Adam Carter on What Gets Easier and What Gets Harder

In Chapter 7 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "What is Getting Easier and What is Getting Harder in Your Life?"  Carter finds it progressively easier learning to live in different locations and cultures.  After traveling to 80 different countries, he finds it progressively difficult to be financially secure after walking away from a seasonal job and moving to Brazil full time. 

Adam Carter is a micro-philanthropist currently living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He is the founder of the Cause and Affect Foundation which raises small amounts of financing to provide direct-to-source project funding for individuals and communities in need across the globe.  To date, Carter has traveled to over 80 countries.  He earned an MA in International Development from George Washington University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What is getting easier and what is getting harder in your life?

Adam Carter: Well, what is getting easier is learning how to be comfortable living in other places and in other cultures.  I have so much experience traveling the world now over the last 16 years of living all over the place that I found that it’s easier for me to immerse myself in a culture, find—carve out my little niche, make myself feel at home. You know, communication has made that so much easier now. It’s so much easier for me to stay in touch with my family and my friends. So it’s been easier for me to feel at home in so many parts of the world, and what’s become more difficult… Well, it’s become more difficult to keep this—to continue to finance this lifestyle. You know, all the charity work that I do is—all the travel I pay for, which is fine. I can still handle it, but I think when I had a summer—when I had my summer job in Chicago where it was easy for me to just go back for the summer and make good money and then travel, it was easier to keep this lifestyle. You know, I’ve had to adjust now because I decided to walk away from that job, and so now I have to obviously seek out other means of income in order to support my passion. So that’s been a bit of a challenge of kind of trying to figure out what my place is and in a professional light and not just in a humanitarian light.

Adam Carter: How to Find Micro-Philanthropy Project Work in India

In Chapter 9 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "What Did Doing Your Recent Micro-Philanthropy Project in India Teach You?"  Carter talks about his past experience traveling to India and how a recent trip collaborating with VANNI working with deaf children in Kolkata taught him the power of communication.  Carter travels to India to help the non-profit improve how it creates education materials for hearing-impaired children living in poverty. 

Adam Carter is a micro-philanthropist currently living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He is the founder of the Cause and Affect Foundation which raises small amounts of financing to provide direct-to-source project funding for individuals and communities in need across the globe.  To date, Carter has traveled to over 80 countries.  He earned an MA in International Development from George Washington University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What did doing your recent micro-philanthropy project in India teach you?

Adam Carter: Well, I’ve spent a lot of time in India over the years, and it’s a place that has always attracted me. It’s something about the combination of the millennia of history and culture. It’s always kind of been that real exotic place in the world, and even now after having been to, I don’t know, 80 plus countries, I’m still drawn back to India time and time again. This recent trip I was in Calcutta in the eastern part of India and I think the most—what it really taught me, I guess, as far as a lesson is, I would say, the importance of communication, and the reason I say that is because I was working with a project called VAANI which is an amazing project, that’s kind of an award-winning project, really, really dynamic director, and what they do is they work with deaf children in the slums of Calcutta.

So as you can imagine, not a pretty place, a very, very rough place to live, to grow up, and for a lot of these families, you know, they have a lot of children, and often one of the children has some kind of deformity, or whether they’re born with some condition. Unfortunately, they don’t have the resources there to act upon that, and in the case of this project, what we’re working with are deaf children, and unfortunately, many of these families that have deaf children, first of all, a lot of them don’t even really realize that their kids are deaf. They haven’t really fully been diagnosed, so they kind of have this idea that, oh, well, he doesn’t really understand, he’s a little slow, this or that. And even if they know, that, okay, my kid can’t hear. They don’t know the resources that are out there, which is really a shame because these kids grow up, basically, kept at home, not going to school, and kind of ignored by their family, and these kids, their mind is perfectly functional. I mean, it’s horrific to imagine really being trapped inside your body where you can’t communicate with your family, and nobody knows what you’re saying, what you’re thinking.

So thankfully this project, first of all, they send social workers out into these neighborhoods to look for these children and to tell the families, “look, there’s an answer here. We’re gonna help your kid, and you’re gonna see that your kid is just as smart as all the others, and he can actually participate in a regular school setting.” So it was incredibly heartwarming to see these kids now that are getting one-on-one education, educational help from a trained practitioner, you know, that works with deaf children. They’re learning how to do sign language. They’re learning how to speak a bit. Some of them that don’t have complete deafness are getting the hearing aids that they need to be able to hear more and more. The mothers are brought in with the kids, so they’re both there, and they’re both learning sign language because it’s important for them to communicate. This is the bridge that’s gonna allow this kid to communicate with his parents and with his family.

Erik Michielsen: How did you get involved in that project?

Adam Carter: I knew I wanted to go back to India, so sometimes I focus on an issue. Sometimes I focus on a place. In this instance, it was kind of a combination of the two. I knew I wanted to go back to India, and I was speaking with my mentor. He had mentioned how he had come across some—a project helping some deaf people in Asia, and I thought, well, that’s a group that I don’t know much about, I haven’t worked with before, personally, but I think we can all understand it’s a pretty black and white issue. So I started to do some research before I went about to see if there were any organizations that were addressing this on a local or national level. There’s a project called VAANI, which is the first kind of nationally—it’s based in Calcutta, but they’re planning to expand it nationally. They now have projects in West Bengal which is the state of Calcutta and up in Assam which is further up in the northeast, and so I communicated with them. I did some research on the organization and found out that it has an amazing reputation. And, so, I met with them and I visited all of their projects, and then I sat down with the director and with a few other of the staff and we talked about what would be the most effective ways of improving the project, and what we came up with was—is wonderful because these kids are coming in so if you have a deaf child that’s coming in, let’s say, twice a week, with his mother for this training. They have different ways of teaching them. They have a lot of educational materials, and then a lot of it has to do with the teacher one-on-one. 

