ExecuTalks

In this episode, we sit down with Barbara Humpton.  Barbara grew up to parents who were both math professors so initially set her eyes on being a math professor “when she grew up.”  After taking a job at IBM and working on a globally impactful project, she was hooked into the world of working on impactful technology to make our world a better place. I won't give too much away before you listen, but if you decide to listen to the entire episode you will get to hear:Some of Barbara's formative experiences that empowered her career journeyBarbara's advice for you if you're thinking about changing jobs or making a career pivotHer take on the federal government's latest initiative to increase manufacturing in the United StatesWhat she would tell her younger self

Lynne grew up in the bay area and accidentally learned what she loved to do when she was helping a friend become more physically independent by helping her up stairs, and taking her to the gym.  So after getting her undergraduate degree, she dove right back into school and used her savings along with student loans to pay for training to become a Physical Therapist.  After getting her certification, she worked for a terrible boss that made her want to start her own business.  If you stick around until the end you'll get to hear all about how she negotiated her salary, started her own business, and why she got into politics, eventually becoming the Mayor of Bellevue, Washington - Home to some of America's most influential companies like T-Mobile, Microsoft, Paccar, Expedia, Concur Technologies, and many more.

Bracken began his career in accounting after college.  After working in accounting roles for an accounting firm and then PepsiCo he transitioned into brand management early in his career.  He first worked at Procter & Gamble, then moved into a General Manager position at General Electric.  There are other career moves we talk about in this episode, so make sure you tune in!Stick around until the end to hear about:- The key positions that Bracken targeted early in his career that empowered his career journey- Why Bracken decided to go back to business school after gaining experience- What advice he has for you while you think about how you want to navigate your career journey

Kara grew up in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona and naturally developed the skill of persistence growing up.  In her early years she worked many different jobs including working at a toy store, interning for a local senator, and waiting tables at a local Mexican restaurant.  After college she used unique approaches to reach people and get hired at a media company in New York.Listen to the full episode to get the full scoop on- How Kara used unique communication approaches to reach senior executives early in her career- Why storytelling is so important in marketing and brand-building- Important skills she emphasizes, and tailored advice that she has for you while you're on your career journey

Wes was born in Canada, grew up in Columbia, and lived in Southern California .  He admits his dyslexia and ADHD growing up caused him to hate school and didn't attend college after high school. After high school, Wes took the first job he was offered, which was a job making high-end cabinets in Los Angeles; a business that his neighbor owned.  Listen in to this episode to learn about how a kid that grew up with a learning disorder and didn't even go to college, started a highly successful coffee-chain in the Pacific Northwest: Woods Coffee.  Stick around until the end to hear about what advice Wes has for his younger self, and what he wished he would have known as an young entrepreneur.

In this episode, we sit down with Jeff Roe, CEO of Premera Blue Cross.  Employing over 3,200 people, Premera Blue Cross is the largest health plan insurance provider in the Pacific Northwest, serving more than 2 million people.  Jeff grew up in Bellevue, WA and had an early interest in politics growing up.  His curiosity and enjoyment of politics led him down a route of working in politics after graduating from the University of Washington.  He worked for a U.S. Senator based in Washington named Slade Gorton; his first job being his driver.  After working his way up and gaining more responsibility in Washington DC, he pivoted to the private sector when he got an offer to return to the Pacific Northwest and help run a public affairs consulting company.  One of their clients was Blue Cross and he eventually jumped into the insurance industry. For the past 24 years of his career, Jeff has been a key leader in the insurance industry.Listen in to hear about how and why Jeff made career shifts from politics to public affairs to insurance.  Also gain insight to why role models can be so critical to your career development, and what advice Jeff has for those who aspire to climb the corporate ladder.

Seattle's Former Police Chief Carmen Best published her book “Black in Blue” in October of 2021, and it was the #1 book in new releases when it came out. Carmen grew up in the Puget Sound area to a loving mother and a father who was in the military.  She had a close relationship with her siblings and seemed to always be driven from a young age.   Carmen served in the military for some time before working for an insurance company in their finance department.  She was looking for something new and saw that the Seattle Police Department was hiring.  She submitted an application and was eventually hired as an officer.  That would be the beginning of a thirty-year career in law enforcement as she would eventually work her way up to becoming the City's Chief of Police.Listen in to hear about Carmen's early days as a police officer, why she stayed in law enforcement for 30-years and hear her expand on some of the impactful stories she shares in her best-selling book, Black in Blue.

