Mike Karadimas spent decades carrying pieces of a story around in his head before he finally turned them into a novel. The Kalogeris Blood Empire is a fictional crime thriller built around a Greek mob family in Detroit, but the book also draws from places, people, and family memories Karadimas has known for much of […]
Edward McGeorge was 13 years old when a confrontation with his father ended with him being told to leave home. His sister took him in, and McGeorge quickly learned to support himself through work while continuing to compete in sports. It was an unforgiving introduction to independence, but the experience helped form the persistence that […]
A startup might begin with two founders and one bank account. Then it hires a developer in South America, rents coworking space in Spain, engages lawyers in another jurisdiction, starts accepting payments from European customers, and pays some contractors using stablecoins. The company is growing exactly as intended, but its financial operations can become more […]
Nobody expects an ordinary evening to divide life into a before and an after. For Laila France, that happened when her husband, James, died suddenly from a heart attack. Within hours, grief was competing with an entirely different reality: decisions had to be made. There was a hospital process to navigate, a funeral home to […]
Randy Dominguez did not enter the entertainment business through a conventional route. He spent 55 years in finance, working in areas that included trading, wealth management, and leadership before retiring in 2018. A year later, a meeting with filmmaker Fulvio Cecere introduced him to an unfinished documentary about the history of music in New Jersey. […]
Leadership problems do not always begin with a bad strategy. A founder can identify the right priority, assign capable people, establish deadlines, and still watch an initiative create resistance instead of progress. Dr. Leigh Byers believes the problem often begins with what the plan leaves out: the humans expected to execute it. Byers, a leadership […]
Victoria Costa Paz originally became interested in biotechnology through bioplastics. During the pandemic, that interest led her into the scientific community, where she encountered a research group in Uruguay using synthetic biology to work with psychedelics. The technology caught her attention, but the problem it addressed had a much longer history in her life. Costa […]
Real Motors did not begin with the goal of building a motorcycle company. Co-founders Trent Dingman and Michael Feng met as engineers at Techtronic Industries, where their work on next-generation power equipment produced inventions and patents around components such as mower blades, deck-mounting systems, and removable seating. Their working relationship eventually expanded into conversations about […]
For years, Hooman Tavakolian thought of himself as self-made. The description seemed reasonable. Born in Iran and raised with little money in New York, he wrestled his way through college, entered Wall Street without the finance pedigree of many of his peers, and eventually rose to become a global chief compliance officer at a major […]
Artists can spend years preparing for the moment when an audience finally sees their work. They train their voices, refine their technique, rehearse, audition, study, and compete. Robert Saltz believes far less attention is given to the career that has to exist around those moments. Saltz, founder of Propulse Your Career, arrived at that conclusion […]
