Sunday, August 1, 2010 Story of a Ballerina  "She lived in the shanties, the poverty-stricken shanties, but she had a desire far beyond the reach of her environment." Sibahle Tshibika, a ballet dancer from a poor township outside Cape Town, South Africa, is training with a United States ballet company--all because of a documentary, and an email from a caring viewer. "Ghetto Ballet" chronicles four dancers, including Tshibika, as they audition for a dance company in the US. While, Tshibika fails to make the cut at the end of the film, her powerful story moved one viewer to contact the Atlanta Ballet on her behalf. The young dancer shares, "If you believe in something, you should stick on it and be sure that one day it's going to happen--and if it didn't, don't just give up." Read More >>
back to top  Saturday, July 31, 2010 Food: The Solution for Conflict?  Tucked away in a humble corner of Pittsburgh, Penn., rests a colorful take-out stand that is connecting people from around the world through food and art. The idea is simple: start a restaurant that serves food from countries that the US is in conflict with. Run by three artists, Conflict Kitchen has become an incubator of cross-cultural conversation. One guest notes, "Food is a pathway to positive feelings and a humanization of other cultures. I believe eating and sharing new cuisine is a catalyst for the sort of conversations that can lead to deeper understanding and cross-cultural empathy." Next on Conflict Kitchen's menu? Afghanistan. "Perhaps followed by Venezuela," beams co-owner Dawn Weleski. Read More >>
back to top Friday, July 30, 2010 Meditation Boosts Focus  These days, it seems nearly impossible to pay attention to one thing for a long time. A new study indicates that meditation helps people focus because it enables them to discern small differences between the things they see. The research was inspired by work of Buddhist monks, who spend years training in meditation. "You wonder if the mental skills, the calmness, the peace that they express, if those things are a result of their very intensive training or if they were just very special people to begin with," says Katherine MacLean. Her co-advisor, Clifford Saron, who researched with monks decades ago, is now studying meditation by putting volunteers through intensive training and seeing how it changes their mental abilities. Read More >>
back to top Thursday, July 29, 2010 Oprah: A Case Study Comes Alive  Intuitively, there's something very powerful about Oprah Winfrey. At least that's what Professor Nancy Koehn of Harvard Business School thought. Of the entrepreneur who juggles her own talk show, magazine, and book club, one might ask, What exactly is Oprah in the business of? Why is she such a compelling leader? According to Koehn, it boils down to two elements: Purpose and Service. "It is a story of leadership and collective commitment. It was clear that Winfrey's staff think, to a one, that they have a very important mission that they are fulfilling as an organization; and that they have very important precepts for how they execute and engage with that mission," she explains. "That combination of inspiration and humility I found absolutely compelling." Read More >>
back to top Wednesday, July 28, 2010 Thinking Outside the Human Mind  Dr. Temple Grandin is one of the most fascinating and respected figures in the world today. As a child whose parents almost sent her to a mental institution, Grandin became the first autistic individual to publish an autobiography. She has utterly transformed how we view people with autism and how we treat animals, specifically in the cattle industry. She explains to us what it is like for her to live in this world, having an autistic mind, and how it helps her relate to animals. "We need all kinds of minds" and beautiful things happen when we make an effort to see what others see. Read More >>
back to top Tuesday, July 27, 2010 The Miracle of Mistakes  Do you remember the first time you rode a bicycle? Can you relieve the exhilaration of riding free, the sense of triumph as you broke free to the crutches of support? Now step back. How many times did you fall off the bike before that first ride? Today, fear of making mistakes is deeply ingrained in our psyche. At home, mistakes lead to admonishments. At work, mistakes have serious repercussions. Good workers get it right the first time, we are told, and so success is driven by our image as experts rather than as learners. But is this really the best philosophy? Vineet Nayar asks us to imagine the opposite: What if employees are told to make mistakes? Making mistakes, Navar says, is actually an art. It's a process of innovation, growth and learning. Without mistakes, there is no such thing as success. Read More >>
