Many leaders believe work leaves no time for love or kindness, only for results. Yet the Apple Store became one of the most respected retailers in the world by serving people rather than selling to them, earning customers one at a time. In an age of AI, when common answers are a quick query away, the edge belongs to leaders who slow down and listen to their own inner voice. Ron Johnson is the creator of the Apple Store, a sought-after speaker and board member, and the author, with Zander Nethercutt, of Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple's Genius. A Stanford alumnus and Harvard Business School graduate, he was a merchant leader at Target, where his collaboration with architect Michael Graves brought good design to everyday shoppers. Steve Jobs hired him in 2000 to create Apple's stores, which he built on a service philosophy rooted in love and kindness, values he traces to growing up outside Minneapolis. He later served as CEO of JCPenney and founded Enjoy, the first mobile retail store. Chapters: Leadership Development News is a Podcasts That Matter production: https://podcaststhatmatter.org Need support for your own podcast? Reach out: https://podcastsmatter.com

Dr. Tenika Holden-Flynn, Executive Director of Teach For America Indianapolis, says believing in kids is only the start. The work is turning that belief into clear goals and measurable action for students. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Tenika to talk about how leaders get built in Indianapolis and why teaching may be the best training ground there is. Tenika grew up in Farrell, Pennsylvania, a town of fewer than 5,000 people, and went to parochial school from pre-K through ninth grade. When the family could not afford private school for her and a private college for her older sister, she started tenth grade at a public school for the first time. The classes were bigger and the options fewer, but she found teachers who looked like her and believed she could accomplish anything. That is why she knew she would become a teacher. Today she leads a chapter where alumni run schools and shape policy across the city. They do not always agree on how to get there, she says, but they all believe students deserve to win. Mike and Tenika get into the new Indianapolis Public Education Corporation and how district and charter schools will share facilities and funding. She also explains what a 2023 RAND study found about Teach For America teachers in the city, and the 2030 goal to double student outcomes in reading and math. Tune in to hear how a student who found her calling in a public school classroom is now building the leaders Indianapolis will need next.     Chapters: 🏫 00:49 Meet Dr. Tenika Holden-Flynn: from public school student to turnaround school leader 🧭 10:24 Teach For America Indianapolis develops leaders, and RAND measured the student results 🏛️ 16:12 The new Indianapolis Public Education Corporation takes on shared facilities and funding 🤝 21:43 Leaders learn the job by shadowing the people already leading it 🍎 28:02 Teaching is the job that prepares you for any role 🎯 31:54 Turn belief in kids into goals, systems, shared ownership, and measurable action Links: Website: teachforamerica.org/indianapolis Dr. Tenika Holden-Flynn on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tenika-holden-flynn-ed-d-7351519a Teach For America on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/teach-for-america Explore Teach For America Indianapolis and connect with Tenika on LinkedIn to follow the work of building education leaders and student results in the city.   Connect with Mike: www.linkedin.com/in/mmsc Stronger Consulting: strongerconsulting.com Publish a Book That Matters:  booksthatmatter.org Start a Podcast That Matters:  podcastsmatter.com Go from Expert to Thought Leader: geniusdiscovery.org  For more great podcasts like this one, visit https://podcaststhatmatter.org Stay strong. 

Leadership coach and former Teach For America Chief People Officer Laura Saldivar Luna spent forty years defining success as the next achievement. When everything started breaking down at once, she asked a harder question: what if the problem was how she was relating to her own life? In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with Laura, founder of Piñata Possible, to talk about what comes after you have checked every box and still have to ask what you actually want. It started at six, when a first-place trophy from a citywide math competition left her wanting more of that feeling. A first-generation Georgetown graduate, she told anyone at Teach For America headquarters who would listen that she would launch the San Antonio region within five years. She did, and watched her first 100 corps members teach in the same schools she attended growing up. Years later, she told her mom she had done everything on the list. Her mom cried and said: whatever you want. Laura was scared, because she was not sure. Ron and Laura dig into the piñata at the heart of her coaching: what feels like falling apart may be the opening to something bigger. They get candid about leaders who believe they serve people by burning themselves out, including an executive strategy session Laura showed up to with the flu, and Ron opens up about learning to forgive leaders who caused harm while burnt out themselves. Tune in to hear why Laura believes another word for uncertainty is possibility.   Chapters: 🏆 05:47 Laura Saldivar Luna's first-grade math trophy and forty years of chasing achievement 🚪 07:57 Every box checked, then her mom's answer: whatever you want 🪅 15:45 Piñata Possible: when falling apart is really breaking open 🧭 33:06 Your body as a compass: a clear yes and a clear no 🏫 39:23 Declaring a five-year dream to launch Teach For America San Antonio 🤝 42:53 Relationship acumen: the leadership strength most workplace rubrics miss ⏸️ 52:42 Burning out is not serving: slow down to go faster 🕊️ 57:01 Forgiveness for leaders who caused harm while burnt out themselves 🌬️ 01:11:45 Laura's Rondering: another word for uncertainty is possibility Links: Website: https://www.pinatapossible.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-saldivar-luna Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pinatapossible/ If something in this conversation sparked your curiosity, Laura would love to meet you one on one. Book a virtual tea with her via the Calendly link here. Connect with Ron: www.linkedin.com/in/rapatalo Check Out Ron's Book: www.amazon.com/dp/1613431473  Leverage Publishing Group: www.leveragepublishinggroup.com Publish a Book That Matters: http://booksthatmatter.org Start a Podcast That Matters: http://podcastsmatter.com Go from Expert to Thought Leader: http://geniusdiscovery.org 

