Every Deal Is a Dance Ep. 5: World-Building in Real Life: Karen Somers on Creativity, Reinvention & Impact

In this episode of Every Deal Is a Dance, Mishawn Nolan sits down with multi-hyphenate creative Karen Somers—an actress turned filmmaker, photographer, documentary director, music photographer, and now community-focused property developer.

Karen walks through her unexpected path: a childhood fueled by creativity and neurodiversity, early acting success, a leap into producing and directing, reality TV, animation's early digital revolution, Grammy photography, and becoming a one-woman embedded documentary filmmaker for major studios.

She shares extraordinary stories about filming polar bears in the Arctic, making a micro-budget Western in Texas, facing gender bias on set, shooting behind-the-scenes with celebrities, and becoming an intuitive problem-solver across multiple creative disciplines.

Karen and Mishawn explore how those creative skills evolved into her current mission: telling impact-driven stories like Pursuing the Light (about Bill Strickland and systemic poverty), revitalizing multifamily housing in Jamestown, NY, launching Rivet & Roost, and teaching creatives how to leverage grants and community partnerships for sustainable impact.

This episode is a powerful reminder that creativity is a superpower—and that world-building doesn't just happen on film sets. It happens in communities, in businesses, and in the everyday work of reinvention.

Every Deal Is a Dance Ep. 5:

Podcast Transcript:

Announcer: You're listening to Every Deal Is a Dance, part of the Look Legal pods from the law firm Nolan Heimann. And now, here is your host, Attorney Mishawn Nolan.

Mishawn Nolan: I'm Mishawn Nolan and I'm co-founder and co-managing partner of Nolan Heimann LLP. Before I was a lawyer, I was a dancer and then I was a choreographer. And so, it's not surprising that my law practice reflects dance principles of alignment and flow, especially when I'm working with my clients to monetize their creative ventures. And essentially what it means is aligning your abilities with your goals while at the same time balancing structure and reinvention. I want to make growing businesses less scary and less overwhelming for creators. So, everyone I interview in this series is someone who has a story to tell about authenticity, about their reinvention and their journey as a creative business maker. It is an opportunity to hear stories of alignment and flow in action.

Today, Karen Somers takes us inside her journey from actress to photographer to filmmaker to property developer. Several years ago, I remember when Karen told me about when she filmed polar bears in the Arctic. I remember the story because she told me she was carrying all this heavy equipment on her back and it's all throughout the tundra. And then she had to belly crawl on ice and snow to reach the polar bears so she could film them in nature. And if you pass her on the street, you would never guess that she could do that. Karen is strong and fearless and she brings these qualities to everything she does.

I'm excited to explore with her that first spark when she realized that she was a creative and how she has used and leveraged this creativity to make an impact on the world. So, Karen, welcome to Every Deal Is a Dance. We try to make being a creative entrepreneur less lonely and less scary. You're an entrepreneur. You know how overwhelming it can be. And so, we talked to fellow business makers about their stories, how they found their rhythm.

So, you're one of those creative entrepreneurs. So, I want to start at the beginning, the discovery of your creativity. So, when did you first recognize that you had creative talents?

Karen Somers: You know, I think a lot of us experience neurodiversity in some level whether that's ADHD, you name it, we've kind of got it and I was definitely one of those kids in retrospect that was kind of bouncing off the walls a little bit and the only thing that really got me the kind of dopamine dump that I wanted it as a kid was music and art. Anything that was creative, building tree houses, anything but having to do, long form, multiplication tables or any kind of math, anything that had to do with formal school work, with the exception of writing, of course. But if my teachers soon found that if they could turn the dreary aspects of learning into more of a game - Mr. Taylor, my grade four teacher was a champ at this and he turned learning the multiplication tables for good Canadian kids into dividing us up into hockey teams. And it became a competitive sport being able to do multiplication tables. And so, I was in the Boston Bruins and I delighted in that. And it was also that teacher that gave me my first camera. This is grade four. So, when my family went to England to visit relatives, I am from a pack of slightly insane, lovely, creative immigrants that come from India, and England, and Africa now and China. He gave me this little Brownie camera. I have pictures of me with the Brownie camera taking pictures as I guess a 10-year-old. And that really, I think probably that first experiment working with film when I was 10 was kind of what one of the things that really kicked things off for me as a filmmaker ultimately.

