Ep 76: Glen Tripp on Imagining and Creating a Better World

Glen Tripp, the CEO of Galileo Innovation Camps, is the one who introduced me to design thinking, failure tolerance, and the type of leadership that brings out the best in individuals through the power of community. Without Glen, this podcast may never have come into being, and it's a true honor to tell his story here. 

Glen has always said that life is most powerful when like minded people come together to do important work in the world.  Today he talks about how and why.  Glen and I talk about the big changes Galileo has brought to communities of changemaker kids trying out their wildest ideas, educators finding their love for teaching again, families seeing their kids in a different way, and HQ teams who contributed to a movement that served over 600,000 kids in 70 cities. 

Come with my dear friend Glen and I as we go through the fun, the hard, and the beautifully messy design process of making your ideas real, in community.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• The importance of creativity and innovation in learning and personal growth
• How experiential learning fosters a sense of community and belonging
• The concept of "starting with why" and how it can guide you make your ideas real
• The role of vulnerability and authenticity in leadership and personal relationships
• How Glen led Galileo with his vision and contributed significantly to its evolution and success

Glen Tripp's Bio:

Glen Tripp has been a leader in the experiential education world for the past 30 years. In 2002 he founded Galileo Learning with the goal of using engineering, design, and art projects to teach innovation skills to kids through its day camps and after school programs. Since then more than 10,000 staff have served over 600,000 students across campuses in 75 US cities.

Glen retired as CEO after 20 years in 2022, and now serves on the Galileo board and advises education start-ups. Prior to that, he was a founding board member and VP of National Operations for Score! Educational Centers, an after school program operator.

Glen recently completed a seven-year stint as a Scoutmaster, and is proud to have pinned on 32 Eagle Scout medals, two of which were on his own sons.

Mentioned in this episode: 

• Galileo Innovation Camp
• Start With Why by Simon Sinek
• Glen Tripp on LinkedIn

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Transcript

Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want, and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it.

Well, hello everyone and welcome to the Bloom Your Mind podcast. 

I have someone very special on the podcast today that I have known for multiple decades I don't even know exactly how many years let's see 2006, I believe. 

So, two decades almost and someone who is very, very special. I feel like a part of my chosen family for many, many years, and we don't talk as frequently anymore, but I just love this human being and is the reason why this podcast really exists. Because I learned everything about turning ideas into real things through joining an organization that Glen Tripp started, and Glen Tripp is here talking with me today. 

He was the CEO of Galileo Innovation Camps and I'm sure you'll hear about that as we go along, but this guest today is the person that's responsible for me learning all that I know about design, thinking, about turning ideas into real things, about failure, tolerance so many of the tenants of what we talk about on this podcast. So, as you can imagine, he's been number one on my list of interview guests since we started, and he is here with you today. So, Glen, from the bottom of my heart, welcome to the Bloom your Mind podcast.

Glen (Guest)

Marie, it's so good to be here. I mean, can you believe that we had the chance to work together every day for 12 years? I was looking back at your time with Galileo, and you have been such an inspiration to me every step of the way, and I'm so thrilled with what you have done with this pod and what you're doing with your coaching and training organization. I feel like I benefited from your coaching and your leadership in so many ways over the years and I'm just so glad that you're getting to spread that around now. So, I'm happy to be here today. 

Marie (Host)

Yay. And aside from all that work together, Glen and I have been in many ridiculous skits, you should know, together in variety show performances. We've had a lot of fun and a lot of heart, absolutely. Yeah, I feel like we've experienced lots of shades of life together. 

Glen (Guest)

Absolutely. We both became parents, we both developed our families, we both grew in so many different ways over this journey together, and I think that's probably at the heart of what the Galileo experience has been. That's been a community of people that has joined together to work on something really important, that shares a lot of values, and we're just all very fortunate to have had this time working together. 

Marie (Host)

Yeah, to everybody listening. This is one of the coolest things about having Glen on the podcast is we had a group of people that sort of grew up, as Glen just said, together in this time of our sort of middle part of our lives, together, working together at Galileo, and have gone out to do all of these incredible things since then, and so we come back together and have these conversations and build new things right, and so we're building on our own ideas, you know, with each other and our work outside of each other's company. It's a really neat scaffold. So, I would love to start by having you introduce yourself a little bit to everybody, Glen. I kind of introduced you, but what else do you want to say about who you are and what you've been up to in the world? 

