Futurist(Mom)

Nancy Giordano: Hi, and welcome to the Futurist Mom Podcast.

This is an idea that's been swirling in my head and in my heart for many years.

And as any of you have ever had those kinds of ideas that you really wish that something would exist on the planet, it's very exciting when you can actually get it out of your head and into tangible form and invite other people to share in it.

So I'm thrilled to have you here.

My name is Nancy Ano and I describe myself as someone who is an advocate and an activist for a safe and thriving future.

That is a through line in everything that I have ever created and done.

And it's part of a, a really fundamental part of what this podcast is all about.

Okay.

Professionally, I have a broad range of roles that I describe as everything from global futurist and system strategist to an advisor to several AI startups.

I'm a gatherer and I've created events that literally introduce people to new ideas and new ways of thinking about things, both in real life, like for TEDx events and online.

As we describe the new story that we're heading into, and I'm a global keynote speaker, and I wrote a book few years ago to help leaders rethink what it means to be visionary.

I'll also add that I'm a real person, that I'm not a bot, I'm not an avatar.

I'm not the figment of someone's digital imagination.

That may sound funny to say, but as we look at this into the future in the next few years, right, we're gonna be bombarded by a whole lot of
video content and we're gonna wonder, or audio content, we're gonna wonder where it's coming from and whether or not that person is very real.

So I will say, yes, I'm a real person sitting in front of a microphone, in front of a computer, inviting you into this world that I'm very excited about because I'm also a mom.

That's the role I'm the most proud of.

I'm the mother to three, flourishing young adults in their twenties, 28, 25, and 22.

You'll hear a lot about Hugo, Zane, and Harper over the next few, you know, years or however long we do this podcast, next months and next few years as they are making their way
into the world and thinking a lot about the careers that they're building and the work that they wanna do, the contributions they wanna make, the kinds of lives that they wanna make.

So I spent a lot of time, obviously in the last 28 years thinking about the future, both through their lens and through the business lens and that weave between the two has been hugely informative and has given me a lot more confidence as a mother, right?

I've looked at around the corner at where things are going, and I've been able to then back cast ways in which I can make decisions differently for my children.

You know, as a strategist, my work is about pulling together a range of disparate information to help make sense of where we are and to lay out the choices and the paths that we have ahead.

To get to the outcome that we desire, right?

What is it that I want to accelerate and move to faster?

What is a threat or something scary that I want to blunt and try and get out of the way?

And as a futurist, it pulls that thinking forward to take even a more broad view so we can better anticipate, prepare, and drive positive change.

It's all again about embracing for me the possibilities that become only visible in mass transformation.

So I know that that change can be really scary for many people, but for me, I see it as an opening again for huge transformative change.

I believe that we're in this moment of upheaval that is, um, allowing us to have a once in a generational opportunity to redesign, rethink, and reimagine every industry, and to reexamine every social agreement around things like identity and purpose and money.

You name it.

Right, which can be very, again, overwhelming and daunting, but also extraordinary and empowering if we walk into it with a mindset that believes that we can impact it.

So again, I continue to believe that the fortunate, interchange between being a futurist and being a mom has really helped me make more active decisions and feel like I'm walking through the world, willing, again, um, excited about what comes ahead.

And I made different choices along the way that have impacted that.

Again, as a parent, uh, when I look into the future, I can then decide that I wanna make different choices for my children that I might have if I was only using the parenting handbook from, you know, the past.

Uh, I've definitely had some moments in time I had to really rethink something and think about, well, if this is where we're headed, I need to really, uh, change

the course or change my approach, and certainly as a mom, it has impacted my work as a futurist, right?

All the work I do is I want to ensure that we're building a life and we're building a, a, a society.

We're building a planet that my children will wanna step into and that their children wanna step into.

We think about this from multiple generations, right?

We're not just thinking about short-term decision making, but we're really thinking about this through a long-term lens, which is why this podcast is so important to me now.

After decades of helping organizations and leaders around the world grapple with change, it's clear that a rapidly changing world is putting so much pressure on the shoulders and minds of parents, caregivers, and kids today.

You know, we're all bombarded by headlines that warn us of tech domination and job loss and severe weather catastrophes and violent behavior, and arguing politicians that at some point also, sometimes Mik is very afraid that we might be heading into New Wars.

An old roadmap just don't help us today.

You know, I've been in rooms where the same parents, like one set of parents believes one thing, and the other parents believe very differently.

One set of parents can be relieved that their children have never tried chat, GBT or even been on a screen.

And other parents in that same room can be just as proud that their children are using those applications or those tools to build, you know, new solutions to build a new application, to be, you know, create an AI generated film.

So it's complicated, right?

We all have to make decisions about what we think is the right way to prepare our kids for this world that we're into, which I guess is why it's not surprising that after I give keynote talks, often all the conversations of people who come after me come,
come to not come after me, but the people who come up to me after I have given a talk and want to talk about what it is that I just shared, want to talk about it, not want to talk about it, not just through the lens of their, uh, offices or their enterprises.

But how it is also showing up potentially for their children.

