Through a decades-long career in the trade, business, and education spaces, Dr. David Bryan has garnered the skills to be a curious and eager student of many fields. Having taught at middle school, high school, and university levels throughout the United States, Dr. Bryan gained the experience to spearhead his own venture, co-founding the New Roads School, a unique independent school in southern California.
At New Roads, Dr. Bryan served as a faculty member, Founding Head of School, and President from 1995 until his departure in 2013. Following this, he founded his own consulting business, lectured on economics at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and was also the inaugural director of The Center for The Common Good, a joint venture of The Herb Alpert Foundation and New Roads School.
Ten years later Dr. Bryan relocated to rural Wyoming, and despite his love for the community, it was the first time in years that he found himself outside of the classroom. At the same time, the podcasting space has been steadily growing, allowing people all over the world to connect and create synergy. Thus, leveraging the podcasting format and fortified by his “enduring belief that a person can learn a great deal about the world and other people by simply being curious about what folks do”, Dr. Bryan is launching his largest “classroom” yet, the CURIOSITY INVITED podcast.
At its core, CURIOSITY INVITED is about the many avenues open to people to connect with themselves, with ideas, with one another, and with emerging and enduring cultural and technological opportunities. In recent years, Dr. Bryan has witnessed the stark polarization of our country and world, troubled by the fact that well-meaning and intelligent people can no longer see each other with the generosity of spirit that is an essential foundation for healthy communication. He states:
“I have always believed that if people ‘stay in the room’ long enough, genuinely open to other people, genuinely interested in who folks are and why they think what they do, people can connect with one another–no matter the gulf, no matter how profound their differences seem to be. Human beings want to connect.”
Dr. Bryan knows that building a brand is all about awareness and product, so he attributes much of the early success of CURIOSITY INVITED to his palpable enthusiasm for the project and having a great strategic marketing team to guide the podcast to success. Even despite some of the technological challenges of launching his own podcast, it has already been a very rewarding experience, and Dr. Bryan embraces emerging technology and is always eager to learn from others and experiment for himself.
Even still, he has noted the general reluctance among many to venture into potentially controversial conversations. Knowing that a large portion of this is due to the current climate and people’s fear of using the wrong wording or phrasing and paying for it in their careers, Dr. Bryan believes that it’s now more important than ever to hear from the people with wise insights and ideas. He’s not afraid to change his opinions or viewpoints based on conversations he has, and is remaining open and honest in all conversations with guests.
Aside from his work on CURIOSITY INVITED, Dr. Bryan stays busy consulting privately with several nonprofit and for-profit businesses on matters of board and workplace organization, employee training, online education, and generational workplace dynamics. In addition, he serves as a director on the board of Motorcar Parts of America, the Chair of the Board of the Ojai Foundation, and the Chair of the Board Governance Committee at Brave New Films.
Looking ahead, the CURIOSITY INVITED team is working hard to build a broader audience by selecting guests from a wide range of fields, expanding marketing efforts, and engaging in more face-to-face conversations as COVID restrictions allow. You can listen to the podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, and Google Podcasts, which you can find with the following links:
www.curiosityinvited.com
https://www.facebook.com/curiositypodcasting
https://www.instagram.com/curiosityinvited/
https://twitter.com/curiosityinvtd
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC13PNBlKdHKB9a-Zun3OCwA
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