Tech Forward

Welcome back to Tech Forward, listeners! This week, we've reissued my conversation with Michelle Glauser, founder and CEO of Techtonica. Based in San Francisco, Techtonica is a nonprofit that offers free tech training, plus living and childcare stipends, to local women and non-binary adults with low incomes. Michelle is also a software engineer and the lead organizer for PyLadiesSF — the world's largest chapter of women who code in Python. In 2015, she spearheaded the #ILookLikeAnEngineer ad campaign. We discussed her motivation behind founding Techtonica, what makes it different from other boot camps, as well as her journey into tech and entrepreneurship. Despite a lifelong interest in computers, Michelle found herself working full time at a startup doing everything except software engineering. Noticing the high demand for engineers, she signed up for a training program in 2012. While her experience was overwhelmingly positive — she had a new job within 2 weeks of graduation — she also witnessed, firsthand,

Hello listeners, and welcome back to Tech Forward! My guest today is Upasna Gautam, the Manager of SEO at Ziff Davis, where she architects and executes the organic search strategies for Mashable and PCMag. Upasna (or Pas, as she is more commonly known) has unique experience in mathematics, science and search that allowed her to bring a truly logical and analytical approach to digital marketing. An avid proponent of community, nature, and wellness, she’s also a Fitness and Zumba instructor, aspiring yogi, and hiker. Today we’ll be talking about her work in search, the things she loves about the Austin tech community, and some of the inspiring work she’s been doing to encourage more women and girls to pursue careers in STEM. Like many guests on the show, Pas’ path to her current role was not a traditional one. Though she came from a biomedical background as a clinical research scientist, she had a strong desire to get involved in the world of digital marketing. She took on an unpaid internship as a digital stra

Hello listeners! Welcome back to another episode of Tech Forward. This week, we've resissued my conversation with Chris Bennett, co-founder and CEO of Wonderschool. Combining high quality educational standards with the warmth of in-home programs, Wonderschool is a network of boutique early childhood education programs. With the Wonderschool platform, it’s easy for teachers to start and operate these programs — and for families to find them. Chris and I discussed his journey as an entrepreneur, as well as his passion for providing families with more affordable, high-quality options for early childhood education. Though some might hesitate to leave the stability of the financial sector for the unpredictable world of entrepreneurship, for Chris — who has many small business owners in his family — it was an easy decision. While attending the Wharton School of Business, he started his own business, but didn’t entertain the notion of continuing past graduation. After 2 years at a real estate private equity firm in

Hello listeners, and welcome to another exciting episode of Tech Forward! On today’s episode, I spoke 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, the winning duo consi

Welcome back to another great episode of Tech Forward! This week, especially for my newer listeners, I’m excited to rebroadcast my conversation with educator and entrepreneur, Angela Lee. Angela is both Chief Innovation Officer and Associate Dean at Columbia Business School, and the founder of angel investment network, 37 Angels. With her commitment to education, it’s no surprise that she is a sought-after expert for many news networks, and has been invited to advise decision-makers at the highest levels, including Prime Minister Trudeau. We discussed her work fostering teaching excellence at Columbia Business School, how she launched 37 Angels, and her mission to activate female investors. At Columbia Business School, curricula have evolved to reflect a shift in graduate employment. Whereas graduates once primarily pursued careers in finance or consulting, many of them now go into technology or entrepreneurship. As Chief Innovation Officer, Angela has a threefold mission: faculty excellence beginning with or

Welcome back to Tech Forward, listeners! On today’s episode, I spoke with CEO and Founder of The Mentor Method, Janice Omadeke. The Mentor Method is a DC-based company devoted to creating inclusive workplace cultures by mentoring diverse talent. The company has been featured in The Washington Business Journal, Entrepreneur, was a 2016 Tech.Co Startup of the Year nominee, and a 2017 Startup Grind Global Exhibition selection. During our conversation, Janice and I will discuss her path to becoming an entrepreneur, her aspirations for the business, and her advice for other founders looking to follow in her footsteps. After a long career in graphic design working with Fortune 500 companies, Janice turned her attention to creating a mentorship program in late 2015. While most people know intuitively that mentorship is worthwhile, Janice emphasizes that it is, in fact, critical to career advancement. Mentors are five times more likely to be promoted in the lifetime of their career, and mentees are six times more lik

