Episode 20: Cecilia Conrad - Steward of the MacArthurs Genius Grants, 100 Million Dollars, and Transcendent Empowerment

Origins Podcast with Ryan McGranaghan

Show Notes:

• Privilege brings with it a sense of responsibility (4:00)
• Empowering others - "nurturing, supporting, and uplifting" (5:30)
  • “Talent in unexpected locations"
• Levels of impact: individual and systems (7:45)
• Carrying people with you (8:20)
• POSSE Foundation (8:40)
• Compensatory and Distributive Justice (9:00)
• What she tells her students (10:45)
• Most proud of integrating race and gender into economics programs (11:00)
  • What we are missing in the discourses of race and gender
• Difficult to reshape pre-conceived notions unless you allow everyone to explore (13:00)
• Interconnectedness of society and systems level thinking (14:00)
  • A must read - Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows
  • Becoming more comfortable with complexity and uncertainty - Santa Fe Institute guidance during COVID-19
• Cecilia’s message during COVID-19 (15:00)
• The Top 100 from 100&Change Respond to COVID-19 (16:30)
• “We don’t have the luxury of backing away from challenges to focus on a single one” (18:30)
• MacArthur Fellows Program (19:00)
  • Characteristics of fellows (24:30)
  • Howard Gardner “fruitful asynchrony” and his book Creating Minds (26:00)
• Role of poetry in Cecilia’s life (27:50)
  • Her published poem “Apathy"
• The Poetry Foundation (29:15)
• The On Being Project (30:00)
• Finding hope and despair right now (31:00)
• Second-line show for healthcare workers (32:15)
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ series
  • Cecilia’s list