Take a Seat The Shipley School

In this episode of Take a Seat, host and flourishing expert Dr. Nick Holton talks to Michael G. Turner, Head of The Shipley School (a PreK through Grade 12 private school in the western Philadelphia suburbs) about the history and future of independent school education, exploring how private schools can transform to better achieve flourishing and new conceptualizations of excellence. They discuss how private schools can become more equitable, the transition to an inquiry-, project-, and data-based approach to teaching and learning, taking advantage of opportunities for change in schools, and the evolution from positive education to educating for flourishing at Shipley. Turner argues for redefining the factors we use to measure success (like college admission) and explores how you begin to embed these values within the culture of a school.

Before transitioning to education, Michael G. Turner held roles in the private and public sectors, including serving as an Assistant Managing Director for the City of Philadelphia and a management consultant. Since then, he has served as a teacher, advisor, coach, admissions director, and Head of School, which is the role he serves in currently at The Shipley School.

In this episode, we sit down with Shipley alumnus Akinwole Garrett ’00. Aki is a man of many interests and has his hands in a slew of incredible projects. By day, he’s a senior business development executive with Lenovo. By night, he’s  the founder and CEO of IMAGIN, a diversified media company focused on film, television, and digital content production, which has produced multiple films, one of which has been shown at prestigious film festivals like Sundance. He also dedicates his time to a handful of institutions and not-for-profit organizations with missions he is passionate about. He does all of this while working to be a loving husband, father, son, and sibling to a large and incredible family.

Aki talks about the primary motivation that fuels him to take on so much—what he calls his insatiable desire to drive impact and make a contribution. He shares his strategies for synergizing it all so that he can be his best self mentally and  physically in both his personal and professional life. Aki is a really incredible human with an inspiring story and outlook on life. Anyone who is interested in learning more about how to flourish and help others do the same will get a lot out of this episode.

In this episode of Take a Seat, we sat down with Dr. Matt Lee, an expert on the science of flourishing at the Harvard Flourishing Project. In our conversation, we dug into the various components of flourishing (happiness and life satisfaction, physical and mental health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, and close social relationships), as well as how we might re-imagine our systems of education to better support human flourishing and a regenerative way of life for individuals and our planet.

As the Director of Empirical Research at Harvard’s Human Flourishing Project, Dr. Matt Lee is “integrating the deep wisdom of the humanities with rigorous social science research” to define and investigate the measurable aspects of flourishing. The interdisciplinary program is aimed at pulling together knowledge from a variety of disciplines to better understand and promote human well-being.

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Human Flourishing Measure


2:31 Measuring Well-Being
2:50 Career background
4:51 The Joyous Recovery - Lundy Bancroft
7:08 Domains of flourishing
13:04 Transcend Scott Barry Kaufman
13:30 Why Good Things Happen to Good People Stephen Post
15:02 The Heart of Religion - Matthew Lee, Margaret Poloma &  Stephen Post
15:15 Should Pediatricians Prescribe Kindness
16:55 Do schools kill creativity? - Sir Ken Robinsons
25:19 Bruce Perry’s Neurosequential Model
25:47 We Dare Say Love - Na'ilah Suad Nasir, Jarvis Givens & Christopher Chatmon
28:29 Mathematics for Human Flourishing - Francis Su
31:35 Power of a good mentor or teacher
32:44 I and Thou - Martin Buber
35:26 The Science of Abundance - Jim Ritchie-Dunham
39:16 Dr. Paul Wong
42:20 Joy & suffering
43:03 Open Space, Transformative Education, and the Pursuit of Flourishing - Matthew T. Lee, Molly Hartsough, Sam Borick & Brooks Gathagan
44:23 “Students experienced a moment of being seen fully, both in their strengths but also in their flaws, in a classroom context”.
45:06 Is it possible to be seen fully?
46:30 Regenerative soil conditions

In this episode, we take a seat with Shipley alumna Ali Lambert Voron ’98 and her husband, Mike, to explore the profound importance of love and resilience in overcoming adversity. Ali shares her story of living with alopecia since the age of 16 and her three-year battle with ulcerative colitis later in life. Mike speaks about his own history of dealing with life challenges, including the loss of his mother to brain cancer, looking after his high-needs brother, and the recent realization that his father likely has Aspergers, and reflects on how all of that has fueled his work with Special Olympics and as a principal at a school in Yonkers for kids will special learning needs. The two weave in and out of some of the stories behind these challenging events in their lives, the lessons they’ve learned, and the sense that they can handle anything that comes their way because they always have one another to lean on. We think you'll be inspired by their story.

In our conversation with flow expert Steven Kotler we explored what flow is. (It’s the biological state in which we generate some incredible neurochemistry, lose our sense of self, experience the dilation of time, become completely absorbed in what we’re doing, and, ultimately, both feel and perform our very best). We talked a little bit about how to get into flow, but mainly focused on its place in schools and learning environments in general. It was an inspiring and thought-provoking back-and-forth and left us with the feeling that we know a lot more than we once did about peak performance, its role in mental health and the good life, and, most importantly, how we can start getting more of it in our lives and in our schools.

Bestselling author and award-winning speaker Steven Kotler is the Executive Director of The Flow Research Collective, a group dedicated to reverse-engineering the flow state and trying to boil it down to a set of heuristics that can help more individuals and organizations experience greater flow in their lives. Steven is a former journalist and has multiple NYT bestselling books to his name, including his most recent title, The Art of the Impossible, which has swept just about every bestseller list out there.

Our conversation with Shipley alumnus, author, and law student Jesse Wang ’14 focuses on themes from his book, Underdog: 12 Inspirational Stories for the Despondent Law Student, including finding paths to growth, strategies for resilience, and maintaining personal well-being while navigating adversity and performing at a high level. Jesse reflects on his own experiences of growth through struggle in high school and during his early days as a law student. He also shares some tips and tricks to help listeners grow from struggle, too. It was a really enjoyable conversation filled with plenty of food for thought for anyone out there struggling in various ways, but in particular, for recent college graduates trying to find their way in the world and figure out what it is that they want to do and contribute.

Jesse Wang '14 is currently a graduate student in the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, as well as a class action litigation law clerk for Lawyers for Justice, and the managing editor of USC’s Spotlight Entertainment Law Review. Jesse is donating 100% of the proceeds from the sale of his book to USC’s Public Interest Law Foundation and Small Business Clinic. He is currently working on his second book.



Website: https://linktr.ee/wangesque
Facebook: Jesse Wang
Instagram: @wangesque
Linkedin: Jesse Wang
Book: Underdog: 12 Inspirational Stories for the Despondent Law Student

4:06 Jesse’s Shipley story
9:45 Shipley blog post
10:46 Angela Duckworth: GRIT
11:15 Jesse’s educational journey
22:00 Underdog at USC
24:40 Positive stress
25:07 Shipley Alumni Development Series
27:00 Focus on mental health, well-being
29:20 Small wins
36:42 Shawn Achor
37:04 Rick Merrill
40:00 Writing Underdog: 12 Inspirational Stories for the Despondent Law Student
46:17 Advice for college graduates
49:05 Major themes of the book
49:50 Adam Grant: Give and Take