Mishawn Nolan: Wow, and when did you know that it was going to go from just a hobby or pleasure to take photos into something that was more a career?

Karen Somers: I didn't, I thought I was going to be a doctor or nurse. thought I was going to be a forest ranger. And then I found out how much forest rangers actually made for a living. That was a little bit of a bummer. But I think I just kind of tripped and fell into the, into the arts because I was already interested in the arts. So, and it turns out that I can sing my ass off. So much in my shock and awe. so, in high school, I started to participate in the musicals and always got the lead and really delighted in all of that sort of thing, even though, I wouldn't say that that's naturally what would have occurred to me to do. But I couldn't put it down. I started in the performance stream, I just couldn't imagine really doing anything else. So, I just kept going and I made a deal with myself that I'd keep going until I just couldn't anymore. And I didn't know what couldn't meant. So, I just kept going.

Mishawn Nolan: All right, so then you were singing and acting and performing. How did you go from that? Because you did leave that at some point and you went into photography next, right?

Karen Somers: I would say no. I was filmmaking first; I got my BFA in Canada as a formerly conservatory trained actor in one of the universities there and one of the prestigious colleges there. It's like the Yale program for Canadians and managed to survive that one and then worked for seven years, worked in predominantly Toronto and New York. I had an apartment in New York and had good representation.

I was kind of the commercial queen in Canada and ended up doing all sorts of things. You know, did a lot of film and TV commercial work and a lot of plays. But at the end of the day, I would watch the producers and directors who are all male and watch them doing their thing and think to myself, my gosh, that would be so amazing to be able to first of all, eat because this was the eighties when I was doing this and you weren't really allowed to eat - like my agents would really be on top of me if I was over a certain weight. So that lollipop look was hardcore then, as it kind of now. And I could wear whatever I wanted to wear, which was kind of fun. Costumes are fine, but you know, kind of get over it after a while. And I liked the notion of being the boss. I mean, as I got to be more well acquainted with myself as a young adult I really resonated to the idea of creatively being able to lead the pack and logistically being able to lead the pack.

I'd see people making all kinds of goofy mistakes as I was waiting in my trailer trying not to eat. I would see all kinds of goofy mistakes happening and think to myself, you know, if I was producing this, because I didn't think of myself as a director at that point, not yet. I didn't see any women directing, so it didn't even occur to me that I could direct, God forbid. When I moved to the United States full time, I met and married the film critic of the Dallas Times Herald up in, actually I met him up in the Toronto Film Festival. So, if y'all are looking for a good partner, you know, go to the Toronto Film Festival. And we courted for a year and we married and I ended up moving to Dallas. And when I was down there, I got a Pepsi National as an actor, which is fantastic. Shot that for a week and then went up to the female producer and told her I wanted her job.

And she thought that was hilarious. And I'm like, no, no, really do. I really do want your job. What is, what have I got to do? She goes, okay. So, she called me the next day. says, I've got a job for you. Can you come? Here's the location. You're going to be sent a call time and come on up. We'll, we'll see what you can do. So, at 2 a.m. in the morning, I find myself in the parking lot of a Burger King establishment picking up garbage and I remember looking up at the stars and thinking to myself, my God, I've totally made it. I've made the jump into production. I was so delighted. Like I didn't care what time it was. I just made it. So, I knew at that, with somebody giving me a break like that, even though I had been the lead in a Pepsi national the week before, and now I was doing the worst of the worst jobs, I didn't know I was doing the worst of the worst jobs. I assumed I was doing the worst of the worst jobs, but I didn't care.

Mishawn Nolan: My first job in production was also picking up garbage. I think that's how you start.

Karen Somers: It's sort of the litmus test to see if you can tolerate being really doing a filthy rotten job and seeing how quickly you can make your way out of that. a year, about a year and a half later, I was associate producing for the same production company. So, it didn't take that long. If you are enthusiastic and you keep your wits about you, don't panic under pressure, you'll be fine.

Mishawn Nolan: So, then you were producing and then what was the next evolution?

Karen Somers: My husband and I ended up moving to Los Angeles. His newspaper was bought out by the opposing press. This is at the very start of all the national newspapers, the older ones getting bought out and shut down. We moved out to Los Angeles. He got the last job working for the paper in LA. And we happened to move the year of the riots. there was all kinds of stuff going on that year. And it was a tough year. It was a rough year. And also, it was, there was a writer's strike that year. So, for me to find a job in production proved to be just unbelievably hard. I was competing for production assistant jobs with cinematographers. Like we've all now been through that again, but that was a very strange time.

