It all started with fondue... well first an introduction, which led to a friendship, and then the fondue. As Claudia and I sat and chatted about the rather sad state of the world, we each applied the lenses of our professions and backgrounds.
Claudia is Austrian, and has been active in global policy development for the United Nations and The World Bank Group. Her experiences have led her to have a global perspective on the best ways to affect positive change.
I am an American tech entrepreneur and author. My experiences boot-strapping a startup and navigating entrepreneurship give me a more micro perspective on how individuals can build solutions to problems and create the changes they need.
Our backgrounds are quite diverse, but we both agreed that too many people are tuning up for a fight or tuning out completely when it comes to the problems of the world.
That's when the "ah-ha moment" happened. What if we filtered through our networks and interviewed people we considered vehicles of change across sectors, cultures, and countries? We could use our diverse lenses to ask questions that helped us really understand how change makers are created, how they operate, and what others could learn from them.
Then the second "ah-ha moment" happened. What if we did more than interview the vehicles of change in our networks? What if we created a show? We were both tired of the endless sadness and anger on regular television... so what if we made a show we would want to watch? A show that inspired, educated, and empowered viewers to become agents of change. Our two tandem "ah ha moments" were the impetus for Vehicles of Change!
im·pe·tus - the force that makes something happen or happen more quickly. In our case, the need to inspire, educate, and empower vehicles of change to take action.
It's a good thing we had such a strong impetus for Vehicles of Change, because neither one of us had ever hosted a podcast, much less a show! There was so much force behind our idea, we didn't stay mired in what we couldn't do, we dove directly into what we could do. Within two weeks of our initial "ah has" we were shooting our New York City interviews, and a three weeks later we were doing the same thing in Washington, D.C.
Talk about scrappy startup mentality. We sweet-talked Claudia's friend's cousin to become our videographer, rented an AirBNB in Manhattan, and started emailing the vehicles of change that we knew in New York and D.C.! Somehow truly amazing humans not only agreed to be interviewed by virtual strangers, but opened up to share the vulnerabilities and truths of their journeys. We credit the importance of our mission.
18 episodes later we looked back and were completely blown away by the people we met, the stories we heard, the immense positive change that is currently happening, and how much fun we had!
So there it is. The insane, yet true story of how an Austrian and an American walked into a bar, ordered fondue, and then teamed up to change the world for the better!