Pioneers of Possibility

Kareem Afzal

Pioneers of Possibility is a podcast hosted by Kareem Afzal exploring the lives of today's innovators - from local organizers to international names. pioneerspod.substack.com

  1. 2d ago

    Running Sucks. You Should Do It Anyway. | Raziq Rauf | PoP Ep. 36

    Get Raz’s book, This Is Running*: https://www.amazon.com/This-Running-Celebration-Exploring-Culture/dp/1837330425*Read his newsletter, Running Sucks*: * In this episode, Kareem sits down with Raziq Rauf, a journalist of 25 years, author of the newsletter Running Sucks, and, as of this spring, a first-time published author with This Is Running. Raz has built a career out of writing about whatever he can’t stop thinking about, and right now that’s running. Raz was born and raised in London to Bangladeshi immigrant parents. He was telling stories before he could be bothered to write them down: at six or seven he dictated seven-page adventures about his action figures to his mum. As a teenager he made heavy metal his identity and his medium. When someone on a message board asked who wanted to interview a tiny band called My Vitriol, he said yes, and that turned into a part-time journalism career that paid his way through the University of Manchester debt-free. He spent his twenties as a music journalist covering metal and prog. Approaching 40, he went back to writing about something he loved for its own sake: running. Listeners will hear about: * The “200 words a day” philosophy, and how a tiny daily habit adds up to 50,000 words, a whole book, in a year, the same way single miles add up to a running practice * Why he chose a traditional publisher over self-publishing. It wasn’t the money. He wanted the validation, and he wanted to make a beautiful physical object while his online work keeps vanishing as websites fold * Running as a literal form of therapy, not just a therapeutic hobby * Coaching his nine-year-old son, and the thrill of telling him “you’ve run two miles” and watching him realize what he’s capable of * Why ultras produce far better stories than marathons, plus his time this year at UTMB in Chamonix and Western States * A clear-eyed take on money, access, and inequality in trail running, from $35,000 brand activations to the basic question of how far you live from a mountain * Being possibly the only South Asian journalist covering running this way, and why one question no one else had thought to ask an elite runner is both a small moment and an indictment of the field * His three-part read on running’s current boom: participation, diversity, and gear * Why he named it Running Sucks, and why the name is a love letter, not a complaint Raz closes with advice for any young writer: find the subject you think about all the time, write your thoughts down, enjoy the process, and don’t fixate on the outcome. It took him 25 years to write his first book. That’s one more than most people ever will. Listen to Pioneers of Possibility on Apple Podcasts: Listen on Spotify: Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@pioneersofpossibilitypod #RunningSucks #ThisIsRunning #RaziqRauf #RunningBooks #RunningWriter #RunningCommunity #TrailRunning #UltraRunning #UTMB #WesternStates #RunningCulture #WritingLife #RunningJournalism #200WordsADay #Substack #MusicJournalism #RunningMotivation #DiversityInRunning #RunningLife #PioneersOfPossibility This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pioneerspod.substack.com

  2. Sep 30

    This NBA Pro Fights Climate Change One Basketball Court at a Time | Pops Mensah-Bonsu | PoP Ep. 35

