The latest episode of the Creative Class Podcast features a thoughtful and deeply personal conversation with Miri Rodriguez, Senior Storyteller for the Future of Work at Microsoft. Spanning topics from immigrant identity and brand storytelling to artificial intelligence and wellness, the interview offers a rare look at how narrative, empathy, and lived experience shape meaningful communication in today’s digital economy.
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- Written by: Meres J. Weche
Canada's Minister of Environment and Climate Change, the Honourable Steven Guilbeault, sat down with the Makers and Shakers Podcast while travelling in Ghana to announce a $20-million climate finance initiative supporting four West African nations. A former activist who once scaled the CN Tower in protest, Guilbeault now shapes the very policies he once demanded. This conversation captures that rare and compelling arc: from the streets to the cabinet table.
A photograph follows Steven Guilbeault wherever he goes. In it, he is dressed in bright orange overalls and handcuffed by Toronto police at the base of the CN Tower. The year was 2001, and Guilbeault, then a prominent climate activist with Équiterre, had scaled the exterior of the iconic structure to protest Canada's inaction on climate change. It was a dramatic and deliberately visible act, designed to force a conversation that official channels seemed unwilling to have.
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- Written by: Meres J. Weche
David Rawlings, CEO of JPMorgan Chase Canada, brings more than two decades of experience to one of the most competitive corporate environments in the world. In a wide-ranging conversation, he unpacks the idea of the "corporate athlete," reflects on Canada's complicated relationship with entrepreneurial risk and explores how diversity, role models and allyship are reshaping the pipeline for the next generation of leaders in both business and sport.
There is a phrase David Rawlings uses that tends to stop people mid-thought. The CEO of JPMorgan Chase Canada, a man with two decades at one of the most relentlessly competitive financial institutions on the planet, describes senior corporate professionals not as executives or leaders but as athletes. Corporate athletes. And the more you sit with the analogy, the more it earns its weight.
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- Written by: Meres J. Weche
Tony West on leadership, culture, and corporate accountability
A conversation with Tony West at a turning point for Uber, exploring leadership during crisis, corporate culture reform, and what accountability looks like inside a global tech company. From rebuilding trust to advancing equity across borders, the discussion offers a rare inside view of values-driven leadership in practice.
In this engaging podcast episode, I sat down with Tony West, Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer at Uber, for a wide-ranging conversation about leadership under pressure, corporate culture, and the responsibility that global companies carry in moments of social reckoning. The interview took place at a pivotal time, coinciding with Uber Canada’s launch of Black Business Direct in partnership with the Canadian Black Chamber of Commerce, and against the backdrop of deeper conversations about equity, accountability, and trust.