Podcast: Making of the Central Florida Women’s Rally

photo by Julie Wilder

The Women’s Rally–Central Florida, at Lake Eola Amphitheater, is a Solidarity event in conjunction with the Women’s March on Washington. This is the origin story of how first time organizers Gricel & Autumn decided to volunteer their time to bring a grassroots gathering in Central Florida.

Take a listen:

The rally was a huge success – I estimate at least 10k and possibly more were in attendance.

About Our Guests

Gricel & Autumn are two friends who met 20 years ago at their kids’ preschool. Autumn is passionate about family, education and social justice. She has been a professional storyteller for over a decade. She agreed to co-organize the Women’s Rally – Central Florida because she believes each of us, especially women and and marginalized groups, has a voice that deserves to be heard. Gricel has been newly relieved of her full-time stay-home-mom duties by her son’s heading off to college. She joined a fledgling Facebook Group of 50 people interested in doing “something” in Orlando in solidarity with the DC event. She agreed to organize the Rally because she believes silence makes you complicit and “if not us, who?”

This show originally aired live on Wednesday, January 18th on WPRK 91.5fm.

Podcast: Bringing Love Back into Business with Suzanne Herrmann

“It’s about bringing love back into the business,” says Conscious Investment Banker Suzanne Herrmann. Sounds like an oxymoron, but our guest calls in old school. This show aired live on WPRK 91.5fm on Wednesday, April 6th, 2016.

Listen to the podcast here (I was late, so conversation starts at the 17 minute mark):

About OUR GUEST

Suzanne Herrmann is a registered representative licensed with the Security and Exchange Commission providing investment banking services to the middle markets. She also has her own consulting business providing business development in all categories. Her specialty is analyzing companies and completing a true valuation. Along with this she prepares your company for investors.

Her passion is coaching WBE. Showing women the benefits of being a WBE and helping them deliver their products and services to the market. She enjoys working with conscious businesses that live in harmony with the planet and all human souls.  SJH Synergy is the parent company that provides services for nutritional, spiritual and financial balance.

 

Podcast: The Rise of Poca’s Hottest with Wendy Davis

What happens local music meets local Chef Wendy Davis? A hot sauce company is born to support the artists. Here is the haphazard decade long journey from backyard party sauce to the aisles of Winn Dixie with Poca’s Hottest founder and one of the musicians she features: Kaleigh Baker, who serenaded us right behind her own personal marinade.  This show aired live on WPRK 91.5fm on Wednesday, March 30, 2016.

Listen to the podcast here (conversation starts at the six minute mark):

About OUR GUEST

Poca’s Hottest’s is a homegrown local food company that creates custom sauces inspired by local bands & artists, using the freshest, locally grown ingredients. Wendy Davis started the company over a decade ago from her backyard and can now be found at area restaurants on in grocery aisles. Poca’s Hottest sauces are all natural and never use any artificial preservatives. The overall objectives of the organization are to give the bands and artists that inspire them a unique merchandise item and a valuable marketing tool and to help provide children with the materials they need to help them learn through music.

 

Podcast: Reviving Expert Tailoring through Common Thread Orlando with Bonnie Lewis

From the Austin rock scene to NYC fashion shoots and Oscar dressing rooms, local Orlando tailor extrordinaire Bonnie Barton takes us on her entrepreneurial journey, the hustle & (literal) bustle, being a boss who thinks in terms of the currency of generosity and her plans to grow her business, Common Thread Orlando, by building a sewing school and bringing styled sewing back to the kitchen table.

About our guest

Bonnie Lewis is a freelance tailor and founder of Common Thread Orlando, a textile workroom located at the FAVO space in the Ivanhoe district. Building on her impressive career and passion for tailoring, she is developing a sewing school with a emphasis on pattern making & fabrics that are meaningful and ethical.

Based out of New York City, Bonnie Lewis and her sewing machine have travelled far and wide for many clients in fashion and entertainment and represented by the modest, yet legendary, tailor and agent, Lars Nord. Through him, Ms Lewis was honored to bring her talents to a variety of shoots, Bryant Park and now Lincoln Center shows, junkets, sample rooms, celebrity suites on Oscar night, dressing rooms for talk shows and more. She has also been included in Ralph Lauren’s coveted advertising team for thirteen years and has been given the privilege of tailoring Collection, Purple Label, RRL, Chaps and everything in between working with the most talented and diligent names in the field.

She started her career owning Atelier, a custom clothing and alterations salon in Austin, TX, which prepared her to solve any fit issue for any body type and became an expert tailor in alterations. She is also an experienced prop designer and can turn out one of a kind pieces while on set.

Podcast: Workers Voice Tour with Lupe Gonzalo

There have been incredible strides in the Florida Fight for Fair Food, but there are still a few holdouts, notably Wendy’s, which made an interesting decision recently. According to the Coalition for Immokalee Workers: “Just as the industry was being called “the best working environment in American agriculture” on the front page of the New York Times for its commitment to the human rights standards of the Fair Food Program, Wendy’s moved its substantial purchases of fresh tomatoes away from Florida in early 2015.  That’s right, they affirmatively decided to buy their tomatoes from farms offering workers fewer protections.

Guadalupe Gonzalo, a farmworker with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers & interpreter Daniel Cooper brought us the latest from the fields of Florida and the Workers’ Voice Tour that is happening on March 2-12 and gave us insight into the organizing structure of the CIW & how they are now sharing their activism throughout the country with farmworkers around the nation.

Listen to the interview here:

About the Fair Food Program

The Fair Food Program (FFP) is an historic partnership among farmworkers, Florida tomato growers, and 14 multibillion-dollar tomato retailers. By committing to the FFP, participating retailers require more humane labor standards from their suppliers, agree to purchase exclusively from those who meet these higher standards, and pay a “penny-per-pound” premium which is passed down through the supply chain and paid out to workers by their employers. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is a worker-based human rights organization based in Immokalee, FL and the creator of the internationally recognized Fair Food Program (FFP).

About the Workers’ Voice Tour

This March, Immokalee farmworkers will embark on the 10-day, 5-city Workers’ Voice Tour where, joined by thousands of consumer allies, they will take the powerful message of Fair Food directly to Wendy’s doorstep.

The final march will be help Saturday, March 12 in Palm Beach, FL to amplify CIW’s call for justice in the fields and demand that Wendy’s become part of an industry that hears, respects – and gives a rightful, dignified place to – workers’ voices.

This program originally aired live on WPRK 91.5 fm at 4pm on Wednesday, February 3, 2016.