    In this episode, recorded at New York City Climate Week, Kareem sits down with Pops Mensah-Bonsu — former NBA player, only the second Ghanaian ever to reach the league, and now a builder of things much bigger than a basketball career. Pops was born in Britain to a Ghanaian family and spent his first 16 years in north London, running track and playing soccer before his brother and father introduced him to basketball. On his 16th birthday he moved to the United States, landing at a private school in Princeton, New Jersey — a world away from his upbringing, surrounded by Saudi princes and the children of the ultra-wealthy. He learned to adapt fast, a skill that would define everything that came after. A scholarship to George Washington University led to five years in the NBA — Mavericks, Spurs, Rockets, Raptors — and a second career across Italy, France, Russia, Turkey, Spain, Israel, and Greece. When he retired in 2016, he moved to the executive side, scouting for the Spurs, running minor-league operations in Washington, and serving as president of league operations for the New York Knicks. But he left, by his own account six months too early, because something was pulling at him. As one of only two Ghanaians ever to play in the NBA, he had always promised himself that when he reached that platform, he’d use it. That promise became SEED Academy Ghana. Listeners will hear about: * Why Africa’s booming young population — nearly a million and a half people under 25 — is an opportunity, not a problem, and how SEED Academy is investing in it * How his first camp expected 80 kids and 400 showed up, and how he expanded by bringing 13 existing academies under one umbrella to reach close to 1,000 kids * The 12,000-seat multi-purpose arena he’s building in Ghana — only the fourth modern venue of its kind on the entire continent, and why he compares it to the infrastructure Rwanda and South Africa built * The day his favorite sneakers literally split in half from the heat at one of his camps — and how thinking about the kids who play in those conditions every day, in one pair of shoes, reframed everything * The camp where it rained for five hours straight and flooded the courts, and the kids refused to leave * Why he joined the Adapt to Win campaign despite once thinking climate change had nothing to do with him — and how “carbon credits” and “net zero” can feel exclusionary until you realize extreme heat and flooding are hitting your work directly * Janelle: the ten-year-old he watched dribble a ball for the very first time in 2018, who is now on a Division II scholarship in the US, studying to be an engineer * Why the messenger matters as much as the message, and how athletes can move climate awareness in a way policy papers never will This is an episode for anyone who believes a platform is only worth having if you use it — and that the future gets built by the people willing to pour a foundation before anyone else can see the arena. Pops Mensah-Bonsu is doing exactly that, on home soil. Listen to Pioneers of Possibility on Apple Podcasts: Listen on Spotify: Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@pioneersofpossibilitypod #PopsMensahBonsu #NBA #Ghana #SEEDAcademy #YouthSports #Basketball #ClimateResilience #AdaptToWin #ClimateWeek #AfricaRising #SportsForGood #Ghanaian #BasketballAcademy #ClimateChange #SportsAndClimate #AthleteActivism #BuildingInAfrica #YouthDevelopment #Infrastructure #PioneersOfPossibility This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pioneerspod.substack.com

  3. Sep 17

    A Painter Who Turned Grief, Faith and Witness Into Art | Khalilah Sabree | PoP Ep. 34

    In this episode, part of our ongoing art series, Kareem sits down with Khalilah Sabree — a Trenton-based mixed-media artist whose work turns faith, grief, and witness into something you can’t look away from. It’s a personal conversation for Kareem, who grew up going to Sunday school in Trenton and has known Khalilah’s family most of his life. Khalilah was born in Georgia and moved to Trenton in the fourth grade, arriving with her mother and siblings and never leaving. Art, she says, was placed in her — always there, always drawing, carried forward by a run of art teachers who encouraged her when plenty of people were arguing the arts weren’t worth having. After a brief, clarifying stint at the post office out of high school (”I cannot do this for the rest of my life”), a guidance counselor helped her into what’s now the College of New Jersey, and she earned a degree in art education. Then came a long pause. She married, raised a family, and became Muslim — and spent years wrestling with a question that stopped her from making work at all: how do art and Islam fit together? Her master’s at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia became the place she resolved it, reconciling her art, her faith, and the expectations placed on her as an African American artist into a single voice that is unmistakably her own. That voice is unflinching. Khalilah works in series, painting the things most people would rather not see. Listeners will hear about: * The “Above and Below” series, built from her reading of al-Ghazali on the veils of light and darkness, and the recurring portals in her work that mark the transitions between this life and what comes after * “Rubble” and the pieces born from Gaza — fragmented, broken images meant to restore the human element to destruction we’ve become numb to * Her 9/11 series, made just after she started grad school, when color drained entirely from her palette — including a piece on Guantánamo built from the mystery and disorientation of a place with no images * “Blue Body Bags,” painted from footage on the news, where each repeated gold mark is a dhikr, a remembrance, for the people inside them * Painting with spackle and shoe polish as a kid because there was no money for paint, and how growing up poor made her the mixed-media artist she is * Why she doesn’t paint to sell, doesn’t take commissions, and considers all her work one continuous piece * Her work washing and shrouding the dead for Muslim funerals, and how that intimacy with grief lives in the paintings * Her advice to young artists in the age of AI: keep working, and use the new tools as a tool, never a crutch This is an episode for anyone who believes art can be more than decoration — that it can bear witness, hold grief, and ask us to feel something we’d rather avoid. Khalilah Sabree has spent 25 years at Artworks Trenton doing exactly that, on her own terms, for no one’s approval but her own. You can find Khalilah Sabree’s work at https://www.khalilahsabree.com/ or by visiting Artworks in Trenton, New Jersey. Listen to Pioneers of Possibility on Apple Podcasts: Listen on Spotify: Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@pioneersofpossibilitypod #KhalilahSabree #MixedMediaArt #ContemporaryArt #BlackArtists #MuslimArtists #ArtworksTrenton #TrentonNJ #ArtAndFaith #SocialJusticeArt #AfricanAmericanArt #FiberAndPaint #ArtAsWitness #WomenInArt #IslamicArt #ArtSeries #NewJerseyArtists #PaintingWithMeaning #ArtOfResistance #CreativeProcess #PioneersOfPossibility This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pioneerspod.substack.com

