[MUSIC] Yeah, so actually in the past week or two, I've been kind of like asking people, like, all right we hear innovation everyday, it's on every bus around here.

What do you think it is?

Well I feel like honestly I have no clue, I just maybe like tech or something.

[MUSIC] I was having a conversation with this kid I met at a music camp, and he was talking about innovation within, like, music scoring.

When he hears innovation, he hears it with the music.

And so that kind of got me thinking, like a lot of times, I define innovation through tech.

But it really is just pushing the boundary in ways that people haven't done before, or people have been afraid to do before.

Advancing a subject forward, I think that's innovation.

So, when people ask about what I'm gonna do with my spring break, I'm saying, I'm going on a road trip with two other students, and we're just gonna interview people who are doing amazing things in Arizona.

Like, whether they're sending things up to space from Arizona, or whether just preserving Arizona history.

There's just so much here going on.

Look at how much innovation is happening here in Arizona.

How many people are pushing the boundaries of whatever industry they're in?

>> A lot of people assume that there's nothing in Arizona besides desert, but there's actually a lot more to it.

I've been here my whole life, and I really love it here.

There's nothing else like it.

To me, innovation means new ways of doing things or looking at things.

Something could be around for a really long time.

But if somebody discovers some new way to look at it, then that's innovation.

>> One thing I think about innovation is that, a lot of times it's kind of lumped in with STEM.

So people assume that innovation is only in science, technology, engineering, or math.

And that's so not true, there's innovation in every field.

[MUSIC] >> So for tens days we're getting into a 37 foot RV and driving it around Arizona.

Getting to meet a ton of really interesting, different people.

All of these people have super cool jobs that they love.

And so I just wanna talk to them about, how'd you swing that?

>> A lot of successful people have probably been through the thing that I've been through.

I really wanna know how they used, all of their experiences and everything that they've learned to do what they want.

>> Most exciting here like, why they are doing it in Arizona?

And I think that's a key component I wanna learn.

>> I'm really excited to talk to these people because Arizona is so open to the future.

[MUSIC] This is exciting.

>> It's really cool.

>> Yay!

[MUSIC] >> It is day one and we're on the RV.

>> We're at some unknown parking lot in downtown.

>> Living down here, but it's got a cool vibe, really liking it.

[MUSIC] >> We decided to draw cards for choosing beds.

>> All right, don't show it until everyone has their card.

[MUSIC] Nice.

I won by a large margin.

So I got first pick, Shawny got second.

All right, I'll take this one, then.

And then, Anna got the third.

>> The result is that we're sitting in my bed right now, the table bed, but it's cool, it has a map on it, really artsy, I like it.

I don't know if I'm gonna fit, yet.

[LAUGH] Haven't lied out fully.

>> My name's Anna Macki.

I'm 20 years old.

I just turned 20.

I'm from Phoenix, Arizona.

I've lived here my whole life.

[MUSIC] Going from high school to college was definitely the hardest time in my life hands down because I was good at school but I was really just doing what other people told me to do.

And so when I got to college I was undeclared, I was doing history and education exploratory.

And then I was a hotel restaurant management major, then I was a business major last semester.

This semester I'm back to US history.

>> Have you given any thought what you wanna do after college?

>> Yeah.

Yeah, I think after graduation, yeah I haven't given it any thought.

I think it's really easy to feel like everyone else has it figured out already.

And that's something that I think hinders me a lot, is I'm afraid to try something because I'm afraid of failure.

That's my biggest fear after college, is that, what if I can say all these things now in college about finding fun and not having to just work for money, but in real life if I'm gonna be too scared to do that?

Am I gonna choose comfort and safety over a more exciting life?

It's 9:40.

The Uber got me at 8:30.

I finished my laundry at 8:10 this morning.

They're a little damp.

[LAUGH] I have to hang some.

I'm really excited about this trip because I get to meet a ton of new people.

And have a ton of new experiences.

I am hoping to get kind of a boost of confidence about the future.

This can be your life, and this can happen.

And it is real.

I'm driving a 37 foot RV across Arizona.

And I can barely drive my Sedan, so.

I'm a little nervous.

[MUSIC] Okay, seat belts, everyone.

[MUSIC] >> I think once we start moving, then it'll really sink in that we're gonna be in here for a while.

Hey guys, let's go.

[MUSIC] >> What if for this shot I just like start picking.

I'm Johnathan, I'm from just outside of Nashville, Tennessee, and go to school for chemical engineering.

I like chemistry and then I like the engineering skill set, and you make a little more money doing chemical engineering than just a chemistry degree, so that's definitely an aspect of it.

But something's off here.

[MUSIC] So I basically took the code here, so I won't mess it up.

I just copied and pasted it, and just kinda working on it some more.

And so the idea's so people can have little points and drag it around, clip their own image, and then pop it in there.

