Keisha A Rivers Brief us about your outset story of your career. My career as it is now started in a non-traditional way.  I began as a Marketing major at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, but after taking an elective course in “Teaching Children’s Literature” and seeing the “ah-ha” moment of understanding in the eyes of the kids I was teaching, I was hooked!  It wasn’t enough for me to create marketing campaigns and share messages and stories for brands.  Instead, I wanted to make a difference and create a long-term impact on those I worked with.  I changed my major to education, went on to become an educator and then shifted again when I transitioned into consulting and working with organizations. With my combined backgrounds in education and business, I created an approach to engagement, learning and leadership that has enabled me to equip organizations in their quest to create safe spaces for their people to feel seen, heard, and valued in the midst of uncertainty.  What are the aims and ideals that guide you as an individual and a professional? What truly guides and motivates me is a sense that everyone deserves to work in an environment that enables them to show up fully, wholly, and authentically.  I want to create a world where people are celebrated for who they are and valued for the gifts, talents, and abilities they bring to the table—not punished, dismissed, or diminished because they don’t “fit in” or are like everyone else. I believe in inclusive, innovative leadership and strive to demonstrate integrity, empathy, and a sense of wonder at what’s possible with all of my clients.  I believe we show up as who we really are in all aspects of our lives—both personally and professionally—so I strive to be 100% authentically ME in every situation.  After all, you can’t ask others to do what you aren’t willing to do for yourself, right? Enlighten us about your greatest strength. How are you different from others in your field? My greatest strength is my ability to see the big picture vision of what success truly looks like in action for client organizations, and then craft a roadmap that guides them along their journey through the process.  I’m unique in my approach to consulting because of my people-centered and learning-centered views.  Everything a client organization does needs to be rooted in how they can best equip and support their people through the process of change.  This goes well beyond a simple checklist of tasks and things to do.  It starts with the heart of an organization and extends outward to impact each individual, team, leader and client.  My focus on the people side of change sets me apart from others because I’m able to create long-term, systemic change that is sustainable. Please tell us about your organisation. What are your primary roles and responsibilities? Can you please walk us through the major accomplishments throughout your journey? As President, CEO and Chief Outcome Facilitator of The KARS Group LTD, I serve as the organizational leader, strategist, and visionary.  In this role, I work with client leaders to craft a vision of success, determine a strategy, and oversee the action plan to guide them along the journey.  Within my organization, I work closely with my team to encourage, motivate, educate, and guide them towards success.  It is our overall responsibility to create opportunities for our clients to become equipped to provide safe environments where their people are seen, heard, and valued.  Some of my major accomplishments in this journey include: being recognized as one of the 50 Most Influential Women of Mecklenburg County for my work with client organizations and community initiatives; the responses I receive from people who tell me that I’ve been an inspiration to them; and the young women I have mentored who I can see blossom and become leaders of impact in their own right. How did you respond to the challenges induced by the COVID-19 pandemic? What measures did you incorporate to surpass the challenges? My company has been virtual since we launched in 2005, so there weren’t very many adjustments that my team had to make logistically in working and collaborating together in a remote environment.  What did shift however, was our focus and the type of work that we were called to do with our client organizations.  COVID-19 brought a tsunami of requests for our services, and we had to shift and scale at a rapid pace to keep up with demand. The best outcome from this challenge was the creation of our new KARS Learning Pathway and the launch of our online KARS Learning Center.  This enabled us to serve more client organizations and led to a shift in the way we delivered learning sessions.  With so many client organizations being decentralized because of remote work, we were able to met the needs of their people where they were, instead of having to bring everyone together.  It’s a difficult thing to create a learning community when people aren’t physically in the room, but we were able to create an engaging, safe and collaborative environment that led to break-throughs and mindset shifts, which people were able to apply to their daily work. Who in your life inspires you the most? I am inspired by people who show up fully, wholly, authentically, and unapologetically as themselves each and every day.  Those who share their experiences, lift others up during their journey, and use their voice in constructive ways to educate and advocate for others.  There are a number of close friends and colleagues who inspire me daily with their quiet tenacity, bravery, and commitment to do their work and show up to share their gifts, talents, and abilities with the world. What advice would you give to the next generation of aspiring and budding Business people? The advice I would give to the next generation of aspiring and budding business people is simple –

