Stanley Alpert

10/08/19 • 44 min

Ep. 14 — A federal prosecutor kidnapped at gunpoint fights for his survival and discovers what’s truly important in life / Stanley Alpert, Environmental Lawyer and Author. Federal prosecutor Stanley Alpert was enjoying the cold January New York air as he walked to his Greenwich Village home when he felt the gun pressing into his back and realized he was being held up for money. But what started out as an armed robbery quickly turned into a kidnapping when the thugs learned of Alpert’s significant bank balance. In an instant, the prosecutor’s plans to spend his 38th birthday the next day with his family and friends changed dramatically. So did his life priorities. Alpert’s goal: Convincing his captors to let him go and learning enough to put them behind bars if he survived the ordeal. For the next 25 hours, as he was held hostage and his captors tried to empty his bank accounts and max out his credit cards, Alpert made some strategic and tactical decisions that convinced his captors to let him go. In the process, Alpert learned some vital lessons about himself. Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Hello, and welcome to When it Mattered. A podcast on how leaders are forged in critical moments and how they overcome adversity. I'm Chitra Ragavan. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. My guest today is Stanley Alpert, an environmental lawyer, among other positions in his distinguished career, Alpert served for 13 years as a successful federal prosecutor handling environmental cases for the U.S. Department of Justice in the Eastern District of New York. Chitra Ragavan: On the eve of his 38th birthday, Alpert was kidnapped near his Greenwich Village home, and held captive for than 24 hours. He was lucky to released but not before his captors got his ATM password and withdrew large sums of cash from several banks. Alpert wrote a memoir about the incident and what it taught him, called The Birthday Party: A Memoir of Survival Chitra Ragavan: Stanley, welcome to the podcast. Stanley Alpert: Thank you for having me, Chitra. Chitra Ragavan: So this was on cold January night in 1998, and you were walking to your house in Greenwich Village and you were in a really good mood. Stanley Alpert: I sure was. I just met a young woman on the train. We'd gone and found some chocolate chip cookies. I got my box, and she got hers, and she went upstairs to go to her apartment and then I walked up the street going towards mine, and that's when my life changed. Chitra Ragavan: What happened? Stanley Alpert: As I got to the corner of 10th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, I felt a tug on my elbow. I spun around, there was an automatic machine pistol in my gut. Two men behind me with guns. They pushed me into the street into a car, and shut me in the car. They demanded my personal information, my bank information, my name, et cetera. And then they drove me to the bank where they began to withdraw my money. Chitra Ragavan: Tell me a little bit about who these guys were. What did they look like, what did they sound like, what information were you able to get in those frenetic first moments? I'm sure you were terrified? Stanley Alpert: I was absolutely terrified. It was a shock and I purposely kept my eyes down toward my knees in the car because I did not want them to think that I was looking at them, so I got only the barest glimpses of them. They were three young men, very agitated, very excited. The leader of the gang, who went by the street name of Lucky, had a very professional air about him. He spoke well. He demanded all my information, so he could take the money out of the machine. Stanley Alpert: So they drove me to the bank and they asked me how much money I had, and I told them I had $110,000 in my savings account. And even though I was a federal prosecutor who did not make the most mon...

