Making Sense of Chaos: Marian Kaanon on Resilience, Research, and Renewal

Join Dr. Pablo Paredes Romero and guest Marian Kaanon as they explore her approach to community development. CEO of the Stanislaus Community Foundation and 2022 Champions of the American Dream honoree, Marian has spearheaded initiatives that have transformed the Central Valley's business and nonprofit sectors. From her early life traversing different countries to leading the charge in philanthropic efforts, Marion’s leadership is marked by deliberate data-driven decision-making. 

With a focus on community leadership, Marion’s stories of intentional relationships and dedicated service provide a compelling blueprint for building a thriving, interconnected community. Tune in as we explore how her unique experiences have shaped her vision and driven her impactful work in Stanislaus County. 

Co-produced by the Warrior Entrepreneurship and Innovation program and the Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing at Stanislaus State. The E&I Studio is edited and recorded in the KCSS studios on the campus of Stanislaus State.
The views expressed by guests on this podcast are not necessarily those of the University.

Chapters

• 1:16 Marian's Community
• 7:44 Innovation, Non-Profits, Social Enterprise
• 13:09 Developing Skills and Maximizing Passion
• 18:07 Philanthropy and Government
• 20:15 The Power of Stillness and Thoughtfulness
• 27:00 Early Career Experiences
• 37:03 The Essence of Collaboration
• 40:02 The 11

Transcript

0:03

Marian Cannon, CEO of the Stanislaus Community foundation, is among the great community leaders, cornerstones, incomparable people in our Central Valley. An almost Hollywood screenplay story of an exemplar of the American dream. Arianne's background in journalism, nonprofits, and nonprofit leadership are all significant brushstrokes and the masterpiece of a masterful career in progress. Believe it or not, Marianne's abundance of sincerity and love for her community was the second thing that I noticed about her. The first was her directness. No nonsense, let's get this stuff done. She has a way of bringing calm and efficiency to any proceeding that brings out the best in people. And it always makes me smile, that sense of confidence that where there's will, there's always a way, and that everything is going to work out. Her work ethic, legendary, her empathy, boundless. She strikes me as the type of person who is so compelled to lead that it's almost as if she doesn't have a choice but to lead. Marianne Cannon is a champion, and as I've come to learn, so much more than that. We welcome to the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Studio podcast, Marianne Cannon. Hi. How are you, Marianne? I'm good. How are you? Fantastic. Fantastic. Always a great day in the studio. Yeah, always a great day in the community. On the topic of community, can you share some of your memories of the community where you grew up? Yeah, so I actually led a pretty nomadic existence as a child. I was born in Iraq and left when I was 5 and moved to London and then Athens and then at age seven, moved to Canada. We didn't get to this area, the Central Valley, until I was in high school. But I will tell you, because my, you know, early childhood was so frenetic in terms of movement, I really consider Stanshaws county my home. We landed here when I was a sophomore in high school and I went to MJC here and then went off to UC Davis. By and large, this is my community. And I think my earliest memories are just down the street at civic club, the Assyrian American Civic Club, going to countless weddings and social engagements and parties and just running around that hall. As both a kid, when we were visiting in the summers before we moved here full time and then as a teenager volunteering there, those would be my earliest memories. As growing up in my Assyrian community, which is a very rich and vibrant sub community of Stanislaus county, were you. Aware that that critical part of your DNA was being built out, that this was home? You realized it and it would be home? Absolutely. You know, we chose this as our Home. My parents did. Their end goal was always to arrive to Modesto in Stanislaus county, even when we left Iraq, because there was already an Assyrian community, a very vibrant one here, and our relatives were here, our family members, so they knew they wanted to end up here. Even though we took a little detour along the way and ended up both in the other countries than in Canada. This was very much a community we chose to be a part of. What does the word community itself come to mean to you in the context of your life? For me, it's relationships, and that's pretty generic, I know. But for me, having vested relationships in the community we live in, we say at the community foundation, Stanislaus community foundation, that our core sort of vision is that this is a community of choice, and that means no one's here by default. People are here because they want to be here. They didn't get priced out of another housing market. And so I do sense that there's a difference between people that live here, are intentional about living here and building relationships and building community. And those that are kind of like, I'm here, and I'm just, you know, biding my time, or I want to be somewhere else, or we're two hours close to everything, so that's good enough. But really, I think community is choosing to be somewhere, being intentional about it and building those relationships around you. I don't go anywhere without running into people I know. And I just actually was in a restaurant having lunch with someone, left and ran into two other groups of people. And I turned and said to them, this is why I love this town, is because you can go anywhere and run into people, you know? So for me, that's what this community means. How have you seen the business and nonprofit communities evolve in the central valley in your time here? I definitely have seen the private sector, the business community, step up in new ways to support the