Hello, listeners, and welcome back to Tech Forward. This week, we'll be revisiting my conversations with Andreas Freund, co-founder of DiveIn, a platform where people can easily get involved with causes they care about at the local level. As a proud son of immigrants and a San Francisco native, Andreas was inspired to create DiveIn after witnessing the effects of the refugee crisis in Germany in 2015. In an era where we have so much at our fingertips, Andreas realized it was unacceptable that we can wake up with the desire to help in our own communities, but not be able to use technology to make that process seamless and frictionless. DiveIn helps its users connect on two levels: location, and causes. Whether your passion is the environment, animal welfare, or social justice, DiveIn allows you to access relevant content and discussions, and find opportunities to get involved in those causes with like-minded people at the local level. So what does “getting involved” look like? “The types of experiences themsel

Welcome back to Tech Forward, listeners! On today’s episode, I spoke 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 a median size of $60 million, mos

Welcome back to Tech Forward, listeners! This week, we're featuring a rebroadcast of my conversation with Lidiane Jones, the VP of SW Product Management at Sonos, a leading smart sound system company. For over 15 years, Lidiane has worked in product management for a wide variety of products related to consumer productivity, machine learning, and much more. Over the course of her career, she has gained a reputation for building diverse, dynamic, and high-performing teams. In her current role at Sonos, Lidiane leads her team as they work to improve customers’ lives through great listening experiences. We discussed her career trajectory, and her advice to women looking for mentors and sponsors.   Even though she loved coding from a very young age, Lidiane’s transition from tech-focused roles to her position as VP of product management was an organic one. Realizing that she spent much of her energy on the what and why of the products, considering everything from the angle of customer experience, Lidiane met with

Welcome back to Tech Forward, listeners! This week, I spoke with Kanika Tolver, IT professional and founder and CEO of Career Rehab. Through her career coaching business, Kanika helps students, professionals, and retirees transform their careers via 1-on-1 services as well as events, webinars, and digital resources. She’s also the author of Life Rehab: Don’t Overdose on Pain, People, and Power. Kanika and I will be discussing different strategies for Black women and other underrepresented groups to set themselves up for career success, how to navigate career setbacks, and so much more.  Career Rehab grew over the last four years as Kanika noticed that many of the women and minorities in her community weren’t getting the jobs and salaries they deserved. As part of her desire to share her knowledge, she began coaching people on resume building, career branding, job interview techniques, and job search strategies — all of which are now primary services in her business. While the bulk of her clients are in the D

Hello and welcome back to Tech Forward, listeners! This week, I'm rebroadcasting my conversation with Jarrid Tingle, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Harlem Capital. An early-stage investment firm, Harlem Capital in on a mission to diversify the landscape of entrepreneurs receiving venture funding by supporting women and people of color. As stated in the Forbes feature, the ultimate goal is to fund 1000 founders from diverse backgrounds over the next 20 years. Jarrid and I discussed how they aim to attain that goal, the impetus behind Harlem Capital, and his advice for minority entrepreneurs seeking venture funding. When Jarrid and his friends started angel investing as a side project, they quickly realized that only a small percentage of venture capital and angel funding went to women and entrepreneurs of color. They saw an opportunity to make a huge change in the industry by focusing on early stage investing, since many of the female and minority led businesses weren’t in the asset class that larger firm