So, I ended up jumping into animation. The only job I got offered was as an assistant, like a receptionist in an animation company called US Animation. And that was created by a guy called John Whitney. And I've been very lucky over the course of my career in that the people that I tend to get hired by for one reason or another or end up working with end up being right on the cutting, bleeding edge of sort of the new technology or the new cultural something or another.

And John Whitney was the one that created digital animation, digital ink and paint. And I ended up as the receptionist, I would work part time after we had done our day, I would go and learn how to do digital ink and paint. And he ended up being the guy working with the biggest animation companies in the world. We were working on shows like Beavis and Butt-Head that was a very big hit back in the day from MTV.

Mishawn Nolan: Huge!

Karen Somers: Huge! But we worked on all the big animation shows and commercials that were interested in exploring digital and campaign because that transformed the animation business. I mean, the animation business right now is going through its AI moment, or decades, I'm not too sure which, and that is transforming the animation business because suddenly you can have algorithms creating really beautiful animation. But back in those days, the animation was being done by hand in places like Korea, the Philippines, Japan. There’re all kinds of things, all hand done. And so, John had come up with a way, again, with basically a digital program, an AI program with the help of humans, where you could suddenly paint all these all these cartoons. And instead of having to send changes back to the country of origin to get the original artist to change the color of a pair of pants, you can do it instantaneously. And that was a huge deal. It changed the face of animation then.

Mishawn Nolan: After you working at the animation company, what comes next? Because I know at some point the camera equipment is on your back and shoulders because that's where I met you, but I don't know what happened before then.

Karen Somers: That little trajectory really kind of got me into production in Los Angeles. I decided with animation that it was so fun that people in animation are such a lovely group of people, but I missed working with humans.. So, I ended up really jumping into commercial filmmaking and doing commercial work with a commercial film company and ended up working my way up through the ranks. And during that time, I ended up making my first feature on my spare time. We were shooting Super 16 and we were pulling a total Robert Rodriguez. Robert at the time was best friends with the director of the film that I was working on and Robert was our advisor. We made a feature film in Texas for about $10,000. I was everything from the producer to the AD, to the craft service. We employed a lot of very drunk cowboys as our talent and they would call me the rodeo bitch or the Yankee rodeo bitch, lovingly. It was actually one of the greatest experiences of my life, because that's where you figure things out no matter what. I think those sorts of experiences end up really planting the seeds in terms of that whole creative entrepreneurial spirit in that you learn quite quickly as a filmmaker or as a creative that there's really nothing that you can't do. The only thing that's holding you back is thinking creatively to solve the problem. I mean, filmmaking is just one constant series of colossal problems or tiny little problems that you're trying to solve.

Believe it or not, was the early period of reality TV. And because I was really interested in documentaries as well. I ended up getting into reality TV. I figured if I did reality TV, I could learn more about production. And that was a really great way to make manifest my desires to direct and write and meet my deadlines. The whole thing with the entertainment business is money and deadlines.

After seven years of doing that, I'd gotten sick and needed to take some time off. And during that time off, a friend of mine said, you know, I'm doing all these behind-the-scenes documentaries and we're doing shorts and, I'm like documentaries, what? And tangential to that, was also, my husband had gotten his first record deal and as much as I delight in my husband being gainfully employed and having very nice record deals, it was incredibly boring standing around during shows and watching the same songs being done again and again. So, I started to think about what I could do to not just be standing around and they needed a photographer. So, my dad loaned me his 25-year-old Nikon and I started experimenting shooting a lot of black and white rock and roll and really learning the timing.

So that whole experiment, working with film, was actually really valuable because it started to help my mind wrap around the concept of framing and timing and the serendipity of capturing an image that's in constant movement and anticipation, and doing an intuitive anticipation.

I was shooting in so many clubs and I went out on tour with my husband's band, that ended up turning into a work with the Grammy folks. And I became one of the Grammy photographers and I ended up shooting with a lot of bands and it was super fun. And I've shot with their very, very big band since then. The last job I did was for NBC. They had a series actually in partnership with Netflix, a music series. And I was the photographer that went in and worked with TLC and OneRepublic and did all their portrait work and did all their live work and did their studio work. And it was really gratifying still continuing to do that work all these years later.

