Intentional Performers Brian Levenson

Allison Shapira, MPA, CSP, is a former opera singer turned entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and international expert in leadership communication. She is the Founder/CEO of Global Public Speaking LLC, a certified woman-owned small business that teaches speaking skills to leaders so that they can build better client relationships, inspire their teams, and confidently lead their organizations into the future.
She teaches a graduate-level course at the Harvard Kennedy School and has spent 20 years developing leadership communication programs for Fortune 50 companies, government agencies, and non-profit organizations. She has worked with prime ministers and their cabinets and CEOs and their leadership teams, teaching them authentic leadership as a way to inspire their constituents and teams.
She also travels around the world with the nonprofit Vital Voices Global Partnership, teaching leadership communication to help women leaders grow their business, run for office, or launch a nonprofit.
Allison is a Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) and a Certified Virtual Presenter. She holds a master’s degree in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School and is an internationally-renowned singer/songwriter who uses music as a way to help others find their voice and their courage to speak.
As an avid tech enthusiast, Allison has incorporated artificial intelligence into her keynotes, workshops and coaching to help people improve their speaking skills. More broadly, she is researching the intersection of AI and authenticity and what that means for the future of human connection.
Allison is the author of Speak with Impact: How to Command the Room and Influence Others (HarperCollins Leadership), which was a Washington Post best-seller, and the new companion e-guide Speak with Impact VIRTUALLY. She has spoken at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Next Gen Summit, the Most Powerful Women in Banking LEAD Conference, and was a finalist for 2017 Woman Business Owner of the Year by the National Association of Women Business Owners, San Diego Chapter.
A lifelong learner and world traveler who has taught public speaking on nearly every continent, Allison can ask for directions in ten languages but can only understand the responses in four. One of the proudest moments of her life was singing the National Anthem for the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park.
Allison had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include:
“[There is so much value in public speaking in] not reading every single person’s body language” (8:05).
“[Our perceptions of] body language expressions can be accurate, but they’re not necessarily related to us or what we’re saying” (9:05).
“What I’m doing is co-creating a reality between me and each member of the audience” (10:30).
“I’m always very intentional about the energy I’m creating with myself so that I can perform at my best” (12:20).
“’It depends’ is one of my favorite answers because very few issues are binary” (15:45).
“I’m always someone who’s loved to learn new things. I love going from not knowing to knowing” (16:10).
“Why you?” (24:35).
“You’re not the center of attention. Your message is the center of attention” (26:00).
“I do [need validation]” (29:05).
“I don’t just do this work as a job. The work that I do is an extension of who I am and what I believe and how I want to show up in this world” (29:35).
“It’s hard to balance the strategy of running the company with the creativity of making new content” (31:30).
“AI is going to affect every part of our lives in ways we can control and ways we can’t control” (34:20).
“When you’re speaking, you’re actually engaging the audience in conversation” (41:10).
“[Executive presence is] a way of speaking and acting that makes others take notice and listen” (41:30).
“Confidence comes from a belief in our ability to affect a positive outcome” (43:05).
“The amoun

Bill Kraus is on a mission. And I use that word intentionally. He is the co-founder and owner of Mission Barbeque, which opened its doors for business on September 11th, 2011. And of course, that date is not a coincidence. Bill and his co-founder Steve “Newt” Newton, who came from Outback Steakhouse, were very intentional from the beginning to make sure that they built a business that was purpose-based. They cared deeply about serving their employees, their customers, their community, and they’re unapologetically patriotic. They believe in serving our first responders and our military, and that’s going to come across tried and true in today’s conversation. Before starting Mission Barbeque, Bill had spent a lot of his career working in the sports industry. He worked for the NFL, he worked for the brand Champion, and he also was one of the first employees for Under Armour. He helped Under Armour grow and expand at an amazingly rapid pace. He helped that company grow its revenues from $20 million to an excess of $800 million. He oversaw the following functional areas: he helped them with brand marketing, sports marketing, product merchandising, business development, licensing, and team sales. And yet, it wasn’t until he got with Mission Barbeque that he really became this purpose driven leader and wanted to create something bigger than himself. He really cares deeply about service and that’s what today’s conversation is about. What I love about Bill, regardless of what you think of him or Mission Barbeque, he is clear on who they serve. He constantly is trying to challenge us to think intentionally about how we can serve people, and he is obsessed with serving the constituents that exist at Mission Barbeque. They show and share their love for soldiers, firefighters, police officers, first responders, and they don’t hold back in calling those people heroes. So, you know as soon as you enter Mission Barbeque that they are purpose driven, that they are clear on what they value, and also, their barbeque is really really good. If you’re in the Mid-Atlantic region like me, you’ve probably been to one of their restaurants. And if you’re outside of this area, you’re probably going to start to see their restaurants pop up. They’ve already gone as far west as Colorado and they have big plans to continue to grow and make an impact. So, today’s conversation is certainly about Mission, it’s certainly about impact, and I think at its core it is about service.
