Month: April 2021

The Future Is Now: Haitham Al-Beik of Wings On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The

The Future Is Now: Haitham Al-Beik of Wings On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The Tech Scene

We are here to create, not work. — All I ever wanted to do is create things driven by desires within me. The idea of work is creating for someone else’s desires and wishes. When one is creating from and for themselves, then they are playing. The consequence of such “plays” are guiding tools incidentally beneficial to others in their creative process. It is this framework of indirect helping that is most inventive and effective for collective enlightenment.

As a part of our series about cutting edge technological breakthroughs, I had the pleasure of interviewing Haitham Al-Beik.

Haitham Al-Beik is the CEO and founder of a research lab called Wings, developing next-generation autonomous and pandemic-proof businesses. Haitham is driven to liberate creators by introducing new technologies, such as robotics and A.I., to people’s daily lives.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Seeing it as a career path is a slight misnomer. It feels more as though I have been doing this since I was born. I have always resonated that people are catalysts to one another for the purpose of enhancing human life — directly or indirectly. As such, I started to focus on and invent tools, canvases, and platforms for anyone to naturally focus on their creative energies more and more.

Selling my house back in 2017 was an eye-opener to real estate’s operations and logistics. The workflows, processes, laws, and transparency and accountability concerns in real estate made me take a second look at the services industry as a whole. Nonetheless, I studied and played my cards right. I made a good profit with every cent going to Wings.

Ironically, the services industry struck me as one with the most friction in creativity and invention. It’s at least 10 years behind compared to industries from software, hardware, manufacturing, auto, and others. As all industries accelerate through automation, services will become the bottleneck wedged in between them.

Even though I began in real estate as it was most apparent, it quickly shifted to the foodservice sector. This was even before COVID hit. In my humble opinion, this sector is most needed for innovation that puts people first.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

I approached the foodservice sector the same way I did with real estate. I decided to take it upon myself to manage a health-focused fast-casual restaurant that considered closing down due to COVID. I saw this as an opportunity to throw myself into the fire while attempting to keep it afloat. I wanted to experience the pain points beyond any mathematical models observed from the outside. The experience taught me a lot about the industry and its sectors and the people involved in all aspects of the ecosystem — the managers, chefs, cooks, staff, partners, customers, etc.

Along the way, we took the opportunity to prototype many technologies to enhance our internal and external logistics while optimizing for healthier and cleaner operations.

Can you tell us about the cutting edge technological breakthroughs that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?

At the core, it’s all about removing the complexity and friction from the services industry. The most friction can be found with labor work and the business components. In foodservice, for example, your intention is to eat. Still, you have to go through the business and labor portions before you are served. You have to stand in line, review the menu, customize your preferences, verify availability (if possible), order, transact, wait for the food to be made, and finally, delivered. We have observed on many occasions where friction can take up to 50% of the whole process. This is due to the dynamic and unpredictable nature and variability of labor and business work in services. For example, we had to have 4 tablets running and managed at the same time just to offer third-party delivery services. This is a clear sign that businesses are being broken from within, causing an exponential increase in friction and ROI reduction.

The numbers worsen as you consider every business’s internal logistics are unique and non-transparent, creating another layer of friction for every customer to learn and apply.

Suppose a person is not creating but instead laboring with the same repetitive tasks day in and day out. Such an asset will reach diminishable returns very quickly. Since a human is driven by creating, such drive will be soon foregone, as observed with the industry’s high turnover rate.

This is where technology can potentially come in and free the laboring individual to be a creative one. Research and technologies in material science, robotics, fintech, blockchain, and artificial intelligence have matured enough to be part of our daily lives.

Let’s start with robotics — the type of robotics we want to introduce to the public is invented from within the services industry and uniquely architected and designed to be alongside people. We refer to them as HiveRobotics. Most people are familiar with robotics that are multi-axis arms inherited and borrowed from the manufacturing industry. Such robots were never designed or built to be near or in contact with people. That’s one of many reasons why they are already unfit for the services industry.

HiveRobotics, on the other hand, are a collective of highly purpose-built robots that can work autonomously or as an extension for any other robot(s). They clean, store, produce and deliver personalized services to people. These robots can perform various time-constrained operations regardless of how they are physically connected or in proximity to each other. A multi-axis arm robot, on the other hand — ha! — , can go as far as the arm can, while ours can travel distances beyond the building itself.

More than that, though, one of our conditions is to make sure that whatever we invent it is to give back more space and time to people. Current robotics take a considerable amount of footprint from people.

Having robots serving us is one thing; communicating and interacting with them is a whole other story. For the last two years, we have worked on real-time infrastructures and intuitive interfaces for seamless interactions leveling the playing field across all people regardless of their personal needs and circumstances.

Putting it all together, the business is now the robot. Its purpose is to serve your creation in a personalized way to your customers… and do your taxes.

Abstracting the business portion of services opens the doors to creators without any business experience to have one in the shortest time possible.

For example, a pastry chef can focus on creating their unique cupcakes for their local market. The basics of the cupcakes are loaded into the business robot. The robot, without human assistance, connects, transacts, personalizes, and delivers the products in a timely fashion with a cherry on top and an espresso on the side. During that time, the chef is busy designing and creating their following products.

How do you think this might change the world?

We see the world shifting from labor work to a creative one. We see a world where people are respected with personalized services, and they own their data. We see a world where creative development is prioritized and labor work is replaced by robotics. We see a world where services revolve around each individual for hassle-free living.

Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

From my perspective, technology should never be considered as the answer to a joyful and blissful life. Nor should technology be applied for the purpose of taking advantage of people. Let’s be fair; many new technologies in the market are being used in a way that is not congruent to people’s desires or their environments — knowingly or not.

In essence, we gave away our self-responsibility to technology. Giving it that responsibility will (for the most part) lead to chaos. Nonetheless, it is a powerful tool for computations, exploration, convenience, and abundance — liberating us from having to survive.

The consistent theme in Black Mirror is how we still work to appease the technology as part of a reward system. In a way, that future is already here, today! Any system that is based on a reward-based practice is a survival one.

People should think deeply about how to transition from this survival and reward mindset by building relevant solutions and technologies. These technologies intend to upgrade humans to move beyond their intellectual limitations and regain the time for a more conscious living.

Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?

The breakthrough was realizing we can manufacture and produce autonomous end-to-end businesses for anyone to operate without a business experience.

Initially, we attempted to introduce many of our technologies to current businesses that needed the most assistance and guidance during such difficult times. We started with the software. However, we quickly learned that we were so far ahead that the existing infrastructure was preventing us from easily integrating it and effectively moving the needle forward. This resulted in a complete rethinking from the ground up of how we needed to introduce our technology.

There is a reason Tesla did not simply sell their tech to other car manufacturers for a quicker transition to electrification and autonomous driving. It required a complete rethought and a whole new infrastructure to truly see its potential and the opportunities it would bring. They also needed to be agile and move quickly as they navigated uncharted terrain.

We are in the same boat.

When we looked into the future to see what was essentially needed and not, we realized that the idea of manufacturing end-to-end autonomous businesses was the only way to make it accessible and effective for everyone.

What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?

First, we need to continue having conversations about how such technologies will change how we look at and participate in life. Partaking in conferences, podcasts, and other media channels will help spread the message far and wide. Secondly, we are also taking the crowdfunding route to have a platform for people to vote for and become an integral part of this mission.