But the filmmaking really sort of started because I was doing so much photography. One of my clients said, look, I know you do all this photography. think, you know, we've got a camera. We want you to go and shoot behind the scenes on Jennifer Garner's latest series, but it worked out very well. Jennifer Garner was lovely. I was on that project for two seasons and I learned a lot. I ended up leveraging the world of behind the scenes into really becoming more of a doc cinematographer and a director.

The studios ended up sending me around the world, literally by myself, doing camera, audio, lighting, et cetera, et cetera, working with huge talent around the world, shooting all these behind-the-scenes piecesr. The last time I did that, oh, I was on Rustin with the Obamas. They wanted a female to come and shoot behind the scenes because they figured a woman would be less invasive. And there were some very tricky personalities on set. And that's pretty much how that's played out in my career as well. Being a woman has been ⁓ advantageous and disabling at the same time.

I haven't gotten the same level of jobs as my contemporaries in some respects earlier on in my career. I didn't get the same breaks. But since that time, there's been so many requests for women to direct or produce that I've gotten a lot more breaks probably in last five years than I have in the entirety of my career because of that, because I'm a girl and I can shoot.

Mishawn Nolan: That's great to hear. I know that at some point you were really driven by your passion and your values to make an impact in the world that you wanted to create stories of impact that changed the world. Can you explain where that came from and how you did that?

Karen Somers: I don't know where it comes from. My family, are those people. They are naturally, a lot of them are in the medical business and doctors and nurses and that sort of thing. So, their vocations are all about helping people. And so that was, I bore witness to that with both of my parents. And I would go into the hospital with my dad, who's an oncologist, hematologist and a researcher. And I would go in all the time with him when I thought I was gonna be a doctor

He was really good at working with the other residents and being a teacher. And I think that that's what's influenced what I've done. But honestly, once you're out there in the world and you're moving with people in different cultures that are experiencing different hardships, I think most of us just want to help.

I think people end up tangentially experiencing so much joy by helping our fellow humans that you just don't want to give up the jones of the joy. Not all the docs that I've done have been necessarily making change in the world, but certainly the one that I did most recently with Bill Strickland called Pursuing the Light, the Bill Strickland Story that I've done with Wayfair Studios. That is very much about changing the world. I focused on this incredible man out of Pittsburgh who is a very highly regarded advocate in the world of change in poverty. He has basically come up with a solution for systemic poverty globally. And he has built 17 centers in the United States.

He's built a couple of centers outside the United States, and I ended up being tasked with directing a film about his life and about his life's work. That project has been sort of this real labor of love over the last four years. It's been a really joyful experience and working with Bill, seeing how he moves in community, working with folks that are coming out of really desperate situations, real poverty. And being able to see how he changes these folks' lives with the things that he does with his centers has really inspired me to pursue that on many levels, not only as a filmmaker, but very much in a real-world experience. so, I've basically taken my life savings and invested in multifamily housing in a city called Jamestown, New York. Jamestown is one of those American Rust Belt towns that lost its main economic driver in the 80s. Ever since, been in this freefall, this just terrible freefall. The population that lives there are living in pretty desperate circumstances and they're being preyed upon by slumlords, quote unquote, investors.

I think that by doing projects like that and becoming really empowered by being able to tell these powerful stories of change in the world and seeing how that inspires other people to also pursue change on behalf of their fellow humans in the world, it just makes me want to do all of it at the same time. So, I've been doing that. I've been by de facto becoming this developer, a sustainable property developer in a community that desperately needs some help. And I've been getting very involved in community there. And I've created another company, but I have a media company in Los Angeles that's served me very, very well and continues to do that because I continue to develop films. But I also have a couple of LLCs as my holding companies for property.

And I'm just in the throes of creating out a company called Rivet and Roost. And Rivet and Roost really celebrates and empowers other people that want to do this kind of work in community, showing them how to do this, how to buy the properties, how to really leverage this so that not only are they creating a sustainable business, but they're really benefiting communities that otherwise might be living in some pretty dire conditions.

And there is just such an abundance of groovy, amazing furniture and home goods that are all sustainable because I'm sourcing things like this to decorate my own house, but also to resell now through Rivet and Roost. Why not avail ourselves of used and vintage furniture and decor and lean into that hard so that there's less going into landfill? So that's the other, sort of the other, the second part of it.