community. About 10 years ago, actually, Stanshaw's community foundation, quantified through a research endeavor what the transfer of wealth was going to be in our community. And we wanted to figure out, how will people transfer their generational wealth to their successors, and where do those successors live? And as you can imagine, the majority of those heirs to the fortunes that have happened in this community don't live in this community anymore. And so billions of dollars is evaporating out of our community. But the private sector has really acknowledged and recognized that while they may be sort of either retiring or not, maybe as vested in this community with their private enterprise, they certainly, certainly philanthropically have Begun to invest in the community in new ways. Evan and Norm Porges are a great example of that. Nicole Pesco sold save Mart supermarkets, But she's doubling down on her philanthropic investments in our community. I could go on and on. At the community foundation, we have a bird's eye view into the philanthropic work that's happening in our community. And because of that, I think I see the private sector stepping up every single day to support our nonprofits. At the same time, they're also looking at the community and thinking of themselves as a vital cornerstone of leadership in the region. The private sector was instrumental in our Stanislaus 2030 initiative. They put up half the funds to make that initiative happen. During the pandemic, they were the first to step up and provide business relief before the cares act funding came in from the federal government. So we see every day the ways that the business community kind of is stepping up to the plate and saying, we're not just going to rely on government to solve our problems. And that, to me, is incredibly inspiring and heartening. With the nonprofits equally innovative, I think sometimes they're challenged because they're smaller or they're scrappy, which is good, but they struggle with their fundraising. We're not a huge community in terms of philanthropy, even though I just mentioned there's a lot of people stepping up to the plate from that end. But nonprofits are becoming more and more innovative. I think we saw during the pandemic that they had to rethink their business models and rethink how they deliver their programs in the context of the community. So I've definitely seen them evolve. You know, I've seen organizations create business models like Modesto Gospel mission and Valente Coffee roasters. So it's just an example, you know, center for human services reimagined the entire way that youth are supported with housing and mental health services through the youth navigation center. So nonprofits are definitely changing the game. Is there a brand? Is there something that you see that is a sort of a DNA like quality of the way that they're approaching innovation? That's a good question. I think it's varied. I really do. It depends on the leader at the organization and the culture of that organization. I think we look for just curiosity, creativity, in whatever form that may take. But we've really asked nonprofits to reimagine their business models because the old way just won't work. Whether it's government service contracts, fee for service, or fundraising, traditional fundraising, Both of those are sort of finite, Especially in a community like this. And so that's why social enterprise, which is a very innovative way to do nonprofit work, which is really to develop a business that supports your core mission as a nonprofit and that builds revenue for you to advance that common mission and at the same time train your clients, whether they're homeless, population, you know, moms leaving, domestic violence situations, people trying to, you know, getting into rehab, whatever it may be, to create a job program for those folks and at the same time drive revenue to your organization. So that's what we're pushing and have for quite some time is this idea of social enterprise. But what that looks like is varied. Can you share an example of a game changing moment of innovation that you happened upon, authored, were in the room with, with other talented people at the Stanislaus Community Foundation. There's lots of examples because we pride ourselves on being really close to change makers and supporting them in whatever way we can. I will tell you there was a moment in Stanislaus 2030 where the idea of bioindustrial manufacturing, taking the waste out of ag and turning it into other commercial uses, we realized that wasn't just a thing that we were making up in a small room because, you know, it was cool. And we realized, oh my goodness, this has incredible potential and scale. You know, even though I've been around a lot of change makers, we're always talking about how we disrupt traditional modes of thinking and systems and deliveries. This was a moment where I was like, this is the birth of an entirely new industry cluster that we didn't imagine when we set out to do the Stanislaus 2030 spree sprint, that we would end up in such an interesting place with an emergent industry that's so specific to Stanislaus County. That was amazing. It must have been the energy in the room, the creativity just happening upon this. Yeah. And recognizing, oh, other people see this too. It's not just us looking at the data. Everything supports this. It's very specific to this community, which is incredible. When you think about the potential and potentiality of bioindustrial manufacturing, how does it. Feel to be part of an inflection point like in history? It makes you stop and realize, this is what I want more of. Application is one of the cornerstone elements of the Wii. Can you tell me about a time when it all came together for you personally, when you applied the things from your different career experiences? Every day is a day to apply what I've learned. You know, I have a weird background. I started my degrees in rhetoric and I think that's woven in from my life being an English language learner. So I didn't speak English until I was