In Chapter 5 of her memoir My 3 Husbands, Shelley Anne Crawford is 17 and swept up in a whirlwind romance when she meets the mother who treats her like a rival. Shelley reads "Snake in the Grass," the chapter where Jason's charm comes with fancy dinners and late-night motorbike races. Then he brings her home late one night, and his mother, Miriam, appears completely naked and hugs him, barely acknowledging the girl standing behind him. Shelley's own mother says very little when she hears about it. But she is relieved her daughter is leaving soon for a year abroad. Afterward, Shelley sits down with her editor, Dr. Kent Gustavson, to talk about what she just read. She explains the chapter's subtitle, Some people are true, others only wear the skin of it, and why learning to see that difference and choose the authentic person became one of the resilience builders in her books. Kent points out that the chapter holds more than one mother. Miriam is sweet on the surface and sinister underneath, while Shelley's own mother, not always the best character in the book, does the mothering beautifully here. Tune in to hear Shelley read the chapter in her own voice, and Kent's take on how writing a book can turn a difficult past into something beautiful. Content Warning: This episode discusses suicide, self-harm, and other sensitive topics that some listeners may find distressing. Please take care while listening. If you or someone you know is struggling: Samaritans (UK & Ireland): Call 116 123 Pieta (Ireland): Call 1800 247 247 Chapters: 📖 00:04 Shelley Anne Crawford reads Snake in the Grass: a dazzling whirlwind with Jason 🐍 01:26 Meeting Miriam, the mother who looked at Shelley like a rival 🌍 02:50 A mother's quiet worry and a year abroad 🚩 03:30 The warning sign Shelley couldn't see at 17 🎬 06:21 A mother character readers rarely meet in books or films 🎭 08:39 Some people are true, others only wear the skin of it 👩‍👧  09:35 Three mothers in one chapter, including the one who wrote it ✨ 11:51 How writing a book can make a difficult past beautiful   Connect with Shelley: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/shelleyannecrawford2026 Substack: shelleyannecrawford.substack.com Website: www.jessglobal.org My 3 Husbands: A True Story is the memoir behind Shelley Anne Crawford's Jess© and PACT© frameworks on resilience and trust. Visit her website or subscribe to Between the Pieces to follow her work.

It took 950 AI agents 21 hours to find something new, and a biologist in Copenhagen says his team got there first. We start with Anthropic, which makes Claude. On 23 September it said Claude agents had found an enzyme system in viruses that infect bacteria, one that recalls CRISPR, the gene-editing tool. Four days later Mario Rodríguez Mestre of the University of Copenhagen said his team had been studying the same enzymes for four years and shared unpublished work with Claude. So who owns it? A human idea goes in the top of the funnel, Claude works the middle, and humans at the bottom push it hard and applaud. OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, won't release its new model, GPT-6.1 Astra, saying it fell short on staying within its authorization and on reporting what it had done. One army has a big red dragon that breathes fire and won't release it. The other's is blue and the size of a city, and stays unreleased too. The second half gets into trust. An AI without its homework acts like a first-year German student handing in a beautiful rap song in dialect, lifted from a famous rapper, with total confidence. Wajo, a San Francisco startup, has an agent that calls in a trained human when a task needs one. If an AI can hire a person, who answers when the job is illegal: the bot, its maker or the man who got paid? It ends like a Martin Scorsese movie, everyone dead or pointing at each other. We end inside the movie Twister, with AI as the storm, throwing little data-analyzing balls into it to work out how screwed we are, if we are at all. Chapters: Referenced in this episode: Anthropic on the enzyme system Claude found - https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-discovers-novel-enzyme-system The New York Times, via The Irish Times, on the Copenhagen biologist's dispute - https://www.irishtimes.com/world/2026/09/28/did-anthropics-artificial-intelligence-really-make-a-scientific-discovery-on-its-own/ CBS News on OpenAI holding back GPT-6.1 Astra - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/openai-halts-gpt-astra-safety-concerns/ Wajo on its Fo agent and its human assistants - https://wajo.ai/ Connect with Aleck: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleck-m/ Connect with Kent: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kentgustavson Man vs. Slop is a Podcasts That Matter production: https://podcaststhatmatter.org