Conscious Life Sumi Krishnan

Miriam Aschkenasy, MD and Harvard graduate, currently works as the Program Manager for the Initiative on Institutional Anti-Racism and Accountability at the Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Miriam works with a small team to build a new program including developing and executing a strategic plan, mission and goals and is responsible for laying the foundation for their programming including obtaining grant funding, striving towards team objectives and incubating and enacting new ideas and events. She previously worked as Deputy Director of Global Disaster Response at the Mass General Hospital Center for Global Health, and was a pivotal part in developing and executing the team's strategic plan where she acted as the team leader due to her extensive experience working under pressure in a fast-paced work environment.
Show Notes:
8:15 - “Field work is like taking whatever job it is that you do in your office every day and then taking away 90 percent of your resources, making your phone only work 10 percent of the time, making the room 40c, and then getting the same job done. You really have to learn how to make everything work with nothing.”
9:05 - “There’s one thing both of my jobs have taught me and that’s gratitude.”
9:35 - “When you work in the field you realize how people live with so little. It redefines to you what it is to have.”
17:00 - Hear how yoga and meditation helped Miriam survive medical school
18:34 - “I think you have to have real coping mechanisms. In emergency positions you have to know how to do real self care - and I don’t mean getting a manicure pedicure. That’s not real self care.”
19:10 - Learn how this former field hospital director found time for self care in the midst of running a 500 bed relief effort in Haiti after the earthquake.
24:30 - “You don’t need a yoga mat for yoga.”
25:40 - Miriam describes her process for grieving when she loses patients.
“There’s nothing more difficult than having a patient who is talking to you and telling you how scared they are and you watch them die in front of you.”
27:18 - Miriam breaks down how the trauma she works with affects her intimate relationships.
32:05 - “What I take from her is the love she had from her husband, the ability that I had, however meager, to alleviate some of her suffering, and that’s what I carry.
34:00 - Learn how to overcome failure. “You can’t learn from failures until you’re honest with yourself about who you are. You have to critically evaluate what makes you tick, you have to critically evaluate what sets you off, you have to critically evaluate what makes you happy, and i think you have to have some understanding of what your personality it really like. I think you need those things because you have to look at a failure and dissect it unemotionally. If you wallow in it, you can’t learn from it.”
40:06 - What does it take to figure yourself out? Miriam describes how she found her true purpose on a trip to Nepal.
45:00 - Hear the real reason why Miriam never got married, and why she and her partner decided to adopt two babies.
52:50 - “I think this is important for some women to hear because it’s totally okay: I never, ever wanted to be pregnant”
53:40 - Is adoption selfish? Hear why Miriam thinks it is.
55:58 - “To me success is waking up in the morning and being able to go do something that you enjoy, that also makes the world a better place.”

---

Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sumi/message

Elisa Miller-Out is an experienced tech entrepreneur, investor, board director and community builder. She is Managing Partner at Chloe Capital (chloecapital.com), a seed stage venture capital firm investing in women-led innovation companies. She also serves as a mentor, advisor and Entrepreneur in Residence with several organizations including: NYSERDA, The Center for Regional Economic Advancement, Cornell University, Launch NY, 76West and more. She’s an instructor with the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps and a guest lecturer at Cornell and Columbia. Elisa serves as a board director at Women 2.0, GatheringUs and as chair of the board at Singlebrook. Singlebrook is a custom software services firm Elisa co-founded and led as CEO for over 10 years. She oversaw the successful acquisition of a division of the company in 2016. Elisa has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, Forbes and other publications, and she speaks about technology and entrepreneurship at events across the country. Elisa graduated Summa Cum Laude from Barnard College of Columbia University.

Show Notes:
2:40 - “We are a for profit company but we have a social and environmental mission as well. We believe in making the world a better place through technology and using technology for positive change in the world.”