Glen (Guest)

Oh goodness. Well, I'll just say that for me, I was always just super interested in the idea of experiential education, and I was thinking back to my high school years and really the most profound educational experiences I had were things like working on the high school newspaper or backpacking with my scout troop, you know, and in college, same thing. I of course, loved the academics of college, but like it was really leading trips to Yosemite and working at a summer camp where I worked during college that I had my most sort of profound experience as a young learner. And the rest of my career, it turns out, has been around thinking about how can we create meaningful experiences where people come together and grow, and that has really been my life's purpose is to try to create as many different kinds of experiences as possible where communities can come together and become their best selves, and that's what we did together at Galileo. 

Marie (Host)

Tell me a little bit about it or tell everybody listening about it. Well, first of all, when I hear you saying the high school newspaper, I remember in middle school being a part of the junior high news channel where we all had to get there at like. We went there and did pre-calc classes or whatever, really early in the morning, like six, 30. And then at seven 30, when the bell rang, we were on the news channel, and I had the same. That really brings that back for me, those experiential learning opportunities where you come together with others and then you learn by doing and you definitely have flops and fails. 

Glen (Guest)

You know, I'm sure everybody listening is kind of thinking about their moments that they can relate to like that. Well, I was just going to say I'm sure we all you know love the teachers that we or have teachers that spoke to us within the traditional classroom framework, and they really impacted us that way and I know I certainly had those. But really, it's this like hands-on, project-based experiences that I had in so many other venues. Those were the things that really lit me up as a learner and I know that that's true for a lot of folks. 

Marie (Host)

Yeah, Maybe share a little bit with our listeners about. You said bringing communities together, creating opportunities for communities to come together and grow. Can you talk about how Galileo did that Cause? When I think about that, I think about like maybe six different types of communities that were brought together like parents, kids, staff, HQ, others, you know just so many. 

Glen (Guest)

Well, just to just to provide a little bit of background on what Galileo even is, or what it eventually became over what? 

What it has become, I should say over its 20 plus year history is a place that operates summertime programs and afterschool programs where kids ages five through 14 engage in project-based learning, in that they go from having some sort of idea to reality, so they imagine something that doesn't exist, and then they go through a series of steps to ultimately create something that they want to share with the world. 

And this work is facilitated by high school age, college age and professional educators who really try to create an environment that is very encouraging of risk-taking and of putting oneself out there in full, true, honest expression, and together the campers and the staff create a joyful environment that's full of also skits and traditions and songs and other things that make a super fun place to be. 

And so we began this camp idea in Palo Alto, California, in 2002, and over time grew it to more than 75 cities across the United States and several different states, and so when we talk about communities coming together, the first one I think of is that each one of those beautiful spots in the 75 different towns that we were talking about had their own kind of community where adults and kids came together to really experience joy and creativity and learning together. And then there are all these other sort of communities that came out of this, which is, for example, like a community of camp directors, who are just the most incredible, energetic people that you can imagine, and that's actually one of the communities that Marie was part of, and you were part of in your earlier part of your Galileo history, and that was an incredible group. 

And then there was the group at our headquarters. And then there was the group of all the different educators and school partners and other people that were allies in our work out there over this period of time. So, lots of different groups of people came together and I think we're better for the experience. 

Marie (Host)

I would love to add a little bit to what you just said, fluff it a little bit with my own favorite parts. One part of the mission that Glen was leading was to have kids envision and create a better world. So, whatever these ideas they had, this sort of motivation was shared. You can envision something based on what you observe in the world around you that can then spur an idea in you that you can learn to turn into a real thing through collaboration and failure, tolerance, all these things, and then eventually you sharing that with the world, will make the world a better place. So, like weaving into kids' minds from an early stage, you can make the world a better place through your actions and your ideas, and you know, and through community, being in community with others. 

And the other thing that I just loved about it is the community for the teachers, because I over the years, experienced so many stories of individuals that were so burnt out and how hard they were working and what their pay rate was and how a lot of them said they were going into teaching to with this great passion and then didn't really feel like they had the space in their year school year classroom to be creative and do a lot of this stuff. So, a lot of them told me I kept hearing the classrooms over the summer that Glen and Galileo created we all created together or like their labs where they got to reconnect. What brought them into teaching in the first place, which is just so beautiful, so much. 

Glen (Guest)

Absolutely, as I went around and visited sites, there was nothing that made me happier than hearing one of our instructors say this is why I got into teaching, this is what this is all about I'm. I'm lighting kids up, I'm lighting myself up, and this is what inspires me, and so that was probably one of the most gratifying things that we had a chance to experience together. 