So right now like we're inside.

I love development, I got interested in it cuz, I'm passionate about is how we can use technology to make a better planet honestly.

It's something not a lot of people are doing.

It's such like a fundamental cornerstone of our society now like the Internet, computers and all that.

So it's a need, it's creative because there's a visual aspect to it, like there's a lot of creativity behind coming up with these solutions.

It's just so versatile, and it's a skill of the future I guess.

I guess, I'm in existential crisis about at least once or twice a day.

So right now it's finish my degree in chemical engineering.

It's so interesting, and afterwards It's like I can get through it.

It's not like dragging nails across chalkboard like that painful.

But I wanna finish that degree and then after that I just wanna work and get some software engineering job.

I wanna build up the software engineering skills within those industries.

And then eventual goals I wanna start my own company, start my own start up.

I look forward to having the starter questions of like, can you tell us how you got to where you are right now?

I'm excited to hear those answers, but I'm most excited to hear where these conversations end up, like when they end up in places you wouldn't expect they would end up.

I think that's what I'm most looking forward to.

So we're right outside Vector Space Systems and we're gonna interview Jim Cantrell in a little bit.

He is the founder of Vector Space Systems, but he's also in on the ground floor for SpaceX with Elon Musk, and he's doing some pretty cool stuff, sending stuff to space.

On the outside, it just looks like this kind of warehouse looking thing.

You're not thinking, they're going to space there.

And we walk in, nothing special, and then you see rockets, and it's like, wow.

At the time that he met me, Elon wanted to send rats to Mars to show that humanity could expand into the cosmos.

We decided to go buy the rocket.

The Russians wouldn't sell the rocket to him.

He's passionate about this idea of making humanity a multi-planetary species.

And Elon and I were on a plane flying back.

We'd just taken off from Moscow.

He's just typing like this and he says, hey you wanna build this rocket ourselves?

A lot of people have tried this.

And he says, no I got a spread sheet.

I said, Mike, he's got a spread sheet.

>> [LAUGH] >> So he decided to create Space X based on that.

[MUSIC] For me it was all about machines.

I love machines and when I was a kid, my blue collar family distrusted my instincts because I was interested in machines and history.

And as long as I was building I was happy, even as a young kid.

And decided to study electrical engineering which I was horrible at.

The turning point in my career as I look back was, there was a NASA funded design course that was designing the rubber for Mars.

So I go home and I'd draw up this Rover and my imagination would run wild.

And I did so well that they gave me visiting fellowship at the jet propulsion laboratory.

So I invented and got a patent for something that was called a snake, a Mars snake.

And so the French decided that they had to have this.

And so we were working with the Soviets at that point.

We were going over to the Soviet Union.

And then lo and behold in 2001, Elon Musk calls me out of the blue.

And because somebody told him I knew all this about Russian rockets.

>> Did you ever think that all of these experiences and successes were gonna be in your life?

>> Nah, I considered myself just very ordinary.

I went to an ordinary grade school and went to an ordinary high school and got ordinary grades and I've been very lucky.

It's partly circumstance but people have to be prepared to be lucky, I think.

It turns out I was prepared to be lucky.

I was ambitious and so I've tripped over billion dollar fortunes several times in my life.

Some of them I've deliberately walked away from.

You guys are pretty young.

But when you get older, you start going how many years do I have left, right?

So what am I gonna do with tomorrow?

Well you better be doing with tomorrow exactly what you would be doing if you only had a few days left.

One of the keys in life is to do things you're passionate about.

And I didn't understand this til later.

But really to be successful, you have to do what you're passionate about.

And you have to have that passion and live it.

And that like, without that you might as well just give up.

>> Me personally, I'm kind of at the point where I'm in my second year of chemical engineering, and I kind of feel a voice pushing me towards computer science, cuz that's another passion of mine.

I freelance with that.

I do it on the side, and do I continue down the path of chemical engineering?

It's in a more traditional engineering discipline.

I think it's just a really valuable skill set, but it's kind of boring me.

So what advice would you give to me in my situation?

>> So do you consider the subject that bores you to be something you're passionate about?

[MUSIC] >> Not necessarily.

>> So you know what my advice would be.

Don't do it.

Yeah, I mean, you've got an a-ha moment, right?

If you're self aware enough to say, I really don't like this.

I mean Steve Jobs is famous for saying, the greatest invention of life is death, because it puts a finiteness to what you're doing, right.

And if you're doing things consistently, things that you wouldn't be doing.

You're doing something wrong.

>> I'd say for like the past year, I've been telling myself, all right, I'm gonna finish this chemical engineering degree, and then get a job doing programming, computer science, something like that.

But when he started talking about how he started out in electrical engineering and realized he kind of sucked at it, didn't like it, then switched to mechanical engineering.

