Tech Forward

Hello listeners, and welcome to another exciting episode of Tech Forward! This week, we're rebroadcasting my covnersation with award-winning comedian Ana-Marija Stojic. Over the last several years, she’s participated in numerous comedy competitions, and been featured in the NBC Showcase at the Women in Comedy Festival Boston 2018. She was also a recipient of Netflix's 2018 Diversity of Voices fellowship at the Banff World Media Festival. On her latest project, “Artificial, the Podcast,” Ana-Marija will be joined by a unique co-host: a functioning AI chatbot. Today, we’ll be talking about her plans for the show, what it’s like to co-host with a chat bot, and some of the important topics they plan to tackle together. A self-described nerd, Ana-Marija has always been fascinated by the idea of collaborating with artificial intelligence. In recounting the inspiration behind the show, she touches on the story of a  chess tournament that paired humans with robots. Rather than the “top” performers of each category, t

Hello listeners, and welcome back to Tech Forward! This week, we're rebroadcasting my conversation with Aishwarya Balaji, Founder and CEO of Impact Chain Lab. By using blockchain technology, Impact Chain Lab is focused on building equitable communities around the globe. Aishwarya became interested in the disruptive power of blockchain in her previous roles as a consultant and leader at Build Academy, and now identifies ways to apply this technology to create solutions in the global development landscape. On this episode, we discussed her entrepreneurial journey, and the various ways Impact Chain Lab uses blockchain technology to drive positive social impact. As someone who knew from a young age that she wanted to go into business, Aishwarya’s entrepreneurial spirit is imbued with her natural curiosity and affinity for calculated risks. Her role as employee #1 at Build Academy gave her real time insights into the process of building a company from the ground up. That, combined with her firsthand experience in

Welcome back to Tech Forward, listeners! For this week's rebroadcast, we're featuring my conversation with Leslie Jump, founder and CEO at DifferentFunds, which is the first platform designed and built for investing in venture funds. Leslie has spent the bulk of her career building, advising, and investing in new companies, both in the US and worldwide. Most recently, she served as a Partner in Sawari Ventures, LLC, a Cairo-based early stage venture capital firm that invests in entrepreneurs across the Middle East and North Africa. Today, Leslie will share her inspiration for launching DifferentFunds, and how she’s helping a diverse network of more than 800 funds access the resources they need to support entrepreneurs globally. DifferentFunds began as Startup Angels in 2013, with the initial goal to match angel investors with startup investment opportunities. Eventually, however, Leslie and her team realized something critical: venture capital has a math problem. While the vast majority of venture funds have

Hello listeners! Welcome back to another episode of Tech Forward. This week, I hope you'll enjoy the rebroadcast of my conversation with Kevin Dedner, Founder and CEO of Henry Health. Henry Health's mobile app provides self-care and mental health support through culturally sensitive teletherapy, serving the population with the lowest life expectancy in the U.S. — black men. Kevin is an experienced public health leader, and through Henry Health, he is committed to leveraging the power of technology to add 10 years to the life expectancy of black men in the next 25 years by focusing on their emotional and mental health. Today on the show, Kevin will be sharing with us some of the challenges black men face when receiving mental health support, and how his product helps address that need. “There is a weight,” Kevin says, “a stress associated just with being a black man.” Unaddressed, that stress in combination with untreated mental health issues plays a significant role in the low life expectancy of black men in

Hello listeners, and welcome back to Tech Forward! This week, we're featuring a rebroadcast of my conversation with Catherine Wigginton Greene, Executive Director of content and engagement at Point Made Learning. She directed the feature documentary I’m Not Racist… Am I? (INRAI) which followed a diverse group of teens through a yearlong exploration of race and racism. From there, she led the development of Point Made’s newest offering – INRAI Digital – which uses the documentary as the foundation for a 3.5-hour online antiracism course. She also travels the U.S. leading workshops and facilitating dialogue about race and racism. Today we’ll be talking about some of the insights she has uncovered about race relations through her work, and how companies can improve their diversity training initiatives. Catherine’s work with Point Made Films began as a side project during her years as a freelance journalist, but she found herself quickly swept up in both the world of filmmaking, and the work the company was doing