Marie (Host)

It was like light bulbs. You would just we would go visit these sites and you just saw light bulb, light bulb, you know, with the kids and the teachers being able to experience those light bulbs. Right, it's so passion enhancing. But we also got, like Glen said, we got to wear bright blue wigs. We were business casual, fresh to the air, and then we got to wear these bright wigs in the summer or whatever that. Maybe that was my style, but everybody else, we all got to bring the fun and all these different ways. 

Can you talk a little bit about how you started? So, you had this idea. Maybe was the idea born from, yeah, your own vision for how the world could be a better place. Or was it born more from a problem you were trying to solve, Like I was talking about with education. And then how did you get take those first steps? Because we know it ended up in 70 sites and all of this bright community that impacted so many lives. But, like, how did that start from an idea bubble in your head? 

Glen (Guest)

Yeah, this is what all creators and entrepreneurs kind of have to think of is when we're getting started with something. How do we know when something is an idea that we want to grab onto and really pursue? And so, for me, the germ of this was in 2001, when my observations of the world told me that what really mattered most of all was the idea of being a creator in the world. I saw that organizations out in the world were wanting employees to be more creative, to bring collaborative, creative energy, problem-solving energy to the workplace. I saw that the world had a lot of problems and issues that required creativity and innovation to solve. And yet my observations of the school system, the traditional school system at least, were ones where creativity was not particularly encouraged. 

We were so focused on math and reading instruction in 2001, which is right about the time when, some people will remember, the federal legislation called no Child Left Behind had passed and schools were really narrowing their focus to be on core math and reading subjects, and I thought this is, you know, while I understand why those things are important, what we really need to do is think about how are we going to create a generation of creators and innovators? 

And so, to me, the perfect place to tackle this was in the out of school time. Going back to what I talked about earlier around, the most impactful things for me as a young learner were these out of-school time experiences. I thought, well, maybe in the summertime, when we are free from standardized testing requirements and where we have, you know, space and time to do more creative things, maybe a summertime program would be a place to tackle this. 

So that was really the germ of the idea was is there a way to create a program that, in two or three or four weeks, a young person could come and have the experience of tackling some sort of design challenge that could build their confidence as a creator from there? It was all a host of ups and downs that led to the ultimate founding of it, starting on the first camp in 2002. But really it just started with that first idea. 

Marie (Host)

You know, what I always loved hearing you and your wife describe was, you know, when I was there, there was a customer service team. Or a few years into when I was there, we had a customer service team and eventually a large customer service team, I don't know six, eight people, I don't. 

I don't remember exactly where it ended but, answering phones and they were seasonal staff that would come in and their whole job, this whole portion of the company, their whole job was customer service, taking care of all the families, taking all the enrollments Right. But I love sitting there and hearing you and Lauren describe what the first summer was like. Can you tell that? 

Glen (Guest)

Yeah, I want to back up just a second and just say that this was not at all a straight line to starting this first camp right Like I had two or three failures even before we got to the concept that we eventually started. I went to the company where I currently was and tried to get it to fund this new endeavor. I went out and I tried to raise money from investors unsuccessfully. And then, right about that time, tragically, 9-11 happened and that just really kind of put a brought all sorts of businesses to a standstill at that particular moment. 

So, there I was in kind of November 2001, my wife comes to me, and she tells amazing news we're pregnant with our first baby. So here I am, I've like moved on from my old job. 9-11 has happened, my wife is expecting a child and I'm sitting here still thinking about how in the world am I going to start a summer camp? And so, again, not at all a straight line to this, with lots of potential hiccups and problems. And I, after these initial failures, I went to my wife and I said, look, I think I still really want to do this. And she said, Glen, I've been hearing you talk about this for months. You really want to do this, I'm behind you 100%. I think you should try it. We will get through it; we'll see what happens. 

And so, kind of the first thing that I feel like I did a great job of is picking an incredible partner with an incredible spouse who supported me in a moment like that, supported me in a moment like that, and I think that that is like one of the big takeaways from this early startup experience is like, when you really believe in something, when you want something to come true, other people will get on board with you. And time and time again, people got on board with this idea of like, how can we do this? Because it sounds really cool if it could come to fruition. And so, you know, armed with that encouragement from her, we did decide to just start. Let's just bootstrap this, let's just try one program, we'll do it on a shoestring and see if we can make it happen. 

