Episode 14: SheEO Vicki Saunders

Vicki Saunders is an entrepreneur who started an organization called SheEO.

SheEO is a leading global innovation in the female entrepreneur marketplace. Our radical new model to finance, support and celebrate female entrepreneurs has received global attention by capturing the hearts and minds of women around the world. [from the SheEO website]

You have to hear about how this works. If you are a woman looking for how you can concretely help women’s success and make a tangible difference, this is for you.   If you are an entrepreneur looking for a boost of capital and an incredible circle of radical support, this is for you.

I’m in, and I would love for you to be too.

Episode 13: Reena Gupta, Entrepreneur, Founder

Reena is an Entrepreneur with five tech companies under belt.  Her latest venture is called MomRelaunch and is focused on helping stay at home mothers re-enter the workforce in technical and HR fields.

She is focused on her companies’ culture which is very simple = results.  As long as you have results, that is what matters.  And as we know, moms can be the most productive and efficient employees out there.  They don’t have time to mess around and wander the halls holding coffee cups and chatting.

Everything is measurable. And gender doesn’t have to be a factor as long as you are able to communicate confidently.

Episode 12: Kristin Williams, Executive

Kristin is the Vice President of the Enterprise Services Group for Ultra Mobile. After many years in tech advertising sales, she is now deep in organizational development where she has a hand a little bit of everything.  She is very intuitive and smart about people and you are going to want her to be your personal mentor. 

Luckily, she is writing a book, so soon we will all have her wisdom in our hands.

Think of your personal brand at work.  Everything you do either adds to your brand or takes away from it.  Everything.  Always be influencing your brand for the better.

Authenticity is the secret sauce.

Episode 11: Navya Rehani Gupta, VP of Product

Navya is the Vice President of Products at a company called Peek – which is basically the Open Table of activities.  Prior to Peek, she ran product at StyleSeat, the world’s largest marketplace for beauty services that has fueled over $3 billion in beauty services. She has also built large-scale products at Uber, Disney and Goldman Sachs. 

Navya has all the degrees, three of them in fact, from University of Sheffield in the UK, Stanford and from NYU Stern School of business. (Go Violets!) She is a big advocate of women in tech and is in the process of figuring out how to do it all and be successful.

She is expecting a baby soon and hopes her experience will encourage other women in tech to follow their dreams and know that integrating a family is in fact possible. After all, don’t men also have toddlers at home?

Episode 10: Karen Forchione, Project Manager, Controller

Karen is the Controller and in charge of Business Management for Dirty Robber. Previously, she has also been a Project Manager for tech companies since the beginning of Project Management as a discipline. 

She was not only the only woman in the room, she was the only woman at the entire conference at IBM headquarters. She not only figured out the job, she figured out how to hold her boundaries, hold respect, and hold her own.

From the Irish tenements in Bristol, England to the Oscars with her sons, she has had an amazing journey.

The only thing between you and your dreams, is yourself.  We hear that all the time, but it is true and bears repeating.

Episode 9: Illana Raia, Attorney, Founder

Illana is an Attorney and a Founder of a very cool website. After a career as an attorney in M&A and then after building websites for her firm, Illana launched a website for girls called Être. As in the French for “to be.”  As in, who do you want to be?

 It’s really cool and all of your daughters should be on it.  The site not only tells them to Be Brave, Be Smart, Be Charitable, Be WI$E – it also tells them how.

Episode 8: Laurie Luh, HR Consultant

Laurie is an HR consultant – Executive in Residence. She helped build Participant Media for nearly a decade and went out on her own as a consultant a few years ago. Far beyond handbooks and compensation packages, Laurie now advises CEO’s of tech companies and startups on strategy and building sustainable and fulfilling culture.  We had a juicy conversation on what employees really care about – and it’s more about engagement and purpose than it is meditation pods and shuttle pickups.  Although those things are cool too.

And for the entrepreneur in all of us, it is vitally important to dare greatly.

Episode 7: Carmen Palafox, Partner/Investor/Community Builder

Carmen is a Partner at Make in LA, a hardware startup accelerator and venture capital firm that aims to make hardware less hard.  She started her career working in finance at Dimensional Fund Advisors and holds several degrees, including one in Sports Management.  She is an avid runner, a fearless entrepreneur and we share the unfulfilled dream of being a professional singer.  It’s probably not going to happen for either of us.