So, I really empathized with that.

He kind of pointed out like, yeah, it's pretty clear what you wanna do.

You wanna switch.

It's clear you're not passionate about chemical engineering anymore.

You're really passionate about computers, programming, and all that.

And I kind of feel like I'm making a mistake by going down this path.

[MUSIC] >> Follow your dreams, follow your passions.

Think big.

>> Thank you.

>> Thank you so much.

>> It was a pleasure.

>> Yeah same.

>> I'm kinda nervous but it's just kind of this raw excitement.

Just like, ready to take on the trip.

[MUSIC] >> I just remember it was kind of hard growing up because ever since I was born, my mom has been a single mother.

[SOUND] The biggest thing that goes along with that is financial issues.

And so when I was in high school, I had to get a job to help her wtih bills and stuff.

And then I got a second job just to keep up with the kind of things that I wanted to do.

So I have school Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the other five days of the week, I work.

So it's really hard to get in a break sometimes.

I feel, like, one of the things that will be a roadblock in the future is confidence in myself that I can manage and like be successful at all of these things.

Sometimes it feels like I'll never get to where I'm going because it's too much.

So I think the confidence in myself and like what I'm able to achieve is something that'll definitely like set me back in the future A lot of successful people have probably been through the things that I've been through and so I really wanna know how they went through it and if there's similar ways that I can do it, yeah.

[MUSIC] >> So I'm so excited for today cuz we're interviewing Kimber Lanning.

She owns Stinkweeds which is like this really cool record store, which is just really active in downtown and trying to make Stinkweeds cool.

>> So really excited to see what kind of questions we come up with and what kind of story she has to sell.

>> I'm really excited about that, it's how she's really building the community in Phoenix which is really inspirational.

I was actually 19 when we opened my business which is called Stinkweeds.

I had another job in a record store and I remember when I went in and told the owner that I was leaving.

And I had to be honest with him and tell him that I was gonna open up my own record store.

And I thought I would pass out just because I felt like I'd betrayed him but I was really working hard for him in his store.

And I asked him why he passed me over for manager.

And he laughed and said what, are you kidding me, no one would ever listened to a hundred pound woman.

You get sued for that today but back then that I was like devastated.

You know what I mean.

And he didn't think anything of saying that.

I don't think he ever thought that I would make it.

It was like okay, good luck with that.

But before he passed away.

And we remained friends until he died.

And before he died, he told me that I was the biggest mistake he ever made.

[MUSIC] >> Has there ever been a moment where you doubted yourself, or I guess a moment of failure where you kind of doubted your mission?

Kinda uncertain how to move forward after that?

>> Well, I mean, certainly I've had ideas.

People think that every business idea that I had was a huge success.

No, there's like wreckage behind me for business ideas that I had, that I never either got off the ground or that didn't work.

And I think part of being an entrepreneur is being fine with failure, being like, all right, we'll forget that and moving on.

So yeah, sure, there's been plenty of times where you start to go, yeah, maybe that's not such a great idea.

And you know what?

I'm gonna take it back, because I almost gave up on Local First Arizona in 2008.

I've never run a nonprofit before.

I'm a business owner, right?

So speaking nonprofit language was not in my vernacular at all.

It was like, what are you guys talking about?

It was like insert clown music here.

Here's the small business owner trying to run a nonprofit organization.

And so I couldn't figure out the funding piece.

Meanwhile, sales in my businesses are going down and down and down, cuz I was never there, and I almost drowned.

But it finally turned around.

In 2009, I hired my first two people.

I had enough to pay them.

I still didn't pay myself, cuz I needed to help more than I needed the money.

I'm just living as simply as I possibly could.

And today, we are 21 staff in 4 statewide offices, so it was really just a matter of turning that critical corner.

[MUSIC] >> So what got you interested in local Arizona?

What got it all started?

>> So at my record store, and later at my art gallery where we are today, we worked.

We had a lot of bright young people.

I mean, just great bright creative people that we had in high school or college.

And they will always say things to me like this place has no culture, and this place has no soul, and they couldn't wait to get out.

And I thought, why is it that I think this place has all this culture and all this soul?

The turning point for me, I was standing in a line next to a woman.

She was from Chicago.

And out here in Arizona, we have a ton of people who came from somewhere else, and we have a lot of people from Chicago.

And she was going on and on about how Chicago, a total stranger, and I was like, I've heard it all before.

And then at one point, she leaned into me, and she said, boy, you guys sure have made a mess out here in Arizona.

And I was like, you guys?

And I'm thinking, and I'm kind of processing, and I said, you don't live here.

She said, no, I live here.

I said, well, then you haven't lived here very long.

And she said, no, I've lived here 15 years.

So I said, well, then who is you guys?

You're one of us now.

We're having problems with the education system, you're in the same boat we are.