3:30 - Why diversity in technology matters

3:36 - “The whole kind of ecosystem and landscape around innovation right now is being driven largely by a handful of white men still which is why I feel very strongly that this space is also defining a future for all of us because technology innovation is happening at this incredibly rapid pace right now and truly truly shaping our future and I just feel really strongly that we need to have a lot more voices at the table building that future together."

7:58 - “I didn’t start out independently wealthy or anything like that so everything I’ve created in terms of my businesses I’ve done basically just bootstrapping.”

11:43 - How to transition into the tech world without a tech background.

20:35 - Why the ability to translate between technical and non technical speak is very powerful

22:00 - Do you NEED to understand technology to start a business today? Hear what Elisa has to say.

22:58 - “I think a lot of being an entrepreneur is just recognizing what your strengths are, and what your weaknesses are, and what your passions are, and having really good self knowledge so that you can then understand what team members you need to bring on who can do all the things you’re not as good at but that they’re passionate about.”

24:30 - What is a B corp and how can it help your business?

29:20 - Can radical transparency about your business’s finances actually increase employee financial performance? Here’s why more employers are switching to open book management.

36:00 - How to land fortune 500 level clients
40:32 - How to design your days for maximum impact
40:38 - “One of the things I love about entrepreneurship and about the tech space in particular is that I feel like it actually allows for the most flexibility in terms of lifestyle, and that’s a message I’d like to get out there for a lot more women.”

“I just find most other jobs wouldn’t grant me the flexibility that being my own boss gives me.”

50:00 - The ritual that helps Elisa tap into her flow state

52:00 Why partnership matters

52:05 “I can also only do that because in part I have an incredibly supportive husband whose really a partner to me not just in the business but at home


---

Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sumi/message

Paul Zelizer is one of the first business and marketing coaches to focus on the needs of conscious entrepreneurs and social impact businesses. Paul runs a global coaching practice supporting conscious entrepreneurs in growing their businesses to the next level while staying true to their deepest integrity. He also works with leaders to help them increase the transformational impact that they have in their organizations and in the world. He's also is the founder of Awarepreneurs, a dynamic podcast and community that looks at the intersection of conscious business, social impact and awareness practices.

Show Notes
2:30 Rapid Fire
-Grew up in Hudson valley NYC
Lives in Albuquerque NM
Core values
Adventure
Mutuality - invest my time with people who understand exchange - we talk about nacarcism a lot because of key leaders and I show up and invest my time where people understand give and take and back and forth and dont where there is a lot of self centered and egos
Kindness
“TIkkun” - Working to make the world a better place (tikkun olam “the great healing”)
Favorite book of the year - 2019 Essentialism -
6:23- What brought you to where you are today - the start of Awarepreneurs
Nonlinear - he had a very entitled upbringing
Felt very superficial and no room to be a complex person
Got lost in drugs and at 17 met someone who met a wise woman (friend of his mom) : “Paul you are wired for poignant experiences - this goes one of two ways you either live a lifetime of drama and addiction and probably die early or there are these things called awareness practices that help you cultivate a rich inner life and put that wiring to work in a good way and you learn how to be of deep service to others - there are many different ways to do that - I don't care which one you pick, but pick one, please. “
10:45 “Im wired to want depth”
11:50 - Leslie university - Awareness Graduate program (1989 )
15:58 - Learn about Paul getting into activism
There is more to the tradition I came from - there is a tradition of progressive Judaism - grandmother organized busloads of women to get to the city to fight for women's rights
- Domestic Violence Training at 20
23:58 - the Buddha - 3 crown jewels of Buddhism
31:56 - Learn how Paul overcomes fear
38:00 - Do you wish that your approach would have happened earlier? (Awarepreneurs)
“Partially because of where I came from, I think it would be easy to have compassion for people who don't look like me - prepped me to be a more inclusive leader”
Book - Fit to Fat to Fit - Understand the connection from empathy to success
42:18 - Having that empathy to know what it's like to be scared as an entrepreneur gives you an empathy connection you can count on
49:30 - changing the idea of activism
52:00 - Lives in a tiny home
Values experiences and relationships over things
55:00 - Woke Culture - “FB activism”
55:38 - “ my job on this planet -- from a spiritual perspective many teachers and many traditions have said ‘The single most valuable resource we have as human beings is our attention and what we give out attention to deeply matters. ’ For me in a modern economy the majority of adult humans spend the majority of their waking hours so the majority of their attention is about what we do for work. I love my daughter, I love my friends, I love being in nature and I spend more of my time working than any of those things. I work less than most Americans of my age and class. So it's the single highest concentration of adult human energy in a modern economy.”
56:45 - “What I'm really looking for is liberation and a world we can pass down to our children and feel good about”
57:30 - what it means to live a conscious life “pay attention to your values, know what they are. Don't wait until you are done, implement them in your life as you are getting clear on them”