It’s important to find the intersection between passion, interest and ability. 

And “raspberry pie” is apparently a tech term – not necessarily dessert – but it does have something to do with a napkin.  I like how tech has so much to do with food.

Episode 6: Sean Hughes, Customer Experience Leader, Writer, Founder

Sean works at a big consumer software company in California, as the Head of the emerging services group, surrounded by women. Prior to that, he was a naval officer who completed multiple deployments with the SEAL teams of the Naval Special Warfare community, where he was surrounded by men. 

In addition, he writes and runs the politics and society blog Chartwell West. If you want a break from the current hysteria that is our national discourse, Sean is your guy. 

And if all that weren't enough, he and his wife Annette founded a non-profit organization called Care for Us, which provides outreach and support for special needs families, such as theirs.

We talked all things equality and workplace culture. And as for families and work – don’t ever make them choose.

Episode 5: Eileen Scully, Founder and Consultant

Eileen is the Founder of The Rising Tides, a consulting firm that works with companies to help women support each other.  In her own words, “The mission of The Rising Tides is to drive a work culture that supports women regardless of life stage and allows each of our boats to rise together, never at the expense of one another.”  She learned a lot coming up through tech companies, and she is now at a point where she shares this knowledge with others and supports building an inclusive and supportive corporate culture.

She also runs a website called 52 Feminists that highlights the story of a different feminist every week.  Look to see me there soon, because I am a feminist.  But, not in an angry, scary, hairy way.   

She gave us several little nuggets on what we can do today to make things better - like what to do when you are inaudible in a meeting.

Episode 4: Linda Tadic, Founder and CEO

Linda Tadic is the Founder and CEO of Digital Bedrock. Digital Bedrock is a digital preservation company with proprietary methods of ensuring assets will be accessible in the future. Linda came up through filmmaking and cataloging and is now a thought leader in media and digital preservation and metadata.  To be honest, I was on the fence about which podcast to publish this one under – Hollywood or Tech – but Tech won out, as her company does much more than digital assets for film. In reality, this episode is where tech and Hollywood intersect and are related. 

Linda tells us about her history making experimental film, studying Baroque music, attending women’s marches, and becoming an expert in digital preservation – sometimes while partially paralyzed due to Guillain-Barre syndrome.

And she explains about her DOOD. The DOOD is really important.

Episode 3: Marissa Peretz and Max Brown, Tech Recruiters

Marissa and Max are the co-founders of Silicon Beach Talent – a recruiting and consulting firm in Los Angeles focusing on tech industries.  I mostly interviewed Marissa and heard her story coming up through the ranks via Tesla, and Max generously offered some color commentary.  We talked about the business case for diversity, the changing landscape in tech, and how women are making an impact. 

And, of course, you pick your first job based on who has the cutest outfits.  After that, you get more savvy.

Episode 2: Pooja Malpani, Senior Staff Engineer

Pooja is a Senior Staff Engineer at HBO.  She grew up in India where she was one of few women in her engineering program.  She had to get special permission from her father in order to access the lab at her college. Wait, what?  Yes.  She proved herself, winning awards and coding challenges, and paved the way for the women behind her.

She worked at Microsoft in India and in the United States. Upon arriving at HBO, she couldn’t find a women’s group and so she started one.  That’s how you do it.

Episode 1: Rebecca Sadwick, Director of Marketing

Rebecca is the Director of Marketing at GoGuardian, an educational tech company.  Before joining GoGuardian, she worked on research at UCLA that opened her eyes wide open about gender issues in tech industries.  Despite seeing all the data, she plunged in anyway, and is fully invested in consciously creating inclusive and diverse corporate cultures that move toward gender parity.

I learned a tremendous amount during this interview.  Rebecca is a rising star and is poised to be a leader in her industry.

And, she explained “brogrammer” culture.  That’s a real thing.

Introducing The Other 50% - a herstory of tech

This is the podcast where we talk to women in tech and hear their stories.