Like, come on, let's work on this.

And so I started conducting an interview with everybody that I could find from Chicago.

And I asked, why do you love Chicago so much?

And they told me in a million ways all the locally owned businesses.

They didn't realize that's what they were saying.

They said, I love the restaurants, the chefs.

They said I had the same barber in Chicago for 40 years.

So it was like this huge lightbulb went off, where I went this is critically important to Arizona's economy that we begin to figure this out.

So those two things were on my mind when I started Local First Arizona.

One, it was watching the mass exodus of bright young people, and I wanted to keep them here and make them more connected here, and really wanna dig in like I wanna dig in and make it better.

And then secondly was leveling the playing field.

I really think that local businesses can compete if given the opportunity to do so.

Think of it this way.

This is one way that I like to explain how the economy works.

So, how many accountants get a job here in Arizona from corporate coffee shops?

>> Zero?

>> Zero.

How about graphic designers?

Do they hire any graphic designers here?

>> Zero.

>> Yeah, how about website developer?

None.

Payroll service provider?

>> None.

>> Attorneys.

Nothing, right?

So, big fat zero.

Over here, you got 15 independent coffee shops.

They are gonna support 15 independent graphic designers for their logo, 15 website developers, 15 accountants, whatever it might be.

So those are dollars moving through the economy.

And this is so important for folks your age to understand why I'm saying support the local businesses.

It's not because you should feel sorry for Mom and Pop.

It's because it's the right thing to do.

Your future depends on it.

>> The theme of this trip is innovation.

Can you describe or explain a little bit about what that means to you?

>> Mm-hm.

So I think innovators are people who can see a problem and create a solution for it.

There is a really ripe opportunity for a lot of our entrepreneurship to develop right now.

So people, I think, too often think innovation, they go right to tech.

But there's so much other innovation that's occurring.

All of those represent different entrepreneurial opportunities.

[MUSIC] Something innovative that we've done here at Local First is we noticed that a lot of are restaurants were struggling under the weight of their own marketing budgets.

And so we brought together 30 restaurants and formed a coalition where they can work together on marketing.

We market all of them together, and they are the Devour Phoenix Restaurant Coalition.

From that, we build the Devour Culinary Classic, which is now the region's most highly awarded culinary festival.

So that's something that's really special about Phoenix, and also Tempe, and all of our cities here, that I think people take for granted.

Those things, I think, help us be an innovative community.

>> Kimber was the same age as I am when she first started Stinkweeds, and she also had a lot of setbacks.

And that was like the very beginning where we were kind of introduced to the risks that these people take.

And when I first heard hers, especially financially, I felt that I could do really anything that I wanted [MUSIC] >> I think talking to Kimber really made a lot of sense for me.

I think that people, a lot of times, say Phoenix has no soul, Arizona has no soul.

I hear that all the time.

But it does have a soul, and if you're talking to Kimber, I'm proud to be from downtown Phoenix.

It was just really cool to talk about the local scene.

[MUSIC] >> There's so much going on in the State.

We're developing as a tech hub, but there's still all these advancements in liberal arts here, authors, historians, all that.

>> I was born in Chicago, Illinois, in a little town called River Grove.

I went to Knott's Berry Farm a lot when I was a kid, and it really intrigued me.

All the stories about the old miners And the gold and all of that.

I think that had a lot of effect.

Barely anything left when we started this.

Just a few buildings and foundations.

We had the idea to start rebuilding it, to make it a place where people could come and see the old history that was gone.

And I had a vision of what the place could be, and it eventually got there, little by little.

>> You really just have to listen.

And I think some people might not even say the word innovation, but they're talking about innovation.

>> I had a buddy of mine, had a saying, that he could measure a man's strength by his ability to adapt with ever changing things that occur in life.

And I put these things in my brain.

And you definitely have to adapt.

You have to adapt to things that come up and you gotta be innovative.

Nobody realizes the infrastructure that had it put in to bring this place back to life.

And you get really innovative.

[LAUGH] [MUSIC] >> I'm Johnny.

I'm a junior in computer science.

One of the coolest things about this trip for me is being able to go throughout Arizona and talk to all the cool people since I'm not originally from here.

And so our first question is, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to where you are today?

Boy.

[LAUGH] I've been a technologist really since I was ten years old.

I was helping my step-father solder a computer, we got it all working.

It was marvelous, the little lights blinked.

And we had it connected to a TV back then.

They didn't have computer monitors or anything.

And I saw my name filter around the screens.

Just over and over, and over, and over, and over criss, criss, criss sounds like, my gosh you can like, tell this thing what to do and it does exactly what you say it to do.

If I can tell that thing either what to print or what to control the world is behind [LAUGH] [MUSIC] >> Your parents were they also really interested in technology?

>> They were not at all.