The only kind of gap in this process is the fact that when the kid goes home, until he comes back later in the week or the next week, he’s kind of at a standstill.  Sure he and the mother could practice what they’ve learned, but the problem is he has to leave the educational materials at the project because they need them for the next kid. So what we came up with was, well, why don’t we improve this process by producing more of these educational materials, producing kind of like, you know, sets of them like booklet sets, so that the kids can take them home with them, practice it over the course of the week with the rest of their family, the father who may be working, the brothers and sisters who are in the house. So we’re creating really nice, heavy laminated, very durable materials that will be able to really improve the interpersonal communication, which is so important.

Adam Carter on Building Mother-Son Bonds After Mom Retires

In Chapter 12 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "How Have You Grown Closer to Your Mother as She Has Moved into Retirement?"  An only child, Carter shares how the bond with his Mom has grown over time, mainly through traveling together internationally.  After his mother retires to Guatemala and begins volunteering, Carter and his Mom bond as peers and learn from each other working on micro-philanthropy projects together. 

Adam Carter is a micro-philanthropist currently living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He is the founder of the Cause and Affect Foundation which raises small amounts of financing to provide direct-to-source project funding for individuals and communities in need across the globe.  To date, Carter has traveled to over 80 countries.  He earned an MA in International Development from George Washington University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How have you grown closer to your mother as she’s moved into retirement?

Adam Carter: Well, my mother and I have always had a very close relationship. I, like yourself, am an only child, and so I always had a very strong bond with my mother. And our relationship has really evolved over the years which is something that really has warmed my heart because I think this started—once I started to travel after college, I think my mom realized that she needed to—in order to see her son, she needed to kind of get out there and start crossing continents, and so we’ve had—we’ve met up and traveled in Spain, in Nepal, in Italy, in Brazil, in India, in Central America, so that’s been a wonderful dimension, but beyond that, my mom got to the point where she was able to retire. 

And she realized that she wanted to lead a more fulfilling life. So she retired to Guatemala, and she’s currently living there, and she’s speaking Spanish, and she’s volunteering with a variety of organizations, and she’s really found her heart’s calling. And to me that’s been extremely rewarding because it shows that this relationship between mother and son is not—you know, I think when we’re little we have this idea that, okay, our mother is there to teach us, and that as we get older we will always be looking to our mother, you know, the mother guides, the mother teaches, and while that’s still the case, all of a sudden, I think we can see that we’re learning from each other, and that my mother is, you know, I’m helping guide my mother, and my mother’s learning things from me, so I think it’s a wonderful circle there where a parent is able to create something in a child where that child becomes an adult with a meaningful life that can then help teach and guide the parent. 

So that’s been wonderful, and what’s been extremely rewarding about this is being able to participate with her in some of these projects with Cause & Affect. Being based down in Guatemala, and working with these organizations on her own, my mother is a perfect scout, as you will. She’s on the ground, and so, for example, when I recently went down there in February, she had been traveling with one of these projects to some of the rural villages in Guatemala and she came across this family that just—it just broke her heart to see the living conditions that this family was living in. It was a father and his two children, and the mother had died five years earlier, which presented a real challenge because this is a part of Guatemala where most of the men go off to do seasonal work, agricultural work, in other parts of Guatemala. He wasn’t able to do that because he couldn’t leave his two little kids in the house alone, so they had a real financial problem, and their home, as a result, was really just a shack made of kind of wood and mud, and there was a lot of bugs and mosquitoes and rodents. It just was not a safe place. They were cooking in—they were cooking over a fire in the house, which was very bad with the smoke inhalation. It was just one tiny room, which was not a place for this family. 

So it was my mother and I, and we were able to find a local organization that helps build houses for families like this. And we were able to help finance it so that they could live in a new home, and three weeks later, there it was—a 2-bedroom house. You know, obviously, dispartan, you now, but real floors, windows, some security, safety, health, so that was wonderful for my mother and I to be in a position where we’re working together, because much of what I‘ve put into Cause & Affect, the reason that I got here is because she instilled that compassion in me, and it’s really just been a means of me directing that compassion that she instilled in me outwards. So to be able to do it together as a team has been very rewarding.

Adam Carter on Growing a Step-Sister Relationship

In Chapter 13 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "How Are Your Family Relationships Changing With Age?"  Carter talks about building a relationship with his step-sister and taking her on a micro-philanthropy project trip after she graduated high school.  By giving her an opportunity to raise money and do micro-philanthropy, Carter bonds with his little sister and opens her eyes to non-traditional education possibilities, which leads her to do the Global Citizen Year program. 

Adam Carter is a micro-philanthropist currently living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He is the founder of the Cause and Affect Foundation which raises small amounts of financing to provide direct-to-source project funding for individuals and communities in need across the globe.  To date, Carter has traveled to over 80 countries.  He earned an MA in International Development from George Washington University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How are your family relationships changing as you get older?

Adam Carter: Well, in the march of time as we all get older; it’s really interesting to see how our relationships and our roles change with each other, whether it’s between son and mother, son and father or even son and sibling.

