Marcus Collins and Amanda Slavin sit down with entrepreneur, investor, and Stanford professor Jim Hornthal to explore how founders can move beyond hype and build organizations that genuinely solve problems. Together, they unpack the mindset behind successful entrepreneurship, why curiosity and resilience matter more than certainty, and how AI is reshaping everything from innovation to leadership.

From founder psychology and organizational culture to evidence-based innovation and the future of work, this conversation offers a thoughtful look at what it takes to create products, teams, and companies that people truly value in a rapidly changing world.

Dr. Gil Winch, founder of a call center, Call Yachol, that employs people with disabilities and others often excluded from the workforce, joins Marcus Collins and Amanda Slavin to discuss belonging, culture, and why designing workplaces around human potential can create extraordinary results. Through powerful stories and practical insights, he makes the case that inclusion isn't just the right thing to do. It's a competitive advantage.

From unbreakable glass to billion-dollar businesses, the conversation explores how great teams create safety for experimentation, why action matters more than perfection, and how purpose can evolve after success.

This week, Marcus Collins and Amanda Slavin sit down with Kathryn Petralia, co-founder of Kabbage, a data-driven company bought by American Express that provides new lending opportunities to underserved communities. They explore how better understanding people’s needs became the foundation of a huge business. Together, they unpack cognitive empathy, building community culture at the office, hiring for self-awareness, and how the best leaders learn to see the world through someone else's perspective. Plus, Kathryn shares her personal philosophy for success.

In this episode of From the Culture, Marcus Collins and Amanda Slavin talk with the industry-shaping entrepreneur about ambition, mental health, conscious capitalism, and the challenge of defining success on your own terms. Blake shares what he learned from his struggles with depression, why achievement alone is never enough, and how leaders can build lives and organizations that stay aligned with their values.

A candid conversation about purpose, fulfillment, and what it really means to be enough.

Julie’s religious faith, love of hip hop, and filmmaking passions “outside” of work inform her roles and her life impact in technology and equity. She explains a powerful framework, the “album and the mixtape,” to explain how our professional roles and personal passions coexist to shape who we are and how we lead. Together, they unpack identity, belonging, grief, service, and the courage it takes to show up fully in spaces that weren’t built for you.

At its core, this episode is about purpose. About the unseen experiences that shape our “body of work.” And about the responsibility we carry, not just to succeed, but to serve.

After navigating company shakeups at places like TikTok and Hulu, Nick now pursues companies that need help growing through uncertainty, including in his current role as President and CMO of First Round a consortium of brands that includes Cîroc and Lobos 1707. He shares why crisis mode can create unexpected opportunity, why he never wants to lead marketing in the same industry twice, and why change can be the fastest path to growth when you know how to meet it.

They also unpack personal resilience, building capacity during stressful seasons, and how to stop fearing change long enough to use it.

If your company, career, or life is in transition, this one’s for you.

Starting with a striking reality, HR is overwhelmingly made up of women, yet remains one of the most undervalued functions in organizations—they explore how roles rooted in traditionally “feminine” qualities like care, empathy, and nurturing are often dismissed as soft or secondary.

From HR to community-building, the conversation reframes these roles not as peripheral, but as foundational, asking what might shift if we treated care and connection as central to how work actually works.

From launching products like the iPod and iPhone to navigating personal upheaval, Courtnee shares a deeply honest look at success, failure, and the myth of having it all figured out. Together, they unpack the tension between helping others and doing the inner work, the importance of trusting your instincts, and what it means to grow and learn while leading.

At the center of the conversation is Courtnee’s powerful reframing: we’re never “finished” we’re always becoming. And the real work isn’t perfection, it’s having the courage to keep going, even when you don’t know what you’re doing.

They explore some of the reasons why patriarchal work cultures are bad for business and what it could look like to design a working world that utilizes traditionally feminine traits for business strategy and community culture. They unpack some of the ways women are often forced to navigate competing expectations just to exist, and they discuss why there’s a growing group of “older” post-menopausal women who want to stay in the workforce despite the ageism of patriarchy. The conversation also examines the role men play in building a more equitable world—and why real progress requires moving beyond shame, guilt, and reaction.

At its core, this episode is about shifting from survival to wholeness: letting go of old frameworks and learning how to show up fully, without shrinking to fit the room.

From leadership and performance standards to identity, representation, and resilience, Bing shares how an abundance mindset can reshape organizations, careers, and communities. The conversation moves beyond business strategy into personal growth, faith, and redefining success in a world that often defaults to scarcity.

The discussion goes beyond parenting. It’s about fear, trust, cultural norms, and how shared beliefs, often unquestioned can influence the systems we build and the freedoms we allow.

Change isn’t just a strategy, or a punchline, it’s emotional, messy, cultural, and deeply human. They explore trust, resistance, and the role values and shared meaning play in shaping behavior. The conversation also draws on insights from Javier Farfan, a seasoned marketing executive and current strategic advisor at J Wolf Advisors, who’s helped brands like the NFL, McDonald’s, Miller Coors, New Balance, and TIDAL navigate culture, entertainment, and technology to build impactful and lasting relevance.

Ultimately, this is a conversation about learning to see again — and how noticing what we usually ignore can unlock healthier cultures, better work, and more meaningful collective outcomes.