seven years old, began to learn the language. Remembered my earliest memory, Pablo, and feeling is being on the outside looking in and not being able to communicate. And I realized even at that young age that that was going to be my superpower, that once I learned this language, I wasn't just going to learn it, I was going to master it. Three years later, maybe four, we started competing in speech and debate competitions. Both my older sister and I, by the time we were teenagers, we were winning speech and debate competitions. Wow. And this is from someone who didn't know how to speak, read, or write English at all. So I will tell you, communication is been the through line in all of my career endeavors, Whether it was my rhetoric degree at UC Davis, whether it was I started my career in broadcast journalism at a radio station. When I started my nonprofit work, it was in marketing and communications. Okay. So the application for me, even at the community foundation, even today, is how do you take an abstract idea? How do you take a complex challenge? How do you take needs that are in the community and communicate them in a way that's digestible and usable to people with wealth and means and resources to impact that need or that complex challenge? That's what it boils down to. Every day is every day I apply both what I've learned and what's innately, I think, native to me and my particular superpower. And I translate those things. I'm still translating now, 30, 40 years later. What would our students be best served to know about applying what they learn here with us? I would say the best way to apply their learning is real world experience. Right? So if they can get their hands on an internship, even if they can't get an internship, meet with people you know, you've sent students my way. I meet with folks all the time that are looking for their first step or looking for a career transition or looking for, whatever it may be, mentorship. I would say if you can't get an internship, meet with people that are doing the type of work you want to do and ask them what they learned, how they got there, but also ask them how to connect other people in that industry. So even if they don't have a position available, ask them to introduce you to three of their friends, and before you know it, you've got a massive network, you know, to bring it back to relationships. Community, someone with a relational network is invaluable. Most of us that are immigrants didn't have Parents growing up that had those relational professional networks. Right. They may have had them within our cultures and our sort of micro communities, our places of worship, what have you. But my parents worked at dry cleaners, so they didn't. They didn't have the network I needed in order to advance my career post graduation. So I started meeting with people. I got an internship at kfbk, a radio station. So I would just say application lives in sort of the internships in the summers, even during school, wherever you can get just even a few hours a week of exposure is so critical otherwise. I see students all the time graduating, and, you know, they've worked to make money, and I get it. That's needed. But, you know, that doesn't translate then into the experience an employer is looking for. Unfortunately, it's a lot in the classroom. And mentoring students, when they look at money, like you mentioned, is an ends goal or a means goal, like, which one is it? You know, money follows smart people. I've never started thinking about salary and money first. It's always kind of come to me because I'm focused on how do I build my skill set, how do I deepen this passion I have, how do I learn more, how do I get curious, how do I hustle harder? And then the money follows that. But I never start with the money conversation. I'm getting from that Attention to craft. Absolutely, yes. And I don't think people think of their careers as crafts anymore. That's a beautiful thing. Actually, you're right. We each have a gift. I really believe that. A unique gift. And I'm not placing that as some lofty goal. I'm saying my unique gift is to be present and relational with whoever's right in front of me. And I'm deeply curious about every person that sits in front of me. I don't know their kids and what they're up to and who they are and how they were created and what they think about what they did last weekend. What are they gonna do next weekend? And I remember all of it. And so I'm not saying that your gift has to be lofty or super uber intellectual, but I do think everyone possesses something, and finding that little spark is the key to then start the career. What role do you believe research plays in your everyday life as CEO? Yeah. So at the Community foundation, because the issues we deal with, as I mentioned, are complex and nuanced, we always start with data first. We find out, you know, what does the data tell us? So we had an early grade level reading initiative. We Wanted to understand why are third graders not reading a grade level. So we look at the data. Only 30% of students in Stanislaus county at the time we started the initiative, which was called Stanislaus Reads read at grade level. And that's the canary in the coal mine. That was an important data point because once you in third grade, if you're not reading at grade level, they stop teaching reading, you know, as a subject matter. So but, but you have to keep reading history and science, everything. So if you're not master, if you've not mastered reading by grade level, you're never going to catch up for the rest of your educational career and certainly just in life. It's the thing, the data point that then says this is this person's trajectory if they don't overcome this. And in our community it was 30% of students were reading, so 70% were leaving talent on the table at an early age. And if you go back further, kinder, people aren't entering kindergarten. Kids ready to learn, 30% only. So that data point actually tracks across the trajectory of our educational sort of pathway. So it's things like that. We look