Every episode will be featured with guests who have unique experiences to share about their personal experiences with fatherhood. We ask in depth questions that allow our guests discuss their challenges with fatherhood and how they overcame them. The goal of the show and every episode is to give every listener out there, who is a parent, and more specifically, a father, encouragement to stay the course in the lives of their families while providing the best experience of fatherhood that they can. We will also have bonus episodes where we invite a guest who is an expert on a specific topic such as real estate, finance, life insurance, and etc. These episodes will be focused on educating our audience on different topics they may be involved in or want to get involved in within their lives such as buying their first home, getting proper life insurance coverage for their families, health related topics, and more! We are hoping to reach and teach as many people as possible. We will be very diverse in these bonus episodes and seek to think outside of the box with the topics we cover. Ultimately, our goal is to create an environment where fathers feel welcomed in a community where they can lean on the support and experience of other fathers going through similar life paths. We believe that more fathers in the homes doing their PERSONAL BEST to provide the best experience of fatherhood can create an exponential wave of positive change in our world. If we can influence at least one person who watches our videos or listens to our podcasts in a positive way, we believe that positive influence will create a Ripple Effect of positivity into the rest of the world.
My name is Christian Van Buren and, no, I am not from anywhere in Europe. I am a man from Chicago, IL who is trying to make the most out of this life that God has blessed me with.
As a kid, I grew up in a few different areas within the inner city of Chicago. Most of my childhood was spent in the Uptown area and I also lived on the West Side of the city for some time. For a few years my mom and I also lived in a suburb about an hour west of Chicago called Woodstock, IL. While I did not realize it at the time, I was very fortunate to experience the different norms and lifestyles of people who lived within the city of Chicago versus people who lived in the suburban areas.
I left Chicago after graduating high school in 2014 and made the decision to move to the south side of the United States. After spending a year in Leesville, LA, I moved to Austin, TX where I joined the Texas Army National Guard as a Military Policeman and worked full-time as a correctional officer for 2 years. I felt that joining the military was a milestone that was necessary for me to complete in my life. My mother’s stern and strict parenting prepared me well for the structure in the military. As of 2022, my career has lasted 7 years. I have been blessed with the opportunity to serve on 2 state deployments, which include the 2017 Presidential Inauguration and Hurricane Harvey in Houston, TX. I deployed to Afghanistan in 2018 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. I spent time in the Active Guard Reserve as a recruiter and interstate transfer coordinator for 3 and a half years and will be finishing out my career as a Recruit Sustainment Program Cadre member.
I am extremely blessed and humbled to be married to my wonderful wife. We met and got married in 2016 and have enjoyed each other constantly ever since. We were gifted with our amazing son, Cylan Cotto Van Buren, in 2021. We have a saying in our home that the daily order of importance should be: our faith, our personal health, our family, our business and everything else comes after.
Together, my wife and I are life insurance brokers outside of being co-founders of Ripple Effect Fatherhood. We work under Family First Life Insurance Brokerage and strive to help families protect their legacies and futures through the varieties of opportunities in insurance. We love what we do and decided to leave the Active Duty military to operate our life insurance business full-time.
My passion is simple: to learn and develop my relationship with Jesus Christ over the course of my lifetime while serving as many people as I can and create a world full of positivity, one day at a time.
Favorite Quote: “Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think”- Guy Lombardo