Bill had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include:
“I just don’t think we’d feel right about doing business on [Memorial Day]” (7:05).
“[Calling our employees teammates] creates more of a bond and a unity” (8:15).
“I was going to find my own way to serve and give back and make a difference in a more meaningful way” (10:10).
“The gifts we have we are given to share” (11:40).
“There’s that fine line between confidence and cockiness that you have to have a certain level of commitment, especially when you take that risk to start your own business” (12:10).
“This is a lot more than just a pulled pork sandwich as much as the experience we’re trying to create for our consumer” (19:10).
“The consumer feels like they are appreciated at Mission Barbeque” (20:20).
“If for some reason we do make too much [food], there’s probably a firehouse or a police station that would gladly take some of that food at the end of the day” (26:55).
“You have to embrace the data, but that can’t be your full factor in making decisions” (28:20).
“Every day is Veteran’s Day at Mission Barbeque” (33:10).
“Your life doesn’t need to fit into your job” (37:25).
“We welcome and encourage leaning into [gratitude over entitlement]” (44:50).
“If you want to go fast, you go alone. If you want to go far, you go together” (46:55).
“At the end of the day, if [Newt and I] aren’t in agreement, we

Dr. Charles Camarda has a resume that scares the heck out of me because there are so many technical elements of his background in research engineering that I know that I can butcher a lot of these words because it’s basically like speaking Chinese to me. I love this conversation because it’s actually not about a lot of the technical background that Dr. Camarda brings to it. You have Dr. Camarda, and you have Charlie. And I think this conversation was really with Charlie. He will seem down to earth the entire time, but just know the background is pretty wild. He has over 45 years of experience at NASA as a researcher, he worked at the Langley Research Center, and worked on numerous teams to develop and analyze and test advanced thermal structure systems for hypersonic vehicles such as the space shuttle. This is someone who is highly technical. He holds 9 patents over 20 national and international awards for his research. He is someone who is a scientist and cares deeply about creating culture and people around research. A lot of today is his challenging of NASA and their inability to bring a research culture forward and his concerns about that. A lot of those concerns stem from him witnessing the Columbia disaster, which happened in the early 2000s, that killed 7 people on board. The space shuttle disintegrated on its way back to Earth. At the time, Charlie was planning, prepping, and training to be an astronaut, which he ended up doing. He was part of the first mission to leave earth and go into space after the Columbia disaster. He has such a unique perspective having been in the lab and researching and spending time as a research engineer to try to understand how space shuttles need to work and how they need to properly prepare and test and make sure that things are the way that they should be, and then he’s also had the view of being in space. He’s going to talk about some of the mistrust that the astronauts had with their mission control and what that led to from a team functioning dynamic. He calls out some of the lack of strong culture that existed at NASA while he was there, and it is a good reminder for all of us to think deeply about our culture, with whatever organization we are in, and what are we doing to try to allow people to have the psychological safety to raise their hand and voice concerns. You are going to love Charlie, he cares deeply about culture, we talk a lot about organizational culture in today’s conversation, so much so that you’re going to hear me try to bring him back to his astronaut experience because I just think it’s so unique and it’s an experience that so few of us have. But, I do think the culture element that he discusses is so critical for all of us to think about and think about how we can intentionally positively impact the environments that we are in.
Dr. Camarda had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include:
“The same people that made these bad decisions were extremely arrogant” (9:00).
“As a crew, we came together and said we can handle this” (12:25).
“We’re ready to fly. We will accept the risk” (15:00).
“There’s a big difference between researchers, research engineers, and engineers” (17:20).
“If something didn’t look right, they would ask probing questions” (24:05).
“The primary cause of [the Columbia disaster] was NASA’s culture” (26:25).
“I could sit at a meeting and I could tell the people in the room that were afraid to raise their hand. I could see the fear on their faces” (27:50).
“If we don’t correct these problems and go back to our past culture, our research-type culture, we are going to lose the race to the moon” (31:20).
“The entire senior management at NASA is we are going to do the bare minimum to meet the requirements” (36:50).