In fact, what was funny, back in the 80s there was a movie called War Games, I don't know if you saw it with Matthew Broderick.

He had this program called a war dialer that would call every phone number in an area and look for other computers that would answer the phone.

He was trying find a computer gaming company.

And he was trying to like hack into their computer to get the latest games.

So it would call all these numbers and look for computers.

Well, I was fascinated by that War Games movie, and I was thinking, I want to do something similar.

So I wrote my own war dialer.

And I said, hey Mom.

They're not technical.

My mother and my father.

I say, hey Mom.

She was at work.

We were at school.

I said, I'm going to leave this on, and look for computers in Louisiana, where I lived at the time.

And I got home off the bus and there was undercover cop car in my driveway.

[LAUGH] Apparently my little stunt rang every phone in the AT&T offices, the phone company's offices.

And it found three of their computer systems.

And they end up tracing where all the calls were coming from to me.

And they're like, here's this like 12 year-old kid getting off the bus, and like, are your parents home?

I had to call my mom, and she came down, and when they explained to her why they where here, she was like, you must have the wrong place.

There's no way my son could be tripping all of your company up, and all this stuff.

They wanted to confiscate all my computers, he wanted to label me as a hacker.

So, yeah I had to promise never to do it again.

They wouldn't prosecute, and, but I think that was a good example parents didn't know what was going on but my mother knew after that.

Like, I better start asking like, what does he mean when he says he's going to be using the phone?

[LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] >> And I was hooked.

And I've been building companies, and technologies, and services really ever since.

I've built and sold four different companies, and I'm working on the next big thing, now called Computes Inc. >> What sparked your interest in this specific project?

>> I have been fascinated and infatuated with the idea of building SkyNet.

SkyNet's from the Terminator series, it was a global neural net supercomputer.

And the idea was that it could react faster than humans at either defense, military defense or even as a supercomputer solving the world's problems.

So right now it's a brand new startup, okay?

So it's Computes.com, and we're building a global neural net supercomputer, that will hopefully eventually take over the world.

Like all computing necessary that the world needs for cancer research or Parkinson's research or even global thermonuclear war [LAUGH] defense systems.

Computes.com could possibly do that.

And the way it works is it's taking all the idle CPUs and GPUs in everyone's computers.

And it's bringing them all together to act like a big single supercomputer.

>> What's the idle CPU?

>> Do you have a Mac or Windows?

>> Yeah.

>> Mac?

When you're on your Mac, you're only using probably 20% of all the computing power of that Mac.

I keep thinking that we're getting into this world where there's billions and billions of devices all connected to the Internet.

I mean those are just wasting.

You're just leaving that on the table, when we could be fighting cancer or solving the world's problems with all this idle computing power.

The world could be, I think, a better place if we could leverage all of that computing power and do something for the greater good potentially.

>> I'm sure you get a lot of times like, you can't build Skynet.

That's from Terminator, that's not real.

Or people tell you can't do your ideas.

What keeps you going and what keeps you innovating?

>> I think it's the curiosity There's always the next big thing.

There's always the next big idea that you want to build or be involved in, and at the end of the day there is a lot of risk.

For you to quit your job, imagine that, quit your job, and I've quit jobs with six figure salaries a few times, and said I have this idea and I'm passionate about this idea enough where I can walk away from all of that and start over with this new idea.

And that was Optiblue.

I left a six-figure salary, nice position.

I was head of emerging technologies for a $30 billion company.

And I walked away to start Skynet.

People thought I was crazy like, what are you doing?

You're gonna build this thing, it's gonna take over the world and all this stuff].

But yeah it's real, like I could really in my mind envision the need for this and it's that constant quest.

And as soon as you do figure how to do it it leads to another idea, another idea and just questioning the limit.

And then, I think it creates that excitement.

I don't know for you, but when you show it off to your friends and colleagues, and prove them wrong.

You come in and prove them wrong it inspires other people to also contribute and help take it to different directions too.

Which I think its contagious.

So what keeps you coming back and doing something else instead of just coasting for the rest of the days?

>> I don't see myself ever retiring.

I keep thinking this super computer idea, if there's some way we could help solve cancer.

I just keep thinking what if computes is actually involved in solving cancer and my name could somehow be attached to that.

That's game-changing, world-changing tech that I don't think any amount of money would make you want to not do that, right?

My wife says, she says to me all the time, she says, when are you gonna grow up?

Who wants to grow up, who wants to be that guy that wears the suits every day and has that boring commute to work.

And I don't, I wanna just stay young forever and build crazy, cool things.

[MUSIC] There's cool innovation happening all over Arizona.

It's a community that wants to help each other, I think it's cool.

Like when you guys succeed it takes everyone else in Phoenix up a level too.

So I think Phoenix kinda sees that that there's a lot of synergy, it's like if we all help each other, we can all raise the tide together.