Howard Behar grew up in North Seattle, attended Roosevelt High School, and struggled to find his way early on in his life.  He took some courses at Everett community college but didn't finish school because he was directing his energy towards his work.  At the time he was helping run his brother's furniture store in Edmonds, WA.  He would spend the next couple of decades in the furniture business – eventually becoming president of one of the companies he'd worked for.   Then, when he was in his forties, decided to purchase a business.  As he was searching and networking with people, he met Howard Schultz, who had recently purchased Starbucks.  After getting to know each other, Howard Behar made a proposal to work at Starbucks for free for one week before committing to join.  When Howard Behar first joined Starbucks, it was a regional brand with a few locations – as we chat about in the conversation, he played a critical role in not only expansion across the country, but international expansion all over the world.  Today, Starbucks has a market cap of over $138 billion, employing more than 349,000 people worldwide, with more than 62,000 stores in over 83 countries. Tune into this episode to get a full look into Howard's career journey leading up to Starbucks, what challenges and setbacks he faced at Starbucks, and what his advice is for those of us who strive to excel in our careers and live an exceptional life.

Mike Clayville is the Chief Revenue Officer of Stripe, a payment processing company that is building the economic infrastructure of the internet.  Their mission is increasing the GDP of the internet -- and Stripe is valued at almost $100 billion.  In our conversation, we talk about Mike's career journey leading up to Stripe.  He was born and raised in Idaho, got a degree in geotechnical engineering and then went on to get his MBA after he had a hard time finding a job.  After graduating, he went to work for IBM, the world's most profitable company at the time, and worked his way up the ranks eventually becoming an IBM executive.  After IBM, Mike made several career moves, eventually landing at Amazon Web Services, as a Vice President, where he helped grow their business from $1.8 billion to $43 billion in sales.  Stick around until the end and hear about how Mike was able to make career moves that positioned himself to win big, what he thinks are important things to consider when making career moves, and why he started the Clayville Foundation to lend a helping hand in curing cancer. 

In this episode, you'll get to hear from Howard Tiersky.  Howard began his career in theater and performing arts before starting his consulting career at Ernst & Young.  There, he would build E&Y's first website and get exposed to a whole new world.  After 15 years of being in the consulting space, Howard started his own business; From Digital, a digital transformation agency that helps companies develop new digital products for all kinds of industries.  Howard is the author of the Wall Street Journal's best-selling book, Winning Digital Customers.  In our conversation, we talk briefly about Howard's career journey before transitioning into an especially important topic; business in the digital age.  Stick around until the end and you'll get to hear Howard's thoughts on how to really understand your customer, building digital experiences around your customers, and what causes most digital products to fail in our world today. 

A fourth generation Puget Sound native and nascent New Yorker, Kurt has always felt passionately about authentic, full-flavored foods, free of artificial additives. Kurt is the owner and head chef of Sugar Mountain, a creative food company that is home to extraordinary food brands and restaurants, from the award-winning Beecher's Handmade Cheese to The Butcher's Table, a swanky steakhouse that features Mishima Reserve, Sugar Mountain's American Wagyu beef brand. With each operation, Kurt's goal is to demonstrate how quality ingredients make for delicious meals, without added food colorings, flavor enhancers, or preservatives. Beyond the retail world, Kurt is effecting change in people's eating habits through his book, Pure Food, and through The Beecher's Foundation (501c3). Through education and community engagement, the Foundation inspires people to eat real food and vote with every food dollar.In our conversation Kurt takes us way back to his early childhood growing up in Seattle, what struggles he faced at work coming out of college, and ultimately, what inspired Kurt to purchase businesses like Seattle's famous Pasta & Company and start Beecher's Cheese, one of the most successful food brands in the world.  And if you stick around until the end, you will get to hear all about Kurt's ambitious philanthropic goal of changing the way America eats.

In this special episode, we chat with Chris George, a serial entrepreneur who has successfully started and managed 7 businesses in his career (most recently Founder of Certified).  His first business that he started in college, was a debt collection agency that he worked in for almost a decade.  His most recent venture was a subscription-based men's fashion company: Gentleman's Box.  Today, he's chairman of the subscription trade association, a for-profit association that he co-founded. You'll want to listen closely because in this episode we discuss business strategy, marketing tactics, and what it takes to be successful as an entrepreneur in any industry.

In this episode, we cover the man behind the largest biotechnology IPO in history, Steve Harr.  Steve co-founded Sana biotechnology, a company that  went public earlier this year (2021) and raised almost $600 million dollars in its IPO.  Sana is changing the way diseases are cured.  Their approach is based on repairing and controlling genes within cells, essentially engineering cells so that they are better equipped to fight off diseases.  Prior to co-founding Sana, Steve served as an executive at Juno Therapeutics, a biotech company that was acquired for $11 billion in 2018, and worked as managing director at Morgan Stanley for over a decade.  If you stick around for the whole episode, you'll get insight into the extreme highs and lows of Steve's career journey, you will hear what Steve would advise his younger self, and you will get a peek into how he thinks about leadership.