back to top Monday, July 26, 2010 From Untouchable to Businesswoman  Plenty of people visiting Times Square traveled a long way to reach New York, but it's safe to say that few covered anything like the distances Kakuben Lalabhai Parmar had. This is not just a matter of mileage, although it's certainly a hike from Madhutra, a rural village in India's western state of Gujarat, to 42nd Street. At a deeper cultural level, her journey embodies a half-century of global feminism and the evolutionary arc of modern India. In the cattle-herding community Ms. Parmar belongs to, women were traditionally bound not just to their region or village but to the home. Married at 14, the once "untouchable" mother of seven has become the family's chief breadwinner through microfinance opportunities. "Now that I have my own business, my husband shows me respect," she says. He even helps with her accounts. Read More >>
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As the saying goes, life at the bottom is nasty, brutish and short. For this reason, some might assume that people in lower social classes will be more self-interested and less inclined to consider the welfare of others than upper-class individuals. A recent study, however, flips this idea on its head. Experiments by Paul Piff and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley concludes that the poor, not the rich, are more inclined toward charity. The increased compassion among the poor, Piff suggests, increases generosity and helpfulness, and promotes a level of trust and cooperation that may be essential for survival during hard times. [ 
Brainstorming in a group became popular in 1953 with the publication of a business book, "Applied Imagination". But it's been proven not to work since 1958, when Yale researchers found that the technique actually reduced a team's creative output: the same number of people generate more and better ideas separately than together. In fact, according to University of Oklahoma professor Michael Mumford, half of the commonly used techniques intended to spur creativity don't work, or even have a negative impact. So what does? Instead of engaging in intentional brainstorming activities, simple things like taking a break, exercise, or watching less television can boost out-of-the-box thinking and create more effective and fulfilling results. [ 
Arriving in a new city, I broke my leg shortly after starting graduate school. Feeling lonely and homesick, so many blessings I never expected came my way. Many small acts of kindness stayed with me. There were the bus shuttle drivers who gave me the luxury of being picked up from any place and made sure I got connections to wherever I was going. And the many people who held doors for me - small things that were incredibly hard with crutches. I tried to repay the universe for its blessings however I could. Sometimes the worst situations are also blessings: chances to witness great kindness from the universe. My first week of grad school, I was made to attend a class that I never signed up for: A Course in Miracles. [ 
Completing in an ironman triathlon is no small feat - a 2.4 mile swim followed by a 112 mile bike ride followed by a marathon (26.2 mile run)! Jon Blaise recently completed all of this while having a debilitating disease called ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), which attacks the motor neurons, or nerve cells, in the brain and spinal cord. "I think when I'm sitting in a wheelchair, down the road, I'll know that I've fought the great fight," Jon smiles. "This is it. Your life. Face your fears and live your dreams." [ 
Imagine Walt Disney at the age of nineteen. His uncle asks him what he plans to do with his life, and he pulls out a drawing of a mouse and says, "I think this has a lot of potential." Or Springsteen. After a show one night, his father, who hated the guitar, asked him what he thought he was doing with himself. How does he tell his father, "I'm going to be Bruce Springsteen"? All great things begin with the courage to be vulnerable. There's a misfit in each of us, and to love it is the most poignant quality in every entrepreneur. [ 
We've all felt it. The dreaded blow to our gut or the blush of pride when we realize that we did wrong, we were at fault, and now it's time to own up. Though unpleasant at first, apologizing is actually a sign of strength, not weakness. Author John Kador notes, "Leaders who apologize are seen as confident, signaling the three qualities that most modern leaders desire to communicate: humility, transparency, and accountability. Effective apology does not come easy -- none of us likes admitting that we made a mistake -- nor does it come without cost, but it is less costly than the alternatives of denial, deception, and cover-up." Kador offers up the five Rs of an effective apology: [ 
