Work From The Inside Out Tammy Gooler Loeb

Ehab Bandar is a sought-after product design consultant for startups and fintech. What's amazing about his career is that he's managed to do it while being both an outsider and an insider in remarkably distinct ways. Ehab attributes credit to his early life as an immigrant to the US from Lebanon at the age of six. His family moved yearly until he was in seventh grade. Ehab was a shy kid with a stutter, yet he was also a natural observer and listener, taking in different cultural norms and personalities. He recalls endearing himself to fit in with new people by throwing a joke into random conversations, noting how fortunate he was to be warmly received as he started the year at each new school. Ehab describes these characteristics as shy self-reliance while being quietly engaged. Ehab had to invent his own career to become a design leader himself. Educated as a city planner, Ehab started his career as one of the youngest technology managers at Wells Fargo. He then left corporate and went on his own to advise and lead design at fast-growing startups in Silicon Valley, digital agencies, and corporate giants.  Ehab uses city planning tools and curiosity to hone his craft in the tech world. He explains how a quarterly print newsletter he started in grad school out of boredom led him to work in the dot-com boom and how being an outsider as an immigrant from Lebanon made the act of observation and discovery a daily habit.  Today, he's the founder of , an experience-led design agency that partners with product teams to build human-centered designs at scale. They merge hands-on product knowledge, customer insights, and experience strategy to transform ideas into a tangible product vision.   In this week’s learn more about Ehab’s journey: Ehab conquered his stuttering by joining the radio station in college as a news reporter. He has helped dozens of organizations, including Charles Schwab, Wells Fargo, Bank of the West, Boost Mobile, Intuit, and Airbnb, design new digital products and successfully launch them into the market. Learn more and connect with Ehab here:     - by Lorne M. Buchman  

makes it easier for us to communicate at work. He helps experts talk to non-experts, teams talk to executives, and much more. Chris's practical methods are used in organizations like Google and NATO and have appeared in the Harvard Business Review. Helping people retain and apply what he teaches led Chris to write the book . He has also authored multiple books on communication and training that have been translated into 15 languages. Chris grew up in what he describes as a traditional nuclear family in the UK. As our podcast interview unfolded, he shared that his parents worked hard to provide sufficient food for their family. As a child, Chris was unaware of how careful they were to ensure there was enough food. He thought all parents put dates on their canned beans. At age 7, he was awarded a scholarship to attend a private school. Chris saw the distinction between his life and that of his classmates. Adding to his experience of differences, he was elevated two grade levels to a class with students who were 9-years-old.  Chris always did well in school without much effort. Then his perspective changed. At 15, he was struck by a car, sustaining serious injuries. After that, he took nothing for granted. Attending university, he majored in aeronautical engineering, and worked 2 to 3 jobs to support himself. Throughout his engineering career, Chris leveraged his problem solving skills by applying them to challenges wherever he saw a need. He was especially drawn towards translating communication between technical and business teams. Chris’s ability to translate and communicate is the common thread in his work today. When he left full-time employment to start his own business, Chris moved into communication, bridging the gap between technical and business teams and between experts and non-experts. In this week’s  learn more about Chris’s journey: Chris attended flight school with the intention to join the Royal Air Force, but he realized he did not like being told what to do. When he was a university student, he also competed in target rifle shooting, an expensive sport, which he supported by his multiple jobs. Learn more and connect with Chris here: 

was always good at math. As a teenager, she and her Dad would sit in front of the family computer (then, households had one computer), dial up AOL (America Online), and check out the latest stock market figures. Dad, an optometrist, was keenly interested in the markets and enjoyed bonding with Erika over all things involving numbers. Erika studied finance and international economics in college, and following graduation, she took a finance role at IBM. Early on, she discovered the advantages of being in a large company where opportunities for mobility were readily available. Erika moved to the consulting side of the business, serving clients, becoming a project manager in a variety of functional areas, and developing her leadership chops. Interspersed within that time, she married, lived in Asia, had her first child, and moved nine times in ten years. Needless to say, Erika’s personal and professional journey was not a linear one. For her, there were many changes: growing up in a household where money was an exciting dinner topic, getting married, having three children, getting divorced, living abroad, moving nine times for a job, and losing a parent. Erika found herself at a crossroads. After a successful decade at IBM, Erika left her corporate role to work on emerging organic food brands, transforming them from innovative products to household names while raising her growing family. Along the way, Erika noticed a gap in how people all over the world talked — or didn’t talk — about money, both within family structures, relationships, and workplaces. Erika then discovered the field of Financial Therapy and decided to pursue her graduate Certificate in Financial Therapy from Kansas State University. Today, she works with individuals, couples, families, teams, and corporate wellness programs to improve communication and relationships regarding money. Partnering with her clients, Erika helps them transform their mindsets and beliefs about money, paving the way to clearer choices and new options. In this week’s learn more about Erika’s journey: Erika created the Financial Wellness Conversation Cards, which allows people to explore the topic of money with 50 thought-provoking questions. Her expertise has been featured in The New York Times, Yahoo! Money, and Time. Learn more and connect with Erika here: 