In this episode, we hear from Finimize CEO & Co-Founder, Maximillian Rofagha.  He grew up in Berlin, Germany, attended a very diverse, international high school, and went on to study economics and international relations in Scotland.  He did a year abroad in the U.S., and interned at eBay, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey and Company, and a German Stock Exchange.  After college, he worked in management consulting for a year and half before starting his first business.  3 and half years later, he started Finimize, a company that was sparked by a movement, a community of people that believe everyone should have access to financial information that is not complicated to understand.  Today, Finimize is building the world's largest and most engaged finance community, democratizing financial information for people who need it most. Headquartered in London, Finimize has amassed a community of over 1 million people from all over the world.

Mary grew up on a very rural, cattle ranch in New Mexico just above the US-Mexico border, where she learned to drive when she was just seven years old and had no television in her home.   She attended Williams college, in Massachusetts town near the New York-New Hampshire border.  She first intended in going into politics, then fell in love with drama and theater, so she shifted her major.  After college, she decided to study law.After law school, Mary went to work for a natural gas utility in El Paso, TX, the city in Texas that borders Mexico and New Mexico.  She worked as an in-house lawyer at the utility for several years, then went to work for a traditional law firm for a short period of time before she realized she didn't like working as a traditional lawyer. So, she went to work for the (FERC) Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. abbreviated FERC or “FERC”.   She spent her time prosecuting utility companies that were not abiding by the law.  After 4 years, she went back to work for El Paso Electric Company, where she would work her way up to the CEO position. After spending a huge portion of her career in El Paso, Mary decided to join Puget Sound Energy in Bellevue, WA in 2019 to take on an ambitious challenge. Today, Puget Sound Energy, employs more than 2,500 people, and serves over 1 million customers.

Today’s guest is Scott Torey, PayScale CEO.  Scott always knew he wanted to be in business, so he attended a commerce-focused college and worked in consulting after college.  After an 8-year career in consulting, Scott pivoted and joined Concur which was later acquired by SAP, and would remain there for 20 years of his career.  He took a very short break before a recruiter presented an opportunity to lead PayScale in 2019.   PayScale serves 100 million monthly website visitors, powers compensation information for over 35 million employees and 7,000 companies, with a vision of democratizing compensation information. 

Today’s guest is Surabhi Gupta, Robinhood’s VP of Engineering.   Surabhi grew up in India and pursued an education in computer science.  She participated in an internship with Microsoft, and her research focused on artificial intelligence and natural language processing.  She worked on creating a system for producing scalable summaries of conversations extracted from video content.  Surabhi then took a job with Google as a software engineer and worked on improving the relevance of search results for users. Eventually, Surabhi got introduced to executives at Airbnb, and was exposed to the search problems they were aiming to solve.  She joined as a software engineer on the search team in 2013, and in 4 years became the Director of Engineering, overseeing the entire engineering team.  While she was there, the company had grown from just 60 engineers to 1,500 engineers.  Surabhi spent almost 7 years of her career at Airbnb before leaving to join Robinhood in 2020.   Robinhood's  mission is to democratize finance and investing for everyone, offering commission-free trading.  Never before has any financial services company offered commission-free trading.  This is a completely new approach, and it’s what drew Surabhi in to join their mission and lead their engineering team.  Today, Surabhi leads Robinhood’s engineering team of more than 500 people. 

Today, we make history.  It’s the first time we’ve had an executive from the city on our show.  All of our guests before this show have been business executives. Today’s guest is Debra Smith, Seattle City Light’s CEO.  She graduated with a finance degree from Arizona State University, and kickstarted her career in the oil industry working for ConocoPhillips.  Shortly after, transitioned into commercial banking in Portland, then moved into utilities at the Eugene Water and Electric Board, then Central Lincoln PUD, before joining Seattle City Light in 2018.  Now, you’ll want to be sure to stick around until the end because Debra takes us through not only her career journey, which pivoted from oil and gas to banking to utilities management, but her personal journey that impacted her career progression.  Her challenging childhood with her parents being unhappily married, the breakups, divorces, and ultimately, the personal lessons from all of her experiences.  In 2018, Debra was nominated by Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan to lead Seattle City Light, Seattle's largest department by budget, as the CEO & General Manager.  Today, Debra leads Seattle City Light, responsible for providing power to the entire city, has over 1,800 employees, and is responsible for 25% of Seattle’s entire budget as a city. 

Today’s guest is Adena Hefets, CEO & Co-Founder of Divvy Homes.  She grew up in Long Island, New York to immigrant parents who lived paycheck to paycheck, and were not financially stable, and this drove her ambition to be financially independent at a very young age.  She would go on to work in lots of finance roles like investment banking, private equity, venture capital, and also worked in product management, before starting Divvy Homes with her cofounders.  In 2016, Adena started Divvy Homes with two other co-founders with a mission to make home ownership accessible to everyone.  Today, Divvy has raised almost $300 million in funding, and is changing the world of real estate. 

