Innovation and Friendship: The Disruptor Series with Ray Headen - Disrupting the Status Quo (Part 1) - The Disruptor Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, this is John Kuntz of the Disruptor Podcast.
I want to welcome you to a veryspecial edition of our podcast.
On May 21st, 2024, the worldlost a great husband, a great
father, a great lawyer judge,and I lost a friend who I met 50

(00:25):
years ago while I was in themiddle school.
I had the pleasure, in Augustof 2021, to record a podcast
with the Honorable Raymond CHedden.
I've taken the time to remixthat podcast and republish it in
a three-part series.
I hope you enjoy it.

(00:47):
I hope you learn somethingabout friendship for over 50
years and I hope you take thecauses that Ray was trying to
work on, both as a judge and alawyer, and continue to move
them forward is part of hislegacy.

(01:10):
Again, thanks for listening.
Hope you enjoy the show.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Welcome everybody to Apex Communications Network.
As always, I'm Jan Olmesny, buttoday I'm not actually your
host, I'm just here as thespecial guest.
I'd like to sneak into yourspecial guest.
We have an even more specialguest that will be coming on.
Y'all already know me, I'm notreally that important, but this
episode's segment series, if youguys have been paying attention

(01:48):
, is a little bit different thanthe traditional Apex podcast
episode.
Right, these episodes are stillabout ordinary people
accomplishing extraordinarythings, but there's a catch they
have to be somebody that isinnovating a process, disrupting
an industry, or actively beingsomebody that is knocking on the
door of everything that isstatus quo in order to try to

(02:09):
change a status quo.
Right, In order to introduceproperly the real idea of what
this is supposed to be.
I'm going to introduce thegentleman that is really the
brain behind this entire idea,the disruptor himself, Mr John
Kuntz.
John, welcome back to Apex.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Thank you, jan, I appreciate it.
I'm super excited to be heretoday.
We talked about, on the firstsegment, we're in a period of
massive digital disruption or,if you take to a step further,
experience disruption, and whatI always like to say is, if
you're in business or you're outthere, you're either being
disrupted or you are thedisruptor, and what I mean by
that is you're either Netflix orBlockbuster, you're either

(02:53):
Airbnb or the hotel industry orprobably, in a good analogy
today, you're either the taxicab industry or you're Uber or
Lyft.
And so I'm like super excitedto bring in one of my colleagues
on the disruptor community.
It's a gentleman I've knownsince I've been in seventh grade

(03:13):
.
We went to middle schooltogether, we went to high school
together and we've remainedfriends and really respect his
approach, his openness, and hereally is trying to be the
disruptor in the judicialcommunity.
So with that, jan, let'swelcome my good friend, ray
Hedden, who is truly a disruptor.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
Welcome to the party, ray.
Good morning.
Good morning, how are you guys?

Speaker 2 (03:41):
I'm good man, just excited to be here, excited to
be doing stuff like this.
Why don't we start off withjust how you and John met and
what that was like at that time?
But we were talking before wehit the mics that when you guys
met from the very beginning itwas a disruptive period.
It was a disruption at thattime.

(04:02):
So why don't we explore thatjust a little bit?

Speaker 3 (04:06):
I guess I can take a start because in a way,
disruption was in essence, thecivil rights movement.
It was the opportunity of aninner city kid from urban
Glenville, ohio, cleveland,where some of the riots occurred
in the 1960s.
I was there, met Martin LutherKing early on in 1972 as a

(04:26):
result of really, I think, adisruption that occurred in
racial integration.
I was actually bussed out to auniversity school, a prep school
for boys, one of the best inthe United States, and I am
proud to be knowing John since Iwas 12 years old, and that was

(04:49):
a disruptive event because itallowed for people to be friends
and to know each otherpersonally for years and years.
A lot of progress.
But the progress that came inracial integration and the
ability for us to be heretalking to one another as a

