Version 1

Aaron Nessel is the founder and one man show behind Bushwick Yacht Club, a Brooklyn-based lifestyle brand blending streetwear and community impact. Since its launch in 2020, Aaron has grown the brand into a multi six-figure business, spearheading everything from product design and digital marketing to guerilla campaigns and local collaborations. Bushwick Yacht Club is not just a brand for Aaron, it's a vehicle to give back to the l...

Alexis (Lexi) Brown is a photographer, filmmaker, writer, and community builder. Lexi first was recognized nationally at age 12 for her photography, and has been creating ever since. She built her foundation in classical music, studying opera at Manhattan School of Music while simultaneously building a career in visual art. She’s worked with clients such as Vrbo, Polaroid, Fujifilm, Lumix, travel agencies, tourism boards, and many ...

Emily Pavacic is a Queens-based visual artist, dancer, and educator whose artistic career has been shaped by her dual passions for the visual arts and dance. Her love of creating hand-stitched art began with an unconventional drawing assignment while studying at Adelphi University. Upon graduating, she decided to continue her studies and earned a Masters in Art Education from NYU- the prelude to a 9-year public school-teaching care...

John Fabiano is the Founder of Wags Around The World, a photography project that explores the varying relationships between dogs and humans in different cultures. After working a career in sales, he left his 9-5 role to pursue his passion full-time. The project has taken him to 20 different countries to photograph dogs, including sled dogs in Greenland, herding dogs in Australia, and street dogs in India. In this episode, we talk a...

Anika Ignozzi is a self-made artist and fashion designer who launched Ooh Baby in 2018 at just 20 years old, after dropping out of college to pursue her vision. What began with a dream, naïve courage, and a clothing rack at a street market in Pittsburgh has evolved into a thriving brand rooted in creativity and self-expression. Each Ooh Baby collection starts with a painting—Anika’s artwork forms the foundation of the designs, brou...

Jesse Kearse is a photographer originally from Atlanta, Georgia. He’s a graduate of Morehouse College, and has photographed musicians such as Anderson .Paak and J. Cole, events, and much more. His first solo show, “Nu Narratives” premiered in Manhattan this past February. In this episode, we talk about finding inspiration from movement and music, what his photography setup is, film vs digital, and what he wants to say through his w...

Ginn Choe is a bartender on Food Network’s show “Bobby’s Triple Threat,” where she crafts new custom cocktails and mocktails for Bobby Flay and chefs Michael Voltaggio, Brooke Williamson, and Tiffany Derry. She has over a decade of experience in New York City’s hospitality, nightlife, and cocktail programs. Since launching nightlife venue Chapel Bar and the beautiful fine dining experience of Verōnika, she has since launched a new ...

Emily Roemer is a graphic designer whose work has been on the pages of magazines, totebags, food trucks, umbrellas, matchboxes, posters, and much more. She’s currently the design lead of lookbooks at Amazon, and previously was the senior designer at The New Yorker. She has a BFA in graphic design from Louisana State Univeristy and an MFA in design from the School of Visual Arts. She’s worked with big names such as GAP, Hulu, James ...

Jack McGuire is a songwriter, composer, and sound designer who produces music under the names Wet Hands, Ranch Hands, and FCTRYDRM. He is a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music (2018) and is originally from Ohio. Jack has worked on many different interdisciplinary projects ranging from live scoring new dance pieces, film scores, and immersive theatre. His work has been performed all over the world, from Lincoln Center in New Y...

Claire Akkan (@​​claire.akkan) is a writer and designer based in New York. Claire has a background as a venture capital chief of staff and brand strategist. She is a Fulbright scholar and graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in Russian & Eastern European Studies and a B.A. in Humanities. She writes the Substack award-winning newsletter Cappuccino Thoughts and runs a sustainable luxury bag brand (@claireakkan.bags). In thi...

Anjali Sundaram (@cooking.4.1) is an NYC-based food writer and recipe developer, focusing on tips and methods for the solo chef. She loves to discover new flavor combinations and push the boundaries of home cooking, using her years of writing and videography experience to inspire people to love cooking for themselves. In this episode, we dig into how Anjali started cooking and developing her own recipes abroad, how she experiments ...

Emmanuel Dzotsi (@newsmanual_) is an award-winning journalist, podcast host, and producer for This American Life. He’s reported stories on everything from backroom deals for political power, the strange phenomenon of white people sending Black folks venmo payments as reparations, to vast money-making phone scams hidden in plain sight. He co-hosted the third season of Serial and the popular podcast about the internet, Reply All. In ...

Miles is the founder of The Tea Stand, a community project which serves free tea at public parks, food distributions, and local events around Brooklyn. With The Tea Stand, Miles seeks to create spaces for folks to connect with themselves, one another, and the natural world. On this episode, we discuss switching careers to be more in alignment with your values, growing a community, sustainability in keeping The Tea Stand going, the ...

Laura Lorena Barbosa is an accomplished TV/film producer with over 12 years of experience at networks such as NBC News, Telemundo, CNN, and Al Jazeera. As the founder of The Creative Power Agency, Laura inspires others to reclaim their creative potential, crafting narratives that foster inclusivity and illuminate the beauty of humanity. We discuss hustling through journalism school at Penn State, how her background being an immigra...

Rachel is a career & travel expert, and the founder of Rachel Off Duty – a website for ambitious women seeking more adventurous lives. Based in Los Angeles but often workcationing around the globe, Rachel also works as a Travel Storytelling Consultant in the advertising space. We talk about finding fulfillment outside of corporate America, creating your own metrics for success, changing corporate culture, where she is most prod...

Eva Reign is a Peabody and GLAAD Award-winning Brooklyn-based actress, writer and artist from St. Louis, Missouri. She is the star of Billy Porter’s directorial debut Anything’s Possible from Amazon Studios and MGM’s Orion Pictures. Her writing has appeared in Vogue, Vice, Them, The Cut, Byrdie, PAPER and Highsnobiety. On this episode, we chat about Eva’s creative process in getting ready for her role of Kelsa in Anything’s Possibl...

Alice Lemee is a self-taught writer who left her budding career in the music industry to pursue writing full time. She’s a writing coach and newsletter ghostwriter for seven-figure business owners, award-winning YouTubers, and TV anchors. We talk about making changes to be happier – whether that’s changing careers or changing services within her writing career, the advantages of being self-taught, how she gets past writer’s block, ...

Ryan Herrera is a creative writer who is pursuing his Masters in Writing at Johns Hopkins, and works in ad tech for his 9-5. He has experience writing across a wide variety of genres including fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, screenwriting, humor writing, and journalism. He hopes to start writing his first novel upon graduating in 2026. We talk about how he makes time for creative writing while working full-time in advertising...

Patrick Thomas writes about agriculture and the food industry for The Wall Street Journal. He covers meatpacking companies, supermarkets and how American food is grown. He joined the Journal in 2018 writing about corporate breaking news and is a native of Omaha, Nebraska. He joins this episode of Version 1 to talk about what makes business journalism creative, how running leads to breakthroughs and how he takes hundreds of pages of...