We are also contacting local universities and research labs to bring about the idea of HiveRobotics and what can be done to elevate the services industry for the future.

What have you been doing to publicize this idea? Have you been using any innovative marketing strategies?

We are still in the early stages of publicizing the idea. Besides the typical social platforms and news channels, we will also be “landing” somewhere in Silicon Valley before the end of the year 😉 That would be an excellent opportunity for anyone to get a sneak peek into our technologies, including HiveRobotics. The robots are coming…

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Millie Milton is the first person to engulf herself into the research work during the real-estate period. She knew first-hand the frictions embedded within the industry and, as an avid traveler, had worldly exposure to all types of experiences around services. She is an owner of a local french cafe, Cést La Vie Bistro in Northborough, MA, that I frequented almost every morning for their espresso and croissant. I spent my mornings studying, researching, and developing ideas for Wings. Her curiosity and continuous hospitality led to a beautiful friendship, which brought her to become part of this mission as the first advisor and investor.

John McKenna, our primary investor, resonated with the idea early on, and when it “clicked” for him — he saw that future as inevitable, and it was simply a matter of when. I first met John McKenna at a local restaurant he frequents during his lunch break. I continued to talk to him almost daily, sharing my progress and ideas around business models and strategies. His continued insistence on looking into the foodservice sector as a more significant pain point proved enlightening. Together, we guided one another to discover the many untapped opportunities. In fact, the HiveRobotics R&D lab was constructed from scratch at a warehouse he owns, allowing us to accelerate our development progress.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

Every step of the way, we shared our experiences and methodologies with every local entrepreneur, Company, and partner to work together for a shared mission. It’s humbling to see many resonate in aligning themselves and their respective communities towards a more technologically holistic living approach.

This type of resonance allowed us to partner with so many driven individuals who genuinely see hope and a better future for the services industry.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)

These are few things that I have discovered within me through this life journey so far. It guided me in offering clarity to the process of and the symbiotic nature of people and everything else around us. Any clarity I gained around that framework naturally brought about a higher probability of manifesting a vision bigger than myself.

1.) We are here to create, not work.

All I ever wanted to do is create things driven by desires within me. The idea of work is creating for someone else’s desires and wishes. When one is creating from and for themselves, then they are playing. The consequence of such “plays” are guiding tools incidentally beneficial to others in their creative process. It is this framework of indirect helping that is most inventive and effective for collective enlightenment.

The idea of starting a company is essentially a research container to birth ideas for enhancing humanity. The only reason I’m creating a company the way it is today, in the first place, is simply due to the systems’ established language that was developed to facilitate and bring about new ideas. Inherently, bringing about any revolutionary idea to that language will always go against the grain.

I quickly realized that only a few are willing to change for a highly pivotal future when the right amount of energy, time, and space is invested. Hence, the first few who rallied in revolutionary ideas initially tend to be close by and stealthy (like a cocoon) due to today’s natural resistance. This can be observed by the close proximity of early advisors and investors to where I am.

I was surprised how deep topics about humanity and social infrastructure were not given the respected time to be discussed with many VCs until you have a working business model or a technology that excites the mind.

The platform is mainly designed (it seems) to invest in technology, not humanity. Where is the platform for the heart? We are all here to contribute to a singular mission to transition the “human condition” to “human being.”

2.) Never conclude, always realign.

Whatever idea one begins with will always yield to become something more significant than itself. In essence, the devotion behind the creation of that idea is alive, while the idea itself is guidance — a clue.

One of the major struggles for any entrepreneur is holding onto old ideas that are presumed to be the answer preventing them from taking a few steps back or starting over. When in reality, it is never a step back; it’s only so when compared to the previous idea.

This was significant in keeping the ideation and creative process ongoing while unraveling what Wings is. Technology became something we had to invent along the way. The idea of marrying hardware and software resulted from these processes and is now fundamental to Wings.

If we labeled or defined Wings early on as a software company, it would never have had the opportunity to unravel its hardware aspects. It’s not that the idea of starting out as a software company was wrong, but a necessity at the time to prepare and wise up for the hardware later.

Wings was guiding us to itself.

3.) Everyone is extraordinary.

Like any startup in its early stages, funds are scarce to acquire the necessary skills and resources. Believing that only investing in intellectual and most skillful people to bring about a solution will only lay down a path where the focus is on the skill rather than the solution.

We have people contributing their heart and intelligence from all aspects of life and industries — most have never written any software and are reluctant to technology and robotics since they have not served them well. These are the creative energies that can dream and imagine beyond any skill to start laying a path and a platform where technology is always second.

As such, people, given their time and opportunity to express themselves, become the process of invention — extraordinary!

4.) Too much noise — get to the point.

In ideation and creation, one is constantly faced with forming little conclusions on the way. These are based from third parties, research companies, news, customers, investors, etc. However, most acquired data is designed as a guide that has gone through many computational filters to create normalization — for the sake of simplicity. This is where humanity has been lost in that noise. Simply put, no matter how much data one obtains, it will only bring you a little closer to understanding the average of human input/output kinematics and mannerisms, but never really know anyone.

For example, one can use all the tech to understand the moon, but it takes one to ultimately go through training, traveling, landing, and experiencing it to get to know it — by that one astronaut.

Everyone in the company is here to throw themselves into the “fire” — truly experience what really is going on that may be difficult to capture with data.

Data — if not respected as what it is, a history, a memory of what has been done — will only mirror ourselves to it, and technology will keep us in that memory cycle, preventing us from seeing ourselves from all that noise.

5.) Slow down.

We all need to slow down. The concept of “first-to-market” and “prototype something quickly” for revenues’ sake hinders progress for innovative processes. This is a fear-based survival mindset that embedded itself at the organizational level as a strategy. The consequence will always result in sacrifices and settling of the original mission. In reality, the need to be first-to-market presents itself as a small evolutionary step product as a feature rather than genuinely a revolutionary idea.

It has become prudent for the entrepreneur today to consciously remove themselves from any survival mindset or dependence; otherwise, they’ll find themselves continuously balancing their heart and mind. This continuous balancing is like a tire stuck on mud — stress will eventually reveal itself, discouraging the self. Today, the population is stuck in a system that rewards “survivors” over creatives merely because there is an established and highly invested platform for them.

I wanted to minimize all that I had physically related to material things and mentally related to impressions from this life. I sold all I had — even today, I don’t own a car. I put myself first to focus on all aspects of my mind, body, and soul, so I can manifest what I need. I questioned everything and took no truths but as perspective words of guidance and wisdom. I surround myself with things that can and will only enhance what I can create at any moment.

We need to realize that anything that has ever influenced and changed the world came entirely from a devoted human being. Devotion requires time and energy in a loving-based environment. Companies, as such, will need to be devoted and take their time to seek it.

As much as we can plan things, the mind cannot fathom all possibilities. It’s only through slowing down that we can transcend our own intellectual limitations and become part of something larger than us.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

The movement would be about humanity transitioning from a survival mindset to a vibrant and joyful one. As entrepreneurs and investors, we must work together to leap forward the service industry and bring a little of “The Jetsons” to reality. 🙂

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

The one that sits within my core is that “truth is not around us.” What is around us, or rather what we experience, is only a guiding system in a forever processing state of creation. And as such, what is being produced are creative tools. Naturally, these tools that are being created or the ones we make will always be an extension of that guidance system.

