Main Street Moxie
Main Street Moxie was born out of our love of the spoken word and constantly being inspired by people, businesses, and organizations that are mavericks in their own way. Our guests took a leap, all because they believed in themselves, and as a result, made something out of nothing. They had a vision and the necessary belief, and paved a new way – they had MOXIE! You can learn from these moxie stories. We're all capable of moxie in our lives and through our conversations with guests, you'll learn how to move your own moxie along the moxie meter.
Episode 48: Mary O'Neill
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Happiness is a moxie job!Â
To kick off the 4th Moxie season, Mary O’Neill, co-creator and co-host of Main Street Moxie, explores the connection between happiness and moxie.Â
Happiness is a topic on which Mary is well-versed. She has immersed herself in the topic through the lens of multiple disciplines, and it underpins her work as an educator and life design and career coach.Â
For Mary, rainbows and u...
Episode 47: Sara Cousins
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Got holidays? Then you need moxie to get through them. The expectations, the standards, and the idealized version of the season can wear us down. Not anymore!
This episode of Main Street Moxie with Sara Cousins is here to help you celebrate the holidays in line with your values and priorities, leaving you saner and less depleted as you enter 2025.
Sara shares strategies and techniques to help us hold space for ourselves while finding connection with others during this holiday season and throughout the...
Episode 46: Olivia May
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Olivia finds and expresses her moxie through stand-up comedy. In this episode, Olivia explores how she grew her comedy moxie, describes her comedic process, and reflects on the challenges of leaving a highly structured, results-oriented career to dive into the unpredictable world of stand-up comedy.
Olivia started her comic explorations by testing the waters at countless open mics in New York City before moving to Charlotte, NC, for her corporate job and continuing her comedy journey there. While in Charlotte, she founded Olivia’s Fun and Flirty Comedy Sh...
Episode 45: Elaine Gonzalez Johnson
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Elaine’s moxie is exuberant and engaging. Her humor and encouragement make you feel like you got this–you got moxie! Elaine has put in the time and miles to discern who she is and how she wants to show up in the world in each season of her life. That unshakeable belief in herself is the foundation of her energy and zest for a successful life, as she defines it.
Elaine is an award-winning serial entrepreneur, educator, and speaker. She is best known for her role as the Founder and...
Episode 44: Lisa Worth Huber
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We all want peace, but the road toward it can be elusive. Our perceived differences loom large and seem insurmountable. Yet, some individuals like Lisa Worth Huber labor tirelessly to educate people about the self-work required to build peace and understand how the creative arts are a vehicle to express our stories, heal, and begin to bridge with others.
This work takes moxie! It’s granular and slow yet rich and rewarding, leaving Lisa with hope for building a family, community, and world where all are seen and valued. Peace provides a...
Episode 43: Housatonic Valley Regional High School International Travel Club
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Traveling both takes moxie and builds moxie. Just ask the Housatonic Valley Regional High School International Travel Club. Reinvigorated by Club faculty advisor Social Studies teacher John Lizzi, the club has taken students, faculty, staff, and parents to destinations such as the Galapagos, Iceland, Ireland, Scotland, and the Mediterranean coast.
In this Moxie episode, John and students Ellie Wolgemuth and Madison Melino describe their adventures, growth and moxie that have resulted from their journeys. In fact, Madison joined the podcast from the Reykjavik Airport after a glacier flood impacted her...
Episode 42: Moxie by Proxy: Nat Benchley on Peter Benchley
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Fifty years ago, a human vs. beast thriller set in a summer beach town was published and devoured by readers. That book was Jaws, a best-selling novel that spawned a blockbuster movie the following year. Between the book and the film, we were all afraid to go back in the water.
Peter Benchley, an established journalist and speechwriter, was instantly catapulted to fame as an author. Getting to that point took moxie! In this Moxie by Proxy episode, we talk with Nat...
Episode 41: Keith Moon and Special Olympics, CT
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In this episode of Main Street Moxie, Keith Moon shares stories about his longstanding involvement with Special Olympics, an organization with moxie built into its DNA.
Keith’s secret moxie sauce is recognizing a need and then finding a way to use his talents and skills to make a difference. He enjoys bringing people and organizations together to accomplish a larger goal.
Keith's involvement in Special Olympics began when he read an appeal in the Hartford Courant to raise needed fu...
Episode 40: Bill Johnson
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Bill Johnson believes moxie is essential for pursuing purpose, which he defines as becoming one's best self in service of at least one thing larger than oneself. This self-knowledge and action directed outward are why we’re here—and why he’s here, too.
Known as the “Dream Dean,” Bill continues to refine his Life Design Catalyst program, immersing himself in it to gain deeper insight into his own “why.” This place of deeper understanding and a growth mindset on steroids fuels...