In the case of—My father was remarried and had two children so, technically my half-sister, which I affectionately call my sister. My sister is 20 years younger than myself. She was born when I was in college. So when I started traveling the world, she was 2-3 years old.

So as she got older, I can only imagine what ideas she had of her big brother—this guy that would come from faraway lands. Each year he’d come back, he’d look different, he’d have a different hairstyle, he’d have different facial hair, he’d have different clothes, whatever, and so over time, we formed a really wonderful bond.

And as she started to mature, she became more interested in these places that I was going and this lifestyle that I was leading, and I could really sense that interest. So I asked her if she would want to join me on one of these trips, and she said, “of course, how can we make it happen?” We were thinking about— in Illinois, you’re able to take your child out to home school them. So we had spoken with the principal. We had gotten permission to do that. It turns out that that was—would be a challenge because she would have to be learning certain classes while we were doing that, and taking my sister around Latin America and teaching her trigonometry and biology didn’t seem to be too cohesive.

So what we did is she was able to graduate early from high school, and so she graduated a semester early, and then she came and traveled with me for four months, and I really approached this as kind of a, almost kind of like a training session. I mean, I wanted it to be as fun and as enriching as possible, and so first thing that we did is she raised money in Chicago before she left. She made these bracelets that she sews and was able to sell those to friends and family and, you know, members of their congregation, whatever, and came up with $1,200, which is quite a nice sum of money, and she was then able visit projects with me on behalf of Cause & Affect, and not only be an observer, but be a participant. Since this was money that she had raised, I allowed her to have a role in—really just teach her the process from the ground up, which is, okay, here we are.

So we started in Guatemala, and we did some wonderful projects there. We repaired some cleft palates. Some of these babies that are born with cleft palates. Surgery, parents can’t afford it. They can’t afford it throughout the life of their kids, unfortunately, and so a lot of these kids grow up almost as a shame—an object of shame for the families, so we’re able to work with an organization that we partnered with before, and do some of these surgeries, which is incredible. It’s $200 each, so, I mean, simply with $600, she’s able to say, “Okay, look, we just completely changed the life of three of these babies.” I mean that’s the kind of thing that you can really feel that effect. And then I took her down to Panama. She had also had another friend that had amassed all these little teddy bears and things. It’s kind of her own pet project.

So we went down to a children’s hospital there in Panama City, and we were able to distribute these to all these kids, and, you know, that was a wonderful experience also to be able to, you know, see all these smiles. Even though it’s a small gesture for each of these kids it was—it brightened their day. And then from there we went down to Brazil and we spent a month in Rio, and she was volunteering with me at some of the organizations that I worked with, and it was incredible to see. I mean, you know, you grow up with somebody, and this is how you talk about the different relationships, you’re used to somebody like, okay, I changed your diapers and we’re playing hide and seek, and you’re getting older and we’re playing around, and here we are in our house—it’s our comfortable surroundings, right. And all of a sudden, here I am, I’m in the middle of Rocinha, this big favela, and we’re going up to visit this project, and we’re walking through these tight alleyways, or we’re on the back of a, you know, they have these moto-taxis to zoom around, and I kind of had a catharsis at one point, where I’m on the back of this guy’s motorcycle and I see my sister zooming up the hill on the back of this other guy’s motorcycle, and you’re just like, “wow, you know, we’ve come a long way.”

So it’s been wonderful to see her open her world and help be a part of that consciousness being born, and she’s actually now back in Brazil. She’s doing a really cool exchange program where she’s working with a social organization down there. It’s a program called Global Citizen Year, which is an incredible, kind of like a gap year program. So it’s been really fun to help, kind of propel her into this new adventure, and, you know, so many people have said, “Oh, man, she’s so lucky to have a brother that can take her to do this.” And I said, “Yeah, she is lucky. I wish I had that.” You know, 20 years ago, I definitely had to kind of jump in headfirst and learn the hard way, but, yeah, it’s been wonderful to see that relationship being able to evolve, in that sense.

Ken Rona on How Family Relationships Change With Age

In Chapter 1 of 15 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Ken Rona answers "How Are Your Family Relationships Changing as You Get Older?"  Rona has learned that the things that give him the greatest satisfaction are his relationships with friends and family.  Aside from being estranged from his father, Rona notes time spent with those dear in his life far outweighs benefits of material goods. 

Ken Rona is a Vice President at Turner Broadcasting, where he leads teams across advertising sales, big data software development and business strategy.  Rona earned a BA and MA in Political Science from Stony Brook University and a PhD in Behavioral Economics from Duke University. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How are your family relationships changing as you get older?

Ken Rona: Certainly more important. I mean I know there are people that get satisfaction from driving really fast cars. I’m still waiting on that car. We can talk about that actually from last year. I still haven’t pulled the trigger on it. You know, there are people who get satisfaction from particular experiences or particular things or—My satisfaction really comes from my friends and my family. I’ve said that people—I don’t really care where I live as long as my friends are there really, that’s what defines a home for me, where’s my friends and my family.

So our 25th reunion would’ve been a couple of years ago and that’s when everybody discovered Facebook, so it’s actually been really cool to get back in touch with some of the high school folks that I hadn’t spoken to in 25 years. So I have a kind of renewed interest in getting back in touch with folks and reconnecting, some of those folks I owe apologies to. And I’ve—My wife I think would tell you I do a really good apology, my mea culpa is about—I’m very refined but I’ve actually learned to be really refined about that because I’ve had so many—so much practice.