 Jeff Harry Brief us about the outset story of your career.  Here’s brief to my life story: Saw the movie Big as a kid where Tom Hanks gets paid to play with toys for a living  Inspired & started writing toy companies in 5th grade and did not stop Eventually got into the toy industry 12 years later only to be disappointed as there was no play, no fun, no high fives, no time to play with toys, and no kids  Left my dream industry feeling lost and moved from NY to Oakland Found a LEGO-Inspired STEM Education job on Craigslist with seven employees paying $150.00/week  Helped grow the business through a play-oriented perspective where we just experimented, made it up as we went along, embraced failure, and followed our curiosity Grew the organization to a staff of 400 over 16 years, introducing engineering to over 1 Million kids, became the largest LEGO-inspired STEM Organization in the US. Ran team building events for some of the top tech companies in the world (I.e., Facebook, Google, Adobe, Paypal, etc.) for a decade and found that even though they spoke about innovation, disruption, agile, they were not creating psychologically safe spaces for their staff to take risks and play Created Rediscover Your Play to tackle those hard conversations and heal workplaces through building psychological safety using positive psychology and play What are the aims and ideals that guide you as an individual and a professional? I believe that the concept of play can heal divisions in the world, and that starts with the workplace.  To address the Great Resignation and the Anti-Work movement, we need to incorporate compassion, empathy and shared humanity into our work environments.   My ideals include: Following your curiosity. Rediscovering your zone of genius. Embracing your weirdness. Taking bold risks that make you nerd-cited. This play-oriented mindset is where our most significant innovations have come from and are the foundation of the most successful organizations in the world.  Google’s 20% rule provided a playground for staff to pursue projects that make them come alive as long as it benefited Google lead to the creation of Adsense, Gmail, and Google News.  That is what is possible when you provide your staff the environment to play, take risks, and innovate. Enlighten us about your greatest strength.  How are you different from others in your field?  My greatest strength is assisting leaders in building psychologically safe work environments where teams feel comfortable having difficult conversations, embracing their zone of genius/flow work, and taking bold steps to help their organization evolve, where other groups cower and continue to follow the status quo.  Please tell us about your organisation.  What are your primary roles and responsibilities?  At Rediscover Your Play, Jeff Harry combines positive psychology and play to heal workplaces, help teams build psychological safety, and assist individuals in addressing their most significant challenges through embracing a play-oriented approach to work.  Some of the topics I cover in workshops and talks include how to navigate the Great Resignation & uncertainty through play, how to deal with toxicity in the workplace, how to address the BS of office politics, how to play with your inner critic, and how to help your staff rediscover their flow.   My primary roles are consulting leaders on how to heal their workplaces and speaking to organizations about what is possible when tackling their most pressing issues around psychological safety from a play and positive psychology perspective. Can you please walk us through the major accomplishments throughout your journey? I was selected by BambooHR & Engagedly as one of the Top 100 HR Influencers of 2020.  My work has recently been featured in the NY Times, Mashable, Upworthy, Shondaland, & Wired.  My work has also been highlighted in newscasts both in America and internationally.  Some clients that I have worked with include the US Department of Homeland Security & CalState University have been selected to speak at conferences such as INBOUND, SXSW, and Australia’s Pausefest.    How did you respond to the challenges induced by the COVID-19 pandemic?  What measures did you incorporate to surpass the obstacles? The pandemic presented as many possibilities as it did challenges, as I had the chance to work with organizations that I would have never had the opportunity to work with otherwise.  I was able to transfer a majority of talks to a virtual format while remaining engaging, and I utilized platforms that I did not have time to pursue in the past.  For example, I have been interviewed on over 200+ podcasts since the beginning of the pandemic, and I have produced over 500+ videos on TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube displaying my work. Who in your life inspires you the most?  My dad, Dr. Erling Harry & my mom Zenaida Pampoline Harry inspires me the most.  My dad, Dr. Harry, was the first doctor from the tiny island of St. Vincent and the Grenadines to make it in America.  The amount of hard work, sacrifice, and bold risk-taking he had to do to accomplish what he did from where he came from was astounding.  My mom’s story is similar in that she was one of the first women from the rural town of San Narcisco in the Philippines to make it as a nurse in America.  Her sacrifices helped pave the way for her siblings and extended family to dream big and accomplish what seemed, at one point, impossible.  They are two exemplary examples of what is possible when you are willing to wholeheartedly embrace who you are and follow your convictions even when the odds are massively against you.  You are paving a new path that no one has done before you. What advice would you give to the next generation of aspiring and budding Business people?  My advice to any aspiring new business person is to remind them that no one knows what they are doing.  We are all making it up as we go along, and anyone telling you otherwise is not telling you the whole