for data and we look for the data that then is the canary in the coal mine. Because we are overwhelmed by data by all of us, but especially at the community foundation. So we're always looking for where is the data point that really tells a story and tells a really meaningful story and how do we dig beneath that data point to understand what's happening. So research plays a big role because we are, as we're thinking about our investments, we're trying to understand what's the larger picture, what's the data. Good example. We're getting ready to make investments in our media ecosystem and really rebuild community journalism. And so we did a comprehensive market assessment to understand how do people receive their news and what's the quality of that content. So we're looking at data and that data is always a response to the questions we're asking ourselves. With Stanislaus 2030, we asked what is a quality job? What is it to have a good, well paying job in Stanislaus? What's the wages, the benefits and what industry would supply those jobs. We literally started with that one sort of question and it unraveled a whole other set of questions and data points. I'm fascinated by the work of Stan 2030, as so many are. Was it a matter of starting at the desired outcome and then working backwards? Yes, we had, the county was our partner and they always start with what does success look like? And for us, it was to build quality jobs at the scale of our population, which means thousands upon thousands of new jobs, and to remove the barriers that may exist for people to access those jobs, whether those barriers are training or whether those barriers are things like childcare or transportation. So that's what the success statement was, creating quality jobs at scale. And not just quality jobs. We also were talking about financial security. So it may not be a job, it may be starting your own small business, but either or both of those things lead to a more vibrant economy. So, yeah, we always start with the end goal in mind. So from all of that, I'm getting quality of public transportation, not just wages, benefits, being able to offer or support people, getting the licensing and the proper licensing to start childcare. Entrepreneurial ventures. Yep. Yeah. So now Stanislaus 2030 has taken on a life of its own. The community foundation was part of the original group that put the whole thing together. But we also don't believe in holding onto anything once we start it. We're too small of a team and we're meant to stay agile and nimble. So we are. What I always say about philanthropy is it's a test kitchen. It's a place where you can test some things, and I have numerous examples of doing that. But then we turn it over to other folks to scale it. So we have agility. And our typical partners are government, whether it's the school district or the county or Modesto Junior College or Stan State or workforce development. But philanthropy is excellent at testing things. We have agility, we have nimbleness and government at scale. And I believe with it, when you marry up agility with scale, some incredible things can happen. But government on its own isn't going to cook up some prototypes or pilot programs quickly. We can. And because we have a trusted relationship with all the folks I just mentioned, all those agencies can usually turn it over or bring them alongside the prototyping phase and then say, okay, here's what we learned, here's what we recommend. You know, take it and run with it. And they have. So the success story, the overarching Success story of Stan 2030 will read with something that begins with grassroots support, small businesses, nonprofits, multisector effort backed by, by. Business, private sector funding in partnership with government funding in a very short period of time with world class consultants like Brookings. That to me is the ingredients. That's the recipe card for the stew that leads to significant change at a population level. If you could comment on how Brookings became involved, how that became an Element. We were looking for folks that couldn't. Wouldn't just compile data, but really deeply analyze our data. And so very few, very few think tanks do tanks. McKinsey was one, and the other was Brookings. They did a lot of work in Fresno right before we started our work here. And they were the two key partners in Fresno also with their Fresno Drive initiative. So it's very easy for us to kind of look at both firms and say, you know, who's. Who has the time, energy, and can frankly meet our much smaller budget than Fresno to make this happen. And we wanted a comprehensive market assessment and a framework, and that's what Brookings brought to the table. We've been blessed to have some amazing people on this show. I rarely encounter someone who I have a really hard time telling where, you know, the art is from. The art. The way that you flow and communicate your superpower is really remarkable. Does it feel like a vocation to you? Not at all. It's a calling. Okay, so I will tell you, I don't think about work a lot. I spend a lot of my time just being really still and letting the work happen around me. And so being the stillest person in the room or the stillest person in a chaotic situation is the ultimate power move, because you're coming from a very. A much deeper place than a reactionary place. So I have two people that I have watched kind of go about their day. One was Jeff Grover, who was the chair of our board a few years after I started the Community Foundation. So I work closely with him as the leader on our board. And the other is Cindy Duennas, who used to run the center for Human Services. She just retired about a month ago. And both of them, I noticed when we were in group meetings, were always so thoughtful, and they sort of said the thing that everyone was thinking but hadn't yet said or hadn't yet articulated, and they would articulate it in a really meaningful way, and they just could see the bigger picture. They could see the whole versus everyone else kind of touching pieces of the