Today, you will hear from Ryan Hogan, CEO & Co-Founder of Hunt A Killer.  He joined the Navy out of high school, got admitted into a very competitive military program after 6 years of hard work, started multiple businesses that needed multiple pivots, until they ended up failing.  In 2016, a few years after Ryan’s last business had failed, he got together with his childhood friend Derrick and together, they began thinking of how they could create experiences for people that felt real.  Hunt A Killer was born, and today, with a mission to provide first-class entertainment to mystery and thriller lovers around the world, Hunt A Killer has been listed by Inc. Magazine as the 6th fastest-growing private company in 2020, one of the World's Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company, and is on track to bring in $100 million in annual revenue this year. 

Melinda Lee began her professional life as an attorney out of college, but transitioned into the media business.  She admits that she’s always had a passion for pop culture and being in the media business in some form, but didn’t think it was possible because she didn’t' see many people that looked like her in media.  Also, her parents’ journey of immigrating to the U.S. from Taiwan and the pressure of being a "doctor or lawyer" influenced her heavily to pursue a career in law.  If you have immigrant parents or know someone who does, you know what the pressure of not wanting to let them down feels like.  She then realized she could practice law in the media space.  This is what eventually led her to be in the media business.Today, Melinda is the President of StageTEN's Media Network, a technology-driven platform that is changing the future of how content is monetized.  Instead of monetizing through 30-second advertising, content creators can now livestream and easily offer actual products and IP through their livestreams.

Our guest today is Matias Muchnick, co-founder & CEO of NotCo – A Chile-based AI-driven food technology company that is redefining food. They’ve raised over $110 million dollars, including a big investment from Jeff Bezos! So, you’ll want to be sure to stick around until the end to hear all about what how NotCo is using AI to make vegan meat, milk, cheese and other products that are vegan but look, smell, taste, and feel like they are not vegan. Matias first realized that he wanted to pursue entrepreneurship in the consumer foods space after being in investment banking during the early stages of his career. He went on to create an app called chooz that was meant to reward healthy living behavior, which ended up failing. Almost two years later, he moved on and decided to start Eggless, this was Chile’s first food company to develop and launch healthy plant-based foods in traditionally animal based categories. That experience led him to travel to the United States to learn more about data science around food, and he would eventually start NotCo, which is a Food-Tech company based in Chile that leverages artificial intelligence to quickly and accurately develop plant-based foods that appeal to the mass market.

Welcome to the first episode of of Connecting YOU!It's the segment that makes us unique! We connect YOU, the audience, to one of today's top executives.This week we connect Abinav Viswanathan, a relatively new software engineer, working at Amazon on the Alexa team, to Bridget Frey, Redfin's Chief Technology Officer.Tune in every Wednesday :)

In this episode, Ash & Aleksey (our podcast producer) do a quick recap of Naveen's story, the podcast episode that was released yesterday. What does going to the moon mean for the future of humanity? How does Naveen's story line up with the traditional immigrant story? What does the American dream even mean? Listen in to this short segment!

It's been about 9 months since we first conducted this interview with Naveen Jain. If you haven't listened to Naveen's story yet, it has been one of our most downloaded podcasts of all-time, so it's worth a listen. If you have listened, we've reproduced it, adding in some segments that were not in the first episode, so it's worth a second listen!Naveen grew up in India where he and his family had to relocate every 6 months due to dealing with poverty. Resources were so scarce that Naveen remembers school being outdoors and not having proper utensils and tools to write/learn. As he talks about in the episode, the love and care he received from his family outweighed all the difficult times.After college, Naveen came to the United States with just $5 in his pockets in search for a better future. He worked at several Silicon Valley startups before joining Microsoft as a program manager. After working for Microsoft for 7 years, he decided to quit and start an internet company called InfoSpace, which eventually led him to becoming a billionaire.Since then, Naveen has started 7 other businesses including most recently Viome, where he currently serves as the CEO. Viome was founded on the question: "What really causes diseases/illnesses, and why can't we make diseases/illnesses a matter of choice?" He has also co-founded Moon Express, which was founded on the question: "Why can't humans travel and live on the moon?"Today, Naveen is still one of just a few people on earth to own a private space company.

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Today's guest is Spencer Rascoff. If you're reading this you probably know who Spencer is, but in case you don't, he most known for co-founding Zillow Group and was the CEO for a long time before stepping down in 2019 to focus on his new ventures dot.LA and Pacaso. In his first startup experience, Spencer co-founded an online travel company called Hotwire which later sold to Expedia in 2003. After working at Expedia for some time he felt the need for a change and started Zillow with other ex-Expedia employees. He is the co-author of "Zillow Talk: Rewriting the rules of real estate" and the host of two podcasts "Office Hours" and "Dad I have a question." In this conversation we take you through Spencer's entire career journey including the highs and lows, and learning lessons along the way.