They wanna tell me about their anxious and overwhelmed kids and what it feels like to be at home.

Thinking about questions like technology use and privacy and even motivation.

I've had parents tell me that they're really worried that their children don't even wanna, you know, necessarily graduate from high school.

They don't really see the point.

They don't know if it's really preparing them for this world that we're heading into.

Is it really worth the way in which they're being taught now?

Uh.

To, to think through what it is that they want to go do as they move forward.

And they wish that their, again, their anxious or overwhelmed child could have heard me speak to, could see some of the examples that I give about how things are taking
shape in really positive and fascinating ways around the future of healthcare or renewable energy or urban design, or the space economy or food production or housing.

Like there's so many amazing things that you think about in terms of vertical farming and 3D printing and you know, autonomous.

This, that and the other.

Like, it's exciting when you can, you know, see about, see it from that lens.

But I'm also really aware again that the gap between the excitement that I have about what's possible in the future and the very real concerns
around ethics and use of resources and equitable distribution of all these technologies, right, is creating a tremendous amount of concern and fear.

The research shows us how real those concerns are and why they're important to address.

There's something called the World Uncertainty Index that I was just introduced to recently, and the chart that I saw showed from 2008 to 2024 the fluctuation in our sense of, how uncertain we feel was, you know, relative, you know, went up and down.

But it was within a more narrow band and it suddenly in 2025, it shot up like a rocket is exponentially, multiple times higher.

Our levels of uncertainty now, which is not surprising when we see all the things that are happening in the world around us.

Right.

And as a result, it's not surprising that our sense of anxiety and stress and depression and even existential doom and most tragically are, you know, those who feel that the only way through is through, um, death by suicide.

I just, I can't even imagine like how horrible someone needs to feel about the world around them to be able to make those choices, right?

But if we feel like we've got no control or understanding about what's happening around us, it does feel very, very overwhelming.

Not just to adults, but certainly also to our children, right?

They can feel this, I have been talking about for decades, that we've been seeing the numbers climb around these really, really sad statistics and often tragic statistics, and we need to be thinking about this so much more.

Um.

I impactfully and so much more aggressively than we have, right?

Any society that only measures its, you know, progress or productivity through GDP or job creation, or how rich our 4 0 1 Ks are, and not thinking about how well our children are doing is 100% missing the point.

Right.

It is completely distorted then, and it needs to be turned upside down.

The most important metric should be how our children are thriving.

And right now they are not.

They do not feel well held.

They do not feel well supported.

They do not feel secure.

The world is heading in the right direction, and it's our job to turn that story around, right?

Their concerns are valid, but I really do, again, they believe that they deserve a better narrative, a better perspective on where things are going.

And I believe that it's possible, you know, in my work and in my family.

I strive every day to try and turn fear into curiosity.

'cause with that, I can make calmer, more informed decisions, right?

Again, ones that stand the test of time.

By having a futurist mindset, I have the confidence to walk in and question the patterns of the past and to think about different ways that we
can approach things as we walk again into a world of exponential technology, planetary stress, cultural polarization, and reinvention of work.

And have our children then feel more secure and more hopeful.

Really, that is the key to all of this.

'cause the question today's parents and caregivers are going to face are going to be even more complex as we move ahead.

Things like how AI enabled toys impact privacy and imagination.

How we talk about catastrophic storms and fires, how we value college or not.

What really, you know, are the kinds of choices that we make around how we want our children to be educated.

What are the things that are most important for them to be spending their time and attention on?

Because what kind of jobs are going to exist or not as we move into the future?

And what will be the metrics of success as we move ahead?

The intent of this podcast is to explore how these changes and emerging questions impact our kids, and to give us a clearer peek over the horizon so that we can have greater confidence again in our choices.

As we stand with our children at the threshold of an exponentially changing tomorrow, and we're gonna have all kinds of provocative and fascinating guests to talk to along the way.

In my work, I'm privileged to meet the people who are actively designing, shaping, and impacting the future.

I describe them often as thinkers, people you need to know, and we'll be inviting these ERs into the conversations that we're going to have, both as guests and sometimes just, or just referring to their work.

And when they're parents, it'll be also really interesting to dig into how their view of the world and in their work impacts how they do things at home.

Right?

How are they shifting and changing potentially some of the strategies?

How are they using technology or not?

What has worked and what hasn't worked?

I think it'll be just really fascinating to dig into that with them as well, because here's a statistic that has really stuck with me since I've heard it.

There's a thing called the Edelman Trust Barometer.

Every year they do a study with tens of thousands of people around the world to dig into how they feel, right, how confident they are about the future, who they trust, and how they're feeling about the world at large.

And in 2025, they described it as the age of of trust in the age of grievance, that there's a tremendous amount of polarization and again, a tremendous amount of fear.

And the stat that I was most concerned about is that it seems that 30 per, only 30% of American families believe those children are going to have a better future than they had a better life than they had.

That means 70% don't believe that, and that's lower than even the global average of 36%.

So, although I really appreciate that, that is real, what if I told you that instead, you could think about that, you know, your middle
child, middle school child could have the capacity to very realistically become a Nobel Prize winner or have a Nobel Prize level breakthrough.