whole. And I asked both of them, how do you. You know, I've noticed this about you. What is that? And both of them said, almost identical, the same response. They said, we start our days very intentionally. We get up in the morning, and whether it's meditation, prayer, whatever it is, but for about an hour before anyone else in their household is awake, they have time to just themselves, and they're communing with something. And usually the communion is with your own Inner sort of being and self, the quiet, still small voice that's inside all of us. And the more you can tap into that and if you could start your day that way, to me, you'll never work a day in your life because what you're really doing is dancing with whatever's happening in your day. So to me, it's not a vocation. The calling is just to respond to whatever's right in front of me. And that's the skill I'm constantly honing. I don't always get there, but I'm trying. So your days begin mindfully? I try, yes. No phone, you know, I have things I read, but usually not on my phone, they're books. And then I. About an hour, just kind of staring into the near distance. I'm a self confessed mindfulness proponent, but I don't always get it right. None of us do. It's. Was that something that came into your life midstream? Early, early on? Something that your constant desire to consume data and learning, did it come from that? Yeah. So it came from crisis. At the age of 42 things happened, 2014 to 2015 or so. One was I got a divorce. And you know, for someone who's an achiever and you know, other people look to as a leader, I failed at something spectacularly. And what I thought of at the time is a failure. I don't think. I don't believe in failure, actually. I believe everything is here to inform us and there's nothing to get wrong. But. But to me, at the time, I felt that I failed at something really sacred. And so that stopped me in my tracks. At the same time, I had a radical preventative double mastectomy in the same year. And so as someone who was sort of really strong, tough as nails, really prided myself on sort of keep going, that hustler mentality, I kind of climbed my way to the top of my profession at least is to have two things happen so suddenly. And so it paused. It definitely gave me more than pause. That word humbled me. Like I realized, oh, your time here is super fleeting. You are not here to change maybe the world. You're here to change what's around you. And you're only going to do that by changing yourself. And so you can go through that and either kind of keep moving and not really learn anything from it, or you can pause and stop and really understand my life is falling apart for a reason. There's this beautiful Indian goddess. She has a really long name, but what it boils down to Is she's the goddess of never not broken. And so she's always breaking and putting herself back together. Breaking and putting herself back, breaking and putting. That is the move, is that it fragments and then there's wholeness, fragmentation and then wholeness. And so that's just life. It's not personal to any of us. It's going to come, it's going to go. And what we do with it is the beauty of life. So that stillness that cultivating a deeper sense of being, if you will, through my days really came out of that time. I went through that surgery and came out and was a very different person on the other end of it. Or maybe I was back to my original nature and everything else. The artifice dropped away. Is there a sort of elegance and impermanence, Stephanie to impermanence? Oh, absolutely. Because it's so real. It's the only thing that's real. We try to hold on. It's like, no, no, no, nothing, nothing stays the same. And once we recognize that, wow, power, self like that is a powerful thing to recognize is it's all going to come and go and our only job is to welcome it when it arrives and release it when it goes. And that's it. The power move, right? And power with a small P, not. A big P. There's a beautiful line. I'm reminded of a poem by Marilyn Hacker. It said it starts off with, did you love. Well, whatso very soon you left. Oh, I love that. You know, you say like, I'm just going to get a little more like this probably is veering into philosophical direction. But oh, we love that. You know, the Buddhists, you know, have this. That's really what is at the crux of Buddhism is that you can't like clinging to or resisting something. 99% of our days are spent in one of those two modes. Either I like this and I want more, the craving, the desire, or I hate this, the resistance. I don't want it in my life. Or I'm, you know, bemoaning or grieving. And so one is clinging to what was or what you want, and the other is pushing away those things that, you know, you don't want. But really at the end of the day, if you can get to equanimity, love that word, the center point, the dao that is sort of being with what is and releasing what will no longer serves you and you're no longer serving and you know, allowing the cravings to not be overtake you, having them become preferences. That's What? Sometimes my prayer in the mornings is. Allow my cravings to become mere preferences because, you know, it just kind of. The dance is a little different. You're not clenched to anything. Who is Marian Cannon? Ugh. I mean, I can be a real asshole. Can I use that word? Yes. I don't apologize for that anymore. I mean, I apologize if I've hurt people in the past or in the. In the current sense. Who is Marianne? I would say Marianne is just still a young Assyrian kid who's, you know, on the outside looking in and brings an outsider's perspective, even though people would claim she's on the inside of the room now. So I often say I'm a trusted disruptor. I build trust. I'm relational. We talked about that. But I hate the status quo, and I'm here to disrupt. And so if someone pulls me into a room or into a conversation, into a meeting, I'm not just warming up a seat. That's not my job. I want to go back to early career Marianne, as you were sort of gently leading us there. What was she