Today’s guest is the famous Dave Asprey: As seen on Bloomberg, The New York Times, Business Insider, Fast Company, CNN, Men’s Health, Rolling Stone, Vogue, Forbes and many more!He sold the first product EVER over the internet, was a top 100 influencer in cloud computing for 20-years, and is the father of what is called, biohacking. You’ll want to be sure to stick around until the end to hear what Dave’s secret to success was at such a young age was. Throughout most of Dave’s early life, he was poor and that was a driving factor for his motivation to make money when he was really young. He went to school for computer science, and worked in cloud-computing for 20-years before discovering his true passion. Helping people hack their biology to tap into the unlimited potential of being human. Today, he runs multiple businesses, but he is most focused on Bulletproof, the hundred-million-dollar venture-backed company that was started as a blog in 2011, and now reaches tens of millions of consumers with unique food products, award-winning podcasts, and best-selling books.

Joel is the Former CEO of SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment, one of the largest public entertainment companies in the world, Former CEO of Herschend Family Entertainment, one of the largest private entertainment companies in the world, the Former CEO of Saab Automobile, AND most importantly, the Author of one of the best books I have ever read called “Love Works: Seven Timeless Principles for Effective Leaders”, endorsed by Bill Haslam, Governor of Tenessee, Dan Cathy, President of Chick-fil-A, and congressman John Campbell.If you'd like to get Joel's book, please visit his website at www.joelmanby.com

You'll want to listen in to this to hear how a girl who grew up in a household with 5 older brothers in Southern California went from not knowing what she was going to be when she grew up, to volunteering to work at a company that had a terribly negative culture, to writing a very convincing letter to the CEO of then a small company called Tableau Software, to scaling Tableau from being a $5 million company to a $1 billion company as the Chief Marketing Officer.

Today’s guest is Jim Lico, the CEO of Fortive Corporation, it’s the Fortune 500 company based in Washington that you probably haven’t heard of before, well, until now of course! Fortive has 18 subsidiaries including notable brands like Fluke and Tektronix. You’ll want to stick around for the entire episode to get a peek into what Jim’s childhood was like growing up in Detroit when General Motors was the biggest company in the world, you will hear Jim share some valuable experiences early in his career that he hadn’t shared before, and Jim shares with us that we should know if we aspire to be business leaders. In 2016, while Jim was working at Danaher, the executives at Danaher made a strategic decision to spin off Fortive as a separate company, and the reasoning behind it was that Danaher’s business was focused on life sciences and innovation in the medical space, while Fortive’s business was focused on technologies for industrial applications. Since they had two distinct end consumers, they decided it was best to separate the entities. Now, when that happened, Jim was asked to be the CEO of Fortive, and he would now be running a billion-dollar publicly traded business with 25,000 employees, something he admits, he wasn’t necessarily prepared for. Today, Fortive has a market cap of almost 24 billion dollars!

You’ll want to listen to the entire episode to hear how Sarah went from being a pregnant 16-year-old, to graduating law school and becoming an unintentionally great negotiator, to quitting her job at a law firm based on, literally, a dream, to successfully scaling the number one SEO marketing software on the planet.

Today’s guest is Gautam Gupta, Founder and former CEO of Naturebox, and current Partner at M13, a venture capital firm based in Santa Monica. You’ll want to be sure to stick around, because Gautam shares a story about how he landed his first internship – and it has nothing to do with resumes or cover letters, he shares the story behind a company taking a chance on him to start a branch, and he shares the struggles of starting a business if you’re thinking about making a leap and taking the risk!

Christy grew up on the San Juan Island, a very small community of people in a town that actually had no street lights!After college, Christy got her first job at the wall street journal in advertising. She knew she eventually wanted to go to graduate school, so she chose a company that would support that in the future. During her time at the wall street journal, one male executive at the company discouraged her from attending graduate school. Feeling unsure, Christy turned to her mentors and colleagues at work who were women. That’s when she learned the importance of having peers at work who are eager to help you.A few years into her career, Christy went on to work for Claritas, a marketing company that helps businesses make data-driven business decisions. She was looking for a job, and heard about the company through one of her friends who referred her and invited her to interview. She was there for 8 years and one of the biggest learning lessons she describes was a time she realized she didn’t' need to rely on anyone for validation.After finishing her MBA in 1997, Christy when on to work for a several companies in marketing, then eventually landed at SAP Concur in 2013. She would work her way up to becoming the Chief Marketing Officer there.Today, Christy is the Chief Marketing Officer of Pantheon Platform, a website operations platform for Drupal and WordPress, backed by a $100 million venture investment.

Dr. Dawn Graham holds a PhD in counseling psychology and is currently the Director of Career Management at the Wharton School of Business, the world's #1 business school in the world.She authored the book "Switchers" - How smart professionals change careers and seize success.If you are currently frustrated with the current methods of job-searching and looking for a new approach, visit our website at www.executalks.com and get in touch with us!

You’ll want to be sure to stick around for the entire episode, because Kelly dives deep into important career skills like storytelling, listening to other people’s stories, and how to strategically think about your next career move. Kelly Wright is the former Tableau Executive Vice President of Sales, and was actually the first sales person at Tableau.

