Atul Deshmane, a businessman, systems engineer, and re-elected official, talks with podcast Host Joy Gilfilen about the issue of digital communications, the speed of change, and how we are doing business around the world today. How has it changed over the past few years, and even just since the elections? Atul speaks to how his experience of talking with people in person, rather than just through electronic media, has changed the nature and quality of his understanding of relationships and human value.

He brings together issues related to broadband, digital media, and conserving energy to intersect with how technology has altered how people engage with the world. We discuss how people can feel separated, disconnected, and isolated from why things matter. Conversely, why it matters that we can make a huge difference locally to intentionally change our destiny in the future!

Interviewing Eric Flores, with the Freedom Project in Seattle, WA, presents a new view of how people can change their lives with help, time, and a change in circumstances.

Host Joy Gilfilen talks with him about his experience growing up as a teen, living inside the juvenile correctional system, and living in an environment where gangs, drugs, and shootings were common. It was just part of his life and a learned behavior from his surroundings.

Eric didn’t know another life or way of being until he came to a different state, had different mentors and opportunities, and found a different way of understanding the world. Seeing his children for the first time from inside a prison cell changed him forever. He saw how his decisions were affecting their lives, and he made a commitment to change.

Today, Eric has become a mentor and part of the counselor and coaching team to help people reenter the world outside the walls. He has been learning and teaching others how to build bridges to a better life when people are anticipating their release.

Guest Beth Brownfield speaks about the process of her remarkable life over 80 years and how she was shaped as a young person to become the grandmother and civic activist that she is today.

Host Joy Gilfilen has been learning from Beth about the Doctrine of Discoveries, the Reservation Schools and how this ties back to her ancestral heritage. Wisdom comes with the lived experience of learning the stories about how three of her Grandmothers were hanged during the Salem Witch Trials; the early military and slavery influences of her family impacted how she engaged in civics, education, business and more.

Beth has been significant locally in supporting the Lummi Nation,🛶Canoe Journeys, the Totem Journeys, the recognition that the indigenous peoples are the 1st peoples of this continent and the early heritage wisdom of what we now call the United States of America - a corporation.