“Talking to people from different disciplines pushes your thinking about your assumptions, going out and listening to what other people are doing helps inform the way that you creatively solve the problem that’s in front of you. Leaders often are scared by some of these ideas that are coming out of their workforce and that’s why they’re shutting them down. But if you can demonstrate yourself to be receptive to ideas, then you can help guide a creative future.”
Telle Whitney on Electric Ladies Podcast
Massive innovation is crucial to meet the scale of the climate crisis, but achieving this is increasingly challenging due to current political and social undercurrents. How can organizations innovate, and how can people within these organizations come together to brainstorm, bringing ideas of their own and improving on others? According to Telle Whitney, innovation must be an intentional, concerted effort that organizations actively adopt.
Listen to Telle Whitney, Cofounder of the renowned Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology & the Grace Hopper Conference – and one of Fast Company’s most influential women in technology – on Electric Ladies Podcast. Launching her latest book, Rebooting Tech Culture: How to Ignite Innovation and Build Organizations Where Everyone Can Thrive, Telle joins Joan to discuss how organizations and leaders can cultivate the culture of innovation and creativity so critical to addressing the climate crisis.
You’ll hear about:
- The critical role culture plays in driving innovation.
- Why we must dispel the myth of the “lone genius”.
- Telle’s 6Cs for building a culture of innovation.
- How leaders can encourage courage and risk-taking.
- Plus, career advice specifically for women in engineering.
“To take your career to the next level, learning how to tell your story and what you want is an important skill. [One thing] I probably get from mid-career women more than anything else is the belief that ‘if I do good work, it will be recognised’. That is simply not true. Being able to say, I did this great work, and to be able to tell that to your manager or to the company leader – it is as important as the product development itself.”
Telle Whitney on Electric Ladies Podcast
Read Joan’s Forbes articles here.
- Zara Summers, Chief Science Officer at LanzaTech about innovative ways that recovered carbon is making its way back into our daily lives.
- Autumn Huskins, Finance Director at Hitachi Zosen Inova (HZI), a waste-to-energy plant converting agricultural and food waste into electricity.
- Doreen Harris, President/CEO of New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA), on energy innovation for decades into the future.
- Sue Ozdemir, CEO of Exro Technologies, on whether big companies can innovate.
- Read: Insights from women about driving innovation in a purpose-led Economy.
More from Electric Ladies Podcast!
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Joan Michelson, MBA is a highly accomplished business leader and award-winning strategic social impact and ESG – environment, social, governance – leader, who drove breakthrough results at Chrysler (in EVs), American Express and Deloitte, small businesses, and government agencies. She is an instructor on ESG issues to professionals, leaders and board members across industries. Her specialties include leveraging ESG solutions and partnerships strategically for maximum benefit, helping organizations recruit innovative, diverse women, and helping these women thrive in their careers. She is based in the Washington D.C. area.
Joan is also an accomplished journalist who has worked with top media organizations and hosts and produces the acclaimed Electric Ladies podcast (formerly known as Green Connections Radio), about innovation and leadership in energy-, climate- and sustainability-related issues across industries, featuring women experts.
She writes regularly for Forbes on these issues and has also been in the Harvard Business Review, HuffPost, TheAtlantic.com, Greenbiz, The New Economy magazine (distributed at the World Economic Forum), New Thinking magazine, regional business journals; and various other media. She coproduced segments with CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” ABC News, and “The Crusaders,” and television specials on NBC.
Joan has spent her career working in energy-sustainability-climate-ESG issues and in marketing communications, including as head of communications and co-leader of the sales and marketing team of Chrysler’s Global Electric Motorcars (GEM), driving “best year ever” growth and significantly accelerated the adoption of electric vehicles. Prior to GEM, she led marketing communications efforts to high-net-worth and high-visibility clients in management consulting-financial services companies Deloitte and American Express. She's a native of NYC and has a BA from UCLA, an MBA from Baruch College at City University of NY, and post-graduate studies at Harvard Business School, The New School and The Aspen Institute, among others. She has a Sustainability and ESG certification from Competent Boards.