Welcome back to Tech Forward, listeners! For our rebroadcast this week, we're featuring my first double interview: Gerri Kahnweiler and Cayla Weisberg, co-founders of Chicago-based InvestHER Ventures. InvestHER is an early stage investment firm that partners with and invests in female entrepreneurs. As a strong leader in philanthropy and civic engagement, Geri has a track record for empowering women and girls to reach their full potential. Her mission is to create funding opportunities for women who are focused on technology-enabled business services and data driven solutions for large markets. With her background in sales and a focus on people over products, Cayla offers hands-on thought leadership on startup scaling, pivoting, and operation excellence for InvestHER’s portfolio companies. We’ll be digging into the catalyst behind launching InvestHER, and how they’re working to level the playing field for female entrepreneurs across the country. Cayla and Gerri joined forces to launch InvestHER Ventures in 20

Welcome back to Tech Forward, listeners! For this week’s rebroadcast, I’m excited to share my conversation with Sean McKenzie, Co-Founder and Director of Driver Engagement at Steereo. By combining the power of music streaming with the popularity of ridesharing, Steereo is a music discovery app that gives emerging artists exposure and valuable data, while compensating rideshare drivers. Sean is an award-winning entrepreneur and a 3-time founder with a strong background in brand strategy, consumer insights, and market forecasting. He also serves as an advisory council member at Fund for Public Housing. Today on the show we’ll be discussing his career path, his approach to hiring at Steereo, and some of the ways he uses his experience to give back to his community. The idea for Steereo came from a chance meeting between Sean and his team, and a Lyft driver with excellent musical taste. Realizing that rideshare drivers often act as DJs for their clients, Sean proposed the idea for a platform where up-and-coming a

Hello, listeners! Welcome back to Tech Forward. For this week’s rebroadcast, we're featuring my conversation with Wes Kao, a marketing strategy and product launch expert who works as a consultant and advisor to multiple consumer brands and tech startups. She serves as a mentor to entrepreneurs through her roles with WeWork Labs and Backstage Capital. Previously, Wes was the founding Executive Director of Seth Godin's altMBA. Today on the show, we’ll be talking about the leadership lessons she’s learned during her career, and her advice to other managers on how to adequately encourage and support women in the workplace. After years of working in the corporate retail space, Wes found herself drawn to the rigorous thinking and problem solving aspect of the tech sector. She worked with Seth Godin to launch altMBA, an online leadership and management workshop which under her leadership grew from zero to 550 cities in 45 countries over a three year period of high-growth. She brings her wealth of experience to the t

Welcome back to Tech Forward, listeners! Continuing our summer rebroadcasts, we're featuring my conversation with Alli Young, Founder and CEO of The Forem. The Forem is a professional training organization that develops the next generation of leaders while promoting gender equity. Through her work with The Forem, Alli focuses on helping women advance their careers and building healthy organizations as a key lever in driving innovation and revenue. Today, we’ll be talking about how she came to found the Forem, and the critical skills she believes all professionals — but especially women — need to successfully progress in their careers. Though she enjoyed her role as a Google leader, Alli found that it was difficult to pursue her passion for building and trying new things within such a large organization. She wanted to align her professional life with what she truly cared about: working with other women to develop and progress their careers. “Women have been failed by corporate America. How can I get more women

Hello listeners, and welcome back to Tech Forward! Kicking off our summer rebroadcasts, we're featuring the second episode of our November 2018 job seeker series, when I spoke with Michele Heyward, founder of PositiveHire. PositiveHire is a tech company engineered to bridge the gap between employers and women of color STEM professionals. Michele’s vision is to not only help experienced women of color find inclusive workplaces, but to help enterprises recruit them. PositiveHire does this via matching experienced women of color STEM professionals to relevant management positions within organizations. In this episode, we discussed Michele’s plans and aspirations for her business, as well as her advice for women and companies on how to begin to narrow the gender pay gap. PositiveHire grew, in part, from Michele’s previous experience in career coaching. Having heard similar stories of career struggles from many female engineers, she wanted to help as many women in STEM as possible — and as quickly as possible. “Wh