And so, you know, I went out, I started talking to potential schools, and this is when I had the second example of somebody kind of believing in me and stepping in on my behalf. A parent that I was speaking to in Palo Alto said this sounds really cool. She marched me into the principal's office, said you've got to listen to this guy. He's got a neat idea. I think we should have it at our school. And 15 minutes later we had an agreement with that principal to have our first program in Palo Alto, California. And it just sort of built from there and we created a brochure. 

I went out to a museum called the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose and I met with the education team, and I said look, this is this thing. I know that you guys know a lot about design challenge education. I'm super interested in this. Is this something you would be interested in, a way for you to extend your museum's impact beyond the walls of the museum, into this elementary school age camp? And they said yes. And they said not only will we get behind you, but we would love, like, let's put our logo on your brochure. 

And so, one by one, people lined up to sort of be supportive of this dream coming to fruition, which was really exciting. So, we made a brochure, we put it out there in Palo Alto and there was a 1-800 number, and this is what you were referring to in your story. The 1-800 number rang to my bedroom. 

So, there we are, my wife's like six months pregnant. It's 9pm, the phone is ringing, it's another parent who wants to talk about camp, and I was thrilled to talk to him about it. Of course, and what a hilarious thing that is to imagine Every one of those spots got filled Within two months. Our camp was full. We spent a total of $1,000 getting this off the ground. 

Marie (Host)

I don't know if I've ever heard of that figure. 

Glen (Guest)

The only money we ever spent founding Galileo was paying for somebody to help us design a logo and to print a brochure which we had to hand out, and from that point forward we never had to raise money again for the next 15 years or so. So, you know, I think this is just a true example of a bootstrap situation where, when you get creative, figure out how to be scrappy, have the 1-800 line ring to your bedroom that you can get something off the ground with a lot of good fortune and a lot of people helping out. 

Marie (Host)

While you're having your first child. 

Glen (Guest)

That's right. Yeah, speaking of which, you know, fast forward to the week before camp is going to start. By now we've created a curriculum, we have, you know, filled out the camp, we have purchased the supplies, we have hired a staff of 12 people. We're all excited for camp to start, and the day before camp begins, my wife goes into labor two weeks early. 

Marie (Host)

So, check this out. 

Glen (Guest)

So, the camp director, Chad Smith he's the founding camp director of Camp Galileo meets me at the hospital. I handed him all the paperwork and all the stuff that we have. I said, Chad, it's in your hands now. I'll see you in a couple of weeks. I can't get down there for the first two weeks and, Marie, this felt like a huge setback or a big problem. Right and it was one of the best things that ever happened to Galio. Why do you think that is? 

Marie (Host)

Because all the like silliness came into it from Chad, right Like all of the traditions and the rubber chicken. 

Glen (Guest)

Yes. So, the amazing thing about Chad Smith is that he was deeply rooted in traditional sleep away camp experiences and his being able to lead that camp on his own, without me, in those first two weeks enabled that stuff to fully come forward. And when I showed up at camp, I walked up. Two weeks later I had a baby boy at that time. I walked up with my baby boy in my arms and with my wife Lauren, and we walked up to camp and I saw Chad dressed in a costume, leading a water dance and kids were running around, you know, in this incredible afternoon game where they would jump into it was like a kickball game where the kids would instead of bases there were kiddie pools and so the kids would have to jump into a little pool at each base and then between third base and home was a slip and slide and they were coming in hot and fast in the home plate on the slip and slide and having so much fun. 

And this is when I learned that when things seem like a problem, you really don't know if it's a problem or a blessing. 

Marie (Host)

Oh right, I don't know, right. 

Glen (Guest)

Because yeah. 

Marie (Host)

There is a bluey episode. I know my children a lot younger than yours, I don't know your exposure to bluey, but if you haven't seen the most recent one, they tell the old parable of nothing is either good or bad. But thinking makes it so right through the whole of my course, run away. You're so lucky. We’ll see, and all of the things, right? 

Glen (Guest)

I love that parable and that has been true, proven true over and over again for me over the last 25 years. 

Marie (Host)

Yes, okay, I want to say a couple of things and then I have a question about this. So, I want to pull out from what Glen said for y'all a couple of observations here. I heard him say that he pitched this idea to people, to his wife first of all some. For some of us, the closest, the closest people are the scariest right to share these big ideas with them or not because of them, but because we really want them to love it. Right? But there you pitch the idea to her, get support, talk to other people about it. You said they felt so supportive. 

And then this school. You signed a contract with the school. You got the brochures printed, you took enrollments, every spot signed up, and then you said fast forward to later. We had created a curriculum. So, y'all, we always talk about how you have to get into action. We can waste so much time in inaction, thinking we need all of the pieces ready to go, thinking we need a plus work, thinking everything has to be perfect before we start acting, and we think we have to know how we're going to do everything before we start. 

