Jaclyn Richard introduces herself and the podcast in this pilot episode — laying out the spirit of the show, the phrase that gave it its name, and what listeners can expect from a Rochester, NY podcast built around the people who make the city tick.
About This Episode
What does it mean to have a little Brooklyn in you? It's not necessarily about geography. It's a posture — a way of moving through the world with your eyes open and your guard just low enough to let people in. It's the directness that skips small talk without skipping warmth. It's the wit that comes from growing up around people who didn't sugarcoat things, but who also showed up when it mattered. That's the energy Jaclyn Richard is after, and it's the energy that launched this podcast.
In this first episode, Jaclyn introduces herself to listeners — not with a resume, but with a disposition. She's a Rochester woman who grew up with a particular sensibility, shaped in part by her family's connection to Brooklyn, and she's spent her life noticing that same sensibility in the people around her in upstate New York. The podcast is her attempt to put a name to it and to find it in others: the entrepreneurs who bet on themselves, the civic leaders who push past "no," the artists who keep creating even when no one's watching.
What Jaclyn makes clear from the jump is that this show isn't about nostalgia for New York City. It's not a tribute to Brooklyn as a place. The phrase "I've got a little Brooklyn in me" is something her family said — and it captured something real about character rather than address. It's a lens for the whole show: a way of asking what makes someone sharp, resilient, and real. Rochester has plenty of those people. The podcast is here to find them.
The pilot episode also sets the tone for how Jaclyn will conduct these conversations — honest, curious, without pretension. She's not interviewing people to perform admiration at them. She's genuinely interested in the grit behind the story, the decisions that didn't work out before the ones that did, and the texture of building a life and a career in a mid-size city that the rest of the country tends to overlook. That oversight, Jaclyn suggests, might actually be an asset: it keeps Rochester real.
If you've ever walked into a room and known exactly who in it was going to tell you the truth — not to be cruel, but because they respect you enough — you already know what "a little Brooklyn in you" feels like. This episode is an invitation to spend more time with people like that, and a promise that there are more of them in Rochester than you might expect. Consider this your introduction to the show, to Jaclyn, and to a city full of people worth knowing.
About the Host
Jaclyn Richard is the host of I've Got a Little Brooklyn in Me, a Rochester, NY podcast celebrating the entrepreneurs, civic leaders, artists, and changemakers shaping the city's future. New episodes drop biweekly on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.