like? I was definitely that word, hustler. I was hungry for new experiences. I wanted to taste everything, try everything. I had probably 10 different jobs between graduating from college and landing at community hospice at age 30. So for about nine years, I probably had 10 different jobs. I mean, yeah, it was. And I got fired from a few. A few. I left after six months, a year. It wasn't a good fit. And again, all of it served me. I wouldn't kind of be where I am now or land at community hospice and know what I know at age 30 if I hadn't had all those myriad of experiences. But definitely a hustler, Definitely trying to get ahead. Where did she see herself now? Then I wanted to be Christiane Amenpour. You want to be Christian Amenpour, the reporter? Yeah, I wanted to travel the world and be this globetrotting investigative reporter. And then I realized how, like, hard. How much money, like, you don't make any money in journalism in the early days, you know, So I didn't have the patience for it. Christiana Mimpour is pretty awesome. Yeah, she is. If you're going to pick a role model. That was who I thought I would be. Who were Marianne's earliest allies? I will tell you, A mentor I had was the CEO of Community Hospice when I arrived there at age 30. His name is Harold Peterson. He's still in the community, and he was the antithesis of what you would think of as a hospice CEO. You know, you'd think of this, like, nurse or usually a female, you know, because it's a very compassionate form of healthcare. He was the total opposite. He came out of ag. He ran Tri Valley. He was like a vice president at Tri Valley. And he said yes to working at hospice as a CEO for, like, six months, interim, because the previous CEO had left. And when I joined, he'd been there, like, 15, 20 years by then as the CEO. So he stayed. And he was just a teddy bear. He was incredible. And I remember getting there at age 30, full of Vim and vigor. I was like, why aren't you fighting this? Or, we need to tell them that and we need to go to the hospital and ask for this. And he would just kind of look at me and he would say, is that the hill you're going to die on? I would be like, yes, yes, that is the hill I'm gonna die on. Watch me climb it and watch me die on it. Double, triple. And I would learn. I would get my ass handed to me every time on that hill. I'd run back to him with my tail between my legs and slowly. It was like. He was an incredibly gentle leader, and I wasn't used to that, especially in a male leader of a huge. You know, it was a big healthcare organization at the time. It still is. But he garnered so much respect. He was. He was. He was very still inside. And I. Maybe that was my first time seeing a leader come from a deeper place, because he definitely did. I remember asking him. He cried all the time. And I said to him, harold, like, this is a hospice organization. Our patients are all going to die. Like, I was kind of like, we have this morbid hospice humor. I'm like, why do you still cry? You've been doing this 15, 20 years. And he said, I cry more, not less, because I really. I know, I know now, you know, I actually cried less when I first started, and now I see it. I cry at the drop of a hat. Anytime someone tells me of something hard in their life, I feel it deeply. And so his job softened him. It didn't harden him. And to me, boy, what a beautiful thing to mentor into someone else is. You don't get harder as you age. You actually get softer and more tender. So I know your question was about allies, but I switched. I jumped to mentors. To me, yeah, he was definitely a mentor. What would Marianne now say to start a conversation with Marianne? Then? I would just listen because that Marianne thinks she had a lot to say. You wind her up and let her go. And I think I still in some ways am that way, but I don't know. Yeah, that's probably my best response. I would tell her to slow down if I would give her advice. She'll arrive at wherever she thinks she's going to go, but it's going to be a whole new place than what she imagined. You think you'd get along? Maybe. Maybe we get the maybe. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Probably not. Probably not. Would either of you have the patience to deal with either? Right? Exactly. I don't think so. I really don't. You see that like in very intense early career professionals where they have this perceived career arc and then something happens and they die on a couple hills. Then it's boom. This wisdom is now imparted upon you. Totally. There was a great line from a Rolling Stones documentary. It was 25 by 5. They asked Mick Jagger about Keith Richards. He talks about it. Case of Bad Gypsy and all this stuff. And. And he finally comes down on this thing that reminds me of, just like people in general, I say, you can't be what you would perhaps would like to be your whole life. Yeah. Do you think that's true? Absolutely. Well, okay. One of my favorite stories or sort of ways to think about this is Rob Bell. He was like a theologian and a pastor and kind of then left, you know, all that stuff behind. But he has this great podcast and he's talking about light, heavy light, and so light, heavy light. He actually saw Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama speaking on a, you know, a panel together, just the two of them. And he remembers going in and thinking, oh, my gosh, they're going to impart all this incredible spiritual wisdom upon us. And he said they spent 99% of that time in that seminar that he was listening to them live. He was there in the. In the audience laughing and poking fun at each other. And he. And they talked about joy more than anything else. And these are men that incredibly accomplished lives have sort of helped, you know, pull people out of poverty and desperation and suffering. And they spend most of their time poking at each other and laughing hysterically, like, head back laughing. And he realized there's this idea of light, heavy light, the lightness of youth. We've all been there and it's a beautiful thing. And it's, you know, sort