But you can hear, in this example, Glen hadn't even written the curriculum right. That came after he had the months in between taking the enrollments and camp to create that and he knew he'd get there. But we don't have to have all of the pieces done. We're not going for perfection, we're going for action, right? And then we hired the staff. So, you didn't have the curriculum and you didn't have the staff. You just knew you'd get there, and you'd figure it out. Yeah, hey, beautiful. 

And then the other thing I heard there is delegation like letting go of control at some points, which can be so hard for us, especially with a baby, that we idea baby right, that we've put so much work into and have so much hope in. But handing it off and I see this over and over again what you don't expect sometimes creates the happiest accidents. And in my master's program for art, they talked about this all the time and yesterday I went in cause. I'm chaperoning a trip next week for my daughter's field trip to the Sequoia mountains. I went into her class and did shibori dying, so everyone would have a bandana on the trip that matched. 

Glen (Guest)

Nice. 

Marie (Host)

A couple of the kids came over to my house afterwards and saw the bandanas and one of them said I thought mine was so messed up because I made a mistake in how I dyed it, but it's so much more beautiful than anything I could have created intentionally. So, we see this living out in life over and over. You hear it in Glen's story, which is hard to remember at the moment, but just a reminder that we don't have to know how we can start. We don't have to have everything perfect, and accidents or unexpected things usually lead to something more brilliant than we could have created on our own. 

And my question for you, Glen and feel free to talk about any of that that I said but my question is I often hear people say I have to keep my idea protected because I know if I start talking about it then people will say things that make me believe in it less. Is there anything that you can point to in what you shared about your idea or how you shared about your idea that created the opposite of what I sometimes hear people talking about? Like, were you talking about the possibility you get it? 

Glen (Guest)

Yeah, yeah, there is something to the idea of not sharing ideas too early. I remember reading a book with the idea of not sharing ideas too early. I remember reading a book by one of the founders of Pixar where they talked about the delicate nature of bringing your idea forth and being careful about not bringing it forward until you have enough behind it that it will be well received by people. So, there's a balance there. I think that has to be struck will be well-received by people. So, there's a balance there. I think that has to be struck. But at the same time, I think that we have to start getting feedback and sharing what we're interested in doing earlier rather than later, because that feedback, one, will be useful and two, it will help people be part of the creation, and so the more people are part of your creation, the more they're likely to stay involved and stay engaged in helping to bring it to life. 

So I do think bringing that forward is a really important step and I would say that the thing that I think that if we really start with a why I'm a fan of Simon Sinek's book Start With Why, and it's always been the idea of the purpose of whatever it is that you're doing, the deep, deep purpose of why something matters is a great place to start with one's sharing, because that sort of says this is why I'm doing something. I might not have all the answers yet, but this is the why behind it, and now you can help me think about the how. And so now we're sort of starting from the place of a shared purpose and we can debate the hows of how we get there, but we're engaged together in how we bring that forward. So, I don't know if that helps at all, but I'm a fan of engaging people early. 

And another thought that I had, spurred on by what you were saying, is this concept in design thinking that's really common, which is the idea of rapid prototyping, and we will. We often procrastinate or don't move forward on something because it feels like we might fail, but the best thing that we can do is start to put stuff out there, try it out, see what's working, what's not working, and then change our design before we get too far and have invested too much time in things. So, I'm a huge fan of that. And this was all a prototype. 

What I was describing in my story was the definition of putting a prototype out there rapidly was literally putting out a brochure before we actually had the content, Because I learned at that moment, is this something that people will sign up for or not? And once I had that sort of quote, product market fit or that indication that there would be support for families for this kind of idea, that then emboldened me and others to then invest the time and energy in developing the rest of the program. 

So, there's lots of ways to do that today, which is exciting, right? One can create AdWords on Google. One can make a fake brochure or make a visual depiction of some sort of prototype of something and share it with people and get feedback. There's a lot of tools today that allow us to rapidly prototype, put stuff out there, get feedback before we actually have to create the thing. 

Marie (Host)

Beautiful when you talk about that. Why, knowing your why. How did you stay connected to your why, or what would your advice be to all of us trying to stay connected to our why when the speed bumps come in, so when life throws you really hard stuff, or when you take a big fail and something not only didn't work out in one of your iterations but there was maybe a high cost to it, what was your way of staying connected to your why? 

