The Elevate Talks Podcast: a series sharing inspiration

BY CHRISTINA GWIRA

Last summer, I had the pleasure of attending Elevate, courtesy of Toronto Caribbean Newspaper. It was an intense conference, having multiple stages in multiple locations across the Downtown Core; over 20,000 attendees from across the world; more than 300 speakers, including the Michelle Obama and much much more. I stayed my rump, firmly planted at the New Media stage, hearing the likes of Samantha Barry of GLAMOUR, Ariel Garten of Muse and many other speakers and innovators within the space. Overall, it was a great time. Earlier this month, they launched the Elevate Talks Podcast, a series that highlights select talks from the 2019 festival. This was perfect for me, as I didn’t attend any of the other stages (I’ll be sure to take full advantage of my all-access pass this year!) and as such, it felt like I was right back at the festival.

The series currently has three episodes featuring the talks of three of the speakers from last year’s event. The first episode presents Guy Kawasaki’s talk on his top ten life lessons. He spoke about everything from his beliefs about nepotism (hint: it’s good); his trajectory from Hawaii to Stanford University, as well as his lessons working alongside Steve Jobs and becoming a part of Canva, Porsche and Mercedes Benz. I enjoyed listening to his talk as I was getting ready to head out for my Saturday errands. When I came back home – and after a lengthy Saturday nap – I tucked into episode two, which featured Jodi Kovitz of #Movethedial and Samantha Barry of GLAMOUR. Now, I’m not going to lie to you, I was weary of listening to Jodi; many of my friends and associates have been a part of #Movethedial events, and had some choice words to say about the organization, however, I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, and hear about her work through her own words.

When I attended Elevate last year, I was extremely happy to learn about the work that Samantha is doing at GLAMOUR. Her talk was one of my favourite ones of the entire festival, and I was very interested to hear her talk about the history of the organization, as well as the new types of content that they were bringing to the forefront, changing the face of this 80+ year old organization. For example: they started the “She Makes Money Moves” podcast, to bring to light the relationship between women and their money. In addition, they have started talking about topics and taboo subjects that are currently being faced by the millennial woman such as fertility, the changing workplace, and pet custody… yes, determining who gets your pet in the divorce.

The third episode was a chat with the Raptor’s Masai Ujiri. Not going to lie, this was the first time that I have heard him speak. It was like listening to an uncle talk about leadership, delegation, and tilapia. On leadership, Masai noted that, “you’re not going to be all the time, [you’re not going to know] what is going on when you’re not there”, when speaking about finding and trusting people to help you do the work when it comes to managing a winning team like the Raptors.

The most recent episode featured a past Toronto Caribbean Newspaper cover start, Brampton’s very own Director X. The panel discussed the importance of keeping your brand relevant with the managing director of Twitter Canada, DJ Jillionaire and Paul, yup, Paul (I’m not sure why the podcast title didn’t include his full name, but we’ll just go with the moniker here :D). All in all, I would highly encourage you to listen to the podcast. Being able to tune into the festival after it took place really helped me as a former attendee become intune with the lessons and messages that I had heard and learned that day. As someone who may not have had the opportunity to visit the festival, I would highly advise following the podcast on your station of choice – mine is Spotify – and learning something new today.