So I think what’s interesting is that as I get older, that stuff becomes more important. The, you know, with probably the lone exception of, you know, I have one—my father and I are estranged—I would say with the exception of that. You know, I think that these things as you get older kind of become more meaningful because you realize that so much of the materialism isn’t really meaningful, right? It’s the—I’d much rather spend an hour with my son or daughter than buy a new suit. You know, like it’s not even close, right? 

Ken Rona on What Marriage Teaches About Teamwork

In Chapter 2 of 15 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Ken Rona answers "What Has Marriage Taught You About Teamwork?"  In his marriage, Rona learns that conflict builds up more often than not when communication gaps exist, so he and his wife prioritize more consistent communication.  Rona also learns the importance of positive reinforcement and flattery.

Ken Rona is a Vice President at Turner Broadcasting, where he leads teams across advertising sales, big data software development and business strategy.  Rona earned a BA and MA in Political Science from Stony Brook University and a PhD in Behavioral Economics from Duke University. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What has marriage taught you about teamwork?

Ken Rona: I was never a sports kid. I wore glasses. I’m—you know, I’m not—I have slow muscles. I have slow twitch. You know, no endurance. And, you know, it’s how I was made. So a lot of those experiences I think that people have growing up in terms of being parts of teams, nobody ever wanted me on a team, and for good reason, I mean it totally makes sense. The—you know, I’d say that my lessons—My lessons around teamwork with my wife I wouldn’t say are—I wouldn’t say they’re life changing, right? I think that we’re just—we try really hard to communicate, so there’s a lot of—in fact, we—when we have conflict, it is typically because I have been away for 2 weeks, right? Or she’s been—I was away for a week and she was away—we haven’t had a chance to really talk. And things are building up. So I’d say that without the steady stream of communication then things fall apart.

I’d also say that I’ve learned a lot—the benefit of positive reinforcement and flattery—and my team I think will tell you this too that I will both come in and say, hey, you didn’t such a great job here, but then I will come in and say, ah I caught you being good. So I think that’s something that I learned from my wife that she’s somebody who needs—when she’s done something well she needs you to notice it, right?

So I think that’s one of these things where—just, you know, just lubricates the—it lubricates the team. If one isn’t just like, you, you know—Like I’m not a yeller coach, right? You know, like, I’m not one of those coach—like Bobby Knight. I don’t think that’s—That’s not a model that—it certainly wouldn’t work in my marriage. But that’s a—Yeah, so I think it’s—I’d say the communication is the—is probably the single biggest thing.

Ken Rona on Why Mutual Respect Matters in a Marriage

In Chapter 3 of 15 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Ken Rona answers "Why is Mutual Respect Important in a Marriage?"  Rona references a book written by a marriage counselor about how he could predict a married couple's future based on only a few minutes with them.  Rona notes why it is so important to be supportive and not be dismissive as well as to stay committed to growing the relationship over time. 

Ken Rona is a Vice President at Turner Broadcasting, where he leads teams across advertising sales, big data software development and business strategy.  Rona earned a BA and MA in Political Science from Stony Brook University and a PhD in Behavioral Economics from Duke University.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: Why is mutual respect important in a marriage?

Ken Rona: I think if you’re gonna be married a long time you have to be friends with the person. I think there are other things that, you know, when you’re 18, you get married and you think are important are not as important when you’re 45. I can’t imagine being married to somebody where there isn’t a really, pretty big nugget of respect for them. You know—Do you know this research around snap decisions? I forget the name of the book. There is this marriage counselor, right? And he can basically within 30 seconds of watching a couple interact, predict if they’re gonna get divorced or not, and he has like—I thought—I wanna say he had like 100% success rate. I don’t remember the book but it’s a story in the book. 

And what it really is, is his critical—the thing that he synthesized is—the thing he’s looking for is are they treating other respectfully? Right? It’s not like, you know, Hi, sweetie, I love you. It’s more like, you know, that you listen, that you—That you—I said, that you’re not dismissive. So I think it’s core to any marriage. 

I really find it—I can’t imagine how would you even propose to someone? I think the trick actually in marriage is that as people change that you have to kind of figure out what the new thing is, right? Like what—Like as people shift, how do you maintain that level of respect? Right? Or how does it grow?

Ken Rona on How to Be a More Engaged Parent

In Chapter 4 of 15 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Ken Rona answers "What Does It Mean For You to Be Engaged in Your Children's Education?"  Rona reflects back on his own childhood education experience growing up with Eastern European immigrant parents and taking on school more or less alone.  As a parent, Rona shares how he stays engaged as an advocate for his 7-year old daughter and his son in Pre-Kindergarten. 

Ken Rona is a Vice President at Turner Broadcasting, where he leads teams across advertising sales, big data software development and business strategy.  Rona earned a BA and MA in Political Science from Stony Brook University and a PhD in Behavioral Economics from Duke University. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What does it mean for you to be engaged in your children’s education?

Ken Rona: I think folks would say I’m a very engaged parent. When I was growing up, my parents were busy earning a living. That they worked very hard to keep food on the table, and keep us, you know, in clothes, you know, we had a lower middle cla—what I would call lower middle class existence. And we had everything we needed but not much more. We had, you know, a few toys but it was, you know, a pretty modest life. And I kind of had to figure out school by myself. I more or less was left alone to kind of figure that stuff out. And I made some choices—I’m not exactly sure that they were wrong, I mean I certainly turned out well. 