Then the third part of that is really the media part of it. And that's leaning into the storytelling so that people can see the work. I can share the storytelling. I can help to inspire other people to pursue this because the reality is out in this part of the world as opposed to California, it's fairly affordable to get in as a property owner. In Jamestown on average, the average two- or three-bedroom house, one and a half baths with a full basement on a nice street is going to cost you anywhere from $85,000 to $150,000.

Mishawn Nolan: Wow.

Karen Somers: And there are very good schools out here because there's actually a separate school tax. So, the schools out here are really good. The teachers are great. And you can have a really beautiful, sustainable life. to layer in the other things that I'm doing now, I'm learning this whole other world of grants and working with local government. In New York, like California, there is a lot of support from government if you want to do good in the world. So, I'm learning how to write grants, which frankly is just like writing a pitch deck. But I'm also learning the who's who. Who do I need to speak to to get the best kind of intel to get this grant approved? But there are grants out here for me to build out a three bedroom, two and a half bath house, ostensibly large, large apartment on top of an existing fourplex and I will work with the city. This whole idea of leaning into and acquainting myself with what I've become, what I've come to know as sort of this third rail of financing for creatives to lean in and do good work and still experience a real benefit because by my getting this grant to build out this attic in my building, the city will give me the money to do that. I don't have to put out any money myself. So, it's between $55 and $75,000. And then they put a 10-year lien on the property, which sounds dire, but it's not. It basically means that I can still sell that building if I want to.

But any party that buys the building just has to understand that you've got to run out the clock on that 10-year lien. And I'm obligated to rent the apartment under HUD income guidelines. So, in this case, it's like $1,200 a month for that particular area, which for us in LA sounds like the deal of a century. And actually, it is still the deal of a century. But because it's found money, quote unquote, that income is kind of found income for me. And I love doing a build. Doing builds is like production. It's the same drill. It's the same sort of problem solving, exactly the same kind of problem solving.

In this current shift that we're all experiencing in the entertainment business very specifically. And I think in many arts, but very specifically in the film and TV business, I think that filmmakers are really beautifully set up to become the kind of creative entrepreneurs that will continue to really forge culture, forge opportunity, forge employment for others, and continue with the kind of storytelling that they probably had in the back of their heads originally, but it might be in different iterations. And so that's what I'm exploring. Yeah.

Mishawn Nolan: I agree with you completely. Completely. And I speak to creative entrepreneurs all the time and they're trying to make the changes that you've made throughout your career. You've changed a lot and it's risky and it's scary to make that kind of change. And I know you, you are brave and you are fearless and your story exemplifies that. How do you get the courage to constantly be changing? And embarking on completely new projects that are new to you, that you don't have experience, and you just dive in.

Karen Somers: I think it's a couple things. My parents are like that, they didn't think twice about moving to another country and buying a condemned farmhouse in a small town in Ontario. And my dad went to med school. He was 33 and he had three kids under his belt already. So, he worked at night in a lab. My mom supported the family by picking up old furniture on the side of the road and remaking it, repainting it or stripping it or whatever, and either selling it or putting it in our house. And then every single family member that came over from India or England, everybody went through the same drill and they all invented businesses coming over here. It really was remarkable. I've been writing about this actually quite a bit lately because I'm 63 now and I'm looking back at my life and really wanting to deeply understand that kind of a motivation. And I think the example has been really set, but the other part of it is having a support structure, whether it's your friends that are either that way inclined or just very encouraging, real cheerleaders. If you have a cheerleader in your life, it helps a lot. The willingness to make mistakes, I think for women is a very big deal because we've been told over the course of the entirety of our lives not to make mistakes. Like don't fall down when we're toddlers. Don't fall down, you're gonna get hurt. Well, you know what? It's in the falling down that in fact, you're gonna build the muscle. And as has been pointed out by many, many neuroscientists that it's in the falling down and the failing that you build myelin in the brain. And myelin is what makes you a genius.

Mishawn Nolan: And the getting up.

Karen Somers: Yeah, it's the getting up, that's right. If you get up, if you just keep standing up after you fall down, you will one day become a genius. You just gotta keep standing up.

Not that - I don't consider myself by any stretch of genius, but I sure do like the process of standing back up again. And I think probably also having some sort of neurodiversity probably helps because the bright shiny object syndrome, oh my God, there's something new there. What is that? You have to monitor that. But that notion of reinvention, like who doesn't like a good reinvention? Everybody loves that.

