Are you prepared for the future of work? Off the Rak welcomes Rishad Tobaccowala, a global business advisor, author, and futurist, to explore what transformative leadership looks like in a fast-moving, AI-enabled world. Drawing on four decades of helping leaders reinvent themselves, Rishad shares insights from his book Rethinking Work on how leaders must evolve to thrive in a dramatically transforming modern age, and how creativity and meaningful connection become true competitive advantages. It’s more than theory; reimagining work, purpose and progress offers critical and practical actions leaders can take today to rethink how they lead and live tomorrow.

About the Guest

Rishad Tobaccowala is the author of “Rethinking Work: Seismic Changes in the Where, When and Why” and “Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data.” Additional writings can be found in the “The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past” read by 30,000 leaders around the world.

Rishad most recently was the Global Strategist and Chief Growth Officeer of the 80,000 person marketing and business transformation Publicis Groupe and has been named by BusinessWeek as one of the top business leaders for his pioneering innovation and TIME magazine dubbed him one of five “Marketing Innovators.

He regularly presents keynotes at industry conferences and speaks at well-known global organizations, such as Kellogg’s, IBM, Amazon, Google, and Facebook.

Links in this Episode

Subscribe to Rishad’s Substack

Learn more about Rishad at his website, rishadtobaccowala.com

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Learn what it’s like being a professional female athlete from the recently retired LPGA golfer and two-time U.S. team captain. Lewis announced that she will be stepping away from full-time competitive golf at the end of the 2025 season — let's look back at her conversation.

Can adversity help you find your greatest strengths? That’s just one of the topics we’re exploring as I welcome one of my favorite professional golfers, Stacy Lewis! The LPGA golfer and two-time Solheim Cup captain is here to talk team leadership and managing success, women in professional sports, and the transformative influence we can have on communities, in our backyard and around the world. Golf is not a game of perfect — neither is being a leader — but we can still train to be great. And it’d be great if you joined us!

About the Guest

Stacy Lewis is an American professional golfer in the U.S.-based LPGA Tour. She has won two major championships: the Kraft Nabisco Championship in 2011 and the Women’s British Open in 2013. She has ranked number one on the Women’s World Golf Rankings for 25 weeks throughout her career, and has 13 career wins.

Lewis was diagnosed with Scoliosis when she was 11 and was treated with a spinal fusion when she was in high school, missing her first collegiate golf season to recover.

Lewis was a decorated All-American at the University of Arkansas and redshirted her first year while in recovery. She won the Southeastern Conference Tournament and was named SEC Freshman Golfer of the Year.

Lewis turned professional in 2008 and has played in nearly 400 tournaments throughout her career, including the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Links in this Episode

Stacy Lewis’ LPGA profile

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How do you make the journey from being given last rites in a hospital bed to founding an organization that has saved thousands of lives through medical innovation? Dr. David Fajgenbaum is a physician-scientist, Castleman disease survivor, and the co-founder of Every Cure. From medical student to patient to leader, David shares how he turned personal health challenges into a driving force for innovative research, drug repurposing, and AI-driven discovery to help rare-disease patients. Tune in to explore what resilient leadership looks like and what future breakthroughs he’s hopeful to see on his purpose-driven mission to cure the incurable.

About the Guest

David Fajgenbaum, MD, MBA, MSc, is Co-Founder & President of Every Cure as well as a groundbreaking physician-scientist, disease hunter, speaker, and national bestselling author of Chasing My Cure: A Doctor’s Race to Turn Hope Into Action.

Best known as the ‘doctor who cured himself’ (Doctor Cure Thyself, NY Times), Fajgenbaum went from being a beast-like college Quarterback to receiving his last rites while in medical school and nearly dying four more times battling Castleman disease. To try to save his own life, he spearheaded an innovative approach to research through the Castleman Disease Collaborative Network (CDCN) and discovered a treatment that is saving his life and others.

Now, he is spreading this approach to other diseases (His method could save millions, CNN) and co-founded Every Cure in 2022 to unlock the full potential of every drug to treat every disease possible. He has advanced 14 repurposed treatments for diseases they weren’t initially intended for. Fajgenbaum also continues to share lessons he learned about life, hope, and resilience from nearly dying through his national bestseller, Chasing My Cure, which has been profiled by Good Morning America, CNN, NPR’s Fresh Air, and BBC News, among others, translated into over five languages, and named one of the “Best Non-Fiction Books.”

Links in this Episode

Donate to Every Cure at everycure.org

Watch David'd TedTalk here at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb34MfJjurc

Learn more and connect with David at davidfajgenbaum.com

Learn more about Off the Rak and watch past episodes at waltrakowich.com/offtherak

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