(05:13):
result of what leadership ofpeople who saw that people like
John and I needed to gettogether way back almost 50
years ago now.
It's crazy.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
Yeah, it's amazing.
You know what, ray?
What always struck me and I'vebeen giving this a lot of
thought a whole bunch of newkids.
New kids also came in together.
I didn't really know thedifference between growing up in
Shaker Heights versus growingup in Glenville, which was great
because it took away anyimplicit bias.
We didn't have any implicitbias at the time and we got to

(05:42):
know each other.
For the people we were, notwhere we came from or where we
grew up or who our parents wereor any of that stuff, and I
think that was, and it was agood time for that.
Right now.
There was not a great time inthe country.
Right, we were in the middle ofthe Vietnam War.
It was certainly those, theracial tensions that had gone on
in late 60s, early 70s.

(06:02):
But I think, with you coming touniversity, school, middle
school, us all just being dumbteenagers, we got to be, we got
to see each other for what theywere, not for where they came
from, and for me that was a hugeone of the many pivotal moments
in my disruptor life, if youwill.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
Absolutely, absolutely.
When you think about it, that'sthe whole point of America.
It asks us that we all shouldbe able to stand tall with one
another in unity, where you are,what your race is, a background
, regardless of whether you'vegot cash or no cash.
I give credit to the old whitemen of the 1960s and 70s Roland

(06:50):
McKinley and the board oftrustees at US to see that the
future was integration, thefuture was diversity, the future
was inclusion.
All the things that we weretalking about.
Those guys took a moment intime when things could have gone
in either two directions.
There were riots, there was war, there was a lot of disruption,

(07:10):
and they chose to take a paththat allowed for us to get to
know each other and look atwhat's going on.
50 years later, we are both inthe process of hoping to disrupt
other institutions, otherplaces, so that literally
everything improves when you'redisrupting.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah, I agree with that.
I think that when you come intoany type of arena, that has
been at a baseline for howeverlong.
I've always been curious as towhy people don't use the word
that I just used right there why?
Why is it like this?

(07:48):
Why does it have to be this way?
Right there, why, why is itlike this?
Why does it have to be this way?
Why are situations playing outthe way that they are?
I've always been one to nevertake something at face value and
, like you said, to the creditof those people that were on
that board at that time doingthe things that they were doing,
they were asking why, why is itlike this?
Why are we still doing this?
Why are these kids not able tobe together?

(08:09):
And then here we are at thispoint where you and John have
forged this friendship overyears and years is an
epitomization of what they werehoping would happen at that
period of time.

Speaker 3 (08:23):
Absolutely, yeah, absolutely.
You hit it right on the button.
I'd like to say, as a judge,that I stand on the shoulders of
a whole lot of people.
Nobody stands to where they.
Of a whole lot of people,nobody stands to where they are
without a lot of help.
And that might be family, thatmight be institutions, it might
be friends, it might be allkinds of different things, but
it just doesn't happen byaccident.
In the absence of being able torely upon other people, we're

(08:46):
not going to be able to besuccessful, and the country
won't be successful either.
Agreed, we're not going to beable to be successful and the
country won't be successfuleither.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
I agree, and you know , back to the motto of
university school responsibility, loyalty and consideration, and
in those words, I don't knowthey were ingrained in us, as
you say.
The old white men of the late60s, early 70s also saw that and
they were able to give you andme.
I had my challenges for sure.
You and I were given theability to take advantage of

(09:14):
that motto and move forward, andyou made an amazing career out
of it.
I'm going to tout you a littlebit more.
After you went to universityschool, you went to Williams
College and a number of myfriends went there.
It was a place I would havenever been able to get into out
of high school.
And then you went on to becomea lawyer at the University of
Pennsylvania, came back toCleveland, worked at one of the

(09:36):
really nice law firms here intown and obviously have taken on
more responsibilities, and nowour judge, helping to disrupt,
if you will, our legal system.