Hello, listeners, and welcome back to Tech Forward! On this week’s episode, I spoke with Gina Gutierrez, co-founder and CEO of Dipsea. Through Dipsea, Gina is focused on helping women feel sexually, mentally, and emotionally empowered. Currently available on IOS (with Android coming soon), the Dipsea app features hundreds of audio stories that help women tap into their sexuality on their own terms, unlock confidence, and develop a more holistic sense of wellbeing. Today on the show, Gina will share her story of launching the business, how she raised over $5 million from investors, and the motivation behind creating this new category of audio-based sexual empowerment for women. Gina and her co-founder, Faye, aren’t necessarily the type of people you’d expect to launch a company like Dipsea. With backgrounds in psychology and economics, respectively, rather than audio engineering or production, they embarked on this entrepreneurial journey together simply because they saw a real need for what Dipsea has to offe

Welcome back to Tech Forward, and happy Fourth of July to my US listeners! On this week’s episode, we are rebroadcasting my conversation with Julie Pitt, director of Machine Learning Infrastructure at Netflix. Her team’s goal is to scale Data Science while increasing innovation. Prior to that role, she built the streaming infrastructure behind the "play" button while Netflix was transitioning from domestic DVD-by-mail service to international streaming service. Julie also co-founded Order of Magnitude Labs, with a mission to build AI capable of doing things like exploration, communication, and accomplishing long-range goals — in other words, tasks that humans find easy, but today’s machines find hard. Today, we’ll talk about Netflix’s unique culture and how Julie supports the other female engineers on her team. Julie’s work with machine learning at Netflix ties back to solving two problems: offering members the best choices, and ensuring they have as much control as possible over their personal experience. Th

Hello listeners, and welcome back to Tech Forward! This week, I've reissued my conversation with Maria Salamanca, a venture capitalist at Unshackled Ventures. She was named 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 for Venture Capital. Unshackled Ventures fills a unique space in the entrepreneurial ecosystem by funding teams with immigrant founders. Maria’s own journey — she immigrated from Colombia at age 7 and became a citizen at 18 — has motivated her to uplift others by eliminating barriers to entrepreneurship and education.  Due in part to her history, Maria has a deep understanding of the challenges immigrants face when starting a business in the United States. She and Unshackled Ventures have identified the barriers that immigrant entrepreneurs face: Access to capital Office space Lack of support network Immigration support These barriers are what led them to specifically support immigrant founders. “It’s hard to be an immigrant entrepreneur and jump into that full time while also juggling concerns about who will spon

Hello listeners, and welcome back to Tech Forward! On this week’s episode, I spoke with D’ontra Hughes, serial entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of fintech platform SPARE. By turning any cash register into an ATM, SPARE helps merchants increase foot traffic and underbanked consumers avoid costly fees. If that sounds familiar, you may have caught his appearance on Shark Tank earlier this year. D’ontra is also a motivational speaker who shares valuable lessons for entrepreneurs about resilience, team building, and finding the right business partners. Today on the show, he’ll share the story of how he built several businesses from the ground up, as well as his advice for other entrepreneurs. While employed at JP Morgan, D’ontra witnessed firsthand how influential financial services are in our everyday lives, as well as how certain consumers could be disenfranchised by these services. For the 20% of the population who are underbanked, the average ATM fee of $4.69 per transaction can make a significant impact on

Hello, listeners! Welcome back to another exciting episode of Tech Forward. This week, I hope you'll enjoy our rebroadcast of my conversation from last summer with Omari Edwards. In addition to serving as a board member at leading technology proficiency non-profit Mouse and founding K-12 STEM enrichment program Technology for {You}th, Omari is also the founder of image-based analytics platform Beak. We discussed his different experiences as a black man at both Morehouse College and the University of Pennsylvania,  and the unconventional journey of Beak from inception to present day. Omari spoke highly of the mentors in his early life, both in his family and in school. These role models instilled in him the confidence to seek out schools he might not have otherwise considered. He attended historically black Morehouse College for his undergraduate studies, and UPenn for his M.S. in Systems Engineering. While he loved both schools, the largest difference between the two was a top tier but purely academic experie