This provides a framework where companies are not meant to produce truths but rather create tools for others to seek their true selves.

This is the framework I apply when creating anything.

Some very well known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

VCs can invest in automation and robotics that may or may not be sold to businesses or invest in future companies that are already automated and robotic, produced right from the factory. One is highly short-sighted, while the other is the future.

We are the first Company in the world to attempt to produce end-to-end autonomous business products. The first of which, Nectar, is planned for 2023. It will be cheaper than a car, AutoPilot capable, and requires no business experience to own or operate.

Presented here is a new market opportunity estimated to be valued at least $1T by 2030. Elon Musk estimated the A.I. market alone would be ~$16T by then.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

I’m on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram under the alias “albeik.” Readers can also visit my personal site for updates at albeik.com.

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.

The Future Is Now: Haitham Al-Beik of Wings On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Future Is Now: Allen Drennan of Lumicademy On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up…

The Future Is Now: Allen Drennan of Lumicademy On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up Education

Success is all about personal relationships. If I had to choose the most successful outcomes over the years so far, I would point to those where I developed a personal relationship with the customer. I mean this is in the sense that they knew me, and I knew them. The most important attribute in developing these relationships was trust.

As a part of our series about cutting edge technological breakthroughs, I had the pleasure of interviewing Allen Drennan.

Allen Drennan, CEO, started Lumicademy in October of 2017, bringing together the team of senior engineers who created Nefsis, a cloud-based, video conferencing online service, which Frost and Sullivan cited as the first “conferencing service solution based on the technologies of cloud-computing, end-to-end parallel processing and multipoint video conferencing,” to create the next generation of virtual classroom technology.

Engaging students and educators alike, Lumicademy provides the ability to interact in a live video meeting and view presentations with screen shares, document shares, annotations and whiteboards, all within a tablet or phone experience .Lumicademy offers a high quality video and audio user experience for most mobile devices with our GPU-centric mobile edition. Educators and learners can live chat with peers in up to 62 languages. Users enjoy the learning capabilities traditional ‘video apps’ cannot offer, with an unlimited amount of users joining in the mobile classroom experience.

At Lumicademy, we believe there’s a better way to connect people online. Our goal is to unify the virtual classroom experience, providing a modular and customizable solution to education industries and corporate organizations. We’re excited to bring the authenticity of face-to-face relationships in a virtually-driven world.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Early in my career I saw the need for using computing devices to promote real-time communication between people. At the time, the industry lacked quality software to create those instant connections, and this seemed like a great opportunity for a whole wave of new technologies. Back then, I saw the need for text messages to be sent in real-time across computer networks, but that would evolve over time into video conferencing and other forms of real-time voice. I had a solid understanding of network principles and software engineering, and that vision of a future where everyone could communicate in real-time is what led me down this career path.

I took my fresh ideas down to Sand Hill Road to speak with VCs and was promptly rejected a couple dozen times. Mind you, this was a time before the rise of Twitter, What’s-app, Skype and all the other forms of real-time communications we enjoy and use these days on our devices.

Despite the rejection, I just focused on building solutions, products and services around these concepts while bootstrapping the companies we started. The results were several successful companies along the way that helped to shape how real-time communications worked; including the company being cited by European CEO Magazine and market research firm Frost & Sullivan in 2009 as the first to use cloud computing in a multipoint video conferencing online service.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

There are so many different stories, it is hard to choose just one. I think that a turning point which ultimately saved the first company I started in real-time messaging, thereby cementing my career as an entrepreneur, was when we were a new company, and we had a booth at NetWorld Interop in 2001 in Atlanta. The show started on one of the most infamous of days, 9–11–2001 at 9am, essentially the exact time of the attack. I was having breakfast with the editor of Network Computing magazine at the time, but we were unaware of what was going on. When we walked back to the show floor people were in shock. Many of the vendors started packing up and the show was promptly cancelled. We knew we had to head back home to San Diego, but all flights were cancelled, all trains were booked, and it was difficult to rent a car since we needed to drive one-way from Atlanta to San Diego which takes several days. We set off on our journey home in a huge Ford “Crown-Vic” and I knew at the time, this event would create a real survival issue for our new company, and that the tech sector and related investment might stop. Eventually we made it back to San Diego. We had to reinvent ourselves and find a way to use our real-time expertise to survive. Within a matter of weeks, we had the “big idea” and that was to use our real-time technology to create an alert notification software to notify users in-bulk, of emergencies. That small idea ultimately sold 600K copies and was used by every major branch of the federal government in D.C. including the FBI and Dept or Labor. At the time, we were even on the POTUS’s computer. The product ultimately saved our small company while the tech sector slowed down.

Can you tell us about the cutting edge technological breakthroughs that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?

This recent pandemic has taught us many things about distance learning, but probably one lesson we are learning is that we need a purpose-built solution to video conferencing designed for educators. The off the shelf solutions people are using for learning lack the immersion required to replicate the experience of the classroom, and general-purpose video conferencing tools are inadequate for education.

We are focused on building the next generation of synchronous distance learning where interaction is forefront and paramount, and the need to learn comes first.

In addition to the problems with the current generation of remote learning, these solutions really lack the privacy and security required for the 21st century. Organizations need to have complete control over their information, and privacy is critical, so we are working on and providing solutions that meet these needs both in the private sector and in government.

How do you think this might change the world?

Education is a key element to improving one’s life. There are large parts of the world that are unable to access quality education in an effective manner due to poverty or governmental restrictions. Part of the issue is that technology is either not available, not affordable or distance learning tools are inadequate for the task. I see a future where broadband is widely available, like Musk’s Starlink satellite Internet service, which will be able to provide high-speed access to remote areas with low latencies. Combined with software technology that can deliver a high-quality live learning experience on low-end consumer devices, this will allow us to extend the reach of education to the entire world.

Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

I have seen a couple of episodes about the pitfalls of video conferencing on Black Mirror. Some of those storylines are not appropriate for discussion here, but the true worry is that we lose our human connection to others. A world where VR replaces human to human interaction is a theme of recent Hollywood blockbusters. This past year of pandemic education for our children has showed us how one-way streaming of information is not really education. For students to thrive they must have real interaction with not only the instructor but also their classmates. This can happen with technology, if it is designed correctly and based on enhancing our human behaviors instead of replacing them.

Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?

Moore’s law has held mostly true since it was first coined in 1975 and I am big believer in the concept. In layman’s terms it is on the principal that computers become increasingly more powerful as they become more compact. When I first started thinking about real-time, my epiphany was when I realized that text messaging would only be the beginning of this revolution. It would lead to real-time voice interaction and real-time video conferencing, and various other forms of real-time communications as the CPU of the device became more powerful. Since those early days of single core processors, we now have multi-core processors and GPUs driving our devices, all of which can be used to improve the experience for real-time. We have rearchitected our ideas for each of the evolutions. We are still seeing advances in the areas of real-time and we will continue to do so in the future. There is a long list of billion-dollar companies and billion-dollar exits based around real-time communications, with more yet to come.

What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?

Real-time communications continue to evolve, and what consumers expect from the technology continues to evolve as well. I would argue that no one company will dominate in this space for any lengthy period, because consumer demands continue to mature, and we have not even scratched the surface of what is needed for real-time communications on a global basis. Once high-speed, low latency Internet is available to the entire planet, we will see even more widespread adoption of technologies related to messaging, synchronous voice and video communications. Large, new opportunities for real-time communications exist in countries all around the world.

