Arc Benders began as a passion project that Christina started to interview people who are changing the world. She was tired of hearing bad news every time she turned on the tv and radio… yet in her day-to-day life, she was meeting people with incredible stories that she knew deserved to be told.
After collecting numerous interviews and thousands of photographs, Christina realized that to really do the stories justice, they had to be shared in multiple ways. This website started as a blog — and we continue to feature new Arc Benders' stories in written articles.
In 2019, Christina partnered with her good friend Alisa to launch the Arc Benders Podcast, which is available on all the major podcast apps and available in Closed Captioning on YouTube.
As a couple of social impact & podcast-obsessed millennials, Christina and Alisa made it their mission to create a podcast that gets honest about what it actually takes to drive positive change. So together they cut the crap, get past their guests' glossy resumes, and dive into #realtalk on topics like burnout, bias, wellness, financial inclusion, and paying-it-forward.
We believe that we all deserve to be happy and to find our deepest purpose. In turn, we'll inevitably find our unique path to making the world better and living a life with meaning.
Thank you to all the Arc Benders out there working to find ways to create a kinder, more equal world. Together, we can truly be the change we seek in the world!
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Meet the Hosts
Christina Noel
Christina is the Founder of Arc Benders & Co-host of the Arc Benders podcast. She is also a Marketing & Strategy Consultant on a mission to help community-focused entrepreneurs launch and grow their businesses, while staying true to their purpose.
She started her journey to trying to become an Arc Bender one night after a friend asked her 'What would you do with your life if you didn't have to worry about money?'
Without blinking she knew the answer was that she'd dedicate her life to helping others. She had been working in Healthcare Consulting at a company that had an amazing reputation for being a great place to work, but at the time she was miserable and unfulfilled. She was raised by two parents that worked in traditional jobs - one in business development at a pharmaceutical company, the other a pharmacist. She honestly hadn't imagined that anything other than a traditional corporate career direction was even possible.
Despite this, she realized at that moment that she was called to follow her passion. The only thing that was holding her back was the fear of the unknown.
The path wasn't always easy. When she told people her mission was to change the world, sometimes she'd often get an eye roll. It was obvious that many of the people she met working in traditional jobs thought she was naive. Despite their doubts, she believed her dream was possible.
Over the next 5-years, she pursued her MBA at the University of Georgia, landed a life-changing internship at B Lab, the non-profit behind the B Corp movement, and moved back to her home state of North Carolina where she landed a dream job at a The Redwoods Group, a Certified B Corp that uses the power of insurance to create safe communities for all. She also discovered her passion for using creativity and innovation to scale impact.
She is the co-founder of the NC B Corps, a group of business leaders dedicated to using business as a force for good and in 2015 she was given the B Corp MVP award, given annually to the single person worldwide who made the most contributions to the B Corp movement, for her leadership in community building.
Through her journey, Christina has met so many inspiring people. She started Arc Benders to use her passion for storytelling to inspire others to find their own path to change the world.
To take Arc Benders' storytelling to the next level, she was thrilled to partner with her dear friend and fellow B Corp Champion Alisa to launch the Arc Benders podcast.
Alisa Herr
Alisa is the co-host of the Arc Benders podcast and CEO and Creative Director of Unity Digital Agency.
Alisa always knew she wanted to help people, but she was never really sure how. In college, she majored in psychology because she was fascinated with people. Interestingly, she randomly landed in her first psychology class after dropping a business course because she thought it was filled with stupid busywork.
At the same time, Alisa was secretly honing her skills as a programmer. She had started learning to code in sixth grade and over the years coding was always a hobby. It wasn’t until she graduated with a Masters in Library Science (in 2009 when the economy was in the trash) that she ultimately found her path to becoming a woman in tech. She got a part-time job as a junior web developer and over 4 years worked her way up to the lead developer of a design firm.
That path eventually led to Alisa becoming the founding CTO of a media nonprofit focused on supporting public education.
However, Alisa eventually realized that she wanted to build something of her own. Throughout her professional career, she always felt like her life was being driven by other people and she was just along for the ride. That led her to launch Unity Digital Agency in 2016 as a business with a mission to make a positive impact on her home state of North Carolina.
Unity is a Certified B Corporation digital agency that specializes in working with community-focused organizations to build online brand experiences that capture and amplify their mission.