Episode 39: Pieter Lefferts
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Pieter Lefferts is a visual artist, author, and musician who draws deeply from the natural world for creative inspiration and moxie. Over the years he has sought deeper communion with Nature to find balance and better understand himself and the world around him. In this work, he eschews perfection and instead embraces authenticity and intentionality, wherein perfection unfolds as the sum of the parts of an idea explored and life lived.
Pieter is a student of shamanism, indigenous wisdom, science, and natural history, which, in combination, inform his artistic process...
Episode 38: Moxie by Proxy--Pamela Hogan on Iceland's Women's Day Off
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In this Moxie by Proxy episode, we discuss the moxie of the women of Iceland through the camera lens of Pamela Hogan, Emmy award-winning filmmaker, journalist, and media executive.
In her latest documentary, The Day Iceland Stood Still, Pamela, and her collaborator, acclaimed Icelandic filmmaker Hrafnhildur Gunnarsdóttir, take us back to October 24, 1975, and the months leading up to that historic moment when 90 percent of Iceland’s women took the “day off,” bringing the country to a stand...
Episode 37: Craig Peterson
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Craig Peterson’s moxie is a well-conditioned muscle, one of the many that he’s developed as a professional athlete in the Arena Football League (AFL), Indoor Football League (IFL), and the National Arena League (NAL).
Craig’s moxie has been built by long hours of doing the work and responding to setbacks with a can-do mindset, mental toughness, consistency, adhering to his routine, teamwork, and listening to his trainers and coaches. He believes in competition—against himself and others—accompanied by fun. For Craig, without the fun to accompany the hard work...
Episode 36: Mini Moxie 2023 Wrap-Up with Thorunn and Mary
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Another moxie-filled year has passed with fascinating guests from all walks of life. In our monthly episodes, our guests joined the ranks of Honorary Agents of Moxie. We hope you found their stories as interesting and inspiring as we did.
We are incredibly grateful to you, our listeners, for tuning in to hear the inspiring and honest stories of our guests--people like you who have embraced courage, learned from failure, and evolved as humans.
In our 2023 episodes, you can listen as:
Episode 35: Pano Koukopoulos
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 Pano believes that we earn moxie through putting in the work and paying the price, not instant gratification. As a lover of the outdoors and wild places, he finds opportunities to cultivate moxie and apply the lessons of nature to his life and the lives of those he encounters through his work, teaching, and volunteer commitments.
Pano is the director of Emergency Management and Environmental Health and Safety Programs for Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, CT, where he oversaw the University’s successful res...
Episode 34: Simon Critchley
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Simon Critchley's curiosity is on steroids, and that curiosity, love of learning, and genuine interest in other people fuel his moxie. In this episode, we explore with Simon the role of philosophy in creating moxie. He shares his wisdom on how we have more in common than we think and how forming alliances and relationships based on those commonalities allows us to learn from others rather than judge them.Â
He explains that to philosophize is to take time and resist busyness. It’s about looking up and...
Episode 33: Janine Gordon
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Janine has been flexing her moxie muscle throughout her life. In every phase of her career, she has identified her strengths and pursued roles that would build on them. Her path has been a moxie mix of serendipity and strategy and an openness to embrace the opportunities presented to her. Janine also sees connections between people and the organizations she serves throughout her impressive public relations and marketing career. Through her creativity and vision of what’s possible, she creates synergy.
Janine has held a succession of positions in...
Episode 32: Faye Hess
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Chef Faye Hess has the winning recipe for moxie. She mixes love, joy, curiosity, fearlessness, resilience, and gratitude to produce a moxie souffle that won’t collapse. In this episode, Faye explores how she came to her love affair with food and how cooking for herself and others has been a foundation for her happiness and growth. She embraces failure as an opportunity to learn and forges into the unknown with incremental steps and lots of reflection.
Faye currently cooks for private clients and runs residential cooking programs in...
Episode 31: Michael Kevin Baldwin
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Michael oozes moxie and uses his passion for the stage to help others cultivate their own. He believes educating people of all ages in the theater arts is empowering, cathartic, and fosters empathy—and moxie.
He loves drama—on the stage. And he loves the community that surrounds it. He has found his bliss at this intersection of community and theater and derives energy and inspiration from the constant collaboration the theater requires and being known to those who surround him.Â
Michael is th...
Episode 30: Kelley Vickery
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For Kelley, moxie involves seeing the gaps and finding ways to fill them. She strategically uses her considerable skills to create something that adds value and beauty to the world. Then she goes for it, bringing others along to develop collaborations and community.
When Kelley moved to the Berkshires over 20 years ago, she decided the area needed a film festival. A huge film fan since childhood, thanks to her parents, she set out to bring her vision to life. At her kitchen table, she sketched out the plan...