What have you been doing to publicize this idea? Have you been using any innovative marketing strategies?

We started developing our platform for video conferencing and collaborative communications before the pandemic hit, not knowing that virtually overnight the pandemic would force people to work from home, and education would switch to distance learning. We had not launched our platform yet, but overnight there was an immediate need, so we have been providing the service free-of-charge to educators and organizations in the community. Additionally, we work with our partners in the government sector to deliver solutions that meet up with the requirements that they are unable to obtain from most other cloud based, general purpose web conference or video conferencing solutions. This is extending our reach into areas that are untouched markets, due to the need to address the requirements for military grade privacy and security related to communications.

Nobody does this alone, and at the risk of offending anyone, I would say that I been fortunate to be surrounded by a great group of software engineers my entire life. I believe that great products are not built with large teams of software engineers, they are only enhanced. Great products start with a small handful of super-talented engineers executing upon a shared vision. Finding those people with the talent to execute at that level is nearly impossible, and I have worked with so many genuinely smart people with great ideas.

One individual I would specially mention, and I have been working with for the greater part of my career is Erik Van Bilsen. He is an incredibly brilliant and humble software engineer from whom I have learned so much over these years. One of those rare talents that most large organizations are lucky to have only a few of, because you cannot measure that talent in a typical interview. From our first time working together, he has taught me so much and made me a much better software engineer. We started this latest venture together, and we are co-founders of Lumicademy along with our other partners working in the government sector.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

Part of my joy comes from helping others be able to communicate more easily and efficiently. Watching my own child use technology that we built here at Lumicademy to improve her math through truly interactive tutoring over our platform shows me the power of the technology, when properly applied, to shape learning for the future. I hope to see a day where this is available to the most remote areas of the world.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)

Being lucky is more important than being good. My mentor, Steven Peltier, use to say that “timing is everything in business”. I learned along the way that it does not matter how great your invention is, it matters whether the timing is right. Too early is as bad as too late. I learned that lesson in both my successes and failures in business.
Success is all about personal relationships. If I had to choose the most successful outcomes over the years so far, I would point to those where I developed a personal relationship with the customer. I mean this is in the sense that they knew me, and I knew them. The most important attribute in developing these relationships was trust.
Be careful who you hire when starting up. You are only as good as the people around you, listen to them and learn from them. When you are first starting out make sure you hire the correct people for those first 10 jobs because it will make you or break you.
You need more money than you think you need. It has been said before, but you will certainly underestimate it. Either you need more cash before your business reaches break-even or you will take off and need more capital to grow faster.
Never underestimate an opportunity. If I look back on my career, the biggest opportunities came from small meetings on my calendar that at first glance, seemed insignificant. The best things happened from the most innocent introductions, so always keep an open mind and while sometimes you need to say no to the opportunity, do not be afraid to say yes.

Communications is transformative, and I believe it is the key to developing empathy by means of knowing others. It is difficult for most people to hold onto their prejudice when it impacts those we know, love and care about. If I could inspire just one thing in this world, it would be for all of us to communicate with each other in a way that helps us really understand what it is like to walk in someone else’s shoes. Imagine what the world would be like if we all truly empathize with each other? Communications is key in getting us all there and I hope to play a small part in making that happen.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

There are so many great quotes and my friends would say I mostly use either football or farming phraseology. There are others like Ma’s “forget about your competitors just focus on your customers” and my mentors have used a choice few. But for me, the golden rule is paramount in that “always treat others how you want to be treated” serves you well in business. So many entrepreneurs and founders get into trouble by not following this concept. Treat, not just your shareholders or your customers as you expect to be treated, but make sure you treat your employees with the same respect.

Some very well known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

I have raised varied amounts of money over the years from different sources, some friends and family in the early years (which I would never do again), angel investors, and now mostly private equity, but never the traditional venture capital route, even though I tried. Fortunately, in some of the ventures we have been able to boot strap our growth, and in others, private equity has been available from prior business relationships. For Lumicademy, we can fund the operation through our connections, and the private equity investment from them.

I found out over the course of the years that the investment capital came from the other sources for us, and not from the VCs. It has crossed my mind how much bigger the exit could have been if we infused large amounts of capital in the early years from the VCs, but I am happy with the course we took at the time, as well as the journey and the outcome.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

On Twitter: https://twitter.com/lumicademy

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Lumicademy

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/lumicademy/

Lumicademy has a presence on Twitter, Facebook and Linked-in so feel free to reach out to us if you would like to discuss your needs and requirements. For me personally, while I have social media accounts, I prefer to spend my social time playing with my kids and seeing my family and friends.

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.

The Future Is Now: Allen Drennan of Lumicademy On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Charlotte Mallo of Clay…

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Charlotte Mallo of Clay AIR

Build a reliable team with people who are in the right mindset: a team made of individuals with a strong sense of self, willing to learn and self-improve, who have the ability to listen and to have honest conversations will go far. Accountability and team spirit do well with transparency in communication.

The Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality & Mixed Reality Industries are so exciting. What is coming around the corner? How will these improve our lives? What are the concerns we should keep an eye out for? Aside from entertainment, how can VR or AR help work or other parts of life? To address this, as a part of our interview series called “Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Charlotte Mallo.

Charlotte is currently the Head of Marketing at Clay AIR, an interaction technology company located in Los Angeles. She has a background in business and strategic design with experience in product development, go-to-market, and B2B marketing in international contexts. She is passionate about cultures and obsessed about reducing waste and food insecurity.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

I grew up in a very small town of 5000 inhabitants in France, near Germany’s border. I was raised by dad and my grandmother — a feminist and vanguardist strong woman who is still a role model to me now. At 18 after my high school diploma, I studied in Lyon, and then got admitted into a Business School, still in Lyon, which enabled me to travel during my studies. After graduating, I worked in Mexico, Paris, and now Los Angeles on projects related to user research, strategic design, and artificial intelligence.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

I have two very different books in mind. Memoirs of Hadrien, by Marguerite Yourcenar. It’s a philosophical and historical novel about the life, death and thoughts of the Roman emperor Hadrien, written from his own perspective at the end of his life. He meditates on various aspects of his life including love, death, power, and ethics. It took the author more than twenty years to collect historical data, write and publish the book, which I think is an example of great persistence.

Something else that strikes me with this book is the amount of emotional intelligence and empathy shown by the author to ‘impersonate’ a Roman Emperor with who she had nothing in common (unless, maybe, the fact that they were both queer and evolved in a male-dominated environment).

Genderqueer, by Maia Kobabe (pronouns: e, em, eir), is an amazing comics memoir. I recommend this book to anyone who is curious to learn about sex, identity, nature, feminism, pronouns, love, relationships, friendships. Self-discovery journeys are complex, chaotic, and personal, but anyone can identify to Genderqueer.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in the X Reality industry? We’d love to hear it.

I have always been interested in emerging technologies, but what triggered my interest for artificial intelligence was my years at AXA, where I started working closely with the data science team. The ethical challenges that were related to deep learning, data analytics and computer vision were new to me at this time and I remember being struck by a Ted Talk by Joy Buolamwini about bias in facial recognition and its broader implications.

