Ronderings

Gold Chhim leads national partnerships at Education Pioneers. For years he kept his identity and his leadership in two separate lanes, and closing that gap is what he now means by authentic leadership.

In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with Gold, Managing Director of Partnerships at Education Pioneers, to talk about what it costs to be the only one in the room and what changes when you stop paying it.

Gold grew up ...

Philanthropy does not fail for lack of money. It fails when nobody in the room has the courage to put the issue on the table. Marvin L. Smith has spent twenty years watching that happen from the inside.

In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with Marvin, founder of the advisory practice and podcast Funding Bravely, for a conversation about what it costs to keep your voice inside systems that were never built for you.

Ma...

Executive coach and Lead For Liberation founder Shayna Renee Hammond has spent two decades coaching Black leaders through burnout, and she says the work starts with energy, not strategy.

In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with Shayna, founder of Lead For Liberation and Indigo Unbound, for a conversation about what it costs to lead inside systems that were never built for you.

Her first day of school was in Pinckney,...

Founding principal turned entrepreneur Dr. LaShawnna Harris opened a New York City public school with 220 kindergartners and ran the operations flawlessly. Her appointment still stalled, because systems were never the part she needed to master.

In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with LaShawnna, founder of sharEDtalent, to talk about the gap between technical excellence and the relationships that decide whether you ...

Nonprofit leadership is a creative practice, not a title you master. Executive coach Gary Bagley led New York Cares and now works with the executives and boards holding organizations together.

In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with Gary, board adviser and adjunct professor at Columbia and Baruch, to talk about what nonprofit leadership asks of people when the ground keeps moving.

Gary trained as a musician. A frien...

Parent engagement advocate Punam V. Saxena failed the gifted test in second grade, and spent the next twenty five years believing she was not smart.

In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with Punam, a TEDx and SXSW EDU speaker who started out teaching special education, for a conversation about what schools miss when nobody asks families what they actually want.

Punam grew up outside Atlanta in the 1970s, the only Indi...

Educator and community builder Craig Aarons-Martin, founder of the Black Boy Joy Summit, has spent more than two decades doing transformative work in Boston's schools, and he is candid here about the rooms he still gets shut out of and why he keeps building anyway.

In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with Craig, a New Orleans native, longtime school leader, and author, to talk about belonging, masculinity, faith, an...

Dr. Nadia Lopez banked 156 unused sick days. When she finally got too sick to work, the Department of Education separated her from payroll and told her she could come back to work.

In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with Dr. Nadia Lopez, award-winning educator, best-selling author of The Bridge to Brilliance, and the founding principal of Mott Hall Bridges Academy in Brownsville, Brooklyn, for a conversation about ...

Julie Chan was a Yale and MIT-trained urban planner building a career in economic development when a spontaneous spiritual awakening opened intuitive abilities she never asked for and could not explain. Today she helps entrepreneurs and executives find their life purpose, and she is on a mission to bring science and spirituality back into the same room.

In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with Julie Chan, founder of...

A high school sports editor watched a fellow editor dismiss a brilliant Black student's writing. The question that moment raised never left him.

In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with Jon Schnur, cofounder of New Leaders and CEO of America Achieves, for a conversation about leadership, education, and economic mobility in the age of AI.

Jon grew up just outside Milwaukee, the son of a mother who co-founded one of th...

George Suttles followed the money. Not for status, for impact, and from inside some of the most powerful funding institutions in the country, he is trying to redesign how philanthropy works.

In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with George Suttles, Executive Director of Commonfund Institute, Harlem-born and New York City-rooted, for a conversation about power, repair, and rebuilding the system from the inside out.

Geo...

Chris Thompson, CFA, went from training to be a mechanic at a Brooklyn vocational high school to managing over a billion dollars on Wall Street. The thing that changed his trajectory wasn't talent. It was a math teacher who told him he was good at something he couldn't yet see in himself.

In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with Chris Thompson, impact investor, executive coach, and JP Morgan investment banking alum,...

Career expert Jeremy Schifeling says a referral used to give you a 10x edge in hiring. In today's AI-flooded job market, it's now 20x, because trust is the one thing a machine can't fake.

In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with Jeremy Schifeling, founder of The Job Insiders and best-selling author of the top LinkedIn and AI job-search books on Amazon, for a conversation about how to actually get hired when applying...

Some leaders climb out of a system and never look back. Dr. Patrick Fagan climbed out of New York City Public Schools and came back to lead it.

In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with Dr. Patrick Fagan, Chief Talent and Human Resources Officer for New York City Public Schools, the largest school system in the nation, for a conversation about what it takes to lead people at a scale most of us will never touch.

Born in London...

Most people think legacy is about dying. Shawna Wells builds her whole life around the opposite idea: legacy is about living, and you are leaving one with every choice you make right now.

In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with Shawna Wells, CEO of 7Gen Legacy Group, executive coach, and self-described generationalist, for a conversation about leadership, generational thinking, and what it actually means to live a ...

Board-certified psychotherapist Jessica Muñoz calls herself a visible survivor of gender-based violence and an expert in re-traumatizing systems designed to help. She built The Business of Healing™ to train the rooms most likely to encounter a survivor first: hotels, gyms, courts, workplaces.

In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with Jessica, founder of The Business of Healing™ and a survivor leader with Sanctuary fo...

In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with Wenimo Okoya, educator, public health scholar, and founder of Healing Schools Project, for a conversation about why community itself is medicine and why the adults carrying the most trauma are the ones being asked to deliver wellness frameworks for kids.

Wenimo's path runs from a Newark classroom (where she lost her job in the Christie-era budget cuts that brought the Zuckerb...

Revenue strategist and third-generation entrepreneur Amirah Raveneau-Bey has spent 25 years inside Citibank, Zillow, Trulia, NerdWallet, and Opendoor. The truth she keeps coming back to: you cannot scale a business you are not personally growing into.

In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with Amirah, founder of Grow Scale Develop, to talk about why what looks like a revenue problem is almost always a leadership probl...

Education leader Jameelah Stuckey has built a career across finance, classroom teaching, school founding, and national education research, and she did it without losing the softness her father told her to protect.

In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with Jameelah, senior manager at TNTP and education chair of the Greater Tulsa Area African American Affairs Commission, to talk about identity, neurodivergence, advocac...