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Unexpected connections are the simplest way of describing creativity. In its most basic form, it’s pattern recognition, and at its most complex, it’s a tangled web that humans have become surprisingly great at deconstructing.
Imprint and MAEKAN: Unexpected Connections is about celebrating those who have embraced new intersections around them in both positive and inventive ways.
Our format invites fascinating people from contrasting disciplines to talk and find an unexpected common ground. How does the tattoo artist connect with the sneaker designer? How can designers of different backgrounds link experience to great work?
Unexpected Connections is about the rich opportunity for exploration when two different vantage points are joined together.
In this latest episode, Intertrend founder Julia Huang talks with Jennifer Ferro, President of public radio station KCRW and serial entrepreneur Lindsay Jang, founder of Yardbird, Ronin, and Sunday’s Grocery. They share how their experiences starting in one geographic location went on to shape their lives and careers as well as their perspectives on raising children of mixed race in both Hong Kong and California.
Community forms the foundation of virtually every brand and company today. Attaining that level of commitment from your audience is difficult and it simply cannot be achieved purely through tangibles. It’s a matter of thoughtfulness, understanding, and desire to work tirelessly to create value and connect people.
At MAEKAN, the story defines the medium. Some stories function best as written text, others hope to capture the emotion through an intimate audio experience. In cases such as this audio story, the transcripts we provide are done to the best of our ability through AI transcription services and human transcribers. We try our best, but this may contain small errors or non-traditional sentence structure. The imperfection of humans is what makes us perfect.
Julia: So these two people, no connection whatsoever. They just met yesterday, but there is this unexpectedness and there is this community building aspect of it that is just fascinating. And I’m going to be asking a lot of those questions, but first I’m going to ask about reinventing something. So with you, Jennifer, you basically inherit an iconic Southern California radio station with a cult following. It wasn’t broken, right? It was really great to begin with. But you started to pivot and to rebuild it to what it is it, continuously pivoting when I’m listening to it. Was there a reason why you thought that changing and reinventing the radio station was important to you?
Jennifer: I think it’s just anxiety and the anxiety is that KCRW won’t be relevant sometime in the future because we think we’re so great. Everything that I am interested and I feel like my role is as the head of the organization is where how should we position ourselves now for how we should be five years and ten years from now, which creates a lot of anxiety. This is why I have my best ideas at like 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning when I wake up in panic and write them down and pretend to go back to sleep and send delayed e-mails, so people don’t know that I’m up at 3:00 in the morning.
Julia: I know that there are a few people from KCRW over here like answering your e-mails right now, but going to Lindsay. You and your business partner Matt opened a Japanese restaurant. Neither one of you are Japanese.
Lindsay: No we’re not.
Julia: No you’re not. I know Matt’s not. But you went on to reinvent the Japanese cuisine of all places in Hong Kong. What what was it that motivated you to say “you know, I’m going to start a restaurant and I’m not Japanese. He’s not Japanese, but I’m gonna open a Japanese restaurant.”
Lindsay: I don’t think we ever specifically decided to open a Japanese restaurant, and I don’t think even now I would define it as a Japanese restaurant. I think the cuisine is modern Japanese and Matt’s skillset is Japanese. And as you know, you just fall in love with their attention to detail and the specificity and their craft and how long they hone a skill. So just naturally, that was how we approached our own brand or our first restaurant.
Julia: I’m gonna talk a little bit about your backgrounds. I always thought it was interesting that Jennifer has always lived in Southern California and I said you’re the only person that I know in the world that was born in Southern California, lived in Southern California and then worked in Southern California. Right?
Jennifer: Because you don’t know that many not-that-interesting people, that’s why! (laughs)
Julia: But on the other hand, Lindsay, you are like a transplant several times over. You were born in Alberta, Canada, which is from what I hear, kind of like the boondocks.
Lindsay: Did Eugene tell you? Eugene and I grew up very close.
Julia: Yeah, he said there’s nothing, like nothing over there. And it just so happens that Eugene and you were in that town and you never met each other either. That’s just fascinating. And then from Alberta, Canada, you moved to New York and then you moved to Hong Kong. And now probably, you might even move to Los Angeles. So I’d like to ask about these two different choices of residency. For you Jennifer, you basically plopped yourself in Southern California and said, “this is it. This is where I’m going to be.”.
Jennifer: Well, I mean let’s just be specific. I was born and raised in a suburb. When I moved to Los Angeles, it was like moving to Paris, so I feel like I did move! And then I lived in Venice and in West Adams, so that is like two totally different things! (laughter)
Lindsay: That counts.