Episode 29: Clem Loew
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Clem’s moxie starts with his mother’s efforts to keep him alive and safe from the Nazis in Poland during World War II. As a child, Clem witnessed his mother’s fierce bravery and moxie in the face of Nazi atrocities, alongside the kindness of Catholic nuns in the convent where he was hidden for two years.
After the war, Clem and his mother immigrated to the United States to start anew in New York City. He became a psychologist and psychoanalyst and has maintained a private practi...
Episode 28: Jenny Hansell
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Jenny’s moxie is like a snowball that keeps getting bigger! She adds a bit more moxie with every opportunity and experience she encounters. She has worked to improve the lives of others in ways that use her skills and talents while also getting out of her comfort zone and building her own capacities as well as those of the organizations and communities she serves. Having amassed a wealth of knowledge and expertise, Jenny believes in sharing what she has learned with others to help them find their own version of moxie....
Episode 27: Nadim Sadek
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Part of Nadim’s brand is moxie.Â
He has founded, built, and led three major businesses: Sadek Wynberg Research, a qualitative research agency; Inish Turk Beg, an island off the coast of Ireland from which he built an award-winning whiskey, food, and music brand; and ProQuo AI, the first AI-driven brand management system.Â
Now, Nadim is building a fourth organization as CEO of NeuroTech Group AI, which combines psychology with AI to better fulfill human needs. This new endeavor navigates the intersection of neuroscience and curating an i...
Episode 26: Leo Marzen
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Leo believes moxie can benefit from solid financial planning and a long-term approach. Taking risks feels less risky when you know your big picture and are clear about your life and fiscal priorities.
In this episode, Leo shares his financial planning, entrepreneurial, and life philosophy, all of which can be traced back to working in his parents' hardware store in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.Â
Leo always knew he wanted to be in business for himself. He began his professional career in public a...
Episode 25: Unlocking Connecticut's Lora and Bev
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Lora Karam and Bev Canepari are unlocking the riches of Connecticut one town at a time through their website, blog, and social media platform, Unlocking Connecticut.Â
In this episode of Main Street Moxie, Lora and Bev discuss their joyous exploration of the fabulous small businesses, stores, food and dining, art and culture, recreation and natural beauty, and events and people of the Nutmeg State–and beyond.Â
In this episode, they explore their origin stor...
Episode 24: Gratitude is the Attitude Thanksgiving Mini Episode with Thorunn and Mary
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We are thankful for so much this year! And Thanksgiving is the perfect time to show that. In this mini-episode, we talk about what we’ve learned from guests about gratitude and moxie.
We also briefly explore the science of gratitude, how it benefits our well-being, and the power of saying thanks in our personal lives and workplaces.
We offer a heartfelt thank you to our sponsors over the past year, including Elyse Harney Real Estate, No...
Episode 23: Anne Makepeace
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A life of making documentary films takes moxie, and Anne is proof of that. She has sought out people with moxie who do what they can to make lives better for themselves, their families, and their communities. Her films put real faces to issues such as social justice and marginalization, human rights, and the intersections of cultures. Native American history and contemporary life have also fascinated Anne.Â
In this episode, Anne explores the quest for a good story but knows the story can take an arc she didn’t e...
Episode 22: Lexi Ryan
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Lexi’s got moxie–and so do the characters in her romance and fantasy novels. Her lifelong dream of being a writer has been achieved through grit, trial and error, and a whole lot of imagination.Â
In this episode of Main Street Moxie, Lexi explores the vicissitudes of the publishing industry, her thoughts on failure, the core story of “I love you as you are” that runs through all her work, and her process as a discovery and patchwork writer.
Episode 21: Carita Gardiner
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Carita adores words, and much of her moxie is fueled by writing them, reading them, speaking them, and encouraging others to love them as much as she does.Â
In this episode, Carita helps Main Street Moxie launch a new literary genre called Mox Lit. She came prepared with a moxie-filled reading list to share with listeners. Carita also offers her moxie secrets and advocates for small daily habits to advance toward one’s goals.
She reads widely, voraciously, and enthusiastically for enrichment and...
Episode 20: Rachel Doriss
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Rachel has a designer’s moxie. Her creativity and observation skills serve her in life and in her career in textiles. A college class field trip allowed her to imagine a professional path working with fabric and weaving, a craft she lovingly pursued as a child with her grandmother. She finds inspiration in the smallest places and sets her moxie sights always higher, one ladder rung at a time, building on what she has created for herself and her family.Â
Rachel, the Design Director for Pollack<...
Episode 19: Tara Sullivan
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Tara has a set of moxie skills and traits that she packs up and takes with her in whatever professional or volunteer position she finds herself in. She uses her moxie for public benefit and to raise awareness of the history of the Hudson Valley and that we all have a role to play in making our society better.
She grew up on Byrdcliff in Woodstock, the first art colony in America, where she experienced a unique childhood surrounded by painters, sculptors, musicians, great craft artisans...