But certainly early on, certainly like from junior high school, high school, and into college, parents weren’t very involved. Partly by my design, truthfully, they probably wanted to be more involved and I kind of kept things at arms bay and—because I thought that I could make—I was a person on the ground, right, I was a person that could make decisions better. And part of it is because my parents were eastern European immigrants, right? 

So part of my involvement with their education is to say I believe that you can have a better experience than mine in school. And I am one of the science dads, me and one of the other dads come in and do science experiments for the kids. Charlotte certainly understands what an experiment hypothesis is—at least on a basic level. I’ve tried very hard not to be, you know—what I’m committed to is not being a helicopter parent, right? The kids have to figure out their own way but in an appropriate pace, right? 

So I’m sure by—I’m sure by grade 12, our involvement will be much less after colleges are picked. But for now, I’m very committed to staying engaged and making sure that Charlotte has a good experience and that she has an advocate. So I would say actually that the primary way I’m involved with Charlotte’s school is that I’m an advocate for her, not that—and I’m trying to teach her to advocate for herself. Both my wife and I would say that I think that—and you know, she’s 7, so she’s not really in a position—although she does a—I think a pretty good job of it. 

So my involvement is, you know, is to be an appropriate advocate. I’m not planning on—I’m not planning on being one of these parents that calls up your kid’s first job and say why didn’t you promote him, right? That’s not—That’s—They’ve gotta run there.  But I think at age 7, at age 8, you know, for the foreseeable future, her mother and I and Doyle—you know, Doyle requires less advocacy at this moment, because he’s in preschool, but I would expect that we will continue advocacy, but interestingly you know, we—You also have to be really thoughtful about when you don’t advocate. 

So—just today, we got the class list for what class she’s—Charlotte’s gonna be in next year, and she’s—there are 3 classes in her school, each class has 21 kids, and there’s a shuffling from year 1—from 1st grade to 2nd grade, and Charlotte’s—like we’re not super thrilled with Charlotte’s shuffle. There are a very few friends from that class in her new class, right? Seems like—and I think that’s a shame, right? Because we just moved to Atlanta. And I—My wife and I haven’t discussed it but I’m pretty sure we’re on the same side of it like we’re not gonna advocate for changing a class, we’re not gonna—like Charlotte’s gotta kind of figure out how to be successful in an environment which is very friendly, right. Is it exactly what I would’ve wished for her? No. But like that is part of our existence, right, that you—that—this is not an incredible hardship, right? She certainly has friends in the class, she will make other friends. She knows all of those children. I would’ve liked that one or two of her close friends would’ve been in the class, that didn’t go that way. It’s gonna be fine, right? 

So I think that part of what you need to be able to do in supporting your children’s education is knowing when to not advocate, right, when to hold back and not be involved, because I think being involved is actually easy. You can just say yeah I gonna be involved. I think restraint is the harder part.

Ken Rona on Shifting Parenting Style When Kids Start Grade School

In Chapter 5 of 15 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Ken Rona answers "How Has Your Parenting Approach Changed as Your Children Have Entered Elementary School?"  When kids start going to school, Rona realizes as a parent the need to share his children with the world.  He finds teaching his kids sharing and empathy are key grammar school skills and finds setting expectations a powerful motivator for his 7-year old daughter. 

Ken Rona is a Vice President at Turner Broadcasting, where he leads teams across advertising sales, big data software development and business strategy.  Rona earned a BA and MA in Political Science from Stony Brook University and a PhD in Behavioral Economics from Duke University. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How has your parenting approach changed as your children have entered elementary school?

Ken Rona: The insight that you have when your kids start going to school is that they’re not yours any more. They’re not solely yours. You share them. You know, the children need to be not just an effective--within the family, right? Not just be part of our family unit. But now they need to be kind of—they need to be in the world. 

So I think that there is—there is more kind of thinking about helping pointing out moments of where you can share, where you can empathize, right? And Charlotte actually does it quite naturally for the most part, except with her mother. But, you know, at school I think pretty naturally. So I think the other thing I think we’ve done is we’ve—we’re on Charlotte because she is actually in grammar school and Doyle is still in pre-K. 

For Charlotte, the expectations go up a bit. So—we expect her to do her homework. We expect her—she has opportunities to make money. Right? Both by doing schoolwork and by doing some other stuff. So she gets less for free. Right, so there’s a little more—there’s more expectation. She I think thinks it’s probably—if she was here, you’d say, Charlotte, how do you think about that? How do you feel about that? And she would say, it is not fair that I have to do something and Doyle doesn’t. And I think that’s exactly, when you talk about what’s the difference and Doyle is not in that stage. 

Doyle, I’m happy to—I’m happy to, you know, make good on the same things that—like if he’s willing to spend time doing math, which he does on the computer. I’m happy to pay him out at the same rate I pay Charlotte out but there are things that we will do for Doyle that we won’t do for Charlotte because like I said there needs to be expectations, like she’s—She’s 7 years old and I think it’s reasonable to ask her to do certain things. And in fact, l think we can probably ask her to do more than we are because she’s quite capable. I think she probably—she probably is coasting a little bit. But she gets asked to do enough stuff where she understands our expectations on her. And she treats my requests and her mother’s requests a bit differently. She’s probably more responsive to me initially, and now she’s become responsive to my wife—for my wife’s requests. 