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Terrence Franklin

Ep. 13 — Uncovering a pre-Civil War era will takes an estate lawyer deep into his family’s history with slavery and helps him come to terms with his sexual identity / Terrence Franklin, Sacks, Glazier, Franklin & Lodise, LLP. For nearly a quarter century, Terrence Franklin practiced trust and estate litigation, not knowing how his expertise would reshape his own life some day. Then, a family reunion took Franklin deep into his family history. At that event, Franklin noticed snippets of names and words taken from what appeared to be the last will and testament of a slave owner named John Sutton, freeing Franklin's fourth great grandmother, Lucy Sutton, and her children and grandchildren. Franklin made note of it and then got on with his life. But he could never forget those cursive words. Years later, Franklin traced the original will and found the poignant and untold story of his family’s emancipation from slavery, nearly two decades before the end of the Civil War. Uncovering his family history transformed Franklin’s mission as a trust and estate lawyer and in the most unexpected way, also helped him reconcile with his sexual identity. Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Hello and welcome to When it Mattered, a podcast on how leaders are forged in critical moments and how they overcome adversity. I'm Chitra Ragavan. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. My guest today is Terrence Franklin. He's a partner at the law firm, Sacks Glazier Franklin & Lodise. Franklin is a seasoned attorney with more than two decades of experience handling trust and estates litigation. His depth and breadth of expertise on estate matters became of great importance when he found and traced the last Will and Testament that freed his fourth great-grandmother and her children and grandchildren. The will helped Franklin uncover the poignant and untold story of his family's emancipation from slavery nearly two decades before the end of the Civil War and it transformed his mission as a litigator. And in an unexpected twist, that story of emancipation also helped Franklin come to terms with his own journey as an African American gay man searching for his identity. Terry, welcome to the podcast. Terrence F.: Thank you, Chitra. It's a pleasure to be here with you. Chitra Ragavan: Your moment of adversity came at a relatively young age in 1983. How old were you and what happened? Terrence F.: I was just about almost 20 years old, but I had studied abroad and I came back and I'd had a relationship with someone in France and my brother found a letter that suggested to him that perhaps I was gay. And being from an African American family on the South side of Chicago, Christian family, we really didn't believe in homosexuality or that it was appropriate. And my brother told my parents, doing what he thought was the right thing to do for which was best for us as Christians. And they confronted me and asked me about that. And I had to take a moment to try to understand what I could be and how I could move forward with my life. And in that moment of trying to figure out how I could succeed and be a person of substance because I didn't really have any role models who were African American and gay who were successful. I chose to say that I was bisexual. Terrence F.: Looking back on it today, I understand that bisexuality is something different. But for me in that moment, this was sort of my way of acknowledging some truth to what my family was saying to me, and also preserving the possibility that I could somehow move forward, continue with my education and be successful. Chitra Ragavan: So that intervention really was a really transformative moment in your life. What happened after that? Terrence F.: It was a transformative moment because without really setting out to do so, I then sort of was in the process of trying to figure ...

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James Carville

Ep. 15 — A big time political advisor returns to his small town roots and finds an urgent new cause / James Carville, Democratic political strategist, author, public speaker. James Carville earned the privilege of breathing what he describes as the “most rarefied air on earth,” when, as Bill Clinton’s campaign manager, he helped Clinton win the Presidency. Knowing that the only direction from that pinnacle of success was down, Carville made two life-changing decisions: He walked away from working on domestic political campaigns, although he remains a prominent advisor to the Democratic Party. And, when Hurricane Katrina ravaged his home state of Louisiana, Carville moved his family from the nation’s capital to New Orleans in a gesture of solidarity and to help rebuild the city. The decision to return home to his roots ignited a burning passion for an urgent cause: fighting the devastating impact of climate change on coastal communities. In doing so, the Ragin’ Cajun, as Carville is affectionately called, knows he has signed up for the most difficult campaign of his life. He’s raging against a dangerous, unpredictable, and uncontrollable adversary. The weather. Transcript Download the PDF Chitra: Hello, and welcome to When It Mattered, a podcast on how leaders are forged in critical moments and how they deal with and learn from adversity. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology start-ups find their narrative. My guest is the legendary James Carville. He's an internationally recognized political strategist and media commentator. He's a best-selling author, public speaker, sports commentator, lawyer, and a prominent advisor in the Democratic Party. Nicknamed the Ragin' Cajun because of his spirited discourse and his Louisiana roots, Carville gained global recognition as the campaign manager who helped elect Bill Clinton President in 1992. He served as a long time CNN co-host and commentator. He currently teaches in the School of Mass Communications at his alma mater, Louisiana State University, home of his beloved LSU Tigers. James, welcome to the podcast. James Carville: Thank you, this is a big honor to be on. It's great. Chitra: Is it fair to say that you are a bit of a late bloomer? You burst on the national political scene when you were almost 50 as the campaign manager who helped Bill Clinton win the Presidency. What were you up to before you found politics or before politics found you? James Carville: A lot of stuff that's not suitable for your podcast. Yeah, I got married when I was 49, and I've only been married once, and I've been married for almost 26 years now. I was 48 when President Clinton got elected, so I guess it's safe to say I was a late bloomer, but bloom I did. Chitra: You did. What was your first political campaign like? I guess you were a lawyer before you discovered politics and your natural affinity for it. James Carville: I think I discovered politics before I was a lawyer. First campaign I ever worked on was at like 13-14 years old. A guy running for state representative in Louisiana, my job was to go tear the other guy's signs off the telephone poles. Maybe I was 15, because I had to drive. So, when I was 15, I would go around every little place in Louisiana and tear the signs up of the political partner off the telephone poles. Chitra: That's great. A lot of our listeners may not know that your last name Carville is actually the name of the town where you were born and raised. Carville, Louisiana, named after your paternal great-grandfather and postmaster Louis Arthur Carville. So, you have deep multi-generational roots in Louisiana. Can you talk a little about that? James Carville: By way of interest, my great-grandfather was actually a soldier in the Union army and was a Republican member of the Louisiana legislature doing reconstruction. He died and his wife,