Julia: Yeah, that’s true!
Jennifer: Actually, driving between them is like driving to another country. I mean, it takes forever, so I am traveling every day. So there is diversity in my background!
Julia: Lindsay, so as time permits I want to talk a little bit about how those backgrounds influenced you in terms of how you build your community, you build your KCRW community, the audience community and you of course, build your community through your MISSBISH, through Ronin, through Yardbird, Sunday’s grocery and all the other things that have going.
So, Lindsay first: If you could talk about how you feel about your background into Alberta, New York, Hong Kong.
Lindsay: I’ve been thinking about it a lot and I think the nomadic nature I’ve had comes from being a first- generation Asian Canadian where my dad was very much an immigrant and grew up that way and sort having a community that reflected— well, I didn’t even know what I looked like or where I fit in. Where I grew up, also in a suburb, I was the only Asian. I’m only half Asian too, and I was the only Asian person in my high school. So I was always building my own communities, so that I was automatically included. Sowhether that was like running for student council or just trying to fit in and then bringing people along with me. That’s sort of what I’ve always done every time I have moved, is just try and make other people feel included and powerful or valuable or part of some kind of team.
Only recently have I started to truly understand what I was doing as I’ve gotten older, but reflecting on it, I think that’s what I’ve always done: just try and build an inclusive community for people who maybe don’t know where they fit.
Julia: To segway from that, Jennifer the transplant that you’re doing on a daily basis on the 110 to the 405 and then to 10: How do you think your background influenced the way that you build your community? You think that it had any influence or any effect at all?
“I think the power of something like public radio, whose mandate is not to make money but to represent and be a community service, is that we have the power to — and it’s cheap with a microphone — to go hear what people think and feel from all different kinds of communities.”
— Jennifer Ferro, President of KCRW
Jennifer: Again, growing up in the suburbs, I used to call Torrence — and again, I apologize. But I’m just going to be honest — I used to call it like a wannabe blue-collar town. Like, I was a smart kid, but I had to like try to pretend like I wasn’t, so I could be cool. I don’t think that happens anymore, thank God. But I just felt like I was around people who are not curious, and so when I arrived at KCRW as a volunteer when I was a very young person, I was like, “Wow, these are smart people. I’m around smart people who are really curious and know what’s happening in the world.”
And so for me, I feel like that is the energy that inspires me every day is that I get to talk to people who are excited by ideas and culture and music, and creators — people who are creative and who make the time and effort to create beautiful things. Whether someone sees it or not, that’s inspiring to me. People who design cities, things like that is exciting and people who want to talk about that — those are the people that I want to be around. So that’s the community that I’m always interested in creating and I feel like in Los Angeles, there’s lots of people who feel that way, who want to be connected with that and beyond Los Angeles. Just being able to talk about big ideas.
Especially in a culture of Los Angeles where you spend so much time in your car. You’re by yourself generally, and you have this ability to be transported away from the fact that you are the traffic. You’re learning and connecting with people when you’re alone. And I think that’s really incredible. It’s magical. So I don’t know, maybe my background of having very intelligent parents and just, I don’t know. In the suburbs it’s like, “let’s go to the mall.” I’m like, “okay, let’s go to the mall.” I guess my interest was trying to run away from that. When we were talking backstage, Lindsay, you were kind of like fleeing from that…you know.
Lindsay: Eugene is the only person who I would offend here, but yeah. Uh, I left basically the day after I graduated high school.
Julia: To New York?
Lindsay: I went to Calgary first, which was only like 300 kilometers south. That was a big like white collar city where the headquarters, the offices of the oil and gas businesses were. So there was a higher level of education per say, and then I spent about two years there and then I moved to the east coast.
Julia: So New York seems to be a very stimulating place. What made you say, “I’ve had enough and I’m going to move to Hong Kong?”
Lindsay: Um, well ironically, I got pregnant and my plan before having a child was to move to Japan because I was studying Japanese while I was working for Nobu. So I wanted to move to Tokyo, I wanted to perfect my Japanese and really go in that direction. And then as soon as Lily came into the picture, I just realized that wasn’t probably realistic. But I was ready to leave New York, I hadn’t learned everything, but I had been broken and beat down by that city and then found a really great space to learn and to grow. I knew I was ready to move on to something else.