Doyle is still a work in progress. Try to get him to brush—Try to get that boy to brush his teeth like you think you were—I mean—you know, I don’t really even have a parallel like you know you thought you were asking him to rip out his own toe nails, I mean it’s just—But, you know, we expect people—so for Charlotte, we expect her to take care of herself, we expect her to take care of her body, and she rises to that occasion. Doyle—Doyle still needs some help on it.

Ken Rona on How Aspirations Change as Responsibilities Grow

In Chapter 11 of 15 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Ken Rona answers "How Are Your Aspirations Changing as Your Responsibilities Grow?"  Professionally, Rona points to how he has established trust with his colleagues and bosses to make decisions and solve problems.  This leads Rona to think about ways he could handle larger senior management responsibilities.  However, personally, Rona sees his aspiration as staying in Atlanta and making sure his wife and children are stabled and grounded. 

Ken Rona is a Vice President at Turner Broadcasting, where he leads teams across advertising sales, big data software development and business strategy.  Rona earned a BA and MA in Political Science from Stony Brook University and a PhD in Behavioral Economics from Duke University. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How are your aspirations changing as your responsibilities grow?

Ken Rona: One of the things that I think I’ve shown is that I can be trusted. I can be trusted with staff. I can be trusted with decisions. I can be trusted with problems. As I’ve kind of proven that trust, I start to say, “well, you know what? Maybe I could be the CEO or COO of a company. Maybe not something the size of Turner, but certainly in the analytic space, I’m probably—“ So I kind of see that vision and I think that’s not something that I saw 3, 4, 5 years ago. But I think that I—I think that I could be a pretty effective, you know, senior C level person at a company that does what I do. That’s not to say a media company. I wouldn’t -- I’m wholly unqualified for that. But you know—or to be like the head of global analytics for something. Like I think that’s—I think that’s where I’m headed and I didn’t see—I didn’t really see that vision 5 years ago certainly. But now I think professionally I do. 

I think the question is, is that gonna be good for my wife and the family? I think that those kinds of jobs might be—Like I would be very interested in it but I’m certainly not interested in it enough to put my family at risk, you know? Or you know, and the family the—or should I say, I’m not interested enough to put the family dynamic at risk. It was quite difficult to get everyone to Atlanta and to a happy place; hopefully we’re there. The thought of trading—to uprooting people for any job right now I can’t really get my head around. So actually part of the aspirations, you know, when you talk about aspirations, I took it as professional aspiration, but I can tell you I have a personal aspiration to stay in Atlanta. 

I really—I do not think—and that my aspirations have really changed. I mean I—before I thought about moving I’d be perfectly happy myself to be move every 5 years. I think with the family, and the relative, the relative success that I’m enjoying I don’t--really don’t wanna move. I really want everyone to be stable and for my, you know, for my wife to be grounded in Atlanta

Mark Graham on What Marriage Teaches About Teamwork

In Chapter 1 of 17 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Mark Graham answers "What Has Marriage Taught You About Teamwork?"   Graham, married in 2011, finds work skills useful when setting and working toward goals with his wife.  From short term goals such as moving into a new apartment to long term goals such as raising a family, Graham and his wife learn to make decisions together as a team. 

Mark Graham is currently a managing editor at VH1, an MTV Networks company. Previously Graham worked in editing and writing roles at New York Magazine and Gawker Media.  He graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in English.  

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What has marriage taught you about teamwork?

Mark Graham: It dovetails sort of nicely into some of my new roles at work. Learning how to work together towards goals, really making sure that we take the time to sort of lay out our plan, our framework both in the near term with things like: How do you move? What stuff do you pack? In longer term goals like: Where are we gonna live? Where are we gonna—Are we gonna rent an apartment for a while? Are we gonna – are we looking to buy a house? Are we gonna hang out as a married couple for a while or are we gonna have children at some point? So, you know, really sort of working together as a team, and I think more than anything else, it’s about learning how to communicate. It’s taught me a lot about shared sacrifice and sharing responsibilities, and more than anything else, it’s been great to have someone who’s on your team, who’s on your side, who you’re building and growing a life together, who has similar goals with what they wanna do with themselves and, you know, it’s been an awesome—It’s been awesome so far.

Mark Graham on How Personal Priorities Change With Age

In Chapter 2 of 17 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Mark Graham answers "How Are Your Personal Priorities Changing as You Get Older?"  After getting married in the past year, Graham faces a new challenge of figuring out the balance of growing his career to provide for a family in the future and being an engaged, present, and supportive husband. 

Mark Graham is currently a managing editor at VH1, an MTV Networks company. Previously Graham worked in editing and writing roles at New York Magazine and Gawker Media.  He graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in English.  

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How are your personal priorities changing as you get older?

Mark Graham: Personal priorities and professional priorities haven’t always synced with me. I’ve always been someone who from a very early age has placed a lot of value and a lot of time in my week into making sure I succeed in a professional space. Particularly someone who graduated college with an English degree, which I quickly learned wasn’t the most helpful degree to have in the world. 

So I think I’ve really had to work hard to get where I’m at. You know, now that I got married in the last year, and understanding and balancing how important my wife and our relationship is, and how important our marriage is, you know, I need to learn how to dial down the amount of time that I spend at the job working on professional stuff, and be able to figure out how to spend more time, you know, continuing to build our relationship and make sure that my wife’s needs are being met, and that she’s happy, and that we’re having fun together, and that we’re doing things together more often. 