---

Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sumi/message

Sumi gets Interviewed!

Show Notes:
1:50 - Learn how being a first generation American shaped Sumi’s politics, and how those beliefs have evolved over her life. 

4:54 “The reason I’m so passionate about this is because I have spent a lot of time opening my heart up -- in terms of understanding what it means to really feel my feelings. And because I’ve done that i’ve taken off these layers that we’re sort of conditioned to put on top that hardens us. So when you take off those layers and then you see a little kid who doesn’t have access to quality food and education ask you why she’s undeserved, it hits you in a whole new way.” 

6:18 - Sumi explains how her father’s story embodies the American dream. 

6:45 - The intersection between privilege and hard work.

8:30 - Sumi tells the story of the time she tried to ditch engineering school for dance camp, and how it leads to her starting one of the fastest growing govcon businesses in the industry.

14:05 “For all of you who feel like you’ve been in trouble, entrepreneurship is your path.”

16:29 - The lifelong question between Sumi and her sisters.

16:40 “I think he [dad] always wanted a son and he never got one, and I think in his mind I was his stand in son. For any idea back in his mind that he would give to his son, instead he would give to me.”

18:11 - “Once I brought my dad the wedding planning businesses plan he poked a thousand holes in it and then suggested I start an IT services company and market my friends skill sets to the government.” 

16:46 - Sumi explains exactly what types of programs K4 Solutions worked on. 

22:02 - Sumi shares her unique perspective from being a DC insider for 15+ years. 

23:40 - Overcoming doubt with hard work.

25:20 - Hear why Sumi ultimately left her life in Washington DC 
“I think it was a slow decline of my excitement for life.” 

28:40 - The validation that came with attending Harvard, and the realization she came to after.

30:20 - The people who changed Sumi’s life at Harvard. 

32:40 - Sumi dives deep into how she found one of her other greatest passions - CROSSFIT!

37:38 - “It was the best feeling helping people get their first pull up or helping people squat over three digits. I realized I have the coach gene like that’s part of who I am.” 

38:20 - Sumi gives the inside scoop about her most recent transition from CEO to Nashville singer/songwriter! 

39:20 - “Life is so much more fun when you’re growing.”

40:00 - “I think it’s important to make sure your ladder is on the right wall and that you’re doing the things that are ultimately gonna not just make you money but make you feel fulfilled, make you feel healthy, whole, and like you’re making a positive impact on the world.” 

40:46 - “It’s been knocking at my heart for decades and I’m listening now. And I’m so excited for where it’s gonna lead me!”

  41:13 - RAPID FIRE QUESTIONS 
1. What is your definition of leadership?
2. What does success mean to you?

3. What is the key to being a single successful thirty something?

4. Would you rather be twice as smart or twice as happy?

5. When was the last time you cried?

6. What is one thing you will be really disappointed if you never get to experience in life?

7. When was the last time you changed your opinion on something major?

8. What book do you wish everyone would read?


---

Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sumi/message