erin
For 15 years, Erin has worked with executives across industries to find the sweet spot between business results and personal meaning. She designs and delivers transformational leader, team, and organization development in line with business strategy. Released in 2020, Erin’s inaugural publication, Wholeness at Work: Free Yourself from Burnout for Good, addresses the science behind workplace burnout. She explores the symptoms, sources, and solutions across three levels: individual, relational, and systemic. Her Roadmap to Wholeness supports leaders in finding a lifelong path to sustainable wellbeing in their work.

Erin’s clients are curious, open, emotionally intelligent leaders up to big things. She works with C-level executives at billion-dollar companies and founders of proven start-ups, helping them cultivate sustainable, high-performing teams based on metrics that drive engagement and results. Erin’s clients include: Uber, Glassdoor, Snap, Inc., Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, DaVita, New Capital Partners, Seattle Children’s Hospital, Surgical Care Affiliates, Yahoo!, Medtronic, Community Psychiatry, City of Hope, Paylocity, and Worldwide Express. 

Erin earned a Bachelor of Science in Education and Social Policy from Northwestern University, and a Master of Science in Positive Organization Development and Change (MPOD) from Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management. While at Northwestern, Erin was an elite student-athlete, helping to build its Women’s Softball program to national distinction. Erin is a certified Integral Coach with Integral Coaching Canada and a Senior member of the Enneagram in Business Network. Erin is a graduate of Landmark Education’s Team, Management and Leadership Program, and is an avid fan of mindfulness meditation.

In this episode, Matt Auron, Managing Director at Evolution, sits down with Ali Rayl, SVP Product at Slack to discuss Slack’s startup journey and the insights that come from building a unicorn.

Tune in to hear: 

• The “pivot” from gaming and how Slack was born from IRC
• Managing growth and learning on the fly
• How clarity in decision-making enables growth
• The evolution of Slack from product to infrastructure

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About Ali Rayl

Ali Rayl is the SVP of Product Management at Slack, responsible for making the working lives of Slack’s millions of users simpler and more productive. She joined Slack as the director of QA for Tiny Speck and, prior to that, served in the same position for Songbird.

In this episode, Matt Auron, Managing Director at Evolution, sits down with Janet Logothetti, Principal Managing Partner at Evolution to discuss core values and how they are integral to leadership success.

Tune in to hear: 

• The Founder's Journey
• Presence, presence of mind, and self-regulation
• Eastern & Buddhist practices and the intersection with coaching
• A leader's duty to stakeholders and business as an evolutionary force

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About Janet

Janet is Principal Managing Partner at Evolution, providing executive coaching and leadership development to founders, C-suite and senior leaders in the tech ecosystem. She has over 20 years of experience in coaching and mentoring others to lead from their core values. Specifically, her work focuses on building leadership and culture to sustain innovation, execution and soul through rapid growth, public company readiness, acquisitions and IPOs. She has worked with clients including Facebook, Pinterest, Slack, Google, Eero, Uber Elevate and Kiva among others. 

Previously she was a Senior Consultant with Axialent, a global consulting company specializing in leadership, team performance and culture.  She also has operational experience in market analysis, product management, business development and fundraising.  She was Manager of International Market Analysis at US West (later Qwest and now CenturyLink) and Product Manager at International Learning Systems where she worked with Fortune 500 clients to leverage organizational knowledge through emerging web-based technologies. 

Janet holds a BA degree in History with a focus on African-American and Asian-American history and graduated with honors from the University of California, Santa Cruz.  She also holds an MA degree in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado and has practiced as a psychotherapist focusing on sensorimotor approaches to healing trauma, executive functioning, and attention.

Her work is influenced by a variety of interests and study: neuroscience, sensorimotor regulation, neurodiversity, transpersonal psychology, world wisdom traditions and non-ordinary flow states. She has been a student of meditation for over 20 years in the Tibetan tradition and teaches it to interested clients.

More personally, she enjoys her family, international travel, good food and wine, running, hiking, mountain biking, trying to stand up on a surfboard, and generally being outdoors.

Evolution Co-Founder Geoff Graber, and Evolution Managing Director and Master Coach Matt Auron talk about how companies can  have a positive impact in the world. There’s many different paths that companies can take, but it all starts with leadership. Matt and Geoff share insights into the value of coaching in these journeys and how to plan for impact.

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About Geoff

As a coach and thought-partner for founders and CEOs, Geoff combines his 30-year career as an entrepreneur, executive, and adviser with a passion for supporting leaders of evolutionary businesses. Geoff co-founded Evolution to partner with companies to fulfill their purpose as world-enriching entities, serving all stakeholders while building iconic cultures. He has worked with Slack, Snapchat, Radiology Partners, Coursera, Collective Health, CrossCut Ventures, NVA, Change.org, Scopely, Density, Winc, and Kleiner Perkins, among many others.

Geoff began coaching more than twelve years ago after recognizing the critical need in companies for leadership and culture development, as well as a belief that business has far greater potential than just profit maximization through increased consciousness and progressive organizational design, culture, and governance. At the time, he joined Axialent, a global firm with clients that included Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft and Facebook, and received extensive training and mentoring by experts in the field, including Fred Kofman and Carolyn Taylor.

In addition to his work as a coach, Geoff started and led a number of technology companies. He launched the first video games company in China for Electronic Arts (EA), and led Yahoo! Games to become the world's largest games website. Geoff also founded three prior companies: IQI Accessories (at age 22), Muse Communications (for which he raised $12m from angels and VCs) and Scout OnDemand (which was acquired by CoachSource). Geoff’s career began in venture capital at BankAmerica Capital Corp. and IDG Capital Partners, the first VC in China. 

Geoff graduated with honors from UCLA in East Asian Studies and Business. He also studied at Soochow University in Taiwan, at the East-West Center at University of Hawaii, and at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He lives in Los Olivos, CA with his wife, Cathy, daughters, Genevieve and Chloe, and English Lab, Fiddlestix. Geoff makes wine under the San Sé label and enjoys hiking, skiing, travel and soccer.