Julia: I’m going to jump to entrepreneurship because Lindsay is quite obvious that she’s an entrepreneur. But what I see at KCRW on a constant basis, you’re being entrepreneurial as well. I think there’s a program for independent producers program where you encourage people to do content development, and I think you did it even before people were talking about “content being king.” KCRW in my mind was always really pushing for new content either it be music or news or drama or all of those.
And I was wondering in even in that context of a public radio station, I know you talked about anxiety, but what is driving you to be so entrepreneurial and pushing your people to be entrepreneurial as well?
Jennifer: Well first of all, my predecessor, the founder of KCRW. She never created a radio station to create a radio station. She was just making really interesting programming. So it doesn’t it doesn’t always fit together and it doesn’t make sense for running a radio station. We have cutting-edge music and NPR News and a show about literature by this very peculiar man with a peculiar voice. And that just sounds like a random train wreck, but it’s not it’s all ultimately connected by these big ideas.
I think when you don’t think that you’re this thing you’re supposed to be, then the world is open to you. My interest is in always building a community of people who are connected. So the first part is for them to connect with us and then the second, like Nirvana, is when they connect with each other. Through that, we have this exchange where we create great programming and people support us even though they don’t have to.
From that, when we get that support, you end up saying, “oh, there’s a lot of room to explore that community.” If you know who your people are and if they’re a diverse group, but they all care about curiosity and John was saying earlier about this creative creativity IQ and that’s what I feel like we feed and foster. So when you start from that position, you can kind of go anywhere. I always want us to be something exciting and new and that of course is fueled by my 3:00 a.m. anxiety and dreams. That works out well.
“You can approach people and have conversations with people where people seem to let down their guard when you’re eating together or you’re drinking together. Very different than like trying to schmooze at a fashion show where everyone’s trying to be somebody. But after like three shots of sake, you’re really who you are. After 10 shots of sake, you get to know somebody very well.”
— Lindsay Jang, restauranteur and entrepreneur
Julia: You heard about this confession before is that KCRW is really the only radio station that I listen to, so I’m I’m actually very objective about my opinion, but for the longest time in the first ten years, I refuse to “pay to play.” I heard on the radio station KCRW and that there’ll be fund raising and I said, “I’m not gonna pay to listen to radio. It should be free, right” for 10 years. But I was just thinking that within that 10 years, of course I was very guilty. I felt very guilty.
Jennifer: That’s good. (laughter) You were paying. You just weren’t paying with dollars. That’s all that matters.
Julia: I feel bad that it took me 10 years, but now that I’m a grown up I think you will be much shorter in terms of being part of the community that you built. In terms of being a stakeholder to KCRW, I feel like I’m part of that community in the way that KCRW does that is really great. Some people say that they came for the music and stayed for the news. Myself, I went for the news and then stayed for the music.
And this is something that I’m going to go back and ask you about. So Lindsay, you being a serial entrepreneur and quite successful at that and you as well, Jennifer, in terms of building KCRW. Why can’t you just slow down? I mean, why can’t you just like smell the roses a little bit? Same as you. Look at KCRW. Look at what you’ve achieved, Lindsay and say, “I’m going to just really kind of cruise for a little bit.” Why can’t you do that?
Lindsay: I’m trying to, actually. Actively. And I’m trying to focus more, but I think that it’s hard especially when you have a small taste of let’s say “success” and I’m not trying to sound arrogant, but I don’t really feel successful. And not in a negative way, but in a way that I just think there’s actually so much more that — not even I can do, but the people I work with — we can do together. I feel an enormous responsibility towards everyone I work with to continue to provide new things for them to do and new opportunities for them to explore.
And I think I’m driven by fear and challenge, where if I don’t know how to do something, I’m hellbent on figuring it out. But also knowing fully well that I might not be able to do it, which I’ve had to come to terms with as well. Knowing that some things just don’t work. Knowing that some things end and being okay with failing. I’m okay with that now.
Julia: Okay with failing?
Lindsay: Yeah I’m okay with starting something and it not being exactly what I thought it was going to be.
Julia: That’s interesting. So what do you think?
Jennifer: I totally agree with you and what you said about fear and challenge. That is definitely the story of my life and I had this epiphany. So I’d taken on this job, took over for a founder. Big shoes to fill. Felt very unsure of myself, of course had no idea what I was doing and was like, “Oh my God. I hope I don’t screw this up. I hope I don’t screw this up.” And then I took a break over the Christmas holidays and I woke up at like 4:00 AM or whatever and I was like, “Oh my God. We’re all going to die.”