Glen (Guest)

Well, I think it starts with really getting into what the why is right. So, like, I think, asking the question like five times, why does this matter? Okay, and then you answer that, why does that matter? Why does that matter? And you keep digging deeper into getting into the core, emotional, human reason why something matters, and then writing that down for oneself is a great place to build a strong foundation for continued perseverance. 

The second thing is to really keep returning to that. So, I think making it part of my daily and weekly and monthly process, the sort of ways that I manage my time and workflow, is to come back to this on a regular basis, to keep reminding myself why this particular thing matters. The second piece of advice I would have, a recommendation, is to really take inspiration from the people that are helping you out, right? 

So, and Marie, like you're the perfect kind of example of this. I mean, do you know how many times I talked to you? And, secretly, what I was doing was getting inspiration from you for why this matters? Because the people that are doing the work, the people that are on the ground, the people that are, in our case, working directly with the kids, they're going to have the best, why they're going to have the most information about why this matters and why this is impactful. 

Marie (Host)

Yeah. 

Glen (Guest)

And so I think that, whether or not it's partners like life partners or strategic partners or staff members or colleagues or whoever it is, you know, I think really asking them why they're in this, why is this mattering to you, is a way that you can sort of secretly gain your own, you know, recommitment to the idea. 

And then there's other kinds of examples, I think building into an organization's rituals, repeated ways to uncover the why, you know, storytelling at meetings, annual retreats where we reflect on our purpose. There's ways that you can bring in systems and rituals that will help everybody reconnect to the why of things. 

And I think that that is really important, Marie, one time I remember on a retreat that we were all gathered together in a circle out in the woods and I said I want all of us to think about this question If we're going to spend the next five years of our life doing this, what will make it worth it? What will make it worth it? And that question, whether or not we're asking it of ourselves or of a group, really gets to the heart of one's why. And we'll really. I mean that not only returns us to our why, but it also says, okay, how do we want to do it to make it worth it, and so those are some practices that have worked well, well for me. 

Marie (Host)

And I think all of those could probably apply to an individual or a couple people too, as journal prompts or talking to a friend and answering those things for yourself. 

If it's working on something Glen. What are the moments where you experience that this is worth it, this is working? Do you have vignettes in your mind where you looked out or got an email, or saw someone's face or heard a story, or we're at a retreat? Aside from that, right when you were like these 10, 15 years were worth it. All the ups and downs this is my vision happened. You know the glimmer of possibility that you talked to everybody about in the beginning. When were the moments, or what were the moments where you were like it's real, it's happening. Thank you, past self, for doing all that. 

Glen (Guest)

Well, the good news is they're still happening every day for me. Just last week, I was walking in my neighborhood with a person whose daughter is in college and is working for her third season this year for Galileo, and she's an instructor whose life has been changed by her experience because one she learned that she is in love with being a teacher and an educator and is likely to pursue that path. Two, she found her people. 

You know, what I heard from this friend was that she feels extremely comfortable with the fellow staff members and a type of community that she had never felt before. And to make it even more fun, this young woman's brother is just now. He's in high school still, but he's joining the staff this summer as well, so it's becoming a family affair where both of them are going to be working side by side together. So, it's not only going to be great experience from a learning perspective, but it's also helping to build their family. So, when I hear something like that, I think, okay, this is all worth it for sure. 

Another thing that I heard this week is about another set of people that are getting married who met each other on staff 14 years ago, believe it or not in Los Altos, at our camp there, and so like and funnily or amusingly enough, they had sent an invitation to the entire headquarters last week. So, I feel like these examples of community and of that there's something special there continue to come back, and so those are the sorts of things that have kept me going over and over again. 

It's the small stories, the individual stories, that ultimately went out over the big things. We can all be excited when we hear things like 600,000 kids attending overtime or 10,000 staff members working there overtime, but that pales in comparison to hearing the individual story of a specific child, a specific staff member, a specific family whose condition was somehow affected or changed in a positive way because of this. 

Marie (Host)

Yes, agreed, agreed If you think back to all. Okay, so you see all of those. You have all those stories which I feel like we all got to every day during the summers when the program was going, and multiple times through the year. Many, you know, frequently throughout the year we would hear these individual stories. 

If you have all of those in mind and you're thinking, you're letting those sorts of flow through your mind, is there anything that you wish you could say to young Glen as he was going through those big fails? You know where you tried to get the funding and it didn't work. And you tried to go to the first organization, the fails, as you were starting out. Is there anything you wish you could say to him, or you wish he knew back then or could just hear? 