  4. Sep 2

    From Cloning Research to Fiber Sculpture — and a 100-Mile Race | Jackie deRuyter | PoP Ep. 33

    In this episode, part of our ongoing art series, Kareem sits down with Jackie deRuyter — studio artist, costume designer, ultramarathoner, and former cellular biologist. Recorded in Twin Lakes, Colorado, about 30 miles from Leadville, where Jackie finished the Leadville 100 last year, this is a conversation about following a creative thread across a life that, on paper, kept pointing somewhere else entirely. Jackie grew up in central Connecticut, the daughter of an orthopedic surgeon and a college professor, and set out to become a veterinarian. Instead she landed in a cutting-edge lab at UMass Amherst right as Dolly the sheep was cloned, and ended up earning a PhD in reproductive and cellular biology, studying cell division in early embryos. She taught genetics and biology at the university and community-college level for years. But the whole time, a creative side kept running underneath everything — the kid who built haunted houses for her sisters, who learned to sew from her mother and YouTube, who never quite called herself an artist even as she started making things she couldn’t stop making. The balance finally tipped. Jackie discovered that fabric could be sculptural, and built a body of work — layered fiber pieces so rigid and self-supporting that people mistake them for ceramic — that carried her into the vibrant Cape Cod art scene. Listeners will hear about: * How she builds large, free-standing sculptures out of many layers of stitched fabric, and why people are stunned to learn they aren’t clay * The little fantastical houses that became her entrance into the gallery world, and why she eventually had to find out what else she could make * “Intrusive Thoughts,” her favorite series, where a second form pierces and interrupts the soft, flowing shapes she’d spent years perfecting * Making peace with the fact that once a piece is out in the world, its story is no longer hers to tell * Why she loves the process far more than the finish line — in art, in running, and back in the lab peering through a microscope for hours * Learning to build classical ballet tutus (yes, there is a tutu school) and how much that structural sewing has in common with her sculpture * The biggest pivot of all: at this stage in her career, enrolling as a first-year student at the Academy of Realist Art in Boston to finally get the formal training she never had — starting with simple graphite drawings * Her advice to anyone afraid to begin: create what you love, don’t be too precious with it, and take the leap This is an episode for anyone who’s carried a quiet passion alongside a “responsible” career and wondered whether it’s ever too late to let it lead. Jackie’s answer, in fiber and in footsteps, is that the process is the point — and you can always start again. You can find Jackie deRuyter’s work on Instagram [handle to confirm with guest]. Listen to Pioneers of Possibility on Apple Podcasts: Listen on Spotify: Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@pioneersofpossibilitypod #FiberArt #TextileArt #SculptureArt #JackieDeRuyter #CapeCodArt #ContemporaryArt #ArtistJourney #CareerPivot #FromScienceToArt #UltraRunning #Leadville100 #CostumeDesign #WomenInArt #MixedMedia #CreativeLife #RealistArt #ProcessOverOutcome #ArtSeries #TrailRunning #PioneersOfPossibility This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pioneerspod.substack.com

