250: Making Meaningful Connections Can Be Fun! with Gena Scurry
Release Date: 05/22/2024
Find Something You Care About
Work From The Inside Out
Odd fact: I was the sports editor on my high school newspaper for a time. One assignment I had was to interview and write an article about a classmate who was emerging as a top boxer, headed for the Junior Golden Gloves competition. Fast forward 45 years later, the subject of said article, , tells me he almost skipped the interview because he felt unsure about doing it. I’ll admit that I felt intimidated because Chris seemed like a pretty tough guy and we hung out in very different crowds. The article won an honorable mention at the Columbia Scholastic Journalism Conference and it...
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251: Tap Into Your Courage to Build Confidence with Ellen Taaffe
Work From The Inside Out
is a Clinical Associate Professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. She teaches a course, Personal Leadership Insights, and serves as the Director of Kellogg’s Women's Leadership Program. Ellen is an independent board director on three company boards and runs her own leadership advisory consulting, speaking, and coaching business. Growing up as the fifth of six siblings, Ellen recalled dinner table conversations where her father engaged them in brainstorming about his entrepreneurial challenges. Ellen loved those discussions, saying they influenced her interest...
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250: Making Meaningful Connections Can Be Fun! with Gena Scurry
Work From The Inside Out
Gena Scurry has dedicated her career to fostering human connection. She is a self-proclaimed introvert, and while she loves people, her alone time sustains her. Gena says she is quirky, and it takes a lot of effort to be social and be herself. Gena’s formative years differed from most of the other kids in her Texas neighborhood. Crossing the border daily from her home, she attended a Montessori school in Mexico. Later, her thirst for adventure led her to take a year off from college and travel the world, camping and rock climbing. Gena loved rock climbing and traveling and was not sure...
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249: Designing Neurodiverse Inclusive Organizations with Ludmila Praslova
Work From The Inside Out
Ludmila N. Praslova, Ph.D., SHRM-SCP, is the author of . She is a Professor of Psychology and the founding Director of Graduate Programs in Industrial-Organizational Psychology at Vanguard University of Southern California. Born in Moscow, Ludmila grew up in a blue collar area where textile mills and farming were predominant, yet, she shared, there was a strange mix of high culture blended in with visits to museums and trips to the theater. She enjoyed reading college text books as a child and writing poetry. Her parents pressed her to use her hands to sew, garden, and play a musical...
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248: Curiosity is Your Superpower with Ehab Bandar
Work From The Inside Out
Ehab Bandar is a sought-after product design consultant for startups and fintech. What's amazing about his career is that he's managed to do it while being both an outsider and an insider in remarkably distinct ways. Ehab attributes credit to his early life as an immigrant to the US from Lebanon at the age of six. His family moved yearly until he was in seventh grade. Ehab was a shy kid with a stutter, yet he was also a natural observer and listener, taking in different cultural norms and personalities. He recalls endearing himself to fit in with new people by throwing a joke into random...
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247: Don't Just Talk About Doing It. Do It. with Chris Fenning
Work From The Inside Out
makes it easier for us to communicate at work. He helps experts talk to non-experts, teams talk to executives, and much more. Chris's practical methods are used in organizations like Google and NATO and have appeared in the Harvard Business Review. Helping people retain and apply what he teaches led Chris to write the book . He has also authored multiple books on communication and training that have been translated into 15 languages. Chris grew up in what he describes as a traditional nuclear family in the UK. As our podcast interview unfolded, he shared that his parents worked hard to...
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246: Be Ready to Say Yes & Try It with Erika Wasserman
Work From The Inside Out
was always good at math. As a teenager, she and her Dad would sit in front of the family computer (then, households had one computer), dial up AOL (America Online), and check out the latest stock market figures. Dad, an optometrist, was keenly interested in the markets and enjoyed bonding with Erika over all things involving numbers. Erika studied finance and international economics in college, and following graduation, she took a finance role at IBM. Early on, she discovered the advantages of being in a large company where opportunities for mobility were readily available. Erika moved to the...
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245: Trust Your Instincts and Follow Your Curiosity with Catie Harris
Work From The Inside Out
Catie Harris is a nurse practitioner who believes nurses are uniquely qualified to be entrepreneurs. As the CEO and owner of , a mentorship program that empowers nurses to monetize their knowledge and develop business skills, Catie inspires them to change how healthcare is perceived and delivered. Through individual coaching, live events, and signature group programs, thousands of nurses have been empowered with the knowledge and skills they need to build profitable businesses of their own. As a child, Catie was quite introverted and didn’t socialize easily. Her family...
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244: Take a First Step and Be Prepared for Opportunities with Donna Serdula
Work From The Inside Out
Donna Serdula is the founder and president of Vision Board Media, a professional branding company that helps individuals and companies tell their unique stories on LinkedIn and beyond. Donna has authored two editions of . Bringing dynamic brand storytelling to the masses and empowering people to dream big – that’s the ink in her pen. Donna’s website, , is where she and her team of over 20 writers and coaches help people collide with opportunities and transform their lives via future-forward career branding. You’d never know it now, but Donna was a shy little kid. During college, she...
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243: Don’t Wait for Someone Else to Fix It with Chuck and Doug
Work From The Inside Out
This week’s podcast features a delightful conversation I had with Doug Lennick and Chuck Wachendorfer from , a leadership development firm serving many industries. Together, they co-authored the book . Their experience and knowledge show readers how to be positive and impactful leaders. Doug and Chuck offer practical and evidence-based guidance through eight key principles that are essential to one’s ability to lead others: Aim to be Yourself Know Your Real Self Ignite Integrity and Responsibility Embrace Empathy and Compassion Decide Wisely Let Go of What You Know Achieve Purposeful...
info_outlineGena Scurry has dedicated her career to fostering human connection. She is a self-proclaimed introvert, and while she loves people, her alone time sustains her. Gena says she is quirky, and it takes a lot of effort to be social and be herself.
Gena’s formative years differed from most of the other kids in her Texas neighborhood. Crossing the border daily from her home, she attended a Montessori school in Mexico. Later, her thirst for adventure led her to take a year off from college and travel the world, camping and rock climbing. Gena loved rock climbing and traveling and was not sure what else she wanted to do with her life, so she worked hard outside of her classes to save money to support her trips. After completing her degree in Spanish, Gena embarked on her entrepreneurial journey with just $5 and a bicycle, teaching adults to speak Spanish. It started with one person asking her to teach them the language, and her business grew over the next 17 years, with a team of employees and contracts with large companies, which gave her steady revenue. Yet she felt terrified about income most of the time. Gena also got married and started a family during those years.
Nine years ago, Gena went through a major life transition, a divorce. She began meditating and focused on the question, “What’s next in my life?” The answer: “Build a game.” It felt right to her. Eventually, Gena created Over Coffee, a card deck-based game designed to create deeper connections between people. The game challenges players to ask deeper questions on a variety of topics, integrating random verbs to enhance listening skills.
In this week’s Work From The Inside Out podcast, learn more about Gena’s journey:
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Gena hosts monthly potlucks in her home and invites everyone to join in, embodying her mission to reconnect humanity with each game played.
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Originally designed as a bilingual board game, Gena tested it for years and determined it would be best to release an English version as a card deck initially.
Learn more and connect with Gena here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gena-scurry-overcoffeegames-meaningful-connections-6135657/
https://www.facebook.com/gena.scurry/
https://www.facebook.com/OverCoffeeGames/