So that’s something that, you know, I’m really looking to spend more time on, and continuing to focus, and get that balance where it used to be professional-personal, you know, start to get those things a little bit more here. And, you know, as a man, hopefully, you know, we’ll have a family sometime soon, you know, I still need to place a lot of emphasis on, you know, ensuring that I’ve got a good career, and I’m able to provide for a family at some point. So, you know, figuring out that balance is something that’s definitely a work in progress, and something that I need to, you know, just continue to spend more time on, and figure out where that sweet spot is.

Mark Graham on Why Mutual Respect Matters in a Marriage

In Chapter 3 of 17 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Mark Graham answers "Why is Mutual Respect Important in a Marriage?"  Graham talks about his pre-marriage or premarital process talking about goals with his fiancee.  The open communication puts a foundation of respect in place before and after the wedding. 

Mark Graham is currently a managing editor at VH1, an MTV Networks company. Previously Graham worked in editing and writing roles at New York Magazine and Gawker Media.  He graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in English. 

Erik Michielsen: Why is mutual respect important in a marriage?

Mark Graham: Particularly before you get to a point where you’re going to get married and decide to commit your life to somebody, you need to make sure that you have a lot of open conversations. Again, like, I think throughout my relationships but particularly with this one and this is why this one was right is that we really worked hard from the very beginning to make sure that we were open and honest with each other about things that we wanted to do with our lives. Goals that we had, places we wanted to live, amount of time that we spend on our work and our careers and how you balance that with time at home, and really getting that information all together early and openly was very, very important to I think building us to a place where we were ready to take that next step and go from a couple who’d been dating for a year and a half and some change to getting engaged and going through the—you know, roughly 9 or 10 months of being engaged and making it all the way through the marriage process. 

So, you know, I think that for us, making sure that we’re always open and honest and forthcoming about what we want to do and where we wanna go, and those are the things that have been really, really important and something that I think that we’ve really learned from each other. And because we’re both—we both work in similar fields, being able to bring out, you know, mutually respecting each other, our boundaries, as well as what we do—professionally, you know, we’re sort of competitors in some way which makes for an interesting relationship, and our house is not a fun place to watch award shows and things like that because we’re always furiously typing, but we both have tons of mutual respect for each other, what we do. 

I think we both really have come to a place where we understand that, respect that in each other and try to help someone out when they’re feeling a little down and be sure to—you know, be really reassuring, and also, you know, celebrating successes I think is an important part, and the respect that we have for each other when we both do something well, whether that’s at home or in our professional lives, making sure that we really celebrate those things together and really work as a team, that’s been super important for us.

Mark Graham on How Family Relationships Change With Age

In Chapter 4 of 17 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Mark Graham answers "How Are Your Family Relationships Changing as You Get Older?" Graham, who lives in New York City, talks about the challenges of not being close by to his parents and siblings, who are Michigan, and finding ways to better keep in touch.  He adds how getting married in the past year has given him a new family support system of in-laws. 

Mark Graham is currently a managing editor at VH1, an MTV Networks company. Previously Graham worked in editing and writing roles at New York Magazine and Gawker Media.  He graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in English. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How are your family relationships changing as you get older?

Mark Graham: Family relationships have been a challenge. And by that I mean not through any sort of relationship crises or anything like that, but having distance away from my family. I live here in New York City now. My family is back in Michigan. My mother, my father, my brother, they all live out there, and so there are clearly challenges, you know, particularly as I’m in my first year of marriage right now, you know, it’s really important for Megan and myself to really continue to build and grow our relationship and really sort of solidify that foundation. And so consequently I haven’t had as much time to get back home and spend time with my immediate family back home. 

So that’s definitely been a real challenge and it’s something I’ll sort of candidly admit that I have not been really great at and something I want recognize and improve upon in the future to get home more, to call more, you know, to email and text more, like my mom just got an iPhone which is exciting, so I can text now instead of, you know, exclusively relying on the Sunday night phone conversations and things like that. 

So, you know, that’s been a real change in my life and, you know, I’ve also gained new family through the course of being married as well. My in-laws are here in the city. They’re up in Westchester, which is a 20-25 minute train ride north of the city. And it’s been fantastic to build a relationship with them and to have somebody here who’s close, who you can lean on. Not exactly in the same way that you lean on your family that you grew up with, but they’ve been an incredible support system through all of the rigors of getting married and going and moving and all of that fun stuff building a new life together. 

So relationships continue to change and continue to evolve and I want to continue to place emphasis on family, and particularly my family back in Michigan, getting to spend more time with them in the future is something I need to spend more time and focus on.

Mark Graham on How Reflecting at Work Improves Job Performance

In Chapter 12 of 17 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Mark Graham answers "What Role Has Reflection Played in Shaping Your Personal Growth?"  Working in digital media producing Internet content, Graham uses reflection to help his team grow and learn from its mistakes and successes.  Personally, Graham finds reflection valuable assessing achievements and reviewing how his personal relationships are growing over time. 

Mark Graham is currently a managing editor at VH1, an MTV Networks company. Previously Graham worked in editing and writing roles at New York Magazine and Gawker Media.  He graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in English. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What role has reflection played in shaping your personal growth?

Mark Graham: Reflection is certainly very important. One of the great things that I really love about producing content for the internet is that everything is very, very measurable. At the end of every month, I put together a report for our team to show our team’s performance over that month in terms of which stories were popular, which stories got shared a lot, which videos got viewed the most. You know, really helping sort of us learn from our successes and also taking a look at projects that we had high hopes for that maybe fell a little bit flatter than we had originally pegged them to. 