You’ll want to be sure to stick around for the entire episode to hear how a kid that grew up in Morocco ended up in Gig Harbor selling coffee out of a van, then going broke and foreclosing on his home while he had a family, to accidentally starting a photo booth company that generates over $3 million in annual revenue and got placed on the Inc. 500 list, and how they were able to survive through the pandemic, being an events-based business.Almost a year ago, our country and our world completely changed with the pandemic changing our lives. Sam’s livelihood relied on in-person events. If there were no in-person events, how was he going to make a living? On March 11th 2020, Sam stayed up all night generating ideas of how he could somehow make money to keep his employees employed and how he was going to survive. Within days, he launched “keep your city smiling,” a company that creates corporate gift boxes and care packages to support small businesses, something completely different from Snapbar, but something that would generate some kind of cashflow to keep Snapbar afloat. It gave Snapbar just enough time to develop a virtual photo-booth software that they now use to make money and keep their employees employed.

Adam was born & raised in Marysville, WA, a town one hour north of Seattle. His father was an entrepreneur and football coach, and his mother was a principal at a local high school.Adam always had an interest for math & science, so he pursued a degree in computer science from Portland State University, and after college, he landed a job working for a company that helped manufacturing facilities upgrade their electronics & software to help them be more effective. He started to make observations about technology and it’s advancements. New technology in general like smartphones are constantly being innovated and updated. Think about it, you probably get a smartphone upgrade every 2-3 years. He realized that this was not the case in manufacturing. There were (and still are) places he would visit where the technology hadn’t been updated for over a decade. He realized there was a real opportunity to start advancing the technology in the manufacturing industry. Customers began asking Adam and his company if they could somehow relay information from the new machines they were installing back to their computers through the internet. Adam and one of the business owners at his company went on a quest to validate the market. So, they began interviewing potential customers all over the country asking them if this is something they also wanted. Eventually, they decided to spin this “idea” out as a separate business, called Elevat IOT. Elevat IOT helps manufacturing facilities connect their devices through the internet and makes sure information is being relayed in real time so that all employees in the facility understand what’s happening.

Today’s guest is Vinay Bhagat, Founder & CEO of Trust Radius. You’ll want to be sure to listen to this episode to hear how Vinay’s experience with racism growing up shaped him to be more empathetic, how Vinay addressed racial bias issues in the workplace, and ultimately, how being fired from a job was the best thing that ever happened to him.Vinay was born & raised in London and was the child of immigrants. His mother was a teacher and his father was a car designer, and his parents loved to travel and camp at lots of different places. Back when Vinay was growing up in London, there was still a great deal of racism, and he remembers being verbally abused and physically bullied very often in school. He attended the University of Cambridge, and wanted to work for a big consulting firm after college. Due to the ongoing racism during the time, Vinay couldn’t even land a first-round interview even though he was near the top of his class. Since he did so well in school, he was able to get into Standford to pursue a master’s degree in engineering economic systems. During his time at Stanford, he was approached by the same consulting firms to interview with them, the same ones that he couldn’t get a first-round interview with after graduating in London. Vinay would not take this lightly – after he was hired on at Bain & Company, he worked hard to demonstrate how there was a racial bias in their recruiting process. After Vinay got his MBA from the Harvard School of Business, he ended up at a computer software company in Austin, TX, as their director of e-commerce. Before finishing his first year, Vinay openly disagreed with the CEO, and was fired because of it. That would be the turning point for Vinay. He says that was the best thing that could’ve happened to him, because he was now able to finally satisfy the entrepreneurial bug that had always been itching inside of him. The first company he started was an online fundraising solution for nonprofits, making it easier for nonprofits to raise money.

Taylor was born & raised here in the PNW. He received his undergraduate degree in accounting from the UW, then went to go work for Blue Origin, which is where he found his passion for space travel. Even though his job was in accounting for the company, he felt passionate about the mission of the company.After 3 years at Blue Origin, Taylor decided he would leave and join a startup in Texas that was working on building rocket-powered aircrafts to fly into space. After the company had gone through financial struggles, which Taylor admits was one of the best experiences in his life, he decided he would move back to the PNW, and ended up at Systima Technologies. Today, Taylor is the CFO of Systima Technologies, a multi-million-dollar aerospace & defense company.

Tushar was born & raised in India to a stay-at-home mom and a father who was an engineer working for the government. After high school, Tushar got his computer science degree from the Indian Institute of Technology. During his time in college, he became fascinated with machine learning, so he started asking around his school to see if anyone was offering research-based internships in machine learning. He got connected to a professor in Italy that was offering an internship. After a while in Italy, his professor suggested he go to the U.S. and work for her twin sister who was also a professor at the University of Minnesota to pursue his PhD. That's how Tushar landed in the U.S.He then went on to move to the pacific northwest to work for Microsoft. Eventually, he became Chief of Staff before leaving to go back and get an MBA from Northwestern. One of his classmates and good friends, Steve Lane, suggested they start a business around helping homeowners save energy in their homes. They conducted some research and realized that the reason people don’t make investments to save energy in their homes is because it takes too long to recoup the energy upgrades. They did find another problem though, and that problem would be the beginning of Flyhomes. The typical homebuyer doesn’t have much transparency and ease with buying a home, so Flyhomes gives homebuyers more transparency and helps people buy homes much more easily through machine learning and technology. Today, Flyhomes has over 200 employees and has raised over $140 million to disrupt the home-buying process.