  5. Aug 20

    They said he'd never run again. So he ran 100 miles through the mountains. | Jared Ewing | PoP Ep. 32

    In this episode, Kareem sits down with Jared Ewing — Army veteran, adaptive endurance athlete, and quite possibly the first adaptive athlete ever to attempt one of the hardest challenges in ultrarunning. They met at the Leadville Run Camp, both training for the Leadville 100, and this conversation happened three weeks out from that start line. Jared grew up in Akron, Ohio on baseball, basketball, and football, and hated running so much that he considered it a punishment. After studying nutrition at Ohio State and joining the National Guard — where he spent nine years, moving from radio work into cybersecurity — he caught the marathon bug at 30. By late 2018 he was in the prime of his life, having just run three marathons in five weeks. Then, walking down a sidewalk after a night out, he was hit by a car. His lower leg was destroyed: surgeons saved it, but had to remove his calf muscle and Achilles tendon, and told him his marathon days were over. What Jared did next is the heart of this episode. He rebuilt himself from a hospital bed, then a nursing home at age 32, then a friend’s living room, then a treadmill at the local YMCA where he gripped the rails to walk a quarter mile. Ten months after being told he’d never run a marathon again, he crossed the finish line of the Columbus Marathon. He hasn’t stopped since. Listeners will also hear about: * The night of the accident in his own words — the tourniquets made from strangers’ belts, the decision to stay calm, and the choice between amputation and an uncertain leg * Why he chose to keep the leg, and the mindset shift in the ICU that carried everything after: focus on what you have, not what you don’t * How he rebuilt stability without a calf or Achilles by training his hips, core, and weak side relentlessly — to the point that fellow runners can’t tell * Going from that first comeback marathon to the 50 States Marathon Club, a sub-3:05 PR, the JFK 50, and his first 100-miler at Burning River in under 24 hours * The Grand Slam of Ultrarunning — four of the five oldest 100-milers in the country in a single summer — and why he signed up precisely because it scared him * His mission beyond the medals: adaptive athletes are lumped in with the open field because most races have no division for them, and he wants to change that * The documentary he’s making to put adaptive endurance stories on a bigger stage * The message he carries to his goddaughters and anyone who’s been told no: the biggest thing standing in your way is the thing between your ears This is an episode for anyone who has been handed a limit by a doctor, a circumstance, or their own head, and wondered what’s on the other side of it. Jared’s whole life since 2018 is the answer: one foot in front of the other, whether you’re crawling, rolling, or running. Listen to Pioneers of Possibility on Apple Podcasts: Listen on Spotify: Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@pioneersofpossibilitypod Thank you, as always, for listening. #AdaptiveAthlete #UltraRunning #Leadville100 #Veteran #GrandSlamOfUltrarunning #TrailRunning #NeverGiveUp #ComebackStory #Resilience #100MileRace #EnduranceSports #RunningCommunity #MindsetMatters #AdaptiveSports #DisabilityInSport #MarathonTraining #Akron #OvercomingAdversity #InspirationalStory #PioneersOfPossibility This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pioneerspod.substack.com

  6. Jul 16

    First Woman in British Infantry — Now Funding Climate's Front Lines | Charlotte Kirk | PoP Ep. 31

    In this episode, Kareem sits down with Dr. Charlotte Kirk — chemist, soldier, endurance athlete, and climate investor, though no single one of those captures her. Born in London and shaped in part by the Bay Area, Charlotte earned a chemistry PhD at Oxford developing new materials for renewable energy and battery chemistries, using machine learning before anyone called it AI. But she quickly ran into the truth that has driven her career ever since: the best technology in the world means nothing if it never leaves the lab. That realization sent her from strategy consulting to Fortescue — one of the world’s largest iron ore producers, with emissions the size of France — where as head of technology she worked to decarbonize an entire mining operation. From there she went on to lead European investments for the climate VC fund Clean Energy Ventures. And in parallel, she built a second life most people would consider a full career on its own: she became the first woman ever to pass selection into the infantry of the British Army, served five years, and competed at world championships in ultramarathon running, Ironman triathlon, cross-country skiing, and biathlon — sponsored by The North Face along the way. It was on the trail that everything converged. Running the Pacific Crest Trail — roughly 55 kilometers a day for 90 days — she ran through forest fires, flash floods, and three separate blackouts, and saw firsthand that the clean energy solutions she’d spent a decade building weren’t reaching the communities that needed them most. So she set out to fix exactly that. Today she runs a fund that deploys catalytic capital to finance climate resilience and clean energy in frontline communities — the outdoor, rural places falling through every gap in traditional financing. Listeners will also hear about: * Why she talked her way into an infantry selection that women were formally barred from — and why she says the leadership and trust she learned there outvalue even her PhD * The difference between climate mitigation and resilience — and why she believes resilience is where solutions actually get adopted, because people aren’t buying solar and storage to save the planet, they’re buying it to survive the next blackout * How a solar panel on the roof and a battery in the garage changes everything when the grid goes down and the water pumps, vaccine fridges, and payment systems all stop with it * Why venture capital, private equity, debt, and philanthropy all fail these communities — and how a low-interest loan can do what a grant can’t * Kareem and Charlotte comparing notes from inside the hydrogen world, including the South African mining hauler that could carry only enough hydrogen for a single round trip to the pit * Setting the fastest known time running the Camino de Santiago, and why she found the trail magic of the PCT more moving than the Camino’s spiritual reputation * Her advice for anyone who thinks they must choose one path: the greatest opportunities sit between disciplines, and if you live with integrity and kindness, doors open in ways you can’t predict This is an episode for scientists, athletes, builders, and anyone who has ever been told to pick a lane. Charlotte’s whole life is an argument that the most interesting work happens where worlds overlap — and that resilience, in the end, is something you can build for yourself and for the people around you. You can find Dr. Charlotte Kirk’s work at [COMPANY LINK — to confirm with guest] and listen to her energy-transition podcast, Power Plays, at https://www.powerplayspod.com/ Listen to Pioneers of Possibility on Apple Podcasts: Listen on Spotify: Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@pioneersofpossibilitypod #ClimateResilience #CleanEnergy #ClimateTech #CharlotteKirk #EnergyTransition #ClimateAdaptation #WomenInSTEM #EnduranceAthlete #PacificCrestTrail #VentureCapital #ClimateFinance #FrontlineCommunities #SolarAndStorage #WomenInLeadership #TrailRunning #BritishArmy #Decarbonization #CatalyticCapital #PowerPlaysPodcast #PioneersOfPossibility This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pioneerspod.substack.com

  7. Jun 30

    She Quit Teaching to Show Muslims a Different Way to See the World | Wafa Aouchiche | PoP Ep. 30

    Note to viewers: our guest’s video froze periodically in this interview. Thank you for bearing with the occasional glitch. You can find Wafa and Burgundy Roots Retreats at https://www.burgundyroots.com/ In this episode, Kareem sits down with Wafa Aouchiche, founder of Burgundy Roots Retreats - a travel company built on a simple idea: the most meaningful way to experience a place is to live inside its culture. Born in Algiers and raised between Montreal and Toronto, Wafa carries an identity she describes as ethnically Berber, culturally Arab, and Canadian by way of everywhere she's traveled since. Wafa's didn't expect to end up here. She studied French and history, spent six months learning classical Arabic in Damascus, and became a teacher almost by accident, all while nursing a travel bug that took her solo to a small Peruvian village to teach English. On the way home, she made an unplanned stop in Jamaica - and everything changed. She found a Muslim community there that lived with a freedom she'd never seen growing up post-9/11 in Toronto: a man in a kufi calling out to coworkers from his car, watermelon on the roadside, reggae in the air, faith worn lightly and joyfully. That single trip became the seed of a business. What began as a Facebook post inviting a few women to Jamaica became, within a year, six retreats. Today Wafa runs Burgundy Roots full time across four continents, roughly five months a year on the road. Listeners will hear about: * Why she scouts every destination herself * Her pointed critique of "halal travel" and the all-inclusive resort model, including the economics of tourism leakage and why she considers a resort in Jamaica a kind of beautiful prison * The difference between an excursion and an experience * Why she pushes her Muslim guests beyond the "safe" itineraries of Islamic history toward Brazil, Jamaica, and sub-Saharan Africa: "No one says Muslims can't go to Brazil. We can also create new ones." * The deal her father struck with her before she'd leave teaching, and how she finally knew it was time to leap * The three qualities of a guest who'll love her trips: curious, considerate, and kind This is an episode for anyone who suspects that travel can be more than a photo op - that done right, it can return you to yourself. As one of Wafa's guests put it: in Jamaica, the people and the landscape are the museum. You don't observe it. You live in it. Listen to Pioneers of Possibility on Apple Podcasts: Listen on Spotify: Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@pioneersofpossibilitypod #BurgundyRoots #MuslimTravel #HalalTravel #TravelRetreats #Jamaica #ImmigrantStory #CareerPivot #FemaleFounder #ResponsibleTravel #CulturalTravel #SoloFemaleTravel #Algeria #Toronto #Wanderlust #SustainableTourism #MuslimWomen #TravelPodcast #AuthenticTravel #ExperientialTravel #PioneersOfPossibility This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pioneerspod.substack.com

  8. Jun 22

    Inside the Future of Transportation: Hydrogen, Megawatt Charging & Autonomous Freight | PoP Ep. 29

    In this episode, Kareem takes you onto the floor of the Advanced Clean Transportation (ACT) Expo in Las Vegas; 360 exhibitors building the future of green and electric mobility, all in one room. This is a field report from the front lines of how the world moves its goods, and how that’s about to change completely. The transportation sector is one of the most polluted corners of the global economy; heavy trucks, port equipment, freight, refrigeration. The ACT Expo is where the companies trying to fix that show their hand. Kareem walks the floor from the smallest vehicles to the largest, following the entire energy chain from the molecule up: how landfill gas becomes clean hydrogen, how that hydrogen powers an 80,000-pound truck, and how you actually charge a fleet of electric semis without taking all afternoon to do it. Along the way, you’ll hear about: * Utility Global, a startup turning landfill and waste-treatment gas into clean hydrogen and biogenic CO2; one of the only paths to genuinely negative carbon intensity hydrogen available today * Indigo Tech’s ride-hailing and final-mile delivery EVs, featuring a two-minute automated battery swap, a four-passenger cockpit, and FedEx as an investor * Kenworth’s 650 kWh battery-electric truck built for cement and dump operations; and their philosophy of having a truck for every application and drivetrain * Toyota’s sprawling hydrogen ecosystem: the Nikola joint venture hauling parts across California, an 80,000-pound fuel cell truck on a Kenworth chassis, fuel cell generators, and megawatt-scale stationary power * A deep-dive interview with Jed Routh of Kempower on their megawatt charging system; 1.2 megawatts capable of charging a Tesla Semi in a little over half an hour, with a flexible cable setup for trucks that aren’t there yet * Volvo’s “towards zero” vision; zero emissions and zero accidents' - across everything from mining haulers to autonomous vehicles * Why autonomous freight is the holy grail of logistics, and what it looks like up close This is an episode for anyone curious about where transportation is actually headed. The future of how the world moves is quieter, cleaner, and closer than you think. Listen to Pioneers of Possibility on Apple Podcasts: Listen on Spotify: Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@pioneersofpossibilitypod #ACTExpo #CleanTransportation #HydrogenMobility #ElectricTrucks #EVCharging #HeavyDutyTrucks #FuelCell #Hydrogen #Decarbonization #ZeroEmissions #Trucking #Kempower #MegawattCharging #AutonomousFreight #CleanEnergy #FutureOfMobility #GreenTransport #Sustainability #Logistics #PioneersOfPossibility This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pioneerspod.substack.com

Ratings & Reviews

4.9
out of 5
19 Ratings

About

Pioneers of Possibility is a podcast hosted by Kareem Afzal exploring the lives of today's innovators - from local organizers to international names. pioneerspod.substack.com

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