Is Your Work Worth It? : A conversation with Chad Sokol is the third of three episodes of Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson featuring interviewees whose stories appear in my new book with Jennifer Tosti-Kharas, Is Your Work Worth It? Because don’t we all, at some point, wonder whether what we get out of our work is worth what we give to it? Sokol has held some of the best executive positions we can imagine, as the head buyer of wine, beer, and now candy at Costco, the U.S.-based warehouse club retail chain. But on his career journey, he has also operated a drill press machine and herded carts in the parking lot. Did I mention he also performs music and is a published poet? Listen on for his take on what makes his work worth it. This series is co-sponsored by the following enterprise at the University of St. Thomas: The Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.

Is Your Work Worth It? : A conversation with Kristine Enea, JD, is the second of three episodes of Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson featuring interviewees whose stories appear in my new book with Jennifer Tosti-Kharas, Is Your Work Worth It? Because don’t we all, at some point, wonder whether what we get out of our work is worth what we give to it? Enea has had many careers: in law, big tech, writing a book, politics, and real estate, among others. Now 58 years old, she is a student again, preparing for her next career: as a medical doctor. Listen on for her take on what makes her work worth it. This series is co-sponsored by the following enterprise at the University of St. Thomas: The Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.

Is Your Work Worth It? : A conversation with Dennis Curley is the first of three episodes of Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson featuring interviewees whose stories appear in my new book with Jennifer Tosti-Kharas, Is Your Work Worth It? Because don’t we all, at some point, wonder whether what we get out of our work is worth what we give to it? Dennis Curley has sung “Sweet Caroline” at least 1,000 times. That helps to explain why he says, “You can’t base your perception of who you are on what you do.” Listen to what makes Dennis’ work as a music performer worth it. This series is co-sponsored by the following enterprise at the University of St. Thomas: The Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.

In Search of Careers for the Common Good is a four-part series of candid conversations with professionals across three different career stages – early, middle and encore – discussing the ways in which reality and one’s ideals about careers intersect in the search and struggle to find careers for the common good.  In part four of this series, Christopher Wong Michaelson has a discussion with John Sullivan, who recently retired from a long and distinguished career as a corporate lawyer but who remains active in volunteer engagement with organizations such as the Minneapolis Foundation and the Matthew Shepard Foundation. Sullivan shares his story about following his interests rather than a pre-set plan in his search for a career for the common good. He says, “I doubt that my legal work will be remembered for long, but I believe that I have helped local nonprofits become more effective and I have created significant change for the lives of LGBTQ+ people and my hope is that those changes will inspire additional changes by future leaders.” This series is co-sponsored by the following enterprises at the University of St. Thomas: The Center for the Common Good The Alumni, Career & Corporate Engagement Center The Selim Center for Lifelong Learning  The Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.

In Search of Careers for the Common Good is a four-part series of candid conversations with professionals across three different career stages – early, middle and encore – discussing the ways in which reality and one’s ideals about careers intersect in the search and struggle to find careers for the common good.  In part three of this series, Christopher Wong Michaelson has a discussion with Lindsey Hickey, CEO of Simek’s, who shares her story about thriving in the chaos of balancing a family while leading a second-generation family business in her search for a career for the common good.  This series is co-sponsored by the following enterprises at the University of St. Thomas: The Center for the Common Good The Alumni, Career & Corporate Engagement Center The Selim Center for Lifelong Learning  The Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.

In Search of Careers for the Common Good is a four-part series of candid conversations with professionals across three different career stages – early, middle and encore – discussing the ways in which reality and one’s ideals about careers intersect in the search and struggle to find careers for the common good.  In part two of this series, Christopher Wong Michaelson has a discussion with recent University of St. Thomas graduate, Katrina Anderson, a park ranger in the Great Smoky Mountains, who shares her story about changing her major, her expectations and her zip code in her search for a career for the common good. She is still figuring out the path to that waterfall but has discovered along the way that she’s allowed to enjoy the view along the journey. This series is co-sponsored by the following enterprises at the University of St. Thomas: The Center for the Common Good The Alumni, Career & Corporate Engagement Center The Selim Center for Lifelong Learning  The Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.