Bridget’s career journey begins when she was 5 years old. When her father brought home this brand-new piece of technology called, an apple computer ("apple 2e") She was fascinated with how it worked and her curiosity for computers would continuously grow as she grew older.She went on to study computer science at Harvard University, and did her first job out of college was at this startup called Plumtree Software, where she would be given lots of responsibility early on in her career, and where she developed many meaningful relationships. One of the people at Plumtree was Glenn Kelman, who was then Plumtree's co-founder, and now is Redfin's CEO (we've had him on the show before as well).9 years after leaving Plumtree, Bridget joined Redfin after working several different jobs at different companies. During her childhood, Bridget had moved around a lot growing up, so she has a strong connection to Redfin’s mission of helping regular people buy and sell homes. Ever since she joined Redfin in 2011, she constantly feels like she’s working on new and exciting projects that she finds meaning in. Today, Bridget manages a team of more than 200 engineers at Redfin, serves on the board of Premera Blue Cross, has been awarded many awards, some of which include: 50 Most Powerful Women in Tech (National Diversity Council), Women of Valor 2018 (awarded by U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell), Inman Real Estate Influencers of 2017, 40 under 40 (Puget Sound Business Journal), Leadership in Innovation and Technology: Innovator Award (Puget Sound Business Journal).

Nick was born & raised in Seattle, and after graduating from WSU, Nick had trouble finding a job that paid well, so he ended up working for a small company where he earned half of the average starting salary out of college at the time. He credits a lot of his success to what he learned while working for a small company, saying that because he had to wear so many different hats early in his career, he learned so much about business than the average person even though he was paid less. Eventually, Nick started his first company "Konnects, Inc." that ended up failing and as he was looking around for a job, his wife told him she was pregnant. As he was decluttering his house, he struggled to find a way to get rid of all kinds of stuff. Then one day, he pitched the idea to his wife, and she would be the first “believer” in OfferUp. She would encourage Nick to start this idea up and even though he had a baby on the way and wasn’t secure financially, he took a leap of faith in 2010, and never looked back. Today, OfferUp has been dowloaded almost 100 million times, has raised almost $400 million, and according to Pitchbook, is valued at $1.4 billion.

Mike was born & raised in Seattle by two very young parents. Growing up, he had a clear sense of what was right from wrong, and was never afraid to speak up about how he felt about something or to assert his opinion. He remembers being profoundly depressed throughout his childhood. Mike admits that he felt a pressure from society and his mother to do what he was 'supposed to do.' Attend a college, get a job that pays well, and live a standard life. Eventually his desire to just live in the moment and desire to become some sort of artist would begin to surface.He left Seattle University after one semester, and decided to travel the world on credit cards. Although it was one of the greatest experiences of his life, meeting different people and developing deep relationships with people across the world, he admits he came home dead broke and in debt.When he came back, he attended the University of Washington and got his B.A. in English & Humanities. He then got a job at Boeing, which he admits he disliked so much that he eventually ended up self-terminating.Mike would go on to pursue his passion of creating art through videos. He worked for free several times, worked for a non-profit, and worked for a CBS show before landing a job at a studio where CUT would eventually rise from.CUT was born in 2015 and has since acquired over 10 million YouTube subscribers, sharing videos and stories that go viral.

Gus was born & raised in the suburbs of Chicago. He was always the smallest kid in his class, which not only enabled his sense of competitiveness, but also taught him how to negotiate for his "survival."He always had a fascination with nature so went on to get his B.S. in Environmental Science after high school at Washington State University in Pullman, WA. After spending time in Washington, living in the suburbs of Seattle became Gus’s dream. After college, Gus had a hard time finding a job. His father encouraged him to apply for sales jobs, so he landed a job in sales for an elevator company in Chicago. After realizing that how much he loved the outdoors (hiking, skiing, fishing, boating, etc.), he decided he needed to move to Seattle, regardless of what job he landed.Gus ended up at MacDonald-Miller as a sales person, and the rest is history. He would work his way up the ladder, eventually becoming the President & CEO, take the company through the 2008 recession, and make his life dreams a reality. Today, MacDonald-Miller is the top-choice mechanical contractor in the Pacific Northwest, employs about 1,000 people, and brings in revenues exceeding $350 million per year.