We'll be discussing that in one of our podcasts.

What if there's some really interesting and provocative new approaches to, again, to learning in the future of schools and role that AI versus guides have in terms of academics and life skills, which is what our kids most want to learn about.

I will be discussing that.

What if I could introduce you to student led innovation and activism and empathy initiatives all over the world that are having a tremendous impact in not just allowing
children to wait until they're adult to make change, but allowing them to actually be active, contributors and stewards of the world around them, even at a young age.

Would that change the way you feel about the future?

Would that impact the conversations that you have with your child and the expectations that you have for them and decisions that you make on their behalf, but also hopefully with them, could these give you even yourself reasons to be excited about the future?

That is my hope.

Now this podcast is not just for moms and dads.

It's hopefully for grandparents and aunts and uncles and neighbors, and teachers and academics, and anyone who cares about children and not just our own children, but hopefully the world's children, right?

Everyone that we are.

privilege to be around that is going to, grow up and take on the responsibilities of the future, right?

We owe them our very, best and we owe them a story, and again, the capacities to be able to feel as though they're prepared as we move forward.

And as we mentioned, the topics are gonna range everything from a lot of technology topics 'cause that's certainly on our minds.

Uh, and again, how that impacts education, what that will look like for the work of the future, and how that's being redesigned and reconsidered.

We were talking about economics.

We'll be talking about the planet and we'll be talking about the role of parenting itself.

Right.

What are the expectations?

How does that shift, um, how does our own sense of self, again, as we're navigating change, how are ways that we can build our adaptability quotient?

And then how does that turn into, um, again, a more sense of security around parenting?

We will have sponsors and partners that will help us shape this podcast and amplify it.

We'll be experimenting with different formats and thinking about what works best, and we really appreciate your feedback and invite you to be part of this.

You're gonna have questions that we'd love to hear.

I'm sure you'll have ideas that you'd love for us to consider about who would be a great guest on this podcast or conversations that would be valuable to dig into and to explore.

And the hope is that you also feel inspired enough by these conversations to take them then into your home or into your community to extend the conversation, to let them live right, to continue to flush them out.

Ideas like maybe rather than just having a book club, you actually have an exploration club, which these ideas, again can expand and take on new forms.

You can find me on LinkedIn, you can find me on Signal.

You can find me at curious@futuristmom.com.

And I'll share with you also that you know, again, these are ideas that I very much have used in my own life and in my own home.

And while I recognize that parenting right now is very different or certainly more complex than in the last 28 years in which I raised mine, I will say there are some things that I think that, you know, hopefully still stand the test of time.

If you walked into my house in Austin, you would see four words stencil on the wall.

Very big words.

And they've been there since my children were very young, and it's very much influenced, sort of become the blueprint, I guess, for how they've been raised.

Sometimes subliminally, sometimes very actively.

They've written about them in their college applications.

The four words are wonder, think, do, repeat.

Again, if we don't know the exact skills that the future demands, we will know that there are certain capacities and the ability to be curious and
to wonder the ability to work in gratitude for both the, you know, inspiration you were given and the people who can help you do something about it.

To have a sense of agency that you can create the solutions that you think exist on the planet, or the new ideas and inventions that you're excited to offer to the world, right?

And to have the capacity to do that over and over again.

So as we step into this podcast together, I invite us to do the same thing, right?

To walk in with a sense of curiosity about what will come next, about what does it mean again, to have AI guides in the classroom, or robot nannies in our homes, right?

Ways to address eco anxiety that are really empathetic and hold our children well.

Ways to appreciate the growing impact of gaming and or, you know, sports betting, which is also a pretty scary thing.

So there's like gaming, which is having a huge impact on our children.

And some of the, you know, outcomes around some of that more risk taking behavior that may not be, um, as, uh, healthy and things that we need to
be paying more attention to and be really curious about ways that we can instill confidence and self-confidence and sell some agency from day one.

Right?

As a young mother, I really studied what does it mean to raise children in such a dynamic world?

And I found a, a parenting philosophy, a child rearing philosophy that I felt, again, gave me a tremendous amount of confidence that my children were gonna be more prepared.

And so far, I have to say it's turned out to be, um, a good choice.

So we'll introduce you to that way of thinking too, and just give you a. Another option.

And again, the range of children is again, from infant all the way to young adults.

So some of the conversations might be more relevant for young parents, some maybe even for grandparents.

But the fact is that most of it will cover the range across all of it because these are the universal concepts as we're navigating this together.

I thank you for sharing your time and your attention, and I'm deeply grateful that you care so much about children.

Again, both ours and the worlds to have these conversations and to spend time listening.

To these guests and to the topics that we're gonna be digging into.

It makes me feel a lot better about the future when we spend time really invested in thinking about how we can make it better for them.

So let's actively and intentionally do our best to calm our anxieties and create a path that prepares them for this new world versus retreats to the roads of the past.

Well, that offers a sense of security, a more positive story and confidence that they're prepared for whatever lies ahead.

Welcome again to The Futurist Mom Podcast.

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