How the Greater Good Helps Workplaces Thrive
MEETING FOR THE WEEK OF June 9, 2025
This Meeting at a Glance:
Program: How the Greater Good Helps Workplaces Thrive
Speaker: Kia Afcari
Is this your first time visiting us? If so, welcome to our weekly online meeting! To complete our meeting, please continue reading from here to the bottom of this page. Each Monday, our week’s meeting is posted early in the morning, U.S. Pacific Time. These meetings are designed so that you can read and watch what we post anytime during the week. The entire meeting takes about 60 minutes to complete, with the video conference recording of the program being the bulk of the time. Note that you can easily read this meeting with your favorite device, so feel free to take our meeting on the go with you. Please also complete the attendance form at the bottom and leave a comment. Enjoy!
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Read and watch the content below in its entirety.
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Message from our President
Want to Learn More About Us? - Who We Are, What We Do, Why We Do It
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Welcome Members, fellow Rotarians, friends, and guests. Thanks for joining our weekly meeting!
WEEKLY FUNNY WITH SHAGS
We believe laughter is an important part of life, and we should all make time to laugh a little. This segment of our meeting is meant to tickle you just enough. These funnies are curated by member Steven "Shags" Shagrin!
Comparing Flags
A Dutchman was explaining the red, white, and blue Netherlands flag to an American.
"Our flag is symbolic of our taxes. We get red when we talk about them, white when we get our tax bills, and blue after we pay them."
The American nodded, "It's the same in the USA, only we see stars too!"
INSPIRATION
It might be depressing to run across another problem you didn't know existed, but if there's already a group addressing it, that's encouraging! In this video, learn about the issue of "ghost nets," and what the World Wildlife Foundation is doing with AI to accelerate how they deal with it.
LEARN SOMETHING NEW
History Through the Eyes of a Chicken
The Ancient Egyptian king Thutmose III described the chicken as a marvelous foreign bird that “gives birth daily.” Romans brought them on their military campaigns to foretell the success of future battles. Today, this bird occupies a much less honorable position – on dinner plates. Chris Kniesly explains the evolving role of chickens throughout history.
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PROGRAM: How the Greater Good Helps Workplaces Thrive
SPEAKER: Kia Afcari
We bring you a new program every week on innovation, entrepreneurship, and education and how they contribute to service to others.
UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center (GGSC) has translated the science of a meaningful life to audiences around the world for over two decades, reaching a million people a month through its articles, podcast, and online tools. Today, GGSC is bringing that science directly to the workplace to address the challenges of the multitudes of people who suffer unnecessarily at work. You'll hear about why kind workplaces are more successful, how gratitude can be a game-changer at work, and how you can engage with GGSC to improve your own workplace.
Our speaker, Kia Afcari, is the director of Greater Good Workplaces at GGSC. He has over twenty years of experience helping leaders, teams, and organizations with collaborative change and has served as a consultant to a wide variety of organizations, including tech, biotech, and fintech companies, health care organizations, universities, NGOs, UN agencies, and nonprofits. Kia grounds his work in the science of well-being, prosociality, and contemplative practices and uses creative methods like "instant dance parties" and Boal-informed theater techniques to achieve results. He is a certified executive coach, an Appreciative Inquiry Facilitator, Zenger Folkman 360 Extraordinary Leader Facilitator, and Core Strengths Facilitator.
Kia's TEDx talk on How We Can Reshape Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Together has over 77,000 views, and for his work supporting major culture change efforts at scale, Kia was awarded Chief Learning Officer Magazine's Silver Award for Innovation for his accomplishments in helping shift the organizational culture of UC Berkeley's 8,000 staff.
To learn more, go to:
Why Kind Workplaces Are More Successful free webinar: https://ggsc.berkeley.edu/what_we_do/event/why_kind_workplaces_are_more_successful
Bring a Greater Good speaker or workshop to your organization: https://ggsc.berkeley.edu/what_we_do/speaking
To learn more about the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley, go to:
http://rotary.cool
Our Three Podcast Series
Our main program speakers are available as podcasts in addition to YouTube videos! Each week, they are available on Spotify and Apple podcasts.
Or you can click below for this week’s speaker:
The Weekly Rotarian
Inspiring Solutions
And our original podcast, featuring some of the best of our previous speakers, is still available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts
Development Success Stories
Our third podcast features success stories about economic development from around the world. It is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, or you can click below.
UPCOMING PROGRAM RECORDING SCHEDULE
All of our guest speakers and programs are recorded live online over Zoom video conference. We welcome members and guests to join us in one of these upcoming recordings. Recordings are approximately 30 minutes long and are subject to change without notice.
Our online video conference room link for these recordings is always http://zoom.siliconvalleyrotary.com/. You are welcome to join us! Please note the timezone listed for all recordings is US Pacific Time (San Francisco, California, USA).
If you can’t join the live recording, please send your questions for an upcoming speaker to programs@siliconvalleyrotary.com.
THE ATTENDANCE SURVEY
Thanks for reading and watching this week’s meeting. You have two last things to do before you’re done.
We have a very short attendance survey below for you to fill out to record your attendance.
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