Our Impact with Jeremy Casebeer

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What is our impact — and how can we scale it? This podcast explores those questions through conversations with nonprofit leaders, academics, athletes, and mission-driven entrepreneurs who are creating real social and environmental change. Each episode focuses on solutions, personal action, and the ripple effect of collective effort. Though new episodes aren’t currently releasing, the full archive is packed with inspiring stories, practical insights, and ways to take action in your own life. Binge now and discover how everyday choices can drive extraordinary impact.

  1. 03/09/2022

    Design, Generosity, and Sustainable Business With MiiR Founder Bryan Pape

    My guest today is Bryan Pape, the CEO and Founder of MiiR, a food and drinkware company. Bryan founded MiiR in 2010 with his wife Rebecca with the dream of combining business and philanthropy.  Design, generosity, and sustainability are at the core of MiiR. Every MiiR product sold has a giving code where you can see what social or environmental project your purchase helped support. In 2022 MiiR is approaching giving away 3 million dollars to nonprofit partners.  MiiR is B Corp, 1% for the Planet, Climate Neutral and Evergreen certified. Through their growth, they’ve been able to scale their impact while never taking any venture capital investment. In our conversation we go deep on how MiiR focuses on the next best step in taking responsibility for their impact and generosity, the importance of minimalist product design, the culture and investment MiiR is making in its employees to learn and grow, and creating partnerships with other brands, nonprofits, and creatives where everyone wins and there is tangible impact.  Bryan has thought long and hard about what it means to be a founder, finding the balance of investing in his people and giving to nonprofits, and taking the long view for MiiR which is quite rare in business nowadays.  At the very end, Bryan shares an insightful perspective on how things are not as black and white as they may seem, and how this applies to business and our society at large. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation and hope you do too!

  2. 12/15/2021

    America's Water Crisis with Drew Fitzgerald, Co-Founder of 501CTHREE and JUST Water

    Drew Fitzgerald co-founded 501CTHREE with Jaden Smith. 501CTHREE is a non-profit dedicated to driving innovation around global water, energy, health, and shelter solutions. You’re likely familiar with their Water Box which started in Flint Michigan and has now scaled throughout the US providing safe and clean drinking water to hundreds of thousands of Americans from historically marginalized communities. Drew also co-founded JUST water with Jaden and Will Smith. JUST Water is a certified B Corp that made one of the first plant-based water bottles, reducing single-use plastic and emissions associated with bottled water. Before 501CTHREE and Just Water, Drew was the Creative Innovation Director at MIT’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Creative Director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at MIT.    In our conversation, we talk about how Drew has combined his background in design and innovation to bring technology out of the lab and into viable products. He has applied his skills to create real-world solutions to interconnected problems around climate, water, food, energy, and race.   Shortly after this interview, I went to the Dominican Republic for a beach clean-up with the nonprofit Players for the Planet. Some of the best baseball players in the world and a number of athletes from other sports came together to raise awareness. I’ve been playing beach volleyball professionally for over a decade and have never seen a beach without plastic. The beaches we cleaned in the DR were the worst I’ve ever seen. It made it very clear to me that beach cleanups are just bandaids. In order to effect real systemic change, we need corporations to pay for the true cost of externalities of their products. That won’t happen without better materials, like the plant-based bottle Drew and the team at Just Water designed, and real policy change.

About

What is our impact — and how can we scale it? This podcast explores those questions through conversations with nonprofit leaders, academics, athletes, and mission-driven entrepreneurs who are creating real social and environmental change. Each episode focuses on solutions, personal action, and the ripple effect of collective effort. Though new episodes aren’t currently releasing, the full archive is packed with inspiring stories, practical insights, and ways to take action in your own life. Binge now and discover how everyday choices can drive extraordinary impact.