Future Makers Coalition marks season five of its podcast with a focus on resilience

Season five of the Future Makers Coalition's Talent Talks podcast explores themes of community and business resilience after natural disasters and seasons of adversity.

Tessa LeSage, the coalition's Collaboratory chief impact officer, hosts members of the community to talk about how their businesses or fields have supported their communities through hardship.

"We have a million things that happen, like hurricanes and pandemics and everything else, that challenge both our ability to work together, but also challenge the progress that we've been making, and we sometimes have to go back to the drawing board," LeSage said.

The podcast's goal is to inform and educate local businesses on how they can better support their employees and community. LeSage organizes the podcast guests with Alex Breault, the coalition's partnership manager along with navigators and the employer recruitment specialist. They work as a team to schedule guests, edit and publish the podcast episodes.

LeSage had Mia Rae Stephens and Isom Rigell from Chapman Insurance Group for the first episode of season five. The episode titled "Weathering the Storm: Building Workforce Resilience and Community Empathy" analyzed Chapman Insurance Group's approach to hurricane preparation and recovery. They discussed how Chapman Insurance Group supported its employees while meeting the insurance needs of the community after Hurricane Ian.

Chapman Insurance Group is local to Southwest Florida, with offices from Port Charlotte to Naples. The group offers a variety of insurance policies for personal coverage and commercial coverage.

Thousands of Southwest Florida residents were filing insurance claims to begin the restoration process after Hurricane Ian, including Chapman Insurance Group's employees.

"We believe strongly that if our team, our house, is not taken care of, we cannot send our people out there to do good in the community," Stephens said.

The podcast began around LeSage's kitchen table in 2020. Isolated by the COVID pandemic, she worried about the future of the coalition and its heart for collaboration.

"In a pandemic, I figured future makers would die because we were built on relationships and being face-to-face in meetings at a regular cadence," LeSage said.

Now in her 5th season, she discusses community resilience through second chance hiring. LeSage spoke with Paul Werner about hiring previously incarcerated individuals.

"Why would you, as an employer, want to consider Second Chance hiring when, from the outside, it feels like that might be risky to your business. But then, when you get up close and you hear a person's story, and you hear about what they have to offer and how it is possible to hire folks coming out of incarceration," LeSage said. "Studies show that they're actually more loyal and trustworthy employees than people who have not been incarcerated."

The latest podcast episode featured Blanca Beauchamp, the vice president of human resources at Conditioned Air.

Beauchamp and LeSage talk about Conditioned Air's unique hiring approach, job retention and how they do their best to break down hiring barriers.

Talent Talks is expanding on the Future Makers Coalition's greater goal of increasing education, employment rates and eliminating obstacles people face when trying to support themselves and their families. "I think we're really in a place right now where we're talking about community resilience, given how we are living in a world, especially here in southwest Florida, where we faced a lot of disasters," LeSage said. "How do we use what we know about the education and workforce system to try to ensure that when these things happen, it doesn't set us back as far as it has in some instances, so that we can be more resilient."

LeSage recently parted ways with the Future Makers Coalition to pursue other career interests. Whether or not the podcast will return for season six has not been decided.

Episodes are recorded in the coalition's private studio located at their office in downtown Fort Myers. Episodes are available on all major podcast platforms and on the Future Makers Coalition's website, futuremakerscoalition.com/. ¦