Catie Harris is a nurse practitioner who believes nurses are uniquely qualified to be entrepreneurs. As the CEO and owner of , a mentorship program that empowers nurses to monetize their knowledge and develop business skills, Catie inspires them to change how healthcare is perceived and delivered. Through individual coaching, live events, and signature group programs, thousands of nurses have been empowered with the knowledge and skills they need to build profitable businesses of their own. ​As a child, Catie was quite introverted and didn’t socialize easily. Her family moved multiple times, which meant going to new schools, and she found this to be consistently difficult. ​At 16, Catie had a vivid dream in which she saw herself working as a nurse, and from then on, it was clear she would go to nursing school. Catie never questioned that decision to this day. What she had not anticipated was the level of interpersonal interactions she would need to engage in as a nursing student. The adjustment throughout her rotations in different clinical areas was painful, yet Catie persevered and eventually discovered the strength of her introverted personality. As is typical of most introverted people, Catie was not a small-talk type of person. She was much better at listening. So when there were families in the hospital who were identified as difficult or temperamental, Catie was assigned to meet with them because she would go in, and just listen to them. By the time they were done venting, they would express thanks for how helpful Catie had been. Catie found that it helped her too. ​Catie continued with her training to get her nurse practitioner's degree. Always curious, her nursing experience included work in multiple clinical areas. Eventually, she focused on her own business to teach and support nurses who wanted to become entrepreneurs.​ In this week’s  learn more about Catie’s journey:​ Catie strives to show nurses around the world how their hard-earned knowledge and skills can transcend the hospital system into a profitable business. Her podcast, , highlights the unique stories of men and women who have embraced adversity and overcome countless obstacles to pursue work that has greater meaning while sharing their experience of being a nurse entrepreneur. Learn more and connect with Catie here:   

Donna Serdula is the founder and president of Vision Board Media, a professional branding company that helps individuals and companies tell their unique stories on LinkedIn and beyond. Donna has authored two editions of . Bringing dynamic brand storytelling to the masses and empowering people to dream big – that’s the ink in her pen. Donna’s website, , is where she and her team of over 20 writers and coaches help people collide with opportunities and transform their lives via future-forward career branding. You’d never know it now, but Donna was a shy little kid. During college, she was interested in pursuing work in development and production in the film industry. While she did work as an intern in the film industry, getting established after graduation proved challenging, so she accepted an invitation from her father to join him in his business. They sold estimating software to autobody shops. Within the first few years, Donna was training people in several industries intersecting with their business on the use of the software and other tools. She realized she loved to help people discover technology, and this led her to move into other arenas, including designing websites and helping people with their LinkedIn profiles. Over the course of the next several years, Donna worked as a reseller in software sales, and she noticed a couple of patterns. While she sold the same software as her competitors, people wanted to do business with her because they could see she understood their industry, had their backs, and was willing to engage with them in ways that were not purely transactional. How did she do this? She used LinkedIn as a part of her networking strategy to make connections and develop relationships. In this week’s learn more about Donna’s journey: After being laid off from a company she had closed over $1M in business for in 2009, Donna decided it was time to start her own business. She's shared her LinkedIn expertise at global conferences, presented keynotes and workshops, and has been featured on a number of high-profile news outlets. Learn more and connect with Donna here: 

This week’s podcast features a delightful conversation I had with Doug Lennick and Chuck Wachendorfer from , a leadership development firm serving many industries. Together, they co-authored the book . Their experience and knowledge show readers how to be positive and impactful leaders. Doug and Chuck offer practical and evidence-based guidance through eight key principles that are essential to one’s ability to lead others: Aim to be Yourself Know Your Real Self Ignite Integrity and Responsibility Embrace Empathy and Compassion Decide Wisely Let Go of What You Know Achieve Purposeful Goals Empower Others They share many examples and lessons learned from their experiences in financial services and the stories of leaders in various industries, illustrating the book’s eight essential principles. Exercises and frameworks are threaded throughout each chapter, enabling the reader to explore their own leadership development and professional directions. Doug and Chuck conclude that the best leaders are “people-wise.” I wholeheartedly agree! In this week’s learn about Chuck and Doug’s journeys: Before founding think2perform, Doug Lennick, a certified financial planner (CFP), was Executive Vice President – Advice and Retail Distribution for American Express Financial Advisors (now Ameriprise Financial). In that capacity, he led an organization of 17,000 field and corporate associates to unprecedented success. Chuck Wachendorfer is a renowned leadership development professional who has worked with clients including American Express, Wells Fargo, Comerica Bank, TD Wealth of Canada, and Charles Schwab. His insights on leadership have been featured in CNN Money, Forbes, Fortune, and The Denver Post. Learn more and connect with Doug and Chuck here: