The Compassionate Leaders Circle Podcast Compassionate Leaders Circle

This is our fourth Compassionate Leaders Circle Awards Ceremony. The CLC Awards celebrate the brightest and boldest in their respective fields. Our Honorees acknowledge our universal interconnectedness and use their influence to make a positive impact on people and the planet. These leaders are courageous, contemplative, collaborative, and care about the world they will leave behind. The honorees this year are:






Gar Grannell, CEO, Mohawk Global


Comfort Dondo, Founder, Phumulani Minnesota, African Women Against Violence

Laina Raveendran Greene, CEO, Angels of Impact


Ish Orkar, Deputy Chief Equity & Inclusion Officer, ACLU (find out more here)

Jyl Feliciano, Global Vice President of DEI&B, Highspot


Devon Henry, CEO & President, Team Henry Enterprises


Geoffrey M. Roche, Director of Workforce Development (North America), Siemens Healthineers


Audree Grubesic, Founder, Offsite Dirt Media


Asia Pope, Director of DEI, The Buckeye Ranch


Listen to this episode to learn more about our amazing honorees!

This awards ceremony is sponsored by Angles, Inc, who do incredible work in content marketing.

In this episode, we interview Riley McCormack, President and CEO of Digimarc. Digimarc is leading the charge in digital watermarking and cloud-based product data. Part of what drives this incredible company is its incredible culture. 

When it started out, Digimarc had over 50 to 60 corporate values. Riley found this to be hectic and unrealistic, so he leveraged his employees to help him narrow it down into three: collaborative, curious, and courageous. Collaborative—the company works well together and with all of its stakeholders. Curious—everyone asks the question “why?” at least a couple of times a day. Courageous—take responsibility to deliver what the company says it’s going to deliver. 

To help guide the company’s employees as they embody these values, Riley has four principles:

1. Give employees cool things to do
2. Give employees the knowledge that they’re applying that technology to change the world
3. Surround employees with good, smart human beings
4. Recognize that employees are human

Learn more about Riley and Digimarc by listening to the full episode.

In this podcast, I explore the power of forgiveness with my dear friend Mark Anthony Lord. Mark’s passion for spiritual awakening led him to ordination as a Minister and has founded two successful spiritual communities. The Bodhi Spiritual Center in Chicago grew from a handful of members to thousands under his leadership, and Living The Course, a virtual, global A Course In Miracles community that he transformed into a 7-figure business in under three years. What Mark and I discovered through this conversation is that forgiveness is critical for a leader to be compassionate. “The leader always has the potential to change the game and change the story,” says Mark. Listen to learn more about how leaders find and practice forgiveness.

In this emotional podcast, our host Laurel speaks with Marina Aksyonova and Andrii Bezverkhyi of SOC Prime, an American enterprise cybersecurity company with Ukrainian roots founded in 2015. The company builds technology to support collective cyber defense. With about half of the company still based in Ukraine, Marina speaks to the company’s great ambition and values-based culture of strength during Ukraine’s difficult times. The company has grown immensely in the last five years. They work with an incredible amount of transparency to prioritize trust in their client relationships. SOC Prime only hires individuals whose values match the company’s values. We have a lot to learn about the power of compassion and curiosity from this incredible company.

KeyAnna Schmiedl has been asking the tough, uncomfortable questions all her life. Her interest in organizational behavior and organizational psychology started in college, where she was encouraged to ask those questions. Today, she advocates for one’s work experience to be inseparable from one’s life experience. She also stresses the importance of recognizing intersectionality in the workplace to drive the business forward. Her work as the Chief Human Experience Officer at Workhuman is a huge part of putting her personal and professional philosophies into practice. Learn more about her story and work in this episode.

Some key takeaways from this episode:
-“Faith for me is knowing that I’m doing my part,” says Darryl Brown. It’s a way to live in hope and not fear. It means downsizing your ego.
-There is evil everywhere. It’s better to focus on what you can do in your community than to try and act on things out of your control.
-Reading and reaching out in the morning is essential.
-You can’t stop with gratitude. You have to love what you do. Finding that love, not just gratitude, means taking action.