In this captivating installment, we sat down for a chat with Dennis Yao Yu, a true champion for diversity and a fervent advocate for highlighting minorities, with a particular focus on the AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) community. Dennis shares a wealth of insights drawn from his experiences in the heart of big tech and corporate life in Silicon Valley and the West Coast. Dennis delves into the critical importance of cultivating robust professional networks, especially for Asian...

Welcome back to another episode of Modern Idealist, a podcast for career driven professionals striving to make an impact in today’s fast paced society. I’m Valerie Leung. And we’ve brought on a very smart and data-driven friend of Modern Idealist today, Tony Senanayake, is a Chief Strategy Officer at Fortify Health, a non-profit that provides micronutrient-rich wheat flour to combat iron-deficiency anemia. He's passionate about development economics, public policy, and using data and evidence...

Suggested: Listen on 1.2x! Welcome back to another exciting episode, where we delve into the raw and honest experiences of individuals living and working abroad. In this episode, we'll explore the international life in Norway, focusing on navigating relationships, work, and dating, and providing personal tips and insights on how to thrive abroad, particularly in Norway and the Nordic region. Join us as we uncover the joys and challenges of building a life as foreigners. --- Send in a...

Rethinking Sustainable Finance with Rodolphe Bocquet In this thought-provoking episode, we sit down with Rodolphe Bocquet, a distinguished sustainable investment and policy expert, to delve into the world of sustainable finance. Rodolphe brings a vast array of knowledge and experience in ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) and sustainable investments, making this conversation a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of finance and sustainability. Our discussion begins...

Valerie meets up with Bjørn Kjetil Mauritzen, Head of Sustainability from Hydro, a Norwegian aluminum and renewable energy company. It is also one of the world’s largest aluminum company. We discuss the hot topics of industrial sustainability, holistic value chain approaches and innovations applied in the heavy industries towards sustainability. Aluminum production is deeply complex as it has heavy carbon emissions, it is extractive of raw material, and could create toxic chemicals in...

Meryn and Valerie reunite on air after a brief hiatus caused by Meryn's loss of voice due to illness. While Valerie has been traversing the states, from New York to North Carolina, Meryn has been holding it down in Oslo, Norway. Join us as we catch up on our respective journeys and dive deep into discussions surrounding work-life setups and the complexities of privilege and materialism. We contemplate the privileges we enjoy and the material setups they possess, including the finer things in...

In this episode of the Modern Idealist Podcast, we sit down with Verel Rodrigues, a climate activist, engineer and environmental campaigner to hear his perspectives on corporate activism. We discuss the need for social momentum vs technology because, as Verel rightly says, while the technology is already available, we're still missing the political will to affect change. Verel discusses how can climate-conscious companies build momentum and that we needn't look further than the oil and gas...

Back with some life updates and sustainability and social responsibility rants. Valerie talks about the complexity and interlinkages of sustainability and social challenges and pushes companies to do more. Both are fed up with Linkedin Posers, and ideaprenuers. Warning to our male audience, we go straight into the dilemmas of a single woman in her 30's, and Meryn challenges the existing social construct. *SUBSCRIBE  TO  US!*  ✅ @Modern Idealist on Spotify / Apple Podcast / Google Podcast ✅...

In this episode, we focus on content for DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) specialists and professionals, and our guest Vikram walks us through a 5-day outreach sprint that he has come up with. Vikram has an impressive background working with major international organization bodies for responsible (sustainability and social) businesses, including the UN PRI, Textile Exchange, Finance UNEP Initiative, Access to Nutrition Index, SustainAbility and many others. He shares his insights on why...

Laura Smith is an American based in Helsinki and is an organizational researcher and founder of VALIDEI, a research agency specializing in the assessments of organizational inclusion, equity, and social responsibility. The incoming DEI Leader at Wolt and the former Head of DEI at Bolt, Laura specializes in developing strategies and evolving organizational practices, policies, and supports to be responsible to and impactful for stakeholders across global organizations. Laura values being...

We had the pleasure of hosting our dynamic guest speaker, Georgia Elliott-Smith, Element Four's Managing Director. In this episode, we explore the hidden narrative of sustainability consulting and the importance of disruptive practices that enact meaningful and systemic change. Georgia shares how she got into this space and sheds light on the lucrative salaries and perks offered by big business to sustainability consultants. She touches on the critical role of corporate activism in holding...

This episode is part 2 of our last episode. In the second part, we're going macro, we’re also going to give our thoughts and reflections on some of the big bold predictions for 2023. Specifically, we will be referring to a list that Linkedin published at the end of 2022 called, Big Ideas 2023, 23 bold predictions of the year ahead.  This was recorded in January 2023, and there are 20 predictions on there, and we’ll take the first 5 in today’s episode. Linkedin Article:...