I then started working on conversational AI to design support and customer service bots. I loved learning more on the technology working very closely with the data scientists involved with the program but also on the organizational and change management topics linked to it. This is the most exciting thing about working with emerging technology: taking part to creating a vision, overcoming ethical challengers, and learning something new every day.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?

Most of my experiences were in mid-sized to large companies. Either in consulting, where implementing the strategy we designed was out of our hands, or in larger companies where implementation can take longer than expected. The last three years, I was working, sometimes leading depending on the topic, in global programs with a lot of stakeholders involved. I for sure was identified as the intrapreneur, the one that is not afraid of ‘kicking the nest’ and thought I would do great somewhere where I could do strategy, execution, solo and team work, learning every day. Joining Clay AIR has been a very exciting experience so far. Working with people who are excellent at what they do and have a vision to change the world is inspiring.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Saying ‘yes’ to everything! I have a very curious personality and love doing new things, which is a great quality, but the dark side of the coin is that I ended up putting a lot of efforts into other’s projects without getting any benefits of it. If the person who asks or delegates is not able to appreciate the favor or if the task has no advantage for me in the short and long run, I decline.

A former boss of mine was an example and a coach as well. I learned from him structure, strategy, politics, but also, how to deal with tough issues. I learned how to measure my emotional involvement and ‘pace’ myself. Another person I am grateful for is a former colleague– she is an incredible woman, a full-time ballet dancer in her free time, who showed me what self-confidence meant by making me rehearse scenarios during lunch breaks.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

With Clay AIR, we are working on a technology that enables people to interact with computers or devices with their hands, without a controller or without the need to touch the device. Interacting with a mouse or a keyboard is not always intuitive (or private), nor is voice interaction, or biometrics. We offer an alternative for these interactions modes to make technology more accessible.

Because we don’t require to add an extra piece of hardware, our technology can work on any device that has an existing camera. This kind of technology can help people with limited mobility interact with devices, robots or smart displays at a distance. When embedded in a virtual reality headset, hand tracking and gesture recognition can be used for rehabilitation and pain management. The technology can also help turning touch screens into touchless interfaces to maintain a level of hygiene in shared spaces.

Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. The VR, AR and MR industries seem so exciting right now. What are the 3 things in particular that most excite you about the industry? Can you explain or give an example?

The breakthrough in augmented and virtual reality are made possible by the progress that we have seen in other fields like computing power, artificial intelligence, automation, and connectivity. It is interesting to see how large companies like telecoms, chip makers, and manufacturers around the world are working together to define the next way of interacting with our ‘reality’, especially because it reveals our humanity. Is virtual reality an escape to the many issues of the reality? What are the drivers behind the will of ‘augmenting’ our reality: should we understand ‘improving’ and thus would it mean that we cannot accept the reality (distance, time, entertainment) as it is?

What are the 3 things that concern you about the VR, AR and MR industries? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

The nature of the impact of a technology doesn’t depend on the technology in itself but on the value system of the stakeholders handling it, so my concerns for this industry are the same than for any kind of technology. What is exciting with emerging technology is that there is no regulation, no codes nor social norms that define what is socially acceptable. Technological progress embeds the social schemes (and thus their flaws) of their period, which today are accessibility, equity, privacy, and transparency. The concern is that technological progress is now moving faster and faster: can we, as a society, keep up?

Two fields that I find particularly interesting are computer vision and artificial intelligence. When they are combined, they can create powerful tools such as supporting doctors in the detection of ealy stage cancers, or for mass surveillance for instance. The boundary between safety/wellbeing and surveillance will have to be defined and touches to human rights.

Artificial intelligence algorithms are biased, which is another challenge. A bias in AI typically privileges one group of user versus another by repeating anormal errors. Our machine learning models and data sets incorporate the biases of their ‘creators’ and those embedded in the dataset used to train them: this is how Alexa performs worse when with the voice of a black woman vs the voice of a white male. The same is happening with facial recognition. Creating diverse teams and data sets is very important to build solutions that are fair. I had the opportunity to chat with visual technologist and artist La June McMillan, who advocates for diversity in datasets through her project The Black Movement Project.

I think the entertainment aspects of VR, AR and MR are apparent. Can you share with our readers how these industries can help us at work?

These immersive technologies will improve the way we collaborate and connect people in a more immersive way than Zoom or Facetime. Teams scattered around the world will be able to work together on complex topics, manipulating 3D prototypes together. Because they bring people together, these technologies will shorten the geographical distance between different people more than ever, and hopefully make opportunities more accessible.

Another way virtual reality can help us at work is through immersive training. It is proven with research that virtual experiences impact our behavior in real life and make us healthier (in a similar way than how social media can impact who we’ll vote for).

At work, augmented reality will make it easier for workers to follow a complex process by guiding them hands free and decreasing the risk of accidents. Virtual reality headsets equipped with tracking capabilities enable precise user research for marketing or scientific purposes.

Are there other ways that VR, AR and MR can improve our lives? Can you explain?

VR can be used to train professionals by simulating complex situations and accelerating the learning curve. Osso VR provides training and assessment solutions for surgeons and hospital staff for instance. VR has been used to treat patients with PTSD, support people going through physical therapy from home, or simply workout.

The power of these technologies to provide a sense of immersion and to interconnect people makes services more accessible.

In entertainment and education, VR can really shake our empathy such as in this installation by Alejandro Iñarritú, Carne y Arena, where you end up in the shoes of an immigrant at the US border.

Let’s zoom out a bit and talk in broader terms. Are you currently satisfied with the status quo regarding women in STEM? If not, what specific changes do you think are needed to change the status quo?

I am not satisfied with the status quo regarding women (women is for me a term that includes everyone who identifies as a woman) in general. According to the OECD, women in heterosexual couples spend 4 hours daily on unpaid work versus 2.5 hours for men. In 2019. Women in average in the US made 17% less than men, and the gap is worse for Black and Hispanic women according to the Current Population Census Survey.

Covid-19 has reversed the slow and steady increase in women in leadership position (from 23% to 28%) observed from 2015 to 2019 worldwide. It is the first time since 2015 that women opt out of the workforce at higher rate than men. Covid has increased domestic violence: in the US, police departments report an increase from 10 to 22% depending on the cities.

In STEM, women are still underrepresented in engineering, computer science jobs, especially Hispanic and Black workers.

There are many ways to tackle the issue, starting with venture capitalists, who can choose to invest in projects led by women and people of color. 28% of startups in the US in 2019 were founded by at least a female member, but only 12% got funded through venture capital. Even though female-led companies tend to perform better (10% more cumulated revenues), they receive in average $1 million less in investment. Diversifying venture capital looks would help closing the gap: three quarters of venture capital funds are male-only (2019).

CEOs and recruiters can choose to recruit a diverse team, with diverse backgrounds, genders, sexual orientations, etc. there are many resources to educate oneself, like XRinclusion.org with resources on Bias prevention, inclusive writing and recruitment.

Trends are evolving and there is definitely more awareness than a few years ago, but we have to be patient and non-judgemental. Behaviors are deeply entrenched in our culture, language and systems, a change doesn’t happen overnight. Idealistically, I believe that individuals should not be labeled and backgrounds, gender, sexual orientation or skin color should not matter, but the tag and identification help statistics show where the issue is and enables to track the situation’s solution.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about working in your industry? Can you explain what you mean?

