Rising Forward: Stories of Change
by WUWM 89.7 FM - Milwaukee's NPR · 16 episodes
BusinessEntrepreneurship
Hosted by Shannon Sims, this podcast goes behind the headlines to explore the social entrepreneurs transforming Milwaukee and beyond. Shannon leverages her networks, resources and journalistic curiosity to uncover the stories of innovative changemakers who are building businesses that solve pressing community challenges. Each episode features authentic conversations with entrepreneurs who are rising from their communities, leaning into social concerns, and creating sustainable solutions that move Wisconsin forward — embodying our state's motto. From Milwaukee neighborhoods to communities across the region and eventually statewide, these are the stories of people who refuse to accept the status quo. Join Shannon as she disc...
Latest episodes
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24 min
Take What You Need
Gina Sopa spent thirty-two years in the air, flying for Delta. When she came down to earth — retiring in 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, a few years after losing her husband — s…
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24 min
Build the Table: What Five Women Taught Me This Season
Five episodes into this stretch of the season, host Shannon Sims noticed something no singleconversation could show her on its own: the same pattern, showing up in five completelyd…
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24 min
Inside Uplifting Mansion
Deanna Singh's father gave her one rule growing up: never measure your success by how well you're doing — measure it by how well the people around you are doing. She's spent her wh…
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24 min
The Vessel: A Blueprint for Closing the Gap Between Zip Codes
Two Milwaukee zip codes, a few minutes apart on the same freeway. One number between them: a twelve-year gap in life expectancy. That number is where Oby Nwabuzor's story turns — t…
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24 min
Ahead of the Curve: Lisa Geason-Bauer
In grad school, studying to become an environmental sociologist, Lisa Geason-Bauer read a book that changed how she thought about business. It introduced her to an idea called the…
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24 min
Jon Bishop: Microfinance & Patient Capital
Jon Bishop wanted to be a biologist since he was nine years old — he spent his graduate years studying bees in the Alaskan backcountry, training to understand ecosystems well enoug…
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24 min
Petals and Purpose: the B Side
At nineteen years old, Steven Dyme was selling flowers out of a cart outside his own highschool graduation — one year after he'd stood on that same stage and delivered thecommencem…
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24 min
The Whole Business: A, B Corp Explainer
It sounds like a tax status. It isn't.Certified B Corporation is a full audit of a company — not just what it sells, but how it payspeople, what it does to the environment, and how…
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24 min
Compound: The interest that never stops paying forward
A phone call. Five overdraft fees. A $5 slice of pizza. That's the moment Brenda Campbell — executive director of Secure Futures — realized financial literacy was never really abou…
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24 min
Building a galaxy of possibility: Nadiyah Johnson
Nadiyah Johnson dreamed of being a CNN correspondent. Instead, she became one of the go to figures in Wisconsin's technology landscape.In this episode of Rising Forward: Stories of…
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24 min
Fruition MKE: Tiffany Miller chose to Bloom on Milwaukee's Near West side
Some business origin stories start with a pitch deck. Tiffany Miller's started with a seed. A word written on a chalkboard in a Near West Side Milwaukee classroom. A flower made fo…
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24 min
The Milwaukee movement changing how folks see food as medicine: Kathy Koshgarian
What if the prescription your doctor handed you wasn't the only option? That question led Kathy Koshgarian to build something Milwaukee had never seen before. Today she leads Food…
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22 min
He paid $1 for a lot nobody wanted, then he got to work: Derrick Cainion
Derrick Cainion spent 20 years helping people understand each other as a sign language interpreter. Then COVID-19 hit, his son turned three, and a vacant lot on Milwaukee's north s…
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24 min
Funding the dream, how mission-driven business actually get funded: Nina Johnson & Tony Shields
There's money in Wisconsin right now looking for the right people to fund. Most social entrepreneurs don't know how to find it — or how to be ready when it finds them. In this epis…
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24 min
Stephanie Melnick helping women entrepreneurs break barriers and make an impact
Women are breaking barriers and rewriting the rules of entrepreneurship often in systems that weren’t built for them. Stephanie Melnick has been practicing law in Milwaukee for ove…
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24 min
From 14 Moves to $1 Billion: Kevin Newell's Rising Forward Story
Kevin Newell moved fourteen times before he went to college. Today, he's transforming that instability into solutions — as founder and CEO of Royal Capital Group, Newell has built…