In Search of Careers for the Common Good is a four-part series of candid conversations with professionals across three different career stages – early, middle and encore – discussing the ways in which reality and one’s ideals about careers intersect in the search and struggle to find careers for the common good.  In part one of this series, Christopher Wong Michaelson has a discussion with recent University of St. Thomas graduate, Cesar Osvaldo Mendez Portillo, a self-described “banker by accident” who shares his story about the importance of building relationships in his search for a career for the common good.  This series is co-sponsored by the following enterprises at the University of St. Thomas: The Center for the Common Good The Alumni, Career & Corporate Engagement Center The Selim Center for Lifelong Learning  The Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership  Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.

In this episode, Michaelson moderates a discussion with each of the 2022 Principled Leadership Fellows from the Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership. So, how is it that apples, K-Pop and building trust are discussed on the same podcast episode? Listen to learn more from each Fellow as they share their unique research agendas and the connections to leadership and business practice.  2022 Fellows Chad Brinsfield, Ph.D, Associate Professor Management. Topic: What hinders manager voice endorsement: The role of voice type, manager dominance tendency, and manager perceived status threat.Ameeta Jaiswal-Dale, Ph.D, Professor of Finance. Topic: Challenges and potential for community value creation through sustainable food entrepreneurship.Shinwon Noh, Ph.D, Assistant Professor of Entrpreneurship. Topic: Rise of Cultural Industries from Emerging Markets: Case of K-Pop 2. Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.

In this episode, Michaelson moderates a panel discussion titled: Family business: How to create meaningful work for the family, employees and betterment of the community, as part of the University of St. Thomas Schulze School of Entrepreneurship Family Business Center breakfast series. Panelists include three family business leaders who approach meaningful work in a variety of ways, but always with a goal of making the world around them better: Vikas Narula, founder of Keyhubs and Neighborhood Forest; Kris Kowalski Christiansen, CEO of Kowalski’s Markets; and, Traci Tapani, Co-President of Wyoming Machine. Michaelson and panelists explore several topics: How we’ve arrived at the new “purpose economy” or the “passion economy" in an era in which we expect our work to make the world and our lives better and, how family businesses can balance the worthy purpose of supporting family goals and individual passions with business needs and social impact.Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.

In this episode, host, Christopher Michaelson, intermixes his commentary with a recording of a panel discussion taken during an in-person event at the Guthrie Theater in May 2022. The special event titled, A Raisin in the Sun: Panel Discussion and Performance, was an experiential opportunity aimed at helping shape the role of business in cultivating racial justice and social equity in the Twin Cities community. Esteemed panelists included Austene Van, director of A Raisin in the Sun, founder of the New Dawn Theater Company, and producing artistic director of the Yellow Tree Theater; Dr. Yohuru Williams, founding director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas; and panel moderator, Tina Burnside, cofounder and curator of the Minnesota African American Heritage Museum and Gallery (MAAHMG).A Raisin in the Sun overview:"What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"In 1951, poet Langston Hughes posed these questions, and Lorraine Hansberry answered with a theatrical masterpiece that broke down racial barriers both on and off stage. The play follows the three-generation Younger family as they grapple with different definitions of the American dream and how to achieve it. When the matriarch, Lena, buys a home in an all-white neighborhood, the Youngers are greeted by thinly veiled racism and financial pitfalls that threaten to pull the family apart and push their dream out of reach.  With special thanks to the generous sponsors for the evenings' events: Guthrie Theater, Robins Kaplan, Ryan Companies, SPS Commerce, Sunrise Banks, Target, US Bank, Verizon, the Racial Justice Initiative, and the Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership.Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.

The Melrose Twin Cities Principled Leadership Award was established in 2021 to honor Ken Melrose, namesake of the Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership and fervent champion of ethics and servant leadership as well as promote an aspirational vision of responsible and responsive leadership in practice.The 2022 awardee, Erica Neubert Campbell, is the epitome of a principled leader: Empathic, authentic, and driven to serve others. Her commitment to purposefully and positively impact the Twin Cities community through her leadership at the Pinky Swear Foundation is inspiring. Listen and learn more about Erica and her incredible passion and service to the common good.Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.