It's a cool place to operate like that.

>> Just talking to people around Arizona, I think I've got a really good pulse on why people are moving here.

Just kind of an openness, this really innovative culture that's engrained in the state.

>> Everyone that we talk to, we ask them why Arizona, and they all said it's really open to innovation.

It has a lot of people who are just really open and welcome and ready to create a new community, and something different.

>> I was born in Flagstaff, but I spent half of my life living on the reservation.

I feel like going to the city has definitely helped me be the person that I'm today just because of all the things that I've experienced.

But it's just really hard to keep that connection with the reservation and just my family and where I'm from just because it's such a huge separation.

[MUSIC] Sometimes it feels like I've kind of lost my history and I wish I knew so many more things that I am supposed to.

[MUSIC] My great grandma's house, she has all of these things.

The cornfield, the animals, horses, cows, sheep, chickens, dogs, almost everything, except the tepees.

Next semester I'm starting my American Indian minor.

I'm minoring in it, but I'm really debating on majoring in it.

Sometimes I get a little stressed about how to combine my culture and passions into one thing, but still being true to who I am.

I'm not completely sure which way I wanna go.

>> I'm Anna, nice to meet you.

>> John, nice to meet you.

>> I am a mechanical engineer and I work here at Axon in manufacturing.

On a daily basis I design fixtures and build them and test them, but I work mainly in the weapons and ensure that the processes are improving every single day.

In college I gave back to my community a lot because I was President of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society.

And I reinstated the program after it was pretty much dead for ten years.

And wanted to increase the representation of Native American and Alaskan natives in the STEM field.

>> Well first of all I wanted to say welcome, welcome to the Navajo Times, welcome to Window Rock, Arizona.

My name is Tom Arviso Jr., and I'm the CEO of Navajo Times Publishing Company Incorporated.

I've been here about 27 years now.

I started here as a college intern and I studied journalism with the intent of becoming a sportswriter, that was my passion.

But once I got here to the Navajo Times, things just kind of gradually evolved and I just kind of rose through the ranks to the point where now I'm running the company >> Why is this so important for you that Native Americans show a role in STEM?

>> Many times I was the only woman or the only minority in my classes and at times it was discouraging because I felt like I didn't have support.

If it wasn't the color of my skin it was my gender.

Where other male engineers saw me as a sexual entity and nothing more.

So I was hit double impact, so that was hard.

But I tried not to think that way, and instead found it encouraging, because I brought diversity and variety to that field.

And I wanted to build a network that people can just come together and share common goals, share similar backgrounds and have that network be supportive.

>> There's no better people to tell our story than ourselves, and that just goes for any culture, any ethnicity.

And although we have stories and photos, entertainment for all people, we incorporate our culture into how we produce our newspaper.

In journalism today it's not just being able to write a story, you can do video you can do audio, you can do all kind of presentations through social media.

So your story is able to get out there right away.

And it's a whole new generation of readers that are coming on and they are more and more apt use social media to get their news.

So that's something that we've really gotta really try and think about and incorporate into what we're doing here.

[MUSIC] >> I feel like to be innovative a lot of times you have to go against the status quo.

Are you ever afraid to be innovative?

>> Yeah, being innovative means that I design a lot of things.

So there are times where I design something and it doesn't work, and then you redesign again and it doesn't work.

And you just have to put your ideas and thoughts and designs out there.

>> The world's changing and we need to change.

I think we're seeing that not only with our newspaper though, we're seeing it with our schools, we're seeing it in our communities, we're seeing it in government.

We have to change.

Don't be afraid to try new things, don't be afraid to make mistakes, because you're gonna make mistakes.

But if it's something that you really do already know that you have a passion for and you have a passion and drive to be successful, give it your best shot, by all means.

[MUSIC] Stay cool and stay proud.

[MUSIC] Any person that we talk to, they've all kind of talked about the culture and the diversity.

That's really, really important to their success in their business, so I definitely see where I come from, and who I am, definitely have the strength to wherever I decide to go.

[MUSIC] We are on day seven of the trip, going by really fast.

It's been really fun.

>> It's sort of hard to describe.just thinking back to Friday feels like I was almost a different person then.

I've just been in so many different places, met so many different people, it's kind of like life in fast- forward, like your learning all these different things so quickly.

>> One thing I really struggle with is motivation, I think so often in college I kind of feel lost.

Sometimes I feel like I missed my chance and so, for me, it's terrifying.

I wanna talk to people more about that, and I just wanna ask, did you hit that slump, did you get through it?

How do you get past that?

I mean, you've made it now, but what was it like when you were coming up?

[MUSIC] >> So we're about to interview Jason Field he is the Medical Products Division leader at Gore Medical.

He's at the forefront of innovative things happening in medical devices here in Arizona.