And I was like, “thank God.” I just felt so much relief because I’m like, “oh. We’re all gonna die and it doesn’t matter.” So if I run this thing into the ground. So what? I’m going to die. And then people are gonna like, move on. Yeah, and it just was liberating.
Julia: It took you that long to know you were going to — I mean, everyone’s going to die.
Jennifer: We say that but you don’t really feel it, you know? I felt it and I remember when I was in high school, I would go running and I would I would feel really depressed, but I’d go look at the the ocean and near where you live and I’d watch the water crash and I’d say, “oh, those sand pebbles. We’re all a bunch of sand pebbles. We’re irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.” And there’s something very comforting about that because your failure is ultimately “this big.”
It’s like, so what if I run KCRW into the ground. I tried hard.
Lindsay: And who really cares more than you?
(Jennifer: Right?) No one. No one cares.
Jennifer: And then I’d be dead and then you guys wouldn’t remember me. There’d be another KCRW, it’d just be called something else and Lindsay would start it. It would be very successful!
Julia: So just among friends and it won’t go out of this room, I think: Do you think that you would ever leave KCRW?
Jennifer: I’m going to die there as I’ve just told you. No, I don’t know. Sometimes I’m embarrassed telling people “I’ve been at KCRW for twenty-five years. I’ve been with my husband for like almost 30 years.” I’m like a “stayer,” you know. I’m a stayer. And so I don’t know. I definitely will leave when I need to leave. I have been through things where people stayed too long and it is so sad, and I’m like, “I’m not going to do that.” I’m always like, “should I go?” So probably, at some point.
Julia: Which is very interesting because being in the business world is that in dealing with a lot of businesses, a lot of people will say “what’s your exit plan? What is your exit plan? Do you have an exit plan right?” But do you have one, Lindsay?
Lindsay: I have thoughts all the time about just going and applying for a job. I have dreams where I’m like, “oh, I wonder if anyone would just hire me.” Not like a “real world job”. Until this, I was a floor captain at a restaurant. That was my last job working for somebody else.
Julia: That’s with Nobu.
Lindsay: Yeah. So I wonder if I could like get a job at Vans. I wonder if I could work for you. I wonder if I just wanted to like not stress out all the time, could I do that?
Julia: Working for someone. No stress at all.
Lindsay: I mean, no. None. Zero. Of course, I’d be the perfect employee! My other thing is that I don’t think I’m ever going to stop working. So yes, I hope to exit some of my current businesses in a financial position that would reduce my stress level, but I don’t think that my stress is directly fiscally related. So I don’t think that would solve anything.
I think that I’ll just constantly work and it doesn’t feel like work to me. Most of the time. I hope I get to continually do things.
“I feel like my role is as the head of the organization is where how should we position ourselves now for how we should be five years and ten years from now, which creates a lot of anxiety. This is why I have my best ideas at like 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning when I wake up in panic and write them down and pretend to go back to sleep and send delayed e-mails, so people don’t know that I’m up at 3:00 in the morning.”
Julia: I got the permission to ask this question as well because we talked about work quite a bit in and I asked if it was okay for me to to ask these questions and they said, “sure, ask away.” Both Lindsey and Jennifer are mother to mixed-race children right. You have two, and you also have two. And they’re mixed race. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about your experience in terms of raising children in Hong Kong — maybe it’s a little bit different — but of course, in the United States as well. Are there any experiences that you think are worth sharing in an Unexpected Connection environment?
Lindsay: Well, I’m actually extremely envious of my children’s social community because it’s the polar opposite of how I grew up. They don’t even know. They don’t think I’m Chinese. They don’t know that they’re Chinese. And now they’re an international school where the majority of their friends their first language is not even English. It’s French or it’s Spanish or whatever, Cantonese. Then they’re learning Mandarin at school. Everyone goes on holidays to wherever they’re from and that’s all over the world. And they have this incredible freedom to not even think about race. And I grew up only thinking about race.
And so in that case, as much as I don’t like Hong Kong for the urban and the city aspect and the constant reminder of money and how much money you have or you don’t have, they do have this really amazing community of global citizens. And I like that.
Jennifer: I think my kids have a different experience. So my husband is African-American and Japanese. They have two older sisters. My stepdaughters are also mixed so I’m the odd man out in our family. I’m the one who looks like “who’s that in your picture?” (laughter).