Welcome back to Tech Forward, listeners! On this week’s episode, I spoke with co-founders of Public Bloc, Ali Akil and Hamzah El Amin. Public Bloc is a blockchain platform that provides low cost universal access to financial services for global development projects. Ali brings to Public Bloc years of experience as an Account Executive for the IBM Watson Cloud Platform. He’s also a U.S. Army veteran, and was an analyst for the U.S. Treasury Department where he was part of a team that crafted the first U.S. Crypto-Regulation. Having previously held various positions in both the private and public sectors as a management analyst, Hamzah focuses on business development, customer acquisition strategy, and partnerships for Public Bloc. Today we’ll be discussing their entrepreneurial journey, and how they aim to use their platform to spur economic development both in the US and overseas. Upon first meeting at the 1776 Incubator in August of 2017, Ali and Hamzah formed a fast partnership built on common ground and c

Welcome back to Tech Forward, listeners! This week, I'm rebroadcasting an episode from May of last year, when I spoke with Angelica Coleman, tech aficionado and Director of Community at Lesbians Who Tech. A global community of over 35,000 queer technologists, Lesbians Who Tech connects talent with existing companies by hosting summits nationally as well as globally. They partner with hundreds of companies every year, and offer coding scholarships to queer and gender nonconforming women. As an advocate for diversity and inclusion, Angie is always finding new ways to use tech to build communities and bring people together. Black women face abundant challenges in their professional lives. Not only are they frequently offered lower wages, they’re often steered away from the positions they apply for, and towards administrative or other non-technical roles. As a result, black women in the tech sector regularly end up underpaid, overworked, and pigeonholed into low wage, low status career paths regardless of their e

Hello listeners, and welcome back to Tech Forward! This week, I spoke 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. She focuses now on topics related to ra

Hello listeners! This week on Tech Forward, we are rebroacasting our episode 2 interview with madeBOS founder and CEO, Martha Hernandez. Martha has served in several Talent Acquisition and Talent Management and Sales leadership roles for organizations such as Coro, Give Something Back, Mi Pueblo Food Centers, and Inner City Advisors' Talent Management Initiative. Most recently, she was Save Mart Supermarkets' Director of Talent Acquisition. Martha has a successful track record of  strategizing and delivering critical human capital initiatives, technical implementations and integrations. She’s passionate about adding transparency in the talent selection and promotion process, access to opportunity, diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. MadeBOS grew from Martha’s passion for shaping people’s professional growth and development, no matter their starting point or current trajectory. “Seeing people develop, starting in one place and seeing their growth into more influential roles, [...] gave me a perso

Hello listeners, and welcome back to Tech Forward! This week, I spoke 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 the venture capital and angel

Hello listeners! Welcome back to another episode of Tech Forward. This week, I spoke 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 the U.S. While they do seek solutions, black me

Happy new year, listeners, and welcome back to Tech Forward! On this week’s episode, I’ll be speaking with Nesh Pillay, the founder of Press Pillay. With a focus on empathy, equality, and sustainability, Press Pillay is a digital communications agency on a social mission. As a former journalist, Nesh covered international advertising and marketing as a founding reporter of The Drum’s New York team. At Press Pillay, she leverages her knowledge of marketing, PR, and branding from “the other side” as the secret weapon to making her clients successful. Today, she’ll be sharing her experience returning to the workforce after becoming a mother, as well as the lessons she has learned working with tech startups through her agency. Though motherhood had always been in the cards for Nesh, after the birth of her daughter she had to confront many of her own internalized feelings about being a mother in the workplace. As one of only two women on the team, it’s no surprise that she felt pressured to return to work as quick

Hello listeners, and happy holidays! This week, I'm rebroadcasting the inaugural episode of the Tech Forward podcast. Back in March of this year, I spoke with Courtney Bass, a HR Business Partner at Google, who coaches and advises leaders on team management and motivation. As an advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace, Courtney has spent her career developing and implementing strategies that both individuals and teams can leverage for meaningful collaboration and growth. Courtney and I covered a lot of ground during our conversation, beginning with examining why diversity progress has been so slow at many of the larger tech companies. At Google, diversity numbers are still well below representative, though they have improved over the years. Why has it been challenging for Google and other tech giants to establish a more diverse employee base? In recent years, Google has made a sincere effort to broaden their recruitment efforts to be better able to get in front of great talent of color,

Welcome back to Tech Forward, listeners! For this week’s episode, 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 artis