>> This is an embolic filter.

So, what this does is when you go in to put a stent or a stent graph like we looked at into the carotid artery, you can actually dislodge little pieces of tissue orcalcium that can get up into the brain.

So what this tiny little filter does is it creates a little basket, So any of those pieces that go up towards the brain it captures them while you're doing the treatment and then you pull that filter bag back together and you remove it and it takes all that debris out, really cool product.

[MUSIC] I had a number of different majors in my first couple years and really sort of lacked direction and clarity and towards the end of my sophomore year I set my sights on veterinary medicine.

Went and started volunteering at veterinary practice figured if veterinary school did not work out at least I would have worked hard towards something and that would benefit me down the road.

So, I actually had a veterinary practice here in Flag Staff, I was taking care of horses primarily and there were a number of influences that made me start to think about making a change.

I was looking for a more collaborative environment, I wanted to be around more people to really kind of push my thinking.

So I didn't necessarily know what I wanted to change, but I knew I wanted to change.

And an opportunity presented here at Gore to work on new product development, technology, innovation.

It piqued my interest, I thought I would give it a try.

That was the transition out of being a veterinarian into the medical device industry.

>> Did you ever feel like you were abandoning other passions or interests to explore another one?

>> I wouldn't say I've ever felt like I was abandoning things.

Maybe as I said earlier, it's really about being drawn to the next adventure in career or life.

Some of the most impactful job changes weren't necessarily going to the next higher level of responsibility but really more what people might consider lateral moves.

Those lateral moves really had an impact on expanding my breath of experience, my understanding in terms of career advise what would I really communicate to people.

Don't get too hung up on upward mobility, get hung up on having different experiences and trying to find experiences that motivate you, that compel you that you're really energized by and the rest can kind of take care of itself at times.

When you wake up in the morning and you don't have a negative reaction to going into work but you're excited to go into work to start to engage the problems that might be before you, that's when I think you've found the right spot.

>> I think a lot of the people we've, if not all the people, we've interviewed until Jason, were people who've started their own companies working for themselves.

I guess Jason's the opposite, he's going from running his own business to being in a corporate position.

He still really loves his job and he's really getting to be innovative and employ a lot of entrepreneurial principles into his day to day work.

I think that's a really interesting perspective.

>> Follow your interests, chase experiences, and work hard the rest comes easy.

[MUSIC] >> I learned that I'm a lot harder on myself than I have to be because not everyone has to have it together.

After talking to all these people who are so successful at their ages now, they weren't all put together at 20.

They didn't have a major map, and then like a five year plan, and a ten year plan.

And it's okay, to just be 20 and to live in the moment and to try my best now.

And I can just see where that gets me, I can have goals but they don't have to be set in stone.

[ALARM SOUND].

[MUSIC].

>> Tomorrow is the end of the trip, so tomorrow we pack and we go home.

>> It's kind of sad you gotta go back to school, aren't on the road anymore.

[MUSIC] It's kind of bittersweet but it'll be good to get back to my normal routine and all that but it's such an experience that you can't replicate it really.

[MUSIC].

>> I feel kind of sad, obviously I knew but realizing this is not my real life, so I have to go back.

>> I guess Johnny.

>> Shandiin >> Shandiin >> Mm-hm.

>> Anna.

>> My name's August Goldman, I'm originally from San Francisco, California.

I was in IT, in technology, and I found my way to Europe, believe it or not and I was in Europe for 15 years.

I meant to go as a quick trip, and I ended up building a life there and then found my way back to the United States, here in Arizona to GoDaddy.

I ran our data centers, our networks and then I became the CIO of GoDaddy, so, then I led all of engineering, all of infrastructure.

And then interesting enough, about four years ago, the CEO of the company, Blake Irving, came up to me and said, look, you lead your engineering team through culture, people feel a sense of purpose, a sense of pride in what they're doing.

We need that kind of culture for the whole company where you come and lead HR.

Wait what?

I'm an engineer and I've been leading engineering teams my entire life and you want me to go to HR.

He said, well yeah, I want a culture, the culture that you've built we want it for the whole company.

I said, let's do it.

[MUSIC] >> Could you share your story, as an individual, making that transition from CIO to CPO?

>> Yeah, [LAUGH] it was both exciting, hard, it was challenging, in some way it was easy and it was all those things combined.

As a CIO, as head of infrastructure I affected millions of customers every day.

I got in the morning, had my cup of coffee and I though millions of customers are working on my infrastructure are enabling their life on my infrastructure.

Made me feel pretty good.

I never met all those customers, I met a few of course, here and there and I know of customers, but I didn't meet them all.

And then transitioning to the head of HR, I now affected the lives of 5,000 people.

So much smaller, 14 million to 5,000 yet I saw them everyday.

So it's a different level of impact that I had, now I affecting everyone around me.

