In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Denise Withers about her journey becoming a Story Coach and helping leaders drive change. She shares the importance of developing your Narrative Intelligence to improve our abilities to learn, solve problems, and make sense of the world. We then discuss stories' influence on culture, change initiatives, and leadership development. Listen in to learn more about why we need to think beyond just telling stories and start noticing the problem the story is solving.

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Laura Melchor McCanlies about her 25 years of experience improving people's lives with technology.  She shares what it’s like developing mission-driven teams supporting the United Nations Sustainable Development goal with robotics, A.I., and Blockchain. We then discuss why appreciating your team and being vulnerable with them is so important. Listen in to hear tips for getting more participation from teammates in meetings.  

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Hassan Ghiassi about his almost 20 years of experience holding space to help people improve their ability to communicate effectively, think critically, and at the same time increase cultural and emotional intelligence.  He shares what it’s like to facilitate collective conversations across different cultures. We then discuss why his goal is to help others improve their communication skills and take the mystery out of creating engaging conversations. Listen in to hear why it’s important to create a dialogue habit in your life.  

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Carlye Lauff about her experience working at LUMA, prototyping, and teaching at the University of Minnesota.  We talk about her new book called Design Innovation Methodology Handbook - Embedding Design in Organizations.  We then discuss the difficulty of building Prototyping capacities within organizations.  Listen in to learn how to use prototyping to build empathy with users, the curse of knowledge, and failing better.

Control the Room Podcast: Douglas Ferguson speaks with Dr. Bre Gentile about her unconventional career path transitioning from Academia to tech to Founder of her own lab. We discuss the amazing knowledge she has gained in trauma and toxic stress research and how she was able to leverage her lived experience to help app designers, UX researchers, and other creatives become more trauma-informed so they build more accessible products.