Speaker 3 (09:49):
I could just for a second, john, because I think I
want to share something that yousaid so insightfully.
Those, quote unquote old whitemen saw that diversity,
inclusion actually goes bothways.
It's not just like letting akid from black Glenville coming
out to US and only helping me,it also helped you as well and

(10:11):
likewise that's the whole pointof this thing.
If it doesn't go both ways,then you don't have that bridge
of understanding, that bridge ofconnection that I think I've
utilized in my traditionalcareer to the benefit and
disruption of where things canimprove, because you got to have
a diversity of thought andideas and opinions and

(10:32):
approaches.
And that's what we learned whenwe got together, john, and
that's why you're the disruptorand I am hopefully a disruptor,
because I think that was whatthose, that was what was
intended a long time ago.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
I was a disruptor just because I was a
troublemaker, but that's adifferent story.
Well, I've been hearing thosestory at some point, John.
You're spot on, ray.
That's what I learned going outinto college and then into the
professional world and then inmy working for IBM for all of
these years is that people withdifferent backgrounds, different
socioeconomic upbringings youname it they all can have really

(11:09):
good ideas, and one of thethings Jan and I have been
working on is this whole idea ofempathy and understanding what
people think and how they feeland what they do and what they
say allows you to bring thiswhole what we are today, this
user-centric, disruptive userexperience, into the marketplace

(11:29):
of user experience into themarketplace.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
So, on that same vein , we're talking about how your
guys' relationship formed andthe disruptive period.
That was that time period,right, and a lot of people have
been comparing ever since,really, march when COVID hit
that this entire planet has justdone this and everybody's

(11:50):
trying to figure out which wayis up.
But it's the perfect time todisrupt, right?
I made the comparison the otherday and I really like it.
I compared the entire world tolike this snow globe.
Right, and when you have a snowglobe it can still be this
beautiful thing, but a lot oftimes all of the dust settles at
the bottom and every now andthen you need a disruptor to
come in and just do this toreally get the beauty that's

(12:11):
behind the curtain.
It's all kind of settled at thebottom, everything's status quo,
and if a disruptor is able tocome in and shake things up, it
really allows all of thosebeautiful glittery snowflakes to
reenter the atmosphere and thenthe world is in this beautiful
blissful renaissance for a shortperiod of time, until it
settles again and anotherdisruptor is required to come in

(12:31):
and shake things up.
So, as far as it comes toshaking things up in the
judicial side of things, legalentities that we've been talking
about leading up to this, whatexactly is going on in this 21st
century We've talked about.
You know we're a big show thatlikes to talk about data, so I'm
super excited for this part ofthe conversation.
But why don't we start to hiton the database and you can

(12:55):
explain what that is and kind ofexplain how it came about?

Speaker 1 (12:59):
Well, that's the end of part one.
I hope you enjoyed learning alittle bit about how Ray and I
got to know each other over 50years ago.
I hope you stay tuned for parttwo, over 50 years ago.
I hope you stay tuned for parttwo, as Jan alluded to, part two
will take a deeper dive intothe database initiatives that
Ray was working on as part ofhis judicial activities.

(13:20):
His attempt to bring dataanalytics and insights and
overall fairness and equalityinto the sentencing process is
something that he had a passionfor and I hope you learn about
what he was doing and join hiscause to keep Ray's passion

(13:43):
moving forward and support hislegacy legacy.
Then, in part three, jan and Iwill dive deeper with Ray around
the concept he coined calledmass incarceration.
We will get to know and betterunderstand the initiatives Ray
was doing and where he wasworking and how he felt it would

(14:04):
improve the overall judicialsystem in the state of Ohio and
ultimately save the taxpayersmoney.
Again, thanks for listening tothis special edition of the
Disruptor Podcast.
We hope to see you at the nextone.
Thanks a lot.
Take care Bye.

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Innovation and Friendship: The Disruptor Series with Ray Headen - Disrupting the Status Quo (Part 1)

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