Glen (Guest)

I'll say that the one of the overriding lessons that came through to me over time was around authenticity and leadership, and I would say that when I started Galileo at age 30, I definitely felt like I had to have my act together at all times, that I had to be the one with the answers. 

Whatever I think I've said it I felt like I had to have all the answers and do it right. And one of the things I learned pretty early on and I hope I was able to reflect this over a long time is that I rarely did have the answers myself and that the more that other people could be part of that solution set, the more engaged and empowered people would feel and the more they would actually appreciate my leadership. 

And so, I think that over time, Galileo offered a really terrific lesson to me around the importance of making myself vulnerable as a leader. Opening up about what I was afraid of or what my concerns were or what my insecurities were, and then letting other people be part of the solution set or even drive the solution set was a really powerful way for me to build followership over time within the organization, because I think we all kind of owned it together and built something that was really special together because we all felt responsible for it. 

Marie (Host)

You know what occurs to me when you say that is, you're talking about a large organization or a medium-sized organization, right, but that is the same for school communities and you know other types of communities that we're part of, but also like friendships, marriages and parenting. That is all of those things, right? Being vulnerable and open and asking for help or letting other people be a part of the solution builds love and connection and all the things we're going for. 

Glen (Guest)

It's kind of the fundamental human condition, isn't it? We all like have whatever things have hurt us in the past, or something that makes us feel like we have to be good at something, when in reality, what makes us closer to people is not being perfect, but being vulnerable, being imperfect. Indeed, I remember at one Galileo retreat gave a talk about being imperfectly perfect or perfectly imperfect, I think it may have been. I can't remember what the order was, but the idea was we are excellent and special because we bring our imperfections, our humanity, to whatever role we're doing, and that's true for us parents and their spouses and community members in schools and neighborhoods and everywhere we go. 

Marie (Host)

So, yeah, I almost feel like it's the inverse of what we perceive Like the more we can share authentically, the stronger we actually are, right. 

Glen (Guest)

Absolutely. 

Marie (Host)

Okay. So, a lot of people have ideas that they're holding and holding and like I don't know if it's worth it to do them. It's good, I take so much. I. It just feels like so much effort, even though I want it so badly. When you think back to you having this idea and talking to Lauren and her saying you've been talking about this for months. 

What has the impact been on you as a human being? Like, how are you different? Because you've made this idea real? How have you grown? Who are you? How are you different than who you were back then? Because you did it. You put this idea into the world and asked other people to be a part of it and went through all the ups and downs and now you're here. 

Glen (Guest)

Well, I've said it a hundred times at different venues in Galileo, but I think there's nothing more rewarding than working hard with like-minded people to build something that matters, or to create something that matters. And so, I think that I just think that's so true. I mean, I just the idea that, you know, we put ourselves out there, we work hard, we collaborate in a million different ways and, in the end, when you have the experience of pulling something off together, it's just so, so powerful. I think it just creates so much meaning in our lives when we've somehow done something that's made a small dent. 

And so, I would just encourage everybody who's listening to think about ways, big and small, that a small change can reverberate, to try to make change, even if it's something very small, in your personal life than to let the status quo dictate where we are. 

And one of the tenets that we share with our campers is that we want you not to be just recipients of what the world gives you, but we want you to be actors in the world. And every time I've chosen to be an actor in the world as opposed to just a recipient of circumstance, I have really, you know, just experienced a lot more joy, satisfaction, meaning and pleasure and trying that even if it hasn't worked. 

So, yeah, I think it's hard in today's world not to just be the recipient. We're all overwhelmed with distraction, with the entertainment, with our phones, with everything swirling around us, and when we can untether ourselves from that we have such a greater chance of finding purpose, meaning and happiness in our lives. And so that's kind of my hope for the world going forward is that we can somehow figure out how to free ourselves from this like flood of information and distraction and take more control over what it is that we're doing in the world. 

Marie (Host)

Yeah, Use our own compass. You know it's interesting. That's what we do in the bloom room. 

And I just closed out today. As I was telling you, we have a couple of Galileans that are actually in the last bloom room that closed out, which we closed out right before. I talked to Glen today and they highlighted something you just said. You just said every time you were an actor in the world instead of a recipient, it was more fulfilling. And you said other things fulfilling and rewarding and all the things even if it didn't work. And a big thing that that group learns over and over again is that we tend to set really big goals and really ambitious ideas of what things are going to be like and then, whether we accomplish it or not, whether it deviates or becomes something else, we learn what we need to learn to grow into who we are becoming through the pursuit of that goal. 