“NASA had no intention of fixing its culture” (37:40).
“Culture is very difficult to change” (49:40).
“More than 80% of companies that t

Mickey Bergman is one of the most fascinating, interesting people that I’ve met (and certainly that we’ve had on this podcast). He’s currently the Vice President and Senior Advisor at the Governor Richardson Center for Global Engagement. We are going to talk about Governor Richardson, who’s also known as “The Gov” to Mickey, and the impact that he’s had on Mickey’s life. The Center for Global Engagement really was at the forefront of what Mickey calls “fringe diplomacy,” which is a field that he is forming, which is an innovative discipline exploring the space in international relations that are actually beyond the boundaries of states’ and governments’ capacity and authority. So, Mickey and his team, they try to negotiate and help represent families of hostages, people whose loved ones are imprisoned and in awful situations and places like North Korea, Cuba, Lebanon, and the Middle East. We talk a lot about Mickey’s work in Gaza and trying to help a lot of Israelis who are currently hostages of Hamas. So, he has been in some of our most challenging areas of the world. We talk about Russia in today’s conversation. Mickey and his people go in and they try to help families get their loved ones back; that is really what they do, that is his job, and he represents families, not governments. He was the Executive Director of the Global Alliances Program at The Aspen Institute, and he’s a professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service where he teaches about emotional intelligence and international relations. Emotional Intelligence is something that Mickey references often in today’s conversation and the importance of being able to manage emotions and find ways to understand people they are talking to and try to create what he calls symmetry and common ground and try to really get to know people even if they represent some of the atrocities that exist in our world. Mickey talks a lot about evil and good and bad and how that bad people can do good things and good people can do bad things and how he tries to keep that the forefront of his brain when he is representing hostages and personally trying to get them back to their families. He’s published numerous articles, he’s been interviewed, and he’s done opinion pieces in The New York Times, Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, and The Boston Globe just to name a few. He’s appeared on TV on places like CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX News, etc. So, Mickey is an expert when it comes to trying to understand what it takes to bring people home. And just to give people an idea of the scale and the scope of Mickey and his colleagues’ work, in 2019 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work at the Richardson Center, where he led a team to facilitate the release of more political prisoners than any other organization. And Mickey is from Israel and he talks a lot about his work in today’s conversation to try to bring hostages home from Gaza. And remember, Mickey represents the families that have members that are still in hostage situations in Gaza. And so, this conversation goes deep and gets vulnerable pretty quickly. Mickey still has family in Israel, he cares about the country, we both talk about how we are proud to call ourselves Zionists in today’s conversation, and still there are challenges that exist with governments at play and his ability to get people home, and that is what Mickey is most focused on is trying to help families reunite with prisoners that are held hostage, oftentimes in an unjust way. And so, I found this conversation to be extremely inspiring, I find Mickey to be someone to be thoughtful, to be caring, to make you think, and I know and I hope that he does that with all of you today. He has a wonderful book which we talk about quite a bit which is called In the Shadows and I highly recommend you check that out, it is a wonderful read as I share in today’s conversation. And so, as you liste

Andy Lopata is all about building quality, strategic, and intentional relationships, and trying to teach others how they can do so as well. He’s written 6 books on networking and professional relationships, with his latest being all about aentoring; it’s called The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring, and it was co-written by Ruth Gotian who is a past podcast guest. He also writes a regular blog for Psychology Today and has been quoted in the media multiple times, including The Sunday Times, The Financial Times, and Ink. He is someone who not just thinks about networking from a transactional standpoint, but really from an intentional place, which is why he made for such a quality guest on the podcast today. He started working in networking in 1999 with his father, and he’s going to talk about his relationship with his father and what he learned from him as a mentor along the way as well. He spent 8 years as a Managing Director of a UK networking organization that had over 2000 member companies. His approach to building professional relationships is all about being authentic, being genuine, and being thoughtful about the political nature that we might find ourselves in. At the end of the day, it’s just as important that people know who you are as it is to know who you know. At his core, I think Andy is someone who cares a lot about people, cares a lot about being intentional and thoughtful with how we’re connecting with each other, and, as I said, I think he is someone who will come off as being genuine and authentic, but also extremely thoughtful in his own expertise, in his own knowledge, around how we connect. The last point I’ll make is a lot of today’s conversation revolves around vulnerability and the power of asking for help. So, I am grateful to all of you who continue to support this podcast and I hope that you can continue to support us in sharing this conversation with the world.
