This is Life with Lisa Ling is an investigative docuseries on CNN. Lisa Ling, award-winning journalist and author, immerses herself in extraordinary, unusual, and sometimes dangerous communities across America . What she has learned over several seasons as an executive producer and host has profoundly changes her as a person, as a mother, and perhaps even as an American. Lisa sits with MouthMedia Network co-founder Marc Raco for a special interview, in which she reveals how the stories that her show covers have impacted her and her production team, and what she’s learned about America and the country’s changing identity from the people, communities and remarkable stories shared on the series. Lisa gives a glimpse into one of the stories from the upcoming season of "This Is Life with Lisa Ling", and why it struck a nerve, and about a big decision she had to make when Hillary Clinton didn’t win the presidency. Plus, what "This Is Life with Lisa Ling" has to do with Lisa seeing herself as "American enough".

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From the NFL to Media Executives to elected office, the trust & faith we have in the very organizations that define American culture is has dwindled. But Dr. Jerry Toomer, a 30 year veteran of behavioral psychology, joins the pod to discuss how a few core principles can be applied to catalyze change in our communities, and build a new generation of American leadership that doesn’t always require a board room or a podium.

Dr. Jerry Toomer serves as an Executive Partner and Adjunct Professor in the Lacy School of Business at Butler University. With over three decades of applied experience as a Human Resource executive, he brings unique insights into leadership and organization effectiveness.

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While wealth has been used to hack college admissions for generations, the FBI indictment in Operation Varsity Blues underscores vast inequities in higher education. Eric Rath, a 14 year veteran of college counseling & SAT prep, joins the pod to diagnose what’s gone wrong with the admissions process, and steps we need to take to break the caste system of education.

Eric Rath is founder of Rath Education Group, a test prep and tutoring firm. Before starting his own firm, Eric’s 14 year tutoring career spans companies ranging from large corporations to small startups, with roles as varied as writing multiple curricula (specifically SAT, ACT, & GRE), training hundreds of instructors, managing over 75,000 hours of tutoring programs, and even personally teaching over 14,000 hours of one on one private tutoring. A perfect score holder on the SAT, ACT, GRE, and GMAT, from 2010-2015, prior to the 2016 SAT & ACT redesign, Eric’s students averaged score increases of 670 points (SAT) and 7.5 points (ACT). Eric earned his B.A. with high honors from U.C. Berkeley.

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Emily Cherniack & Micah Scharf of New Politics join the pod to discuss why recruiting service members for a second tour of duty — representing their country, after spending years fighting for it — is more important now than ever.

Emily Cherniack, Founder and Executive Director

Emily Cherniack is steeped in the traditions of servant leadership. From her service in AmeriCorps and employment with City Year AmeriCorps, to being part of the founding team of Be the Change — where she led a coalition of over 200 organizations to engage 250,000 people for a Day of Action in support of the $6 billion Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act of 2009 — Emily has worked tirelessly to serve our country and support others who serve. In 2018, Emily was named to the Politico 50 as one of the 50 “thinkers, doers, and dreamers driving politics.” Emily’s path to politics came when her boss and mentor, Alan Khazei, decided to run for the US Senate in 2009. Khazei asked Emily to become his Deputy Campaign Manager and, although he was defeated, Emily learned a great deal from his campaign and the power of political leaders who chose to serve country before self. This experience led Emily to conclude that our current system for recruiting political talent is broken. The current talent pipeline is intentionally exclusive, and has significant barriers that prevent transformational leaders from successfully running for office; the only way to change that is to change the pipeline. New Politics was founded in 2013 to address exactly that. Emily graduated from George Washington University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justice and Psychology and a Masters Degree in Education Policy. She lives in Boston.

Micah Scharff, Director of Strategy & Development

Micah serves as the Director of Strategy and Growth, where she oversees the organization’s ambitious growth plan following an election cycle where service veterans were a national movement and ran some of the strongest races in the country on both sides of the aisle. She joined the team after serving as the Finance Director and Senior Advisor to Ken Harbaugh’s congressional campaign, where she led a fundraising operation that raised the most money in the country for a Democrat in a Solid Republican district. Her leadership in Harbaugh’s operation earned her a feature story on CBS This Morning, profiling millenial women who were changing politics. Ken Harbaugh’s campaign was Micah’s first job in politics. Frustrated with the 2016 election, Micah left her role as a management consultant to join Harbaugh’s campaign. Micah quickly became one of the country’s top fundraisers, leading Harbaugh’s groundbreaking effort that earned national attention. A proud Midwesterner, Micah was born and raised in St. Louis. She graduated from Emory University, where she studied Economics and earned 4 NCAA letters. She currently lives in Washington, D.C.

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Dr. Ricardo Leite, a Member of Parliament from Portugal, joins the pod to discuss how multilateral relations between traditional allies is shifting in real time; and what those evolutions mean for countries to tackle shared interests (like public health goals) together. Recorded at the Concordia Summit 2018.

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Should Amazon Have Invested In Opportunity Zones? And, what do Napster, Cory Booker, and VP Pence have in common?

Even though Amazon was pilloried for seeking tax “incentives” from New York, “opportunity zones” offer investors new tax breaks to revitalize traditionally distressed zones. Eddie Cullen, founder of the Border Freedom Fund, joins the pod to describe how these “zones” can create new hopes in overlooked American communities, including the US-Mexican border.

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Why Millennials in America are becoming the face of community organizing, new technologies, and the nation…

Founder & Executive Director of the Association of Young Americans (AYA), Ben Brown, joins the pod to discuss why young people in America are increasingly becoming the face of community organizing, new technologies, and the nation. Ben argues how representing their voice in politics will be vital to the growth and competitiveness of the country in the 21st century.

Ben Brown started AYA in his NYC apartment in 2016 and is responsible for leading its growth and strategy, including inking partnerships with Lyft, CoachUSA and others. Prior to AYA, Ben was a consultant at Enovation Partners where he worked with Fortune 500 companies to develop innovation strategies, invest in clean-tech startups, and evaluate market entry opportunities. Before working with some of the world’s largest companies, Ben advised clean energy startup companies as a Manager at non-profit Clean Energy Trust (CET). At CET, Ben oversaw the development of a multimillion-dollar public-private investment fund and advised dozens of startups leading to millions of dollars in follow on funding. Ben is a graduate of Middlebury College.

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Showing up at The Women’s March in San Francisco, CA – January, 2019

While 2019’s Women’s March was criticized for size, affiliation, accusations of bigotry and beyond — women and girls and allies of all backgrounds still showed up in cities across the nation. Join American Enough for live dispatches with leaders, organizers and skeptics of this year’s March explaining why it was important for so many to show up.

The opinions expressed in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of the host or of MouthMedia Network.

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