So reflection in that particular aspect is certainly very important to me on a professional level, understanding, learning from our mistakes, helping to continue to grow for the future using the analytical tools we have available to us to be able to help motivate the team, show them things that they did well, and like I said, things that we continue to learn on. 

And my personal life it’s very important as well, you know, opportunities like this to sort of look back over the last year of your career, things that you achieved, things that you hoped you’d achieve and maybe didn’t quite get there, I think that that’s very important as well and it’s—you know, as someone who is sort of is constantly chronicling in their life on the internet through blog posts and Twitter feeds, and Tumblr posts, and Facebook—things like that. It’s always fun for me to sort of go back every couple of months and sort of take stock of what’s happened in my life, be thankful, be appreciative for the blessings that I have, the friends that I have, the relationships that I’ve made, both personally and professionally, and you know, it’s really I think important to take time to savor that stuff. That’s not to say to dwell on it or spend extensive amounts of time looking back at the past but, you know, I’m a fan of nostalgia, and it’s always good to look back at successes you’ve had and things you’ve done well and use them as motivation for the future.

Mark Graham: How to Develop Passions In and Out of Work

In Chapter 17 of 17 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, digital media executive Mark Graham answers "How Are You Learning to Apply Your Passions in New Ways?"  Graham notes that he is fortunate to spend most of his professional life pursuing his passions in his personal life such as television, music, film, and books.  He notes that as he gets more experience, he learns to separate work time from "me time" and enjoy the personal experiences instead of constantly chronicling them.  In the office, Graham puts a short-term priority on learning video editing skills such as Final Cut Pro so he may be more engaged with the video production teams working at VH1. 

Mark Graham is currently a managing editor at VH1, an MTV Networks company. Previously Graham worked in editing and writing roles at New York Magazine and Gawker Media.  He graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in English.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How are you learning to apply your passions in new ways?

Mark Graham: I’ve got a lot of different passions. I’m a pop culture fiend. I love movies. I love music. I love TV. I love reading. Fortunately I’m in a position where I spend most of my professional life actively pursuing passions that I have in my personal life, which is really cool. I think one of the things that I’ve learned over—particularly over the last year and so, is that you do need to make time to create a little barrier between things that you’re passionate about and things that you do professionally, and by that I mean every time I used to go to a concert for example, I would always take notes during concerts and always write about things like that and I’ve sort of learned to pick things that are going to work for work and things that are more just sort of for “me time” to lay back, kick back, you know, drink a couple of root beers, enjoy the experience rather than sort of constantly chronicling it. I’m sending out tweets and Instagrams and taking notes and things like that, so I’ve really tried to focus this year on making sure that I do allow some sort of personal time for me in that way. 

And so the ways that I’m trying to apply passions in a new direction, you know, one of the things that I’m really trying to focus on over the course of the next year and some change, I haven’t gotten started on this yet but it’s one of the things that’s on my list of things to do this summer, I like to start learning how to do video editing. I think that that’s a skill set that is very important to someone who’s in my particular space, if you’re—the more trades that you can sort of do, the more relevant and useful you are to an organization. And also ways that you can help give better feedback and direction to people that you are working with. So as I’m spending more time working with video, with people who are operating cameras, and people who are sitting in editing base, and editing on Final Cut. You know, helping to understand their language, and the way that they work and the ways that we can help create a good product, end-product for a consumer, helping them get to that place is something that I’d definitely like to spend more time learning and developing. 

Anatole Faykin on Getting to Know Yourself By Traveling Abroad

In Chapter 2 of 12 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, entrepreneur Anatole Faykin answers "What Did Traveling Abroad This Past Year Teach You About Yourself?"   Faykin shares two abroad experiences and how they each informed his understanding of self.  First, he takes a trip with his best friends to Peru to hike Machu Picchu, which reminds him about the importance of friendship in his life.  The second trip is a wedding hopping trip to Australia, Singapore and Indonesia - three weddings in five weeks in the Far East.  Traveling alone in between the weddings, Faykin realizes he does not enjoy traveling alone as much as he used to in his younger days. 

Anatole Faykin is an entrepreneur currently working on a new startup as part of the Startup Chile incubator program in Santiago, Chile.  Previously, Faykin founded Tuanpin, a Shanghai, China-based daily deals site he grew to 25 employees and sold in the fall of 2011. He has worked for British Telecom in London, Intel in Shanghai, American Express in New York, and Oracle in San Francisco as well as several startups. He holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business and a BS in computer science and biology from the California Institute of Technology.

Anatole Faykin on How Reflection Informs Personal Growth

In Chapter 3 of 12 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, entrepreneur Anatole Faykin answers "What Role Has Reflection Played in Shaping Your Personal Growth?"  Faykin finds it hard to realize and define his growth without reflecting.  He prefers not to reflect alone; rather he enjoys having a friend's company and talking through what has happened and how it informs his present and future state. 

Anatole Faykin is an entrepreneur currently working on a new startup as part of the Startup Chile incubator program in Santiago, Chile.  Previously, Faykin founded Tuanpin, a Shanghai, China-based daily deals site he grew to 25 employees and sold in the fall of 2011. He has worked for British Telecom in London, Intel in Shanghai, American Express in New York, and Oracle in San Francisco as well as several startups. He holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business and a BS in computer science and biology from the California Institute of Technology.