Spud (Steve) is the executive director and chief visionary for New Leaf Initiative.Spud Graduated from Penn state University with a degree in mechanical engineering and then traveled to Sweden where he earned a masters degree in Strategic Leadership Towards Sustainability from Blekinge Institute of Technology. Spud works hard every day toward improving the world by connecting people that have the drive and want with the resources that will help them achieve their goals and by taking on projects himself that improve the quality of life to the people around the world. Spud has some great solid advice for anyone looking to become an entrepreneur in this ever changing world.
Transcript
>> So my name is Spud Marshall and I run an organization called New Leaf Initiatives. I'm the executive director. And we launched about two years ago. So still on the startup pace and the whole premises basically the support social innovation around the world. So the story of New Leaf is a couple of Penn State Alumni created at back in August 2010. And, you know, one of the selfish motivations was we're going to create a place where all our friends can work on things that actually make a difference in the world and that sort of. One of the driving forces buying this, and so it's been cool is that this team of friends is basically just kind of collected together and said "What does it look like to create our ideal job or ideal career?" One day I may be talking with, you know, 10 different people in different countries on Skype and just a 10 hour a day. On another one we may be, you know, doing the accounting and all the legal work for launching a non-profit and, you know, for profit consulting companies. Another I may be running a team of 50 interns like we had on the spring. So there is no predictable schedule in my career. But we set it on hours which means we work from like, you know, in any day it's typically around like 10 a.m. to about 3 or 4 a.m. So we pretty much live and breath down here in the office. So it's a 24/7 thing. About 90 percent of my job description is connecting with people around the world. And so the best way to do that is to go and travel and see them in action, you know, in the field doing whatever it is that they do. So I travel a lot to cities like DC and New York whether it's big hubs for social innovation, you know, organizations in communities. But then I also do a lot of traveling to, you know, the-- out in field in South Africa or, you know, the [inaudible]. And, you know, we've been out in Arizona, you know, in field work. So I'm constantly in different areas checking out with the social entrepreneurship community is actually doing in the world, our network that we've build through New Leaf is constantly supporting people out in the field. So I mean the wall behind and actually all these little blue, yellow dots are people that are around the world doing these special things. And so, we'd kind of hear from them on what's happening on the ground. So I don't have to travel everywhere but when I get a chance, when I get paid to do so. [END]
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