Mishawn Nolan: It's a shot of dopamine

Karen Somers: It's like I'm think I'm constantly chasing dopamine and being hyper aware of the slumps and being aware that the slumps are necessary to the next dopamine bump. Otherwise, you will get into a critical mass of not getting anything done because you're chasing dopamine. I've seen plenty of that in Hollywood. A lot of that actually. So, I think that- I think that that's a lot of it. And also, I think I'm so fucking stubborn. coming up as a girl, as a woman in this business, there's so many times where people are gonna say, yeah, I can't give you that job because of blah, blah, blah, and you're a girl. And I'm just like, God. So, I kept taking on new skills to prove that in fact I could do that job. And the best one really was learning the camera and becoming a director of photography and becoming a working director. Also, another area where there's a lot more females now in all of these areas now, but back in the day, oh my goodness. And I would be given a very hard time by other people on the camera crew when I came in as a camera operator. The men just could not wrap their brains around the possibility that there was a woman that was part of that team that, could shoot, frame a shot, put your camera at the right settings. Like people would literally walk over, these boys would walk over to my camera and start fiddling with my camera. And I'm like, what, what, what are you doing? Is this something that you would do? Would you allow somebody else to do this to your camera? So, it's just goofy stuff like that.

Mishawn Nolan: Yeah, learning a new skill, learning a new skill like that and applying your creativity allows you to overcome the fact that you're an underdog. I have the same thing when, because when I started practicing law, there were not a lot of women in entertainment and intellectual property law. And I was asked to get everyone coffee on numerous occasions when we'd all go into a conference room. I mean, it's just, it's the world that we grew up in.

Karen Somers: Yeah.

Mishawn Nolan: As you perfect your skills and you prove yourself, you feel obligated to be better. You feel obligated to learn more and excel and just push yourself until you overcome all the doubts.

Karen Somers: And honestly, you do learn the lesson too, that if you surround yourself with people, your friends, not necessarily your family, but certainly your friends and the people that you employ, even more importantly, have skills that either you don't have or they're much better at something that you are trying to achieve as a filmmaker. I love playing with people that are smarter and more talented than I am. That doesn't scare me. All I can think is, I'm going to get a better result out of all of this and I'm going to shine because I'm surrounded by all these beautiful, amazing people. So, I think that's something too, is surrounding yourself with really talented people and keeping an eye open for talent. That's the other thing. And helping the next ones up. Like I really go out of my way to mentor and to help those coming up, not behind me, but you know, that are coming up because it would have saved me probably 10 years of my career if I had allowed more mentors in or if there had been in fact more mentors for my sort of category. So, I'm really glad now that there are so many women, accomplished, really incredible women that are working our craft because that opportunity then remains for them to help the next one up, whether it's whoever's having a hard time. And it’s basically women and minorities still that are in a challenging position in the entertainment business. It's gotten better, much better, but not enough. If you look at the data, the supports, how much we're getting a leg up, it's better. But in some respects, it's kind of worse because we should be much farther along.

Mishawn Nolan: We should. You do so many things. There is a driving force and a passion behind it, right? And it aligns with your values. And ultimately, at the end of the day, what we're all trying to achieve is flow. Like you said, you walk into a building and you feel whether it's right. You're on the set, you're telling a story. You feel it. You just know it. It's this instinct, right? There's an energy, a higher energy that you sort of tap into this flow. You're familiar with flow where it's, you're performing at your best, you're in the groove, you lose track of time. So, when are you in flow?

Karen Somers: Yeah. That's a good question. Well, first of all, I don't chase flow. Flow just happens if all the cosmic tumblers sort of come together from a timing and gear and human standpoint. I think the goal is to try and take all the right puzzle pieces together to set up what could be considered flow. But I think I'm always kind of surprised when it's happening, because so much of our careers are spent not in the flow, really struggling against the flow of problems, honestly. So, when it actually drops in, it's such a delightful feeling. And I try not to focus on it for fear that it would go away. It's kind of ghost-like. And anytime a creative does that, certainly I experienced that as an actor, and you would have as a dancer too, when you're in flow. The last thing you want to be doing is paying attention to that. You want to be paying attention to the moment because flow happens in the moment. And that's why, you know, we're all doing things like meditation and as creatives, hopefully building projects where we will experience moments of that. Because then we know we're doing the right thing. But, you know, I think that there's I've experienced moments like that, even doing volunteer work, working with folks that are unhoused, even having a conversation with a complete stranger. I think that those magical moments are just such gifts. And if you're open to it, as opposed to seeking it, because you're trying a little too hard. It's not very Zen-like if you're hardcore seeking it. But if you're open to it and you keep training, like you keep training your heart, mind, and soul to listen and to feel for what's going on around you, be present in the moment. I think that those things happen more and more and more. I'm finding that now in my career that I'm meeting the most incredible people, this is a person that's been, when I say this, I'm speaking to myself in the third party. I've had the good fortune of interviewing the Dalai Lama. I've interviewed some of the brightest, most famous people in the world.