So I actually like that position for them. I think that they’re like this basketball team and I am like that, I don’t know, the “water woman” or “water girl.” But I think my kids, with their black heritage, they are very aware of how people perceive them. I don’t perceive them. I perceive them as my children, but I’m very conscious to not negate their experience because in the United States, even in Los Angeles, what you look like very much affects how you’re treated.
And I think about it a lot. I worry about it. I want them to be perceived as intelligent as they are and I want them to have all the opportunities and not be held back because of prejudice. So it’s interesting. They’re super woke, they’re super active, they’re extremely aware. They’re 16 and 18. I mean, they can run stuff. They got it all together.
But I just think that white kids honestly don’t understand how easy they have it in the world, and that doesn’t mean anything they shouldn’t feel bad about it, but I am always conscious that I grew up in a white environment as a white person and it’s not the same road that my daughters have. I think they’re gonna go far and be fine, but I just think it’s just important to not ignore it.
Julia: That was one of the really kind of the unexpected connections because coincidently both of you were a parents to mixed-race children, and I thought that in this age how that might affect the way that you see the world and you just answered that as well.
So before we go into the audience questions, what do you think are some of the unexpected connections that you have experienced in the past that have changed something. Not, drastically, but if something has changed drastically, please share that. But are there any unexpected connections that, because of the fact that you had an open mind about those things, led to something? Can you share any any experience that you might have had?
Jennifer: I feel like my whole every day is an unexpected connection for me because I’m always surprised by the people I get to meet, but I was just randomly scrolling through these podcasts and I heard this one called “Us and Them.” It’s by this guy from West Virginia. It was about I think they call them “the hill people” or “the valley people” or whatever. But it was about the differences in that community. I just was like, “this guy is inspiring.” I heard him say his email and him and I’m like, “are you ever in L.A.?” And he’s like, “I’m going to be there next week.”
So we had him come talk to our team, our staff and then now that we’re doing this thing called “red and blue” and it’s all about like sharing what people think about this election or life in general from West Virginia and from Los Angeles. That’s just one thing that I feel lucky about, that I get to turn my unexpected connections into actual programming and share it with the world.
Lindsay: That’s a good way to articulate. I think now everything — not that I expect things, but they become more predictable — by opening the restaurant. I think in Hong Kong unexpectedly connected me to you through Eugene and even Alex, Eugene’s now wife who became my business partner. You know connecting fashion and food, streetwear and food, skate and food. Music and food. All of those things.
Now that we’ve connected them once or twice, it doesn’t seem as unexpected, but the opportunity every single day that you get to feed people and entertain people. There’s such a neutrality in that. You can approach people and have conversations with people where people seem to let down their guard when you’re eating together or you’re drinking together. Very different than like trying to schmooze at a fashion show where everyone’s trying to be somebody. But after like three shots of sake, you’re really who you are. After 10 shots of sake, you get to know somebody very well.
Julia: It’ll take about 12 shots for me.
Lindsay: So that’s been like the best connection and it was unexpected in the beginning and now I’m just very very grateful.
“Honestly, I don’t do as much as people think I do. I’m really good at taking an idea and figuring out how to break it down and delegate it to other people to execute. And I’m not a micromanager. I’m not a perfectionist. I’m really not at all. I’ll put something out there that is not perfect just to see, get feedback, make it better, just get it out there. Otherwise it’s never gonna happen.”
Julia: I do want to add that it’s so fascinating to hear what Jennifer said about the unexpected connection of programming as well because she mentioned about Joe Frank, which when I moved from from from New York, that was like the first program that I heard. And I know that you were you were producing or working with him as well and also Jonathan Gold.
And then you were the person that brought in Evan Kleiman. I still remember Good Food. You watch it and it was on Saturday Night Live where it was a skit of Good Food but you made it into this this iconic program, and then you were responsible for connecting Evan Kleiman and Jonathan Gold in some sense. Because it was so natural and they didn’t even know each other. I thought that was really kind of unexpected in my mind.
I’m going to ask a few questions since we still do have time: How is engaging people with voice easier or harder than engaging people visually?
Jennifer: This may be totally made up, but I really believe this. I think the human voice is the most elemental and powerful connection point, and I think it starts from when you’re in the in-utero because you can hear the voice of your mother. I feel like you can, without distraction, really understand someone’s personality by listening to them talk and I believe that when you’re listening especially when you’re alone with headphones or just around with yourself and this audio connection, it’s like you can feel really emotionally connected to someone. Different than visuals.
