Rotary Voices

Over the past few months, volatile markets around the world have sent many investors on an emotional roller coaster. In this episode, Rotarian and financial advisor Derrick Kinney is joined by certified financial planner James Bogart, CEO and founder of Bogart Wealth – one of the top financial planning firms in the country, for a conversation on how to make reasoned decisions while managing your investments and retirement accounts,...

In July 2024, dozens of gunshots pierced the quiet Seattle night. Sex traffickers jockeying for turf fired 30 shots on Aurora Avenue North, two blocks from journalist Erin Gartner’s house. Amid a surge of violence crashing over the neighborhood, Gartner felt hopeless — until she found a group of neighborhood volunteers and experts in the problem of trafficking, all of them part of a Rotary club dedicated to the issue. In this episo...

In September of 2023, the Gates Foundation partnered with the Moth – an award-winning storytelling nonprofit organization – to host an event in New York City during the UN General Assembly. The event, Don’t Stop Now: Stories from the Final Push to End Polio, highlighted the personal stories of people whose lives have been impacted by polio. One of the speakers was Safia Ibrahim, a polio survivor and global health advocate. In this ...

An accomplished writer of fiction (The Joy Luck Club and five other novels), memoirs, and children’s books, Tan came late to serious birding. That interest coincided with her dedication to learning how to draw. In The Backyard Bird Chronicles, readers follow Tan’s ornithological education while watching the evolution of a skillful artist. Recently, Tan sat down with the Chicago journalist and Emmy-winning news anchor Linda Yu to di...

In 2008, a loan officer in Spokane, Washington garnered international attention after helping a mama mallard and her ducklings down from a ledge outside his office building. Richard Repp, a lawyer and local Rotarian, concocted a plan that would not only preserve the story but promote childhood literacy and honor his mother. The result: a children's book called The Downtown Ducks. Rotary magazine senior editor Geoff Johnson sits dow...

NPR’s Scott Simon sat down with David Byrne five years after the legendary musician, artist and former Talking Heads frontman launched a nonprofit online magazine called Reasons to be Cheerful. The magazine offers good news in a market otherwise dominated by doom and gloom. In this episode, Byrne discusses the origins of Reasons to be Cheerful, the stories that have stuck with him, and his personal reflections on cheer in our world...

On 6 February 2023, two earthquakes struck Turkey and Syria – the deadliest to hit the region in 80 years. That morning, Rotary regional leaders in Turkey mounted an immediate response, while Rotary International and the Rotary Foundation enacted their disaster response funds. One year later, Rotary magazine and social media staff JP Swenson and Hannah Shaw traveled to southeastern Turkey to see these relief efforts for themselves.

In July of this year, poliovirus was detected in environmental samples from the Gaza Strip. In August, a 10-month-old boy became the first confirmed case in Gaza in the last 25 years, leading to an ongoing vaccination campaign in the Gaza Strip. In this episode, we hear from three polio experts from around the world – working in regions where wild polio has long been eradicated, to the two countries where wild polio remains endemic...

In a 2021 Farm Bureau Poll, 92 percent of farmers and farmworkers felt comfortable talking with a friend or family member about mental health, an increase of 22 percent over 2019. As awareness of rural mental health issues grows, so does the number of initiatives to confront them. This story by Elizabeth Hewitt originally appeared in the September 2024 issue of Rotary magazine in collaboration with Reasons to be Cheerful, a nonprof...

Jean-Marc Giboux is a Chicago-based photojournalist who spent 18 years traveling across 17 countries to document the effects of polio and the wide-ranging fight to eradicate it. In early 2024, Rotary International sponsored his exhibit, "Chasing Polio," at the Chicago Center for Photojournalism. In this episode, Rotary magazine senior staff writer Diana Schoberg sits down with Giboux to discuss the obstacles he faced in capturing h...

Dr. Atul Gawande is the assistant administrator of Global Health at the U.S. Agency for International Development. But Dr. Gawande’s leadership in public health stretches back long before his time at USAID, as does his background as a bestselling writer. In this episode, Rotary International General Secretary John Hewko sits down with Dr. Gawande to discuss Rotary’s partnership with USAID, the role of civil society organizations in...

Chef Art Smith is an iconic American restaurateur, philanthropist, and cookbook author. He's cooked for Barack and Michelle Obama, among other world leaders, and served as Oprah Winfrey's personal chef for a decade. He received the James Beard Award in 2002 for his cookbook "Back to the Table: The Reunion of Food and Family" and was named Humanitarian of the Year by the James Beard Foundation in 2007. Fellow James Beard Award winne...