Welcome back to Tech Forward, listeners! This week, I spoke with Oklahoma City-based software developer Carmen Bourlon. As her career as a developer progressed, Carmen began to explore her passion for offline technology, which allows people without Internet access to utilize resources that are generally only available online. Using US census data, she created Margiemap, which plots income against library access. She’s also in the process of finishing her first book, Let’s Take This Offline. Today we’ll be discussing her career journey as a developer, what inspired her interest in offline technology, and how she is using her wealth of knowledge about the Internet access disparity affecting millions of Americans. As a self-taught developer, Carmen learned to program from a book while living in a rural area without Internet access in her home. This not only shaped her learning process — letting problems stack up until she was able to go somewhere with Internet access — but also fostered her interest in offline t

Welcome back to Tech Forward, listeners! This week, I hope you'll enjoy our rebroadcast of my conversation with Katie Macc, Chief Commercial Officer and Cofounder of Juntos Global. At a time when customers have low trust in their financial institutions, Juntos provides those institutions with a mobile-based conversation platform that increases consumer confidence. Prior to working at Juntos, Katie worked in microfinance, both in the Democratic Republic of Congo and, later, in the US. On today’s episode, we discussed her journey as an entrepreneur, and how Juntos is breaking down barriers to financial inclusion for many people around the world. As someone who has always relished the opportunity to build something, Katie’s transition from established jobs to true entrepreneurship was a natural one. Katie wears many hats at Juntos, balancing client-facing teams such as sales client services along with finance and HR internally. Despite the fact that their foreign markets — including Egypt, Paraguay, and Uganda —

Hello listeners! Welcome back to a new episode of Tech Forward. This week, I’m thrilled to share my conversation with Fatima Dicko, Founder and CEO of the on demand delivery service, Jetpack. Prior to starting the company, while completing her MBA at Stanford, Fatima served as the youngest senior engineer on an upstream technology innovation team at Procter & Gamble. Today on the show, we’ll discuss her journey as an entrepreneur, some of the challenges she has faced building her business as a young woman of color, and advice she would give to other founders looking to follow in her footsteps. Having immigrated to the United States from Mali at the age of 6, Fatima’s inquisitive nature set her down the engineering path fairly early in life. At Procter & Gamble, she was part of a team working on products 3-10 years away from going to market. While in that role, she attributes a huge confidence boost to the words of a mentor: “Great ideas happen when two old ideas come together for the first time.” When

Hello listeners, and welcome back to Tech Forward! This week, we're featuring my conversation with Angela Belt, Senior 3D Visual Stylist at Wayfair, from last September. Having graduated from Howard University with a degree in Fine Arts, Angela has over ten years of interior design experience including extensive experience styling for print, online publications, and video.  With a keen eye for what is on trend and a passion for interior design, she has styled shoots for ElleDecor, HGTV, AphroChic, and Maison et Objet in Paris. We discussed her transition into the world of tech through her role at Wayfair, and the initiatives she has championed to support the company’s diversity recruiting efforts. Though she initially saw herself forging a career in politics, Angela took a hard pivot into the world of art and design during her sophomore year of college. After graduation, she took a position with the furniture company Room and Board, which essentially served as a ten-year crash course on not only floor plannin

Hello listeners, and welcome back to Tech Forward! On this week’s episode, I spoke with CEO and Founder of The Zone Lab LLC, Sheryl Kline. Sheryl is a Mental Toughness and Certified High Performance Coach™ who works with business professionals, world-class athletes, and students. She is also a speaker and best-selling author, and her newest book, ZONED IN: The Mental Toughness Required for a World-Class YOU, came out in February of this year. Today on the show, we’ll be talking about her personal journey to becoming a high performance coach and entrepreneur, and her incredible advice for achieving success. Sheryl’s work began from a place of curiosity: she wanted to understand how world-class athletes persevered through failure and setbacks. She identifies two key components of mental toughness: the clarity to dream big, and attaining a thorough understanding of your own inner dialogue. Through her work as a coach, she helps her clients develop these components, teaching ordinary people to be extraordinary by