So, even if it doesn't work out, they got exactly what they most needing to learn about themselves in order to try again. Right, but they had to go through that iteration to break that barrier in themselves. 

Glen (Guest)

That's so powerful. Yeah, we're all designers. We can design a life that's fulfilling and rewarding for ourselves, and I know that that's a never-ending process, and even if you're in the middle of something that's 20 years old or part of something that's brand new and starting today, it's just we do have the opportunity to design how we want to be in that. 

Marie (Host)

What idea are you working on making real now? 

Glen (Guest)

Well, a couple of different things are really interesting me right now, and I don't necessarily have solutions yet, but the one space that I'm playing around in is when I think about people in the final 40 years of their life, like ages 60 to 100, I think about an incredible amount of capacity, an incredible amount of energy that's still there, and I think about how can we create more opportunities for them to come together in meaningful ways and experience growth. 

And so, I guess you could call it, what does Camp Galileo look like for people in their retired years, ages 60 to 100? That's just a growing group of people and I feel like historically we've relied on parks and recs and senior center programming and sort of those types of things, which can be fantastic. But I think that there's more there to work on. So, I'm really interested in how we can create more experiences for people so that we don't end up with a giant group of depressed or failing older people as our population continues to age in the United States and abroad. So that's one area I'm kind of intrigued by. I'm doing some exploring around what's out there for people. 

And a second is just how I just really feel for parents today. I just really feel for parents today. It's like how in the world can a parent really work on creating conditions that prepare their kids to have productive and connected and meaningful lives? How can we get kids off of their phones and into nature? How can we get them to have embodied human conversations and interactions? How can we build this creative confidence that allows them to be innovators out in the world? 

Like and I know Galileo tackled one piece of that, which is how do we teach design thinking to kids to do creative projects? But I'm interested in like is there some sort of movement that we can create that is about bringing all these things together, you know, deeper connection to nature, deeper connection to each other, minimizing the negative impacts of technology and social media, teaching creativity, teaching kids how to work with AI as opposed to being victims of AI, like. 

I just think that there's developing stronger and stronger opinions around like sort of the problems that youth are facing today, very, very concerned with the amount of isolation and alienation that young people are facing. The mental health crisis that's existing for middle school, high school, college age students is just tremendously upsetting and so curious. On how we can support parents more and managing this big challenge, there's a couple of things again, not no ideas for me yet, but those are problems that I'm struggling with. 

Marie (Host)

Yeah Well, I love that we all get to hear what it's starting out. As for you, A question of how might we right. 

Glen (Guest)

Great phrase. There's no more powerful phrase than how might we write? And that's just a great unlock for us. 

Marie (Host)

How might you want to share any last things? Is there anything you haven't said yet that you want everybody to know? And if the answer is no, that's great, but I always like to throw it out. Is there anything else you want to say? 

Glen (Guest)

No, what I want to share is that you are one of the most inspiring, thoughtful, incredible leaders and coaches that I've ever met, and I'm so glad that you're continuing to take everything that you've learned from all the different phases of your life and spreading it out there into the world, and I would definitely, as someone who's benefited from your coaching time and time again, I definitely would recommend engaging with you in whatever way is possible. So, I'm so glad you're out there spreading the love, spreading the empowerment, getting people to be actors in the world as opposed to just recipients of what the world is giving them. It's so incredible to see. 

Marie (Host)

Thank you for being one of my mentors and lighting that fire in my heart to try to do that Like you. Really, I wouldn't be here without you. 

Glen (Guest)

That's nice to hear. 

Marie (Host)

Yeah, thank you so much for everything you're doing for the world too. Glen, you know the deep impact that you've had on my life. I've said it to you so many times. I wouldn't be doing this, but I also wouldn't be who I am without you and you. I'm just so grateful for you and so grateful to everybody else listening, got to hear from you, got the incredible inspiration of the way that your brain and heart weave together to envision and create a better world. So, thank you. 

Glen (Guest)

Thank you for having me. Hope to do it again someday. 

Marie (Host)

Yeah, we'll touch back in on what those little glimmers are turning into later on. All right, I love you, friend, and we'll talk to you soon, okay. 

Glen (Guest)

Take care, Marie. Love you too. Bye-bye. 

Marie (Host)

Okay, that's what we got for you this week and we will see you next week. 

Thanks for hanging out with me, friends. If you like today's episode and you want more of them, please take two minutes right now to subscribe and give me a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Then send this episode to a friend. See you next time.