Happy 2023! We're finally back in O-Town in Norway! After a festive and restful holiday season, we feel energized and excited to share with you some reflections from our time off, relationship updates, where we went and who we spent time with Most importantly some big-bang intentions for this upcoming year. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/modernidealist/message

Welcome to Episode 18 on 'Reimagining the global workforce through diversity.'  A couple of episodes ago, we dropped a hint about Meryn’s new venture, Umbrella, so we decided to bring in the founding team, Jyoti Sohal-David and Sabrina Zeng, to share what they’re doing, the dent they want to put in the world and how they’re tackling the challenges and opportunities when it comes to empowering a truly diverse and innovative workforce.  We talk about how they got started, how they met, where...

Today we sit down for a heartfelt and unfeigned talk with Daniel Roth, founder of JumpScale, a company that focuses on sustainably scaling companies through the lens of well-being and mental health. Daniel shares his rich experience working with founders, his work as former Director for Sustainability at Cornell University and how Somatic Movement Therapy and reconnecting with the body has become a guiding force through his life's work. Daniel is also the producer of the storytelling podcast,...

It’s been a wild ride for us in the past couple of months so we’re bringing you a  double episode special over a glass of wine or two to give you the down low on all that's ensued. We’ve had the Diversify Nordics Summit, performed at The Annual Gala, ran events and spoke at Oslo Innovation Week on diversity, ESG and social impact. We both bought apartments, Meryn founded a new company and kicked off a collaboration with HerTech accelerator program, and Valerie spoke on a sustainability...

It’s been a wild ride for us in the past couple of months so we’re bringing you a  double episode special over a glass of wine or two to give you the down low on all that's ensued. We’ve had the Diversify Nordics Summit, performed at The Annual Gala, ran events and spoke at Oslo Innovation Week on diversity, ESG and social impact. We both bought apartments, Meryn founded a new company and kicked off a collaboration with HerTech accelerator program and Valerie spoke on a sustainability...

Today's episode starts with a Mindful Arrival, facilitated by our wonderful guest speaker, Bonnie Coberly. The perfect start for those who are back in the daily grind after the holiday period. If you're still feeling overwhelmed or that your break was a band-aid approach to a general feeling of being overworked, riding burnout or simply feeling uninspired, then you might get a lot out of this one. And you're definitely not alone. We discuss Bonnie's accidental journey in social...

This week's guest Eivind Fliflet took a break from parental leave (when we recorded this episode in May 2022) to talk with us about what it's like working for the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, Norges Bank Investment Management. Owning 1.3% of the globe's listed companies, you need only take a quick look at their website to see the oil fund's market value going up by hundreds of millions of Norwegian krone before your very eyes. Eivind, who considers himself an idealistic pragmatist,...

Are you travelling this summer? Now that many countries have implemented workable solutions for tackling covid in all its variants, international travel has burst open again. It has given rise to an influx of tourism in certain countries across the globe, to the point where the airline industry has shaken under the weight of it all. So we thought it a timely occasion to take a closer look at the way we travel and its broader global impact for better and/or worse. This episode focuses on our...

In this episode of MI, we take a look at some of the current trends, that some call idealistic, driving the future of work. A part of being a modern idealist is the balance between our ambition to create an impact in society whilst improving our own quality of life. Sometimes, that refers to financial security, but this time, it's about improving our quality of life.  We challenge ourselves to use the LinkedIn Daily Rundown, one of our regular sources of news, to pick our top three up for...

On today’s episode of Modern Idealist, we have a conversation with climate evangelist Gala Anania. After a successful career as a translator and interpreter, Gala took a leap into sustainability consulting, embarked on a zero-waste life, and found her own way of balancing the ever-present trade-offs between how she makes a difference in her personal life and through her work where she helps companies decarbonize.  Gala is currently working at The Carbon Trust, a global sustainability...

A little ‘woohoo’ for us! Perhaps it’s a little preemptive to get excited about reaching our 9th episode, but we’re doing it anyway! After almost a year of plugging away at our passion project, we’re pretty proud of what we’ve achieved so far. We have listeners from 27 different countries and we’re pumped to see how many like-minded people there are across the globe who care about this topic and want to create a positive impact and live responsibility whilst still existing in today’s modern...

Today marks the 109th International Women’s Day. During this month, we want to celebrate and highlight women from all walks of life, we will be talking about equality, the progression so far, and the work ahead to do even better to reach full inclusivity and equity. Throughout the last 200 years, we've seen the progression of gender equality and a rise of feminism, but this progress is unfortunately still too far from full gender equality. Research shows the gender gap will take an estimated...