The hard part is, there's different kind of challenge, obviously, in engineering, things break and in people operations, people break and there's different kinds of challenges.

You have to learn and you have to listen a lot, and you have to not believe that you have all the answers.

>> Did you have that kind of mindset when you were young or would you say you gained it from years of experience?

>> You gain it from years of experience, you gain it from having the courage to realize when you make mistakes, the sun still comes up the next day.

Your friends are still your friends and you learn that you can overcome obstacles.

It's in practice, after time and time again, of continuing to learn, then you start to realize, you know what, I'm going to take bigger risks.

Whatever you do, try to find the tack path, like a sailboat, you can't sail straight into the wind.

It's not possible, physically, you have to tack to go to a particular destination.

My success has always been not to take the straight path, and sometimes those tacks aren't necessarily big things.

Sometimes those little, little shifts are just in your mind.

Those little shifts are, do I speak up in this meeting or do I not speak up?

That's a tack.

And when you do that tack, when you're in that particular spot, go all in.

Whatever you are doing, love it, be passionate about it, be completely focused.

It doesn't mean lose sight of your goals and ambitions, no, you don't have to lose sight of them.

Someone recently asked me, Auguste, what's been your favorite job at GoDaddy, or are you happy that you finally reached a certain level?

I said, it's interesting, I don't think of it that way.

In every job that I've had at this company or any other company, at that moment, was my favorite job.

At that moment was the job that I felt I was supposed to do.

>> I think a lot of times a lot of people assume that you can't follow your passion when you work for a big company.

Do you have anything to say about that?

[LAUGH] >> Yeah, it's interesting, right?

People talk about there are three things, three concentric zones.

There's what I'm good at, what I like to do, and what the world needs.

So if you think of those as three circles, just find the job, find the position where those three meet.

And I promise you, it's the same at Google or General Motors or Honeywell or GoDaddy or a startup with 20 people.

Those three concentric circles meet everywhere.

>> So as we wrap up our trip, what advice would you give us as we continue and move on?

>> So I would give you one piece of advice, just one piece.

Do everything you can to be courageous in your life, be courageous to your friends, be courageous in your work, be fearless.

By the way, I've been told no far more than I've been told yes.

Let me be clear, far more than I've been told yes, why?

Cuz I've asked so often, [LAUGH] and people can't possibly say yes that often, right?

So you'd get used to it, you'd get comfortable with it.

If you only ask once every three years, you're gonna be pretty uncomfortable with a no.

Be fearless, be okay that people say no to you.

If you are uncomfortable with nos, you haven't gotten enough of them.

Get more nos in your life.

There it is, take your own path.

[MUSIC] >> After going on this road trip, I feel more confident about my major.

So I'm majoring in history.

But after talking to everyone, I can see your major doesn't really define you.

I don't have to, right after college, go get a job, work my way up, be the boss.

I can tack, I can go around, I don't have to just know what I wanna do right away.

And that takes off a lot of pressure, and that's a really liberating thing to feel.

[MUSIC] >> I think that in my own terms of success, I can be successful.

I think, at the end of the day, I do believe in myself and that I can be as successful as I wanna be.

[MUSIC] >> Ten days ago, I was uncertain about a lot of things.

Now, I'm just a lot more comfortable in the choices I've made.

And I think I have a lot more confidence in choices I'll make in the future.

I made the decision to switch majors like, I'm doing it, I'm completely confident in that decision, I'm not second guessing it at all.

[MUSIC] >> Before we started this trip, I had seen about, I would say, 95% of the places that we've been to.

But I had never seen them in the ways that we had.

I didn't realize how resourceful and beautiful this state really was.

>> Everyone that we talked to, I think we asked them, why Arizona?

And they all said, it's really open to innovation.

>> There's always gaps of work.

Find the gaps, find what's to be done, and go and do it.

We fill about 1,000 jobs a year here in Arizona, and the talent is incredible.

Being here, you could feel like the underdog, and you could do innovative, wonderful things.

>> I think I got a really good kind of pulse on why people are moving here.

I know why I moved here was for school, but other people are moving here for opportunities.

Just kind of an openness, this really innovative culture that's kind of ingrained into the state.

[MUSIC] >> I spent my spring break on this road trip traveling across Arizona, and I'm so glad that I did.

We got to meet new people, new lessons and advice.

It was definitely an amazing experience.

>> Talking to the leaders, it's like advice that I've heard before, try your best, be proud of yourself, but I think I finally heard it.

After this, I'm gonna finish up the semester strong, gonna graduate college.

After that, who knows?

And that's okay, cuz I do know that I'm gonna try my best.

And I'm gonna be proud of my work, and I'm gonna live in the moment.

[MUSIC] >>To learn more about how to get involved, or to watch interviews from the road Visit RoadtripNation.com