What happens when a self-described lost soul who studied nutrition and art history ends up leading an architecture nonprofit and decides some money isn't worth taking? Let's find out!

In this episode, we speak with Erica Rife, Executive Director of the Architecture Foundation of Oregon, former head of Design Museum Portland, and MassChallenge alum, for a candid conversation about leading with your values in a sector built on donor money.

We dig into how one event at MassChallenge introduced her to design as a way of thinking, why a playbook that works in Boston wouldn't work in Portland, what her grad school research on whiteness in philanthropy revealed, what community-centric fundraising means, and why architecture's long, expensive road to licensure keeps the field so homogeneous.

00:00 - Introduction & Welcome, Erica Rife
00:41 - From Nutrition and Art History to MassChallenge and Design Museum Portland
08:20 - Why Erica Never Wanted to Be an Entrepreneur
12:20 - Boston vs Portland and a City Built for Design
17:49 - Grad School, Whiteness in Philanthropy, and a Street Art Detour
28:46 - Community-Centric vs Donor-Centric Fundraising
34:35 - Saying No to Problematic Donors and Protecting Staff
40:20 - Who Gets to Design, Diversity and the Path to Licensure
46:36 - Unlearning Startup Habits and Learning AFO's History
50:50 - Closing Thoughts & Where to Find Erica

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Is Elizabeth Holmes a manipulative mastermind, a deeply broken person, or both at the same time? Let's find out!

In this very spoiler-heavy episode, we unpack You Can See Everything, the new documentary from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim about Elizabeth Holmes, for a messy and fun conversation about truth, performance, who's shaping the story, and why. Honestly we could have gone another hour... maybe we will. We're not sure.

We dig into how our read on Holmes kept shifting from scene to scene, why turning anyone into a one-dimensional villain gets in the way of understanding how harm happens, what it means when the people on camera know they’re being watched, and how Nathan Fielder’s style makes us question everything. We also talk about the trauma, control, and manipulation threaded through her story, and why naming that context explains without excusing.

Content note: this episode includes discussion of sexual assault (roughly 15:30 to 22:50) and contains many spoilers.

00:00 - Introduction & Spoiler Warning
00:41 - What We Knew About Elizabeth Holmes and Nathan Fielder Going In
11:45 - Who's On First?
15:28 - The Revelation From Her Father and Multiple Truths at Once
22:53 - One-Dimensional Villains, Bad Blood, and Where Belief Became Fraud
29:36 - Let's Talk About Billy, the Eggs, and Folie à Deux
37:37 - The Tweets, the Gag Gift, and Amanda Seyfried
47:26 - Scripted Showdowns, Trailer vs. Final Cut, and the "I Trust You" Call
51:19 - The Ending

Visit us at InclusionGeeks.com to stay up to date on all the ways you can make the workplace work for everyone! Check out Inclusion Geeks Academy and InclusionGeeks.com/podcast for the code to get a free mini course.

Theodora Skeadas is back for round two, and we packed in a lot! In Part 1, we got into red teaming, AI governance, and social scoring. This time we went wider, starting with what's happening to remote work and who gets left behind as companies pull people back into offices, tighten visa rules for trust and safety roles, and automate outsourced content moderation jobs.

We talk about the "portfolio life" as a way to future-proof your career instead of betting everything on one role, what happened to Twitter's workforce demographics after the layoffs, and Theo's survivor-centered approach to fighting AI-generated intimate image abuse. We also make the case for treating cloud infrastructure as a public utility, and dig into the climate and water costs of data centers. Whew!

00:00 - Felicia and Rachel intro: Spider-Man's Vulture and class solidarity

11:02 - Remote work

18:45 - The case for a "portfolio life"

24:33 - Centering survivors in the fight against AI-generated intimate image abuse

32:13 - The case for treating cloud infrastructure as a public utility

35:54 - Data centers, water, and the climate cost of cloud infrastructure

46:41 - Panpsychism, consciousness, and AI

Visit us at InclusionGeeks.com to stay up to date on all the ways you can make the workplace work for everyone! Check out Inclusion Geeks Academy and InclusionGeeks.com/podcast for the code to get a free mini course.