Work in Progress with Christopher Michaelson, discusses every working person’s work in progress, namely, our quest to be fully human in a working world that all too often makes us feel like machines, in which we often don’t even have time to think, and that, in the words of Studs Terkel, too often feels like “a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”In this episode, host Michaelson and two guests: The book reviewer, Fordham University Gabelli School of Business Assistant Professor, Santiago Meija, and University of St. Thomas Associate Professor of Marketing & Academic Director of Business in a Digital World, Lisa Abendroth discuss the book Klara and the Sun written by Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro. Klara and the Sun is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend (AF), with incredible observational qualities of humans and humanity; designed to learn and subsequently imitate human behavior, Klara is bought, sold, and tossed into serving as a friend for a girl. While discussing the book's plot, Michaelson, Meija and Abendroth examine its underlying themes including the nature of intelligence, the cost of progress, and the identification and value of "real" relationships.   This book review was also published in The Journal of Business Ethics (JBE) to answer two questions: "Is this book worth reading?" and "What ideas or questions will this book illuminate for anyone with interest in business ethics?"With special thanks for the support of the University of St. Thomas Opus College Business in a Digital World Initiative and the Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership.Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.

As much as the COVID-19 pandemic has brought out the best and worst in human behavior, it has also brought out the best and worst in business behavior. This virtual series seeks to learn from the ethical successes and failures of business during the pandemic to guide the future promise and purpose of business. Series facilitators, Christopher Michaelson and Harry Van Buren III, the Barbara and David A. Koch Endowed Chair of Business Ethics at the University of St. Thomas’ Opus College of Business, convene nationally recognized thought leaders from business, medicine, academia, and civil society to explore ethical challenges that faced and continue to face business. In part three of this series, Michaelson and Van Buren are joined by Joanne Ciulla, Professor and Director of the Institute for Ethical Leadership at Rutgers Business School, and Doug Lepisto, Associate Professor of Management and Co-Director of the Center for Principled Leadership and Business Strategy at Western Michigan University Haworth College of Business, to discuss how to distinguish essential from non-essential workers in an intersected global economy as well as how businesses should attract and retain workers during and after the Great Resignation. Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.

As much as the COVID-19 pandemic has brought out the best and worst in human behavior, it has also brought out the best and worst in business behavior. This virtual series seeks to learn from the ethical successes and failures of business during the pandemic to guide the future promise and purpose of businessSeries facilitators, Christopher Michaelson and Harry Van Buren III, the Barbara and David A. Koch Endowed Chair of Business Ethics at the University of St. Thomas’ Opus College of Business, convene nationally recognized thought leaders from business, medicine, academia, and civil society to explore ethical challenges that faced and continue to face business. In part two of this series, Michaelson and Van Buren are joined by MayKao Y. Hang, University of St. Thomas Vice President of Strategic Initiatives and Founding Dean Morrison Family College of Health, to discuss how businesses can support or harm public health as well as better understand the tensions healthcare businesses face simultaneously advancing profitability and increasing access to care. Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.

As much as the COVID-19 pandemic has brought out the best and worst in human behavior, it has also brought out the best and worst in business behavior. This discussion series seeks to learn from the ethical successes and failures of business during the pandemic to guide the future promise and purpose of business. Series facilitators, Christopher Michaelson and Harry Van Buren III, the Barbara and David A. Koch Endowed Chair of Business Ethics at the University of St. Thomas’ Opus College of Business, convene nationally recognized thought leaders from business, medicine, academia, and civil society to explore ethical challenges that faced and continue to face business. In part one of this series, Michaelson and Van Buren are joined by Alison Taylor, Executive Director Ethical Systems at NYU Stern School of Business, and Ed Freeman, University of Virgina Darden School of Business Elis & Signe Olsson Professor of Business Administration, and Academic Director of the Institute for Business in Society, to discuss profit and price-gouging during the pandemic and to what extent the cost of doing business has been externalized onto stakeholders.Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.

Work in Progress with Christopher Michaelson, discusses every working person’s work in progress, namely, our quest to be fully human in a working world that all too often makes us feel like machines, in which we often don’t even have time to think, and that, in the words of Studs Terkel, too often feels like “a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”Our ninth podcast episode airs with host Michaelson discussing the meaning and purpose of work with Hubert Joly, who not only has written a book that he published in 2021 called The Heart of Business, but who has also had to practice what he preaches in an executive career that culminated in being the CEO of consumer electronics retailer Best Buy from 2012 through 2019. Joly’s work at Best Buy and elsewhere earned him numerous "best CEO" accolades and put the company at the top of Barron’s "most sustainable companies" list. With special thanks for the support of the Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership at the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business.Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.