And yet, now, as I'm moving through a world of philanthropy, I'm meeting these incredible, quiet philanthropists in the world that are stopping things. Their work is all about stopping mass atrocities and genocides, and they are very successfully doing this very quietly in the world. And they're some of the biggest brains out there, but they're also some of the biggest hearts out there. They're motivated by what you were just talking about. They're motivated by the doing good in the world. And those are the people that I keep bumping into right now. And it's been my greatest joy actually to sort of do what a creative does and introduce those people if they don't know each other. I'm introducing Bill Strickland to this other incredible philanthropist that's wiping out mass genocide. And there might actually be a partnership down the road between those two men by way of stopping mass genocide in typically very, very low income community and then creating centers like Bill’s where you are in fact organically bringing these communities, these communities that are not getting along, bringing them together under one roof and making manifest the economics and the friendships necessary to helping these communities to rise and thrive as opposed to fighting for resources.

Mishawn Nolan: Their values align. Yeah.

Karen Somers: I'm really intrigued by that. Yeah, it's that. And this is not a new thing. People that move in the philanthropic world are constantly doing this with each other. I'm just now starting to sort of wade around in that. And I'm really intrigued by how that level of the world works and how can we leverage that world so that it's actually solving the problems as opposed to just funding problems and not really making them go away. That's a whole other thing in nonprofit world and in the world of philanthropy. That's a very fine knife's edge. How do you actually solve for the problem as opposed to just sort of sugarcoating it and it still keeps rumbling along, but the people that are involved, unfortunately getting impacted negatively by it now and then are getting a little bit of a boost because there's money coming into it.

There's a way of solving problems, again, that I think that creatives are really good at that have more resolution as opposed to sugarcoating. I think that there could be a way of moving the needle with creative entrepreneurs, that if so asked, they have proven again and again that they can think outside the box and come up with—Bill Strickland is a great example. He was quite a famous potter in Pittsburgh when he was young, and he really thought about the solutions to poverty in a very, very different way than anybody else. And it was because he was an artist that he's been able to create basically the solution to systemic poverty. So, I invite anybody that's listening to this show, that feels the desire to go out into the world in a multitude of ways, not just working their craft, but working on different levels that will help to solve the bigger problems in the world. Because the world will change because you're involved. You will change the world, I guarantee it. 100%.

Mishawn Nolan: Creativity is a superpower that can be applied anywhere.

Karen Somers: Creativity is, yes. Yeah, it really is. It's a way of problem solving that is made manifest by artists in a very unique and special way.

Mishawn Nolan: Thank you, Karen, very much for sharing your incredible story with us and inspiring people, I think, to be bold and take bold action and leverage their creativity.

Karen Somers: Well, look, I want to plug you for just a second if you don't mind, because this is what I do. This is what I do with my friends. I don't know how much people, I'm hoping that people will know a lot more about you with the podcast, but you have been such a key force of change in my own career as an entrepreneur, because you and I could sit down every once in a while when I had some money that I could spend, you know, just having a conversation or as an attorney, or as a friend, you would give me some really incredible advice and have me really get me to think in a different way. Thinking about, you're an accomplished dancer that became an attorney, same sort of thing. You're thinking creatively in a way that I've never seen with a person that is working as an attorney, but also working in a very entrepreneurial fashion so that you can help your clients realize their dreams in the way that are best fit to do so. Because every artist is cut from a different kind of cloth. And you can recognize pretty quickly what could work for that person as they're making other projects and checking out other things in the world that they want to dig into. And I really want to thank you for that. It's been...just an invaluable resource having you on my team.

Mishawn Nolan: Thank you very much. It's been my pleasure.

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