Working in the XR industry requires a college diploma or having a computer science background. Many developers or influencers I interact with in the space are self-taught or started in XR as a side project. Antonia Forster for instance (a LGTBQIA activist and Unity developer) started from scratch, Dilmer Valecillos started his YouTube channel on his free time, there are many examples. Working in tech (or in deep-tech) doesn’t require to be extra specialized either because grit and drive will compensate for the lack of technical skills, and bring another perspective to the team!

What are your “5 Leadership Lessons I Learned From My Experience as a Woman in Tech” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

I use a few guiding principles as a moral compass to help me navigate through situations or simply make decisions.

Be excellent and professional: ultimately, the evaluation of an individual’s or team performance should be based on facts so focusing on achieving objectives and measure them is a priority.

I am the master of my own time. There is no time to lose in interruptions (manterrupting is more common than you think!) and mansplaining.

Everyone is accountable: reducing the gender gap, increasing diversity and inclusion, and speaking up against (micro) aggression is the responsibility of all. When Ursula von der Leyen was left without a chair at a meeting with the President of Turkey, European Union Council President Charles Michel could (and should) have reacted, but he chose not to, which makes him complicit.

Build a reliable team with people who are in the right mindset: a team made of individuals with a strong sense of self, willing to learn and self-improve, who have the ability to listen and to have honest conversations will go far. Accountability and team spirit do well with transparency in communication.

Self-confidence. Imposter syndrome is real among women, this is why it’s important to rely on facts, while acknowledging the feeling. Seeking mentorship and coaching, as simple as among peers, helps.

I dedicate part of my free time to projects that aim to reduce food insecurity through models inspired from the circular economy and working on gradually reduce my waste and carbon footprint. Technology is not my religion, and I believe more in camels than unicorns!

I would encourage anyone to take part to local politics and organizations: help your local non-profit, sign-up for a city council, offer help to communities.

We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

Angela Merkel, or Jacinda Ardem. They both have their own very distinct leadership style but exemplify the ‘female’ leadership. They care about their people and are able to make tough, unpopular decisions that follow their values, thinking not about their ego but about the greater mission they are committed to achieve. Women do not have to stick to the masculine representation of leadership to lead and be respected, one can achieve a lot putting aside ego and personal thirst for power and prioritizing consensus and transparent conversations.

Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success on your great work!

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Charlotte Mallo of Clay… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Non-Fungible Tokens: Ali Sabet of The Suite On The 5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly…

Non-Fungible Tokens: Ali Sabet of The Suite On The 5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly Successful Career In The NFT Industry

Map out who the key players are in the space — Considering that this is such a new space, you have to look at who the original pioneers were and how they got started.

Many have observed that we are at the cusp of an NFT boom. The thing is, it’s so cutting edge, that many people don’t know what it is. What exactly is an NFT and how can one create a lucrative career out of selling them? To address this, as a part of our interview series called “5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly Successful Career In The NFT Industry”, we had the pleasure of interviewing George Mazzella.

George is the CEO & Co-Founder of The Suite. He founded The Suite in order to fundamentally change the way executives manage their careers. Prior to founding The Suite in 2019, George spent several years in the executive recruiting space where he was fortunate enough to advise some of the world’s leading VC & PE backed businesses on talent.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

I suppose you could say that my journey to where I am today was pretty rough. I grew up in Brooklyn, raised by a working-class family of mostly Italian descent. I didn’t come from money and didn’t go to the best schools, so when I was graduating high school, I didn’t have many options in front of me. When I was in my second year of college, I had a son. I had to get two jobs to support him and his mother, but I remained a full-time student and graduated on time. Desperate for money, I took any job I could get. My wife jokes that there isn’t a job I haven’t done, and she’s probably right. I’ve worked in restaurants, cleaned toilets, spent time in construction, and even worked as a security officer. I didn’t have time for soul searching, so I never really figured out what I wanted to do after graduation, and since money was always tight, my focus was always on making as much money as possible. After all, diapers are pretty expensive… After what must’ve been a dozen dead-end jobs, I ended up falling into the world of recruiting after a large recruiting firm found my resume online and called me in for an interview. For me, it was a place where through grit and talent, I could decide my own future, and I loved it. It wasn’t until several years later that I started to recognize all the things that are wrong with that industry, but that’s a story for another time.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

Without a doubt, the movie that has influenced my life in the biggest way has been Rocky. I first watched Rocky with my dad when I was 4 years old, making it one of my earliest memories. Watching those movies became a “pick-me-up” ritual that I would undergo whenever life beat me down. The idea that anyone can do anything so long as they have the grit, the work ethic, and the dream, has become a core foundation of my own beliefs and personality. I have always believed in the limitlessness of human potential and pride myself on my ability to shatter whatever barriers lie ahead.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in this new industry? We’d love to hear it.

I can’t say that there is a particular story so much as my own experience. Back when I was an executive recruiter, I couldn’t help but notice that of the roughly 50 people that I would consider for a job, only 1 got it, and nobody was paying attention to the other 49. I founded The Suite to be there for the 49 that no one else sees.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?

I don’t know if I can pick just one story to share. To be honest, my career has led to meet fascinating people, experience extraordinary places and events, and build a list of hilarious barroom stories. Although I suppose being able to say I interviewed one of Jordan Belfort’s senior most team members was a pretty interesting experience… definitely top 5.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

During my time at one of my first jobs out of school, I worked for a boutique search firm in their NYC office. The company was filled with 20-something-year-olds and the culture of the office really was that work-hard, play-harder vibe that young professionals gravitate towards. Anyway, at one of our team happy hours after being dared, I consumed more martinis than any person probably should and the night went from office banter to friendly martial arts sparring session with one of the Managing Partners. I wish someone got a video of it though. To this day he and I still get quite a laugh out of that one.

I owe most of my success to my amazing wife. She has been my biggest supporter, my trusted advisor, and my closest confidant. During the good times, she forces me to celebrate my victories, and during the bad, she is there to catch me when I fall. We all fall right? But that being said, it’s certainly a lot easier to fall when you know there is someone there who will catch you. When I first thought of stepping into The Suite full-time, I was terrified, but seeing how much she believed in me and my dream was enough to make me take the leap. A year later, I couldn’t be happier with my decision. In fact, I finally feel like I am doing what I was meant to do.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

I am working on setting our future product roadmap and I couldn’t be more excited for all that we have in store. When we first launched we wanted to give executives access to job listings at their level and remove the noise that other mass-market sites suffer from. Since then, we’ve developed several products that were designed to champion the jobseeker and empower executives to advance their careers and expand their networks. From our networking platform where members can connect and leverage one another, to our compensation tools that provide guidance on salary and equity packages, every tool we’ve developed at The Suite has been with the executive in mind. What’s next? We’ve identified, analyzed, and graded the top 500 executive recruiting firms in the world and we plan to build the world’s first verified recruiter database. Why is that a big deal? Recruiters control over 80% of the job market, and without a way to identify and contact them, job seekers miss out on thousands (yes, you’re reading that right) of job opportunities each year.

Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. I’m sure you get this question all the time. But for the benefit of our readers, can you explain in your own words what an NFT is, and why people are spending so much money on them?

NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens are presently being used as a proof of authentication token for digitally disseminated arts, stored on the Ethereum blockchain. Their usage and value are not associated particularly with ownership or rights over the arts, but proof of provenance; which in the traditional art world is wildly anachronistic, inefficient, and subjective. By massively distributing the provenance ledger, no single party can act as a market-making bad actor, improving transparency and fairness.

The NFT industry seems so exciting right now. What are the 3 things in particular that most excite you about the industry? If you can, please share a story or example for each.

This is not the first instance of an NFT being publicly available — Cryptokitties wins that. However, this is the first global application of the technology in a sector that deeply needs it.
The Beeple NFT token exposes the hype around this industry — and that it is a fervently supply and demand rich marketplace; vindicating the opportunity of the marketplace, even if it is in its infancy.
In the longer term, I am excited about how this technology will be used to fuel the wider creator economy — the paper-thin authenticity of ad deals with creators (“I just love Raid Shadow legends — you should too”), and challenges subscription-based ‘patron’ accounts are having (e.g. Patreon) means existing business models cannot support creators widely. NFTs give the opportunity for creators to be unleashed from platforms as their source of income. This will disrupt much of what exists today.

What are the 3 things that concern you about the industry? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

Hype — it is the very early days of the technology, and hype might be hurting the underlying value.
Market inefficiency — the Beeple work, whilst an incredible achievement, was sold through a “fiat” equivalent brokerage, Christie’s, and was bought by someone with vested interests in NFT’s success. Not exactly a shining example of the market equilibrium.
Ignorance — crypto technology will always be infected with scammers and ignorance — as will all money markets. We need to shift the argument to be about the positive future of where this tech can go, and not get bogged down in the immaturity of the technology.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about NFTs? Can you explain what you mean?

Linked to the above answer, the main myths surround the inefficiency and security risks of NFTs, and cryptos more widely.
On the power efficiency of the ETH blockchain — yes, it is carbon-draining now, but so was equivalent power generation in steam engines in the 1700s vs. harnessing the power of the sun in fusion reactors we’re developing now. People bad-mouthed steam vs. horse at the time — but with 20/20 vision, we can see how misguided they were.
Concerning security, as with all markets, there will be bad actors looking to scam people. As adoption rates increase, whilst the incentives will increase for those actors, as do those for good actors, leading to higher transparency and steady-state technological applications. Bitcoin is looked at like gold now — in the future, could NFTs be seen in the same way as music licensors are seen now as an annuity asset class? Possibly.

What are the most common mistakes you have seen people make when they enter the NFT industry. What can be done to avoid that?

They pretend to know more than they do: Be yourself and own your shortcomings. This is a new space, anyone proclaiming to be an expert is probably lying.
They put their head down and get lost in work: In a space this new, you need to be aware of what is going on in the industry at all times. Failure to keep up with movement in the space will result in you getting left behind in the innovation race.

How do you think NFTs have the potential to help society in the future?

Non-traditional and intangible income sources suffer from provenance and distribution issues. Cryptocurrencies are perfectly geared to solve this issue with a distributed ledger held on a cryptographically secured blockchain. Whilst NFTs might not be the exact application of this technology — it holds huge potential in feeding the wider economy. I believe we will be in a society soon where proof of ownership, dissemination, and license will be held on the blockchain — and if so — this has a massive knock-on effect on how people prove and source value from their IP.

Ok, fantastic. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly Successful Career In The NFT Industry?” (Please share a story or example for each.)

1) Map out who the key players are in the space

Considering that this is such a new space, you have to look at who the original pioneers were and how they got started.

2) Rest easy, no one is an expert yet.

There was a time when nobody knew what NFTs were, so anyone currently in the space didn’t start there.

3) Let’s say you already made the jump; how do you remain relevant?

In a space that is evolving as quickly as Crypto, it’s hard to say what will help you stay in the know. Monitor your competitors and see how the market is adapting.

4) Establish yourself as an expert in the space.

Research research research. If there is a question, you need to know the answer or be able to learn it quickly.

5) Broaden your network

Meet as many people as you can, build relationships with every known “expert”. The world is big, but the professional world is small.

As a country, we have taken such amazing strides in raising awareness of sexual abuse and misconduct, but one victim who has yet to get the focus they deserve is young boys. 1 out of 6 boys is sexually abused before they turn 18 and so rarely do you hear that statistic shared. If I could inspire a movement it would be to raise awareness of this issue and create a program dedicated to helping those boys through what is the darkest time of their lives. To remind them that they are not alone. To teach them that they are strong because of their trauma, not in spite of it. To show them that true strength is not the ability to ignore pain, but the ability to live on despite it.

I have always admired Jack Ma. His beliefs on culture, his ability to create innovation, and his grit to build a company no one believed would flourish, are all things that I try to model myself on. A meal with him would be an honor.

Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success on your great work!

Non-Fungible Tokens: Ali Sabet of The Suite On The 5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Zeena Qureshi of Sonantic

Be positive, everything is fixable. > When everyone is looking to you as a leader to fix problems but you’re also the same person who has to inspire everyone else, positivity is key. No one likes stress and no one wants to be miserable. Being a positive, problem solver not only reinforces your team’s belief during a difficult time but it also inspires them to know that they can and will get through every challenge that comes their way.

Zeena Qureshi is the co-founder and CEO of Sonantic, a UK-based deeptech startup that has created the world’s most expressive and realistic artificial voices. The company’s audio platform is utilized by top-tier film and AAA gaming studios worldwide. Previously, Qureshi spent 9 years teaching speech and language therapy to children with Autism alongside a decade of experience in the startup world.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

I’m a first generation American-born Indian now living in London. I come from humble beginnings and am lucky to have a strong female role model in my mother. Working hard was the norm in our household. My background spans studying art then going into product and sales for tech startups (having founded 2 previously) and teaching speech and language therapy. The latter came from having a family member diagnosed with Autism eleven years ago. In order to support them, I trained in Applied Behavior Analysis and after a little while was encouraged by a consultant to teach other children. I did this as a side hustle for 9 years — this is where my interest in speech really took off. I found myself deep in that world, using the basic building blocks of voice production to break it down for nonverbal children and help them with communication and expression. Two and half years ago, I co-founded a company called Sonantic that teaches machines to speak the same way I taught children. We work with world renowned entertainment studios servicing them with human realistic voice technology.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

Yes, my favorite book of all time is ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’. I find it to be such a great reflection of the startup life. The main character is self made, resilient, and has grit. Every time I read this book, it teaches me several lessons and helps give a new perspective on problem solving. Without giving too much away, I have learned that the greatest asset we have is ourselves — we make our own destiny, and no matter how difficult things can be, we can always find a way to not only handle every situation, but do so strategically. I’ve learned that cultivating good relationships is the most difficult-yet-rewarding thing. It takes a lot of work and there’s no cutting corners. All of these lessons ring so true in everyday life and definitely in a startup when the odds are stacked against you.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in the X Reality industry? We’d love to hear it.

Everything clicked into place when I met my cofounder, John Flynn, at Entrepreneur First. He’s a speech researcher who came from the world of entertainment and worked with the greatest voices of all time, from Morgan Freeman and Christian Bale to Tom Hardy, Tom Cruise, and Tom Hanks. All the Toms!