The Melrose Twin Cities Principled Leadership Award was established in 2021 to honor Ken Melrose, namesake of the Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership and fervent champion of ethics and servant leadership as well as promote an aspirational vision of responsible and responsive leadership in practice.The three inaugural awardees represent differing areas of ongoing service in a professional setting yet share a common commitment to purposefully and positively impacting the Twin Cities community. The awardees’ individual unique areas of focus help further illuminate business’s role in society not only as an economic driver but as a creator and enduring mechanism with the power to ensure a just, equitable, healthy society. Listen and learn more about each worthy awardee, their incredible passion and service to the common good.The inaugural awardees are (in no particular order, simply listed by order of their interviews on the podcast): Minnesota Frontline Healthcare Workers, accepting the award on behalf of the workers is Caroline Njau, Senior Vice President Patient Care Services & Chief Nursing Officer at Children's Minnesota.Omar Williams, Chair, 3M Employee Resource Network: Black Leadership Advancement Coalition (3M BLAC); 3M Area Business Leader: Precision Grinding & Finishing, US & Canada.Galon Miller, CEO of Cyber Intelligence Cyber Security, LLC; Founder and Executive Director of Cyber Warrior Foundation, Inc.; Consultant for Project Got Your Back; & Partnership with Eagle Group of Minnesota Veterans.Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.

Work in Progress with Christopher Michaelson, discusses every working person’s work in progress, namely, our quest to be fully human in a working world that all too often makes us feel like machines, in which we often don’t even have time to think, and that, in the words of Studs Terkel, too often feels like “a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”Our seventh podcast episode airs with host Michaelson and two guests: Artistic Director for the Minneapolis-based Guthrie Theater, Joe Haj, and playwright, Lavina Jadhwani, adaptor for the Guthrie's 47th annual A Christmas Carol play.  Michaelson, Haj and Jadhwani discuss the beloved Charles Dickens' story, A Christmas Carol, exploring the play's deeper themes of social and economic justice thoughtfully scripted and packaged in this holiday classic.  With special thanks for the support of the Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership at the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business.Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.

As the nation approaches the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the podcast features a multipart series that includes interviews with survivors of the terrorist attacks exploring the question, ‘What can the lives that were tragically lost during the 9/11 attacks still teach us about living and working meaningfully?’”This series includes conversations with Fred Price, an executive from investment firm Piper Sandler, which lost 66 people on 9/11; representatives of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, Jackie Zins and Stacy Pervall; and, with Jennifer Tosti-Kharas of Babson College, with whom Michaelson has collaborated on research about meaningful work.In part three of this series, Christopher Michaelson and former representatives of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, attorneys Jackie Zins and Stacy Pervall, discuss the extremely difficult work of monetizing a human life.The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (VCF) provides compensation to individuals (or a personal representative of a deceased individual) who were present at the World Trade Center or the surrounding New York City Exposure Area; the Pentagon crash site; and the Shanksville, Pennsylvania crash site, at some point between September 11, 2001, and May 30, 2002, and who have since been diagnosed with a 9/11-related illness.  The VCF is not limited to first responders.  Compensation is also available to those who worked or volunteered in construction, clean-up, and debris removal; as well as people who lived, worked, or went to school in the exposure zone.   Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.

As the nation approaches the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the podcast features a multipart series that includes interviews with survivors of the terrorist attacks exploring the question, ‘What can the lives that were tragically lost during the 9/11 attacks still teach us about living and working meaningfully?’”This series includes conversations with Fred Price, an executive from investment firm Piper Sandler, which lost 66 people on 9/11; representatives of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, Jackie Zins and Stacy Pervall; and, with Jennifer Tosti-Kharas of Babson College, with whom Michaelson has collaborated on research about meaningful work.In part two of this series, Christopher Michaelson speaks with Fred Price,  managing director in the financial services group at Piper Sandler. Price was a managing principal and a founding principal of Sandler O'Neill + Partners, L.P., as well as a member of the firm's executive committee when the World Trade Center was attacked on 9/11.  He has been extensively involved in the firm's capital markets activities and provides senior oversight to the firm's client support services and other business affairs.Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.