Andy had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include:
“You don’t want to wait for someone’s life [to end] before you tell them what they mean [to you]” (6:25).
“I came from an aspirational family, so I always wanted to impress and make them proud” (10:40).
“I got to that point where I needed to hear [feedback]” (11:35).
“It is good to like your mentor, but I always think it is more important to respect them” (12:05).
“I need a combination of someone I respect that I’m working with that I allow to challenge me… but also the sense they are listening to me” (16:20).
“It’s not what you know or who you know, it’s who knows you” (19:50).
“Opportunity knocks when you don’t even know there’s a conversation taking place” (20:00).
“We can see how dangerous it gets when people start believing their own publicity and they think that every idea they have is brilliant” (21:55).
“There are a number of reasons why it’s important for a mentor to be vulnerable” (26:50).
“Ego needs to be left at the door before you go into the room to mentor” (27:25).
“Your message is going to resonate more with the other person if you’re not perfect” (27:45).
“We learn from people who say I succeeded but I had challenges along the way and I made mistakes along the way” (32:30).
“Performance only accounts for 10% of any promotion, image is 30%, and exposure is 60%” (36:40).
“What I do is I take things that should be natural and authentic and then I break them down into their component parts” (41:20).
“You need to be able to separate the strategic thinking from the way you engage with people” (41:35).
“You need the strategy, you need to understand what you’re trying to achieve, and recognize when people can help you so you can ask the question but then focus on the relationship” (44:40).
“Most people will get a lot more joy from helping other people than from receiving help” (49:05).
“We assume people know what’s going on in our lives” (

I’ve been really fortunate to spend time with some of the best athletes in the world, whether it’s through my podcast or whether it’s through other relationships I’ve had in my life, I’ve gotten to be inside certain circles that put me in spaces with professional athletes. I also had a sport psychology practice where I worked with a number of professional athletes. One of my favorite athletes that I’ve ever interacted with is today’s guest. Zaza Pachulia is just an amazing human. He’s likeable, he’s thoughtful, he’s curious, he’s caring; he is the type of person that you just want to be around. He was an amazing teammate; I think if you asked players that played with Zaza, that’s how they would describe him: a great teammate who would do whatever it took to help the team win, including some of the not so glamorous aspects like playing defense and setting screens and helping out on the boards; he was an amazing offensive rebounder. As I think about today’s conversation, it actually has less to do with Zaza’s 16 years and over 1000 games that he played in the NBA, and more to do with his mindset and his curiosity and his desire to learn, grow, develop, be vulnerable, be willing to change, be willing to evolve, be willing to grow. At the core, that’s as much who Zaza is as winning 2 championship rings with the Golden State Warriors. And make no mistake, he’s also a competitor. He cares deeply about winning and being the best version of him that he can be when it comes to parenting, when it comes to mentoring, and when it comes to playing a game.  
Zaza had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include:
“Every human being has a turning point in their lives” (6:15).
“Every day is a battle” (9:20).
“[Your kids] have to have goals, have to have dreams, and how can we, as parents, make sure that every day they wake up they’re inspired” (11:15).
“Give your best, give 100% every single day” (13:35).
“We all have different journeys. Every successful person has different paths to success” (15:35).
“When I retired from basketball, I had to work on myself because I was preparing to live a different kind of life” (21:45).
“It’s not only about what I tell [my kids]. It’s not authentic if I tell them to be happy but I’m miserable” (22:55).
“Kids observe everything” (25:55).
“Lead [your kids] by example” (26:35).
“I was lucky to have coaches who cared a lot” (27:40).
“It’s not about what outsiders think. It’s about what we think as a group, as a family” (31:30).
“Control whatever is in your hands” (36:25).
“I believe in consistency and I believe in authenticity. You have to be who you are” (38:50).
“I am who I am, but I am the same person every day” (39:05).
“In everybody’s journey, decisions are such an important part” (46:45).
“Basketball helped me bring [my curiosity] into my real life” (53:15).
“You’re never going to get time back” (1:00:45).
“Curiosity led me to reading and hearing the stories of amazing people” (1:01:00).
“Basketball has always been priority number one” (1:02:40).
“I gave everything to basketball and basketball gave lots of things back to me” (1:02:55).
Additionally, you can find out more about the Zaza Pachulia Basketball Academy here.
Thank you so much to Zaza for coming on the podcast!
I wrote a book called “Shift Your Mind” that was released in October of 2020, and you can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, I have launched a company called Strong Skills, and I encourage you to check out our new website https://www.strongskills.co/. If you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers.
Thanks for listening.