of the effervescent bubbly joy that you feel as a kid before the world kind of knocks it out of you, before you're conditioned into Something else, that lightness. And then there's the heavy. Heavy is what happens to all of us. You talked about impermanence. Our bodies are going to fail us. Our children may disappoint us. Our marriages may crumble. Our careers may not get to where they wanted to go. Even if none of that happens, our parents will age and leave us. Sure. So even if you live a perfect life, you are destined for some heaviness at some point. And it's never maybe on a set time, but it happens at some point in your life. And for most people, it's in the middle of life. So you leave the lightness of youth. You walk through this heaviness. And then we all know people that either stay in the lightness of youth and that's not necessarily a good thing as an adult, or they stay mired in the muck of the heaviness. They're victims to it. And we know that's not a good thing either. And then there's people that pierce through to the other side of that heaviness, and there's lightness again. But it's not the lightness of youth. It is something much different. It's a spiritual lightness. It's recognizing, like you said, the impermanence of everything and still choosing joy, still choosing a lightness of being. And so, to me, that's where I've arrived. In some ways, that doesn't mean there's more. Not more hardship coming my way. There certainly will be certainly more heaviness. But I am just. I don't take it seriously. I don't take myself seriously. You asked about young Marianne. God, she took herself so seriously. She read her own press releases. It's like, oh, I don't. I've gotten awards and they're in my garage. I hate to say that I'm like, I gotta take this to my office. As long as I don't name the names of the organization. Yeah, I don't want it. But I'm literally like, it's still sitting in my garage. I got. My kids are always like, mom, take that somewhere. Because it's in the way of our bicycles or whatever. So it's like, I don't. It's lightness again. It's lightness, but it's tinged with the knowledge of what heavy is. Complete this sentence. When I look back, I laugh at my own bravado. When I look forward, I laugh. Keep it consistent. I mean, because I, you know, there's nothing to take that seriously anymore. I mean, when you've had the health experiences I've had. You know what I mean? Like, man, really? When you've worked at hospice the way I have, eight years. Some of the most alive people on this globe are people that are dying. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is wasted on them. The longer I do what I do, the more I. The more I realize how little I know. Starting something often means listening. There are always people who hate you, no matter what. Haters gotta hate. Life has taught me too. Just take it all in, enjoy it. My mantra is joy. Winning teaches you. It's not about winning. Losing teaches you can never lose. I feel like we should have the sound effect intermittently throughout this, this episode. What do you think, Frank? Being a leader makes you humble. The hardest thing about learning to trust your instincts or intuition is. Goes against what everyone else is telling you to do. The mad beauty of unorthodoxy is that. Oh, I love that. The mad beauty of unorthodoxy is where it shows up. The surprising nature of it. Sending the elevator back down means someone. Else is going to come back up. Creating synergies that make actual impact absolutely. Demands deep collaboration. Deep, deep, deep humility. Collaboration, yeah. The thing that people most often get wrong about me is that I know. More than I actually know. I think people look at me, they're like, so what's the answer? I'm like, what answer? I don't know. I just showed up. I didn't know there'd be a quiz today. There'd be a quiz. I didn't know you were looking at me for the answer. Answers. But, but, but yes. Seriously, keep the wind blowing because I got nothing. Brand of association. You know the rules. I'll say a word and if you like, say the first one that comes to your mind. Leadership. Ice cream. Have you seen the mantra? If you want to. If you want people to like you, sell ice cream. But if you want to be a leader, like, that's not. Leaders don't. Aren't often. Sometimes they're not liked. You can't be a people pleaser and be a leader. Really? You think, oh, God, no. The whole point of leadership. And everyone calls themselves leaders these days, but the whole point of leadership is you're going to tread new ground. You're leading something, right? So you're treading new ground. And I'm not necessarily. I don't consider myself a leader of people. I consider myself welling at the edge of possibility. And to me, that's leadership is to kind of push the margins, push the edges of our known Ways of being and doing not. Hey, everybody, get behind me, and I'm going to forge a new path. It's. Ooh, this is interesting. This data, this research, this question, this issue. Why aren't we doing it this way? Why do we do it this way? What's happening here? Who's working on this issue? That's the most leaderful stance I think someone can take. If people are following you as secondary to what you're experimenting with, what you're thinking about, what's keeping you up at night, that's for me. What leadership is. Synergy. Dance. Possibility. Probability. Now I'm gonna rhyme with everything you're saying. Synonym time. Give her a word, she gives you a synonym. Now she's playing with me. I don't even know what synonym means. Did you say cinnamon? I'm just kidding now. No, we need. We need a pair of toms and a symbol. I know. I thought it'd be darker in here, by the way. Really? The studio? Yeah. Cause your voice is like, hi, it's Delilah. After Dark. You know, I keep pushing for dark. It's never gonna happen. It's never gonna happen. Anyways, keep going. Sorry. Research. Curiosity. Ambiguity. Possibility. Excellence. Everyone. Peace. Fleeting. Legacy. Birthright. Dance. Life. And now we come to the part of our beloved