Episode 18: Thorunn Kristjansdottir and Mary O'Neill
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Here we are again. It's another rascally federal holiday that falls on a Moxie Monday.
Today it's Labor Day. According to the Department of Labor website, Labor Day honors the achievements and contributions of American workers to the social and economic vitality of this country.Â
It started in the late 19th century as a holiday recognized by municipal governments and labor leaders. On June 28, 1894, it became a federal holiday.Â
To honor Labor Day, we gave our guests the day off. Instead, Thorunn and Mary are hosting a Mi...
Episode 17: Kathy Davies
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This episode of Main Street Moxie with Kathy Davies explores design thinking as a method for moxie. Life design is a way to get unstuck in your life by ratcheting up the curiosity, creating opportunities for incremental action, and understanding your life is a process that involves collaborating with others. There is a "team" in "I"! It also reframes failure into opportunities to learn. Oh, and did we say it’s super fun? What’s not to love?!
Kathy is the Managing Director of the...
Episode 16: Vemilo
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We’re bringing the average guest age way down and amping up on the moxitude in this episode with Vemilo (he/him). He brings energy, wisdom, creativity, and love to his moxie. He talks about the power of chosen families and a good bargain, using performance to heal, the life-changing experience of summer camp, and the support he feels from his local community for his life, work, and art.Â
Vemilo is a pop performance artist whose purpose in life is to break through boundaries and stigmas to bring peo...
Episode 15: Laurie Lisle
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Laurie’s moxie is expressed through her writing. Through this creative medium, she has explored herself and others, tackling challenges, embracing change, understanding setbacks, and making sense of universal themes in the human experience. In this episode, Laurie shares her writer’s journey and provides insight into the creative process and the discipline required to make writing a career. It’s a deep dive into a writer’s brand of moxie.
Laurie, the author of six books, cultivated her curiosity about the lives of American women, digging for truth an...
Episode 14: Susan Gibson
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Susan Gibson brings her moxie to the volunteer world, sharing her observations and advice so others can discover how international volunteerism and travel, as well as local involvement, can change the world, their communities–and themselves.Â
She is the author ofHow to be an Amazing Volunteer Overseas, a guide based on her 35 years of experience in the NGO (non-governmental organization) world. During that time, she worked and volunteered in 70 countries.Â
In our conversation, Susan describes her early work in micr...
Episode 13: Moxie by Proxy--Sarah Getz on Arthur Kimmig Getz
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In this Moxie by Proxy episode, Sarah Getz explores the moxie of her father, The New Yorker magazine cover artist Arthur Kimmig Getz.  We talk about Arthur’s creative and pragmatic moxie and explore the intergenerational and intentional moxie of Sarah in her yoga instruction and her own medium for her creativity–writing.Â
Between 1938 and 1988, Arthur Kimmig Getz created 213 covers for The New Yorker, making him the most prolific cover artist for the ma...
Episode 12: Moxie by Proxy--Roger Berkowitz on Hannah Arendt
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Roger Berkowitz, Founder and Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, shares the story and ideas of political thinker Hannah Arendt in this Moxie by Proxy episode.Â
Hannah was a bold and fiercely independent political thinker. Born in 1906, she came of age during the Nazi era, escaping death and finding her way to New York City in 1941. She wrote and taught on an array of political topics.Â
While Hannah saw great evil, she also loved th...
Episode 11: Thorunn Kristjansdottir and Mary O'Neill
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There's one downside to Moxie Monday--and that's when it falls on a holiday.
Memorial Day is for honoring those who gave their lives during military service for our country and it's a day for spending with family and friends.
Today, you get us--your hosts Thorunn and Mary! In this mini-episode, we'll talk a little about ourselves and our journey with this podcast.Â
We'll be back on Monday, June 13 with a fabulous Moxie by Proxy episode.
Remember to follow us and subscribe wherever you listen t...
Episode 10: Abby Auerbach
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Abby is the Executive Vice President and Chief Communications Officer at TVB (Television Bureau of Advertising), the national not-for-profit trade association representing the U.S. television stations.
Abby’s moxie results from chutzpah and intention, and she’s cultivated it over her lifetime. She believes that people can develop moxie and that mentorship is a crucial way to do it. She is grateful to have had mentors who saw what she didn’t see in herself.
Rising through the ranks of an indust...
Episode 9: Fred Rutberg
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Fred is the president and publisher of New England Newspapers, Inc., which owns The Berkshire Eagle located in Pittsfield, MA. The Eagle is a daily paper that serves all of Berkshire County and adjacent areas of Connecticut and New York State.Â
Along with partners John C. "Hans" Morris, Robert G. Wilmers, and Stanford Lipsey, Fred brought The Eagle back under local community control to rededicate it to the highest journalistic standards and s...
