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Helping the Dreamers
A leadership change. A re-organization. Drastic budget cuts. Finally, a radical reduction in force. And after seven years, I was suddenly out of a job.
Mission canceled.
The part of my career in which I helped innovators, entrepreneurs, and startups maximize their chances for success had come to an end. The podcast I hosted, which shared the stories of local innovators in Fort Worth, rode off into the sunset. And the programs, events, data, and research that I created to build the entrepreneurial community in Fort Worth now faced an uncertain future.
I wanted to see if I could keep this work going because I know that my city needs more entrepreneurs and innovators doing what they do best – inventing the new, creating jobs, and building wealth for our community.
So, I did what I saw so many of the entrepreneurs I had worked with do. I started my own company.
Up until last spring, I hosted 150 episodes of a podcast featuring local innovators, researchers, entrepreneurs, and startups who were trying to use their time, talents, and treasure to make our world a better place. These are our neighbors, our friends, our colleagues, and yet we don’t know the stories of the important work they do.
Some of our guests were trying to improve simple things at home, and some were taking on grand challenges that all of humanity faces. Some were producing higher efficiency electric motors or exploring new ways to diagnose Alzheimer’s Disease. These are tough problems to solve, and if our community doesn’t know who these people are or what they are working on, we won’t know how to help them.
Sharing these stories is why the podcast came into being. Most of these innovators and entrepreneurs were in the early stages of developing their solutions and didn’t receive the attention of traditional media. They were too busy innovating to tell their own stories. For many of them, this was the first opportunity to share their story.
Once these stories became public, we saw amazing things happen. By telling their own stories, these innovators and entrepreneurs found a missing puzzle piece – a co-founder, an investor, a mentor, or someone with a solution unique to the problem they were solving. An appearance on the podcast allowed them to tap into the broad resources that are available in our community.
But, like all good things, that podcast ended in April.
A few weeks later, Texas A&M-Fort Worth called, expressing interest in continuing the podcast through the Fort Worth–Tarrant County Innovation Partnership, an entity formed to build an “innovation district” around the Texas A&M Law School in the southeast quadrant of downtown Fort Worth. They saw the value in telling the stories of local innovators and asked whether I would be interested in restarting the podcast under the maroon-and-white flag. I called my former producer, Kendel Rogers, and asked if she was interested in getting the band back together. She agreed, and the “Fort Worth Innovates” podcast was born.
Mission resumed.
photo credit: Devan Peplow
We started in September with Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker, who is one of the best champions of innovation and entrepreneurship in the country. We have since featured innovators who are creating “Gatorade for dogs” and an app that uses swipe technology to make consumer surveys more fun. We’ve also featured innovative institutions like Cook Children’s Hospital and Texas A&M’s aerospace program.
And we’re just getting started.
We have big plans for 2026. Taylor Sheridan and his work to put Fort Worth on the map for film and movie-making is a great story to tell. Our city is becoming a hub for video game developers, and the animators and visualization students required to design these games are starting to take off here. We hope to tell some behind-the-scenes stories of local companies like HTeaO that are growing and thriving from their home base in Fort Worth.
We invite you to join our community and learn the stories of the innovators solving real-world problems in Fort Worth. Tune in to the “Fort Worth Innovates” podcast and find out how you can help these dreamers, doers, risk-takers, and visionaries make our world a better place.