podcast, which we have affectionately named the eleven, pilfered shamelessly from James Lipton, who pilfered it from Proust, So we feel pretty good about it. What is your favorite part of starting something new? Just the limitlessness of it. You know, I love starting new things. I start new things every day. I feel like new conversations, new people to meet, new, you know, challenges to take on. Every day is new, and we forget that we put on our old habits every day, like an old comfortable sweater, old comfortable shoes. Every day, we can completely reimagine our lives and ourselves. So I love it. I love the smell of erasers and pencils at the beginning of a school year. You know, it's one of my, like, most formative memories as a kid. And so that's what I think of when we. After we start something new is just, wow, this could go anywhere, and it'll go in places we don't even know. I love it. It's a wonderful sentiment. What is your least favorite part of starting something new? I think trying to convince people to come alongside, you know, again, if we're dancing at the edges, like I said earlier, as leaders, to get people to see a vision, even if it's slightly different than yours, but to see that it's possible, you know, and we work in systems or with systems that are inert and hard to move. And so even though we bring a lot of energy to maybe the conversation or to the new thing that's wanting, sometimes our systems are ill equipped to work with us. And that's been heartbreaking. This is a radio station, after all. What music artist, genre or song reminds you most of your early days in entrepreneurship and innovation? Anything by Bob Marley. Any sort of Rastafarian reggae type music. Just. It was light and possible and yeah, I love it. Love the beat. What I love about Rastafarian music too is it's so joy. The beat is joyful. But then when you listen deeply to the words, they're rooted in. In this pain, but like they're transmuting it into something else. It's fascinating. I love the alchemy of that. You take a basic element and you transmute it into a whole nother property. Give me that kind of music any day. Oh my God, them belly full. But we hungry. I love that. What did you enjoy most about the early days of your entering into social entrepreneurship? I thought I could get further than I did. And there was a beauty to that innocence. I will tell you. I really thought I could move systems. I don't believe that anymore, not as myself on my own, certainly, or even with a small collection of people. So I think I'm a little more. It's not jaded or cynical. It's just a little more muted, a little more realistic about what's possible. What food or beverage reminds you most of the memories of your first entry into social entrepreneurship? I don't think I have a food that reminds me the most of. Yeah, I don't. I mean, I just. I don't live to eat. Weren't there bagels? Yeah, I don't. Interesting. You continue to fascinate. What profession? Non entrepreneurial. Non social entrepreneurial do you admire the most? I would say any sort of theological. I just love people that are delving into human consciousness from a spiritual standpoint. So one day my retirement plan is to retreat to a monastery. And I mean it. And you'll never hear from me again. And I'll have lived a very complete life if I can end it that way. But those are the people that I. So I don't know if it's a profession. It's definitely non entrepreneurial. Is monks and theologians. What job prior to nonprofit entrepreneurship did you like the most? I loved working at a cafe when I was at Davis. It was called Miska's and I was slinging coffee all day and it was such a tangible, hands on. I didn't have to think about anything. I just made people's lattes and I loved it. You know, you're not trying to like bring about world peace, you're trying to perfect the foam on that cappuccino. That's about it. Hey, that's, that's it. That's peace right there. Hey, the future of the universe hangs in that delicate balance. And those things, of course. What job prior to social entrepreneurship did you dislike the most? And why? Oh, I worked at this place for like a month. That's as long as I lasted. Were they bought and sold mailing lists for a living? This is back to pre Internet days where like people would call you, you'd work with marketing firms and they'd want like a list of women ages 35 to 45 that lived in this geography that needed, you know, and you. So you're pulling lists all day and working with Excel spreadsheets. Oh, I just was not cut out for that job. Was it just the repetition, the repetition. The number, the just the spreadsheets. There was no humanity to it. And I was a low man on the totem pole, but it was just not. Not for me. And last but not least, if a heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates? What took you so long? Immediately thereafter? Immediately thereafter. That's great idea. Or hopefully it'll be 100. No, no. But you got to appreciate the moment. What took you so long? Hey, and about that. Immediately thereafter, what idea or innovation would you like to push him her they it for humanity? Oh, that's so good. I would say, I would say to God, they them it all of. I would say to God, have people understand the place of their ego versus their soul. Can we work on that? Can we have people understand the difference between the mindless loop of ego in their thought process versus the deeper voice of the soul and God? If you could solve that. Everything else follows Marian Cannon. It's been a pleasure having you visit the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Studio anytime. This was fun. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Studio. This podcast is part of the Warrior Entrepreneurship and Innovation program, affectionately known as the We. Our series is recorded on the campus of Stanislaus State at the KCSS radio station and produced by Frankie Tovar. Follow and subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform. I'm Dr. Pablo Paredes Romero. Wishing you the best of everything. Always.