Ash was born in the West Bank (Palestine). Due to the constant conflicts & oppression many Palestinians faced during the 1970s, Ash's father moved his family including Ash, Ash's sister and mother to Fitchburg, MA when he was just 5-years-old. He remembers his father working a variety of custodial jobs and other minimum wage jobs just to be able to afford rent & food.As Ash began to grow older, he began realizing his curiosity for how things worked, mechanically. He became fascinated with the sun and how the sun could provide heat & energy. After high school, he went on to get his degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts.During college, Ash would work a variety of jobs including a McDonald's cook, stocking retail stores, and receptionist at the University's Dean's office.After college, he worked a job in Aerospace, but quickly realized his true passion was in developing solutions for green energy and solving the climate change crisis. He went on a quick stint at the University of Washington to get his Masters degree with a focus in Energy Efficiency.Since then, Ash has never looked back.Today, he is a partner & CMO at McKinstry - a national leader in designing, constructing, operating and maintaining high-performing buildings. McKinstry has about 1,600 employees nationwide, and is a leader in the development of net-zero energy buildings.

Raja was born & raised in the southern part of India, where resources were very scarce. His beginnings were so humble that he remembers sharing a 1,000 sq.-ft. home with his entire family. From an early age, Raja admits that he wasn't the brightest student technically, but was great with people; understanding how to navigate situations to get himself out of trouble.He didn't have much of a choice when it came to choosing a major after high school; the goal was to get a degree that was good enough to land a job that could buy him food, so he studied Industrial Production (engineering). Since he wasn't able to land a traditional job, at the time he settled for a door-to-door sales job selling educational courses, where he remembers his salary being approximately $100/month (adjusted for inflation). Even for India's living standards, this was a very low salary.Fueled with motivation to succeed, Raja became a great salesman, and was eventually recruited by a recruiting firm in India (JK Consultants) to sell their services. After 3 years, he was recruited by Aditi, a technology recruiting firm that helps businesses recruit talent for technical roles effectively. He performed so well, that they asked him to work in the United States, and he landed in Seattle, WA with a short-term Visa. After exceeding consistently exceeding expectations, Raja was granted a long-term Visa and is now the President & CEO of Aditi Consulting.Aditi Consulting has almost 600 employees and was voted one of the best companies to work for in Washington by Glassdoor.Listen to Raja's full story now!

Eric was born & raised in Vancouver, WA, a blue-collar town on the border of Washington & Oregon. He grew up in a typical middle-class family, was an avid basketball player, and always had an affinity for business & personal finance. There is a story he shares in the podcast where he "leases" a chunk of his sidewalk as a kid, to his friend selling lemonade.After graduating high school, he was accepted into West Point, The United States Military Academy. About three weeks after being in the program, Eric felt like he had hit a low point in his life emotionally. He made a bold decision to quit and move back home to decide what he was going to do next.He saved up some money from working a minimum wage job and paid for his first year of college at Portland State University to get his career in Finance kick-started. Through working hard to be a great student, and building great relationships with professors at the school, Eric was able to land an internship at Sequent Computer Systems (acquired by IBM). From there, Eric's career would move quickly as he not only worked hard, but he was able to build genuine relationships that paid off.Today, Eric is the CEO of Nintex, a company that helps people digitize their business processes, with over 600 employees and has raised a total of about $150 million.Make sure to listen to the entire episode to really get into Eric's mind and extract valuable wisdom from one of today's top executives!

Bob was born & raised in Dumont, NJ as the youngest of four siblings. He grew up in a typical, middle-class family where his father worked as a policeman and his mother was a stay-at-home mom. Bob worked as a janitor during his time in high school while playing several sports throughout the year.After getting his B.A. in Economics & Religious Studies, he worked as an assistant trader on wall-street for some time before realizing he wanted to do something else. Bob took a job selling pharmaceuticals to doctors for two years before making a significant career move. He then was admitted into the Harvard Business School to pursue an MBA, and he would become one of the top leaders in biotechnology/pharmaceuticals.Throughout his career, Bob made several risky career moves that ended up paying off. At one point, he was managing a $6 billion business at Amgen, a large pharmaceutical corporation, but decided to take a leap of faith and leave to join a smaller company called Juno Therapeutics.In the full podcast, Bob shares career setbacks, temporary failures, and most importantly shares key advice for how you can better prepare yourself to reach your career ambitions.

Matt grew up in the suburbs of Boston, in a poor neighborhood, with his mother and siblings. He faced adversity from a young age; his parents were divorced, his father wasn't a good role model, and there was tension between his siblings. Matt would wash cars, mow lawns, and even lie about his age to wash dishes for restaurants so he could make some money. The real turning point for Matt however, was when he was in a meeting with his high school guidance counselor and his mother. His counselor advised that Matt wouldn't ever amount to anything and that he should simply enlist in the army.Matt would go on to start a career in sales and work for several companies throughout his career, committing himself to becoming the best sales person he could be. He worked as an executive at T-Mobile, Gateway, Outreach, and even worked directly with Tony Robbins, as his VP of Sales. Matt's story will inspire you and serve as an example that no matter what your current situation is, it is completely independent of where you could be.