With, visuals, there’s a lot of competition like, “I don’t like their shirt. Or their hair looks weird.” But the audio, you’re just in there and all you’re doing is connecting with ideas and thought and I think that’s really powerful. And I think what I love about the whole on-demand or podcast listening that’s starting to grow really large and in our consciousness is that people are finding more time to listen and I have to believe that that’s the savior of humanity. It’s that we listen to each other. You know? Not just hear ourselves talk, but actually listen to someone else and and in a sense, when you’re listening to the radio or a podcast, you’re forced to listen to someone because they’re not listening to you. You can learn a lot.
Julia: That’s so true. To train yourself to listen more, that’s really very true. So for Lindsay, do you have a system to accomplish so much in so many different industries. Because like I mentioned, you’re in food, you’re in fashion, you’re in libation, now. (Lindsay: Always.) Yes, consuming and producing! Teach us your ways.
Lindsay: Honestly, I don’t do as much as people think I do. (Julia laughs) I’m really good at taking an idea and figuring out how to break it down and delegate it to other people to execute. And I’m not a micromanager. I’m not a perfectionist. I’m really not at all. I’ll put something out there that is not perfect just to see, get feedback, make it better, just get it out there. Otherwise it’s never gonna happen. And then, I like for people on my team or that I work with to feel empowered and to learn from their mistakes.
And so if I was controlling every single thing that I did, I wouldn’t have any time to think or sleep. I am really into self care too, so I need to be mentally healthy, I need to be physically healthy in order to be the best I can be for everybody else.
Julia: So I think one question for Jennifer and then one for you Lindsay: How do you feel radio helps change views on diversity in LGBT issues? Because you know you have to save the world with public radio stations.
Jennifer: I think the power of something like public radio, whose mandate is not to make money but to represent and be a community service, is that we have the power to — and it’s cheap with a microphone — to go hear what people think and feel from all different kinds of communities.
And so when you’re listening to KCRW, you’re gonna hear all of it. And I think the thing that I love to hear is people saying, “oh, I heard this story on KCRW” and it was something that I didn’t expect. That’s the repeatable part of what we do and if it’s good and unexpected, if it’s an unexpected connection, then it is more repeatable and people will share it. My life was altered in a positive way because I learned this thing that I didn’t know about a community or a person or an idea that I didn’t know before. So I think ultimately that’s how public radio can do that.
Julia: So one last question for you
Lindsay: how do you manage the team and culture of your brand?
Lindsay: The very simple answer is that I grew up in skate and snow, and they don’t teach you culture, you just you’re part of that culture. It’s stickers and t-shirts and it’s just being out with friends doing the same things. It’s weird because obviously I didn’t skateboard, but I snowboard a lot and it’s an individual sport. But you do it together and you live with these people and you snowboard. You ride with them every day and everyone is just trying to represent each other.
And that’s that’s literally all we do now. It’s like, what do we do? We print stickers and we make t-shirts. Now we have social media, so trying to translate that ethos into a digital world is sometimes challenging, but through branding and working with artists and brands that are still very much rooted in skate culture. I think that’s just naturally how it goes.
We don’t consciously sit down and be like, “alright. Now how are we going to talk about culture?” It’s just sort of where we came from.
Julia: I think that’s it. So KCRW.com if you don’t listen to radio in your car. It’s K-C-R-W dot-com and please don’t wait 10 years to be a member! Please be an angel. Please be a donor. It’s really a fantastic radio station if you’re not a fan already. Now, for Lindsay, if you go to Hong Kong please look up her Yardbird and Ronin and Sunday’s Grocery — whiskey. I mean that’s another session, another time. Japanese whisky that she’s creating — and also anticipating a Los Angeles branch of Yardbird as well (Lindsay: It’s coming.) We’re really excited about that, thank you.
Lindsay and Jennifer: Thank you. (Applause)
“I think the human voice is the most elemental and powerful connection point, and I think it starts from when you’re in the in-utero because you can hear the voice of your mother. I feel like you can, without distraction, really understand someone’s personality by listening to them talk and I believe that when you’re listening especially when you’re alone with headphones or just around with yourself and this audio connection, it’s like you can feel really emotionally connected to someone. Different than visuals.”
- Opening Remarks
- “Future of Creativity”
- “The Role of Science in the Realm of Creativity”
- “Unscripted”
- “Today & Tomorrow: The Evolution of a Digital Creator”
- “Creating Culture, Communities, and Movements”
- “Building Communities and Constantly Reinventing the Tried and True”
- “Pushing for Truth in Storytelling and Narratives that Inspire Action”
