Guest Sean Sessel: “I got to a really dark place because I felt like I had to make that choice: That I could either be financially successful but I could only do so if I sell my soul, sell my values─or, I could be broke. Neither one of those options was acceptable to me.”
Sean Sessel is a voracious learner with a fervent belief in the ability of the individual to better himself or herself. After an epiphany that he derived intrinsic enjoyment from continual learning and the sharing of knowledge with others, he decided to make a career of it and started the Oculus Institute. Sean developed a unique system called psychohacking and helps individuals escape burnout jobs and craft careers that truly inspire AND pay well. He works with people to prevent self-sabotage, dissolve stress, and discover their personal power and value.
Tony Greer founded T.G. Macro in 2016, an independent market analysis company, where he could combine 25 years in trading and 15 years of writing a daily newsletter into one analytical platform. He provides fundamental, technical, and behavioral analysis of global markets to nearly 1,000 individuals in his institutional client and personal subscriber base.
After graduating from Cornell University in 1990, Tony traded currencies and precious metals in the Treasury Departments of Sumitomo Bank and the Union Bank of Switzerland, followed by six years at Goldman Sachs running the Goldman Sachs Commodities Index and spot gold trading. Tony then began a career as an equity sales trader, educating his clients in the natural resources space, until he started T.G. Macro and introduced the Morning Navigator newsletter.
”Goldman Sachs was one of my big clients and I always tried to give them the most competitive price that I could in the FX markets. Through the broker market, I wound up meeting at a dinner the trader who was on the other end of the phone at Goldman Sachs. He was grateful that I quoted him such competitive prices and wanted to say thanks. He asked if I was interested in speaking to some people on their desk. It was the kind of thing that can happen in a career where you get to know the people that work at a competitor and wind up getting a job offer from them because they liked your style and thought that you could help their operation.”
An experienced, accredited college admissions consultant and essay coach, Kate Stone received her B.S. in Communications and a minor in Creative Writing at New York University. She continued as a Princeton University teaching fellow in Asia shortly before starting University Gurus. She transformed her passion for creative writing and storytelling into actionable strategies for the college admissions process, essays, and the application as a whole. Through her program she coaches students to develop and strategize their most powerful narratives based on their individual ideas and achievements.
“What we learned from the Harvard admissions scandal a few years back–I looked through all the transcripts out of curiosity–was top schools really value a personal development journey. Elite colleges cannot rely on grades and test scores only. They really want to understand a student's character, drive, engagement, impact and their dreams. As you know, with artificial intelligence, Chat GBT allows a student to plug in some prompts and it delivers a college essay that's pretty good, maybe even better than what they could write themselves. The schools and the admissions people are talking about making their essays much more creative and much more personal. That’s where storytelling is going to be even more important. Students have to identify their own focusing lens or thread to hang their content hat on, getting really creative to the degree that AI can't generate an application essay. That’s where personal storytelling is going to be even more important. Students will need to ask themselves if they are skilled enough as a writer to best express their values, what’s important to them, obstacles that get in their way around those values, are they allowing their true self to emerge, etc. If not, they will need to find support on how to express and differentiate themselves. I don’t do the work for my students. I usually spend two to four months helping them dig into themselves and craft their own college entry essays.”
"I always say that family and love should come first, and no matter what, set your priorities straight because it's not all about the money. We have to decide our priorities as soon as possible to avoid any regrets later on in life."
Ula Tinsley is a passionate autism advocate, featured writer at www.icare4autism.org and a talk show host on Autism Mama Bear Talk. She’s been raising autism awareness on a local and national level since 2010, when her son was diagnosed with a regressive form of autism. After gaining more experience and knowledge about different ways of treating ASD, she’s been supporting and consulting other families living with autism. Her latest project, Autism Mama Bear Talk, is a fast-paced interview show bringing informative and everyday inspiring stories from leading autism advocates, self-advocates, parents and medical experts.
John Timothy Brewer is an Army Special Forces veteran with more than 10 years of experience enabling those who act to defend life, family, and country. Knowing firsthand the importance of self-reliance, John has made it his mission to enable and empower others so they may live healthy, thriving lives.
His book, “Fight for Your Best Life” is the step-by-step Self-Defense Guide to personal empowerment, protecting your loved ones, and living fearless. John’s company is Mind, Shield, and Spear Consulting Group, LLC. With their dedicated team of experts, their clients receive guidance and mentorship in not just the physical techniques, but also the mental strategies to navigate challenging situations with confidence.
He considers his main areas of expertise to be safety and security, personal development, and military operations.
Steve Orrin offers three decades of extraordinary success in a series of high-level roles at top-tier companies that include Intel Corporation, Sarvega, Watchfire Inc., Sanctum Inc., First Genetic Trust Inc., Lockstar Inc., and SynData Technologies Inc. He has recently had the honor of being nominated as a Fellow at the Tortora Brayda Institute for AI & Cybersecurity. The Tortora Brayda Institute for AI & Cybersecurity is an International Think Tank dedicated to tackling big challenges within cybersecurity and AI. It engages private and public sector thought leaders worldwide to reshape and develop collaboration and partnering practices to improve business and economies.
He has developed a reputation as an industry leader, leveraging a history of delivering results in Innovation, Intrapreneurship, and Entrepreneurship. He is a Tech-enabled business professional who has launched and scaled companies and brought innovative industry-leading products to market. As Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Senior PE for Intel Corporation, Steve orchestrates and executes customer engagements in the federal space, overseeing the development of federal solution architectures to address challenges in government enterprise, national security, and other federal areas of focus.
“My high school mathematics teacher, Mr. Miller, had a unique way of making mathematics look interesting and exciting. I thrived in math under him, took advanced placement calculus and other courses, which helped me in my later life and career much more than it did in college. My appetite for mathematics and the idea that you didn’t have to rigidly stick to the textbooks, that math was much more than memorizing multiplication tables or cosigns, but that you could research and investigate the many other facets and the broader applications of math--what it was really about and how it permeates all dimensions of our world--was a powerful and positive influence on my life and career from that point forward.”