The $40,000 Bet: Soud Habbas on Trust, Small Bets, and Walking Away
Release Date: 07/07/2026
The $40,000 Bet: Soud Habbas on Trust, Small Bets, and Walking Away
The ADNA Presents
Soud Habbas spent his career building systems for nonprofits working in some of the hardest environments in the world: Jordan, Egypt, Rwanda, and the West Bank. As chief operating officer, he made sure programs actually worked, stayed honest with funders, and didn't put people at risk. In this conversation, Soud tells the story of a $40,000 bet on a small women's dairy cooperative that outperformed programs ten times its size, and a million-dollar-a-year partnership with the John Deere Foundation that worked because of one thing: trust. He talks about what it takes to hold a partner...
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Maria Miller: Listening, Liberia, and the Girl Who Said "I'm Networking"
The ADNA Presents
Roy Samuelson sits down with Maria Miller, former Senior Private Sector Specialist with the International Finance Corporation. Maria spent 14 years traveling to more than 20 countries, including post-conflict zones, helping governments rebuild the economic rules that determine who can start a business, get a job, or build a future. She went to Liberia 3 months after a civil war ended. She monitored elections in Ethiopia. She worked in places where what she assumed was essential turned out not to be. Then she retired early and moved her work closer to home. She now sits on the board of Girls...
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264: Connor Scott-Gardner, part 2: Consent, Craft, and What Audio Description Owes Its Audience
The ADNA Presents
Connor Scott-Gardner is a blind accessibility advocate, disability rights writer, and someone who has spent years thinking carefully about what it means to be helped, witnessed, and included. In this second half of our conversation, Connor names something the accessibility world doesn't say often enough: good intentions are not the same as ethical behavior. He talks about Be My Eyes volunteers who filmed blind users without consent, what that reveals about power and trust, and why intent is never the whole story. He also turns the mirror on himself, reflecting on a viral video he made years...
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263: Awareness Isn't Enough: Connor Scott-Gardner on What Actually Changes Things, Part 1 of 2
The ADNA Presents
Connor Scott-Gardner has presented at the European Parliament, Westminster, and SXSW. He also goes home, gets tired, and sometimes thinks he hasn't done anything. This podcast will prove that he has done much. In this first conversation, he talks about what genuine support for blind young people looks like up close, and what gets in the way of it. He names a trap he's fallen into himself: pointing out every barrier without offering a direction. And he explains why awareness, on its own, has a ceiling. This is a precise, generous conversation with someone who has thought hard about the...
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Dr. Cynthia Bennett Part 2: What We Lose When We Stop Describing Things to Each Other
The ADNA Presents
Something went wrong during a live show. An aerial performer fell. The Audio Description professional described it as it happened. Then told the audience the performer was okay. No script covered that moment. No algorithm was ready for it. A human was paying attention, and that made all the difference. Dr. Cynthia Bennett is a blind researcher at Google who studies what happens when technology is built without the people it's supposed to serve. In this conversation, we get into why imperfect, unpredictable human moments are exactly what AI struggles with most. Why she thinks claiming to be...
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261 - Quality at Scale: Josh Miller on What Accessibility Actually Costs
The ADNA Presents
Josh Miller came to accessibility through telecom, media consulting, and a business school project at MIT. That project ran headfirst into a quote so high it would have eaten up half the program's annual budget. That collision between intention and financial reality is where 3Play Media was born. 19 years later, Josh leads one of the largest media accessibility company in North America, serving over ten thousand customers across education, entertainment, and enterprise. He sits on the CTA's Content and Entertainment Council. He has watched captions go from a niche accommodation to...
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260 - Dr. Cynthia Bennett: Who Gets Left Out When We Build for Access
The ADNA Presents
Dr. Cynthia Bennett is a blind researcher at Google who studies the AI systems that are supposed to serve blind people. She found out blind people were making Audio Description, and she, a blind person, had no idea. That gap changed how she works. In this conversation, we get into what authentic representation actually requires, why "good enough" accessibility protects the wrong people, and the tool she helped build so blind professionals can finally create AD themselves.
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Episode 259. The Darkroom Returns: On Credits, Craft, and What Belonging Sounds Like
The ADNA Presents
Alex Howard and Lee Pugsley are back on The ADNA Presents, and a lot has changed since their first visit. The Darkroom podcast hosts and co-founders of the Blind Film Critic Society join Roy Samuelson for a conversation about what it means when blind critics evaluate Audio Description -- not just as consumers, but as people who can now name the performers, writers, and engineers responsible for the work. They talk about why crediting the full Audio Description team is gaining ground, how the back catalog movement is raising the bar for quality, and what it looks like when the field shifts from...
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The ADNA Presents: Darian Rodriguez Heyman: You Don’t Have To Sacrifice To Do The Right Thing
The ADNA Presents
Darian Rodriguez Heyman has spent thirty years helping mission-led organizations stop reinventing the wheel. He's the author of AI for Nonprofits, founder of Helping People Help, and someone who has thought seriously about why good intentions so often produce predictable, avoidable mistakes. What drew me to this conversation is that the gap he keeps closing, between what's available and what people actually reach for, lives in Audio Description too. We talk about the nonprofit assumption, what AI adoption actually looks like inside organizations right now, and why the accessibility sector may...
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Blind Film Critics Give the Oscars Their Own Awards
The ADNA Presents
Lee Pugsley and Alex Howard of The Dark Room watched this year's Oscar ceremony with audio description on, and they brought friends. John Stark, and the newest Blind Film Critic Society member Ren Leach, join them to hand out their own awards, debate the night's surprises and snubs, and reflect on what it actually felt like to experience the telecast as a blind audience member. They get specific. Who got named from the stage, which nominated films still don't have audio description, and what the Marlee Matlin captioning moment means for the conversation ahead. This is a cross-post from The...
info_outlineSoud Habbas spent his career building systems for nonprofits working in some of the hardest environments in the world: Jordan, Egypt, Rwanda, and the West Bank. As chief operating officer, he made sure programs actually worked, stayed honest with funders, and didn't put people at risk.
In this conversation, Soud tells the story of a $40,000 bet on a small women's dairy cooperative that outperformed programs ten times its size, and a million-dollar-a-year partnership with the John Deere Foundation that worked because of one thing: trust. He talks about what it takes to hold a partner accountable without losing the relationship, and how he's applying the same principle to his own life after a recent layoff sent him back to the bar exam he never took.
If you've ever been told your idea is too small to matter, this one's for you.