I came from an artsy tech background with loads of speech experience with kids. When John and I started to ideate on what to build, I remembered back to the lessons with the children I taught. They would go on break time, and every single time they did, the child would opt for playing a voiced video game with the sound on loud. Some would say games aren’t a good use of time, but in my experience, the children learned so much from the voiced stories and came back to lessons with a calmer mind. The children may have been nonverbal, but their receptiveness to story characters was strong and the entertainment would motivate them to try and mimic conversation in real life. Like adults, children want to be heard. And the happiness that stems from communicating effectively is priceless. Entertainment is an industry solely based on telling the best stories in the world and conveying messages perfectly. It’s from that realization that I knew John and I would bridge the gap of human realistic voice interactions with our technology and we would dedicate ourselves to helping make the best entertainment products of the future. The end result would be so rewarding as it would bring happiness to end consumers and help them learn life lessons from incredible stories.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?

After closing our seed round, John and I went full swing into company building. We were hiring teammates, mapping our product vision and creating our roadmap for the journey ahead. We knew we wanted to create the world’s most expressive and realistic artificial voices in the world but we needed to tackle how to get there and overcome the challenge of existing text-to-speech solutions. We also knew the reason AI voices sound robotic is because they don’t look at the details of voice and lack the emotions that humans have, so we set out to fix just that.

We started by looking at the hardest human emotion to convey, deep sadness, which is communicated through crying, a non-speech pattern. It’s difficult for a person to be vulnerable; it’s even harder to cry on demand. Actors themselves find it quite difficult, and they’re the experts. There’s a lot that goes into it, like all the physiological elements for your face to sound like you are believably crying. We thought that if we could get a computer to generate deep sadness, then we could later replicate any other human emotion for a more human realistic voice technology.

Low and behold four brutal months later, we cracked the code and created the first AI that can cry. It was an incredible feat for the team: we were doing something difficult for humans and completely unheard of for machines. I’ll never forget how great it felt for our team to be the first in the world to make that breakthrough.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Oh yes! Two years ago John and I were fundraising and about to speak to one of the most respected VCs in the world. He’s well regarded and invests in the best. The man is such a lovely guy, super smart and understood our business right away. We were about to have our 4th call with him and in the morning, LinkedIn notified me that it was his birthday. So I thought, what better way to say ‘Happy Birthday’ than using our Human realistic AI Voice to say it? So John and I did just that for this investor. Except for some reason, I thought I’d try to be charming and have the AI say: “Happy Birthday, how does it feel to be 25 again?!”

His reaction was definitely not happy. Neutral at best and he was like ”Yeah, I’m too old now” in a somewhat somber tone. Then there was a dead awkward silence that felt like it lasted way too long. I realized that I was on a fundraising call and just called the investor an old man to his face using our product!

The investor did end up investing and we’re lucky to have him on the journey with us. It just goes to show that we all make mistakes but we have to keep going no matter what and hope for the best. Hard work pays off and remember to laugh about it afterwards.

Absolutely. My co-founder John. John has a way of listening to people and making them feel heard, working super fast, and is the most reliable person I know.

I met John at Entrepreneur First. Many say the program is like ‘Love Island’ meets ‘The Apprentice’. The incubator brings in 100 people to find a co-founder and build a viable business in 3 months. John and I were friends first, in different co-founding teams laughing at our shortcomings and difficulties. We both really wanted to build a company but only had 6 weeks left to do so and weren’t anywhere close to achieving it. After realizing we both have a decade of experience in speech from different perspectives, we teamed up and literally built a company in six weeks. I couldn’t have done this with anyone else and John’s been there every step of the way. A lot more has happened in the past 2.5 years and I’m proud to have John as my co-founder growing with me through the different obstacles of startup life. He’s brilliant, kind, and has a great heart. I think every startup needs a John Flynn.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Yes, we’re continuing towards our north star of creating human realistic AI voices with an exciting new project (top secret, for now!). Here’s what I can tell you: the ability to speak and control one’s own voice like an instrument, and communicating effectively is a very complex human talent. The ability for machines to do the same opens up a new world of possibilities. Currently when you interact with machines they have limited options and no ability to convey or understand emotions. It’s very frustrating and something we’ve all experienced. This is why I’ve set out to teach machines to talk just like humans, to bridge the gap between people and machines.

J.A.R.V.I.S. from Iron Man and Samantha from the movie HER, both sci-fi characters of the past alluded to this type of technology. With Sonantic, we have made computer generated voices sound human and realistic by looking at all the idiosyncrasies and details of speech. Our goal is to power human realistic voice interactions around the world so that frustrating voice interactions are a thing of the past.

What excites me the most is bridging the gap between humans and computers. It’s a very difficult challenge but once it’s done, the results will be huge, transforming all interactions on computerized devices for the future. In voice technology, personal assistants have been trying to do this for years now but it’s not quite there. Everyone’s an expert on voice and can tell when they’re speaking to a robot and/or automated system. The robotic voices have no way to connect to the end consumer. Many get frustrated by their interaction and have a terrible experience. This is why at Sonantic we look at all the details of voice to make it human-realistic and we work with the best storytellers in entertainment to match human voice quality.

The other two things that excite me are that one, this has been science fiction for so long and now the latest breakthroughs in machine learning make it possible. And two, connecting end-users to human realistic voices will mean that they can connect with content in a way that they can actually relate to, rather than feel disconnected from.

What are the 3 things that concern you about the VR, AR and MR industries? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

Misuse, misuse, and misuse. Not to sound like a stereotype but it’s true. With great innovation comes great responsibility. This technology is capable of great things in entertainment and other industries vital to our lives as humans. But on the flip side, if it gets into the wrong hands it can be dangerous, especially as we see more Deepfakes.

At Sonantic we have put several measures in place to prevent misuse and take it very seriously. We are strictly B2B enterprise Saas and work only with entertainment studios. We make sure our algorithms are never trained on publicly available data without the voice owner’s permission. We also only work with voice actors.

I think the entertainment aspects of VR, AR and MR are apparent. Can you share with our readers how these industries can help us at work?

Sure, aspects of VR, AR, and MR in other industries outside of entertainment help for a variety of use cases. These can range from simulations and customization to improving customer experience and scaling content. For Sonantic, entertainment is just our go-to-market as it brings out the best in our technology. Voice is a huge market opportunity and AI is already being used for audiobooks, podcasts, radio, call centres, advertising, media, personal assistants, and more. We believe in five years time, all devices will have human realistic voice interactions bringing innovation and efficiency.

Are there other ways that VR, AR and MR can improve our lives? Can you explain?

Absolutely, aside from what synthetic media is already used for like call centres and personal assistants, there’s a greater potential to see what it hasn’t been used for and how it can help. Throughout the pandemic we have seen what comes from shutting the world down, people feeling alone, and are left without proper care, goods, and services. However, despite all the difficulty, there’s been great innovation in VR, AR, and MR and a large part of it has been virtual beings and having that support at any time. Humans are social creatures who require attention and support, if we can’t mix because the world is in a pandemic, building virtual beings and worlds to help with coping and growth is a huge advancement for both people and technology.

No, I believe the environment is heavily biased and still incredibly male dominated. A big part of the industry is closed off to women, especially because they still aren’t receptive to women even if they say they are. Women aren’t given the same opportunities. They also tend to have less access to financial help. The odds are stacked against them from the very beginning. Many advocates and women are trying to level the playing field but we have many years of catch up to do. Getting more female leaders at the top of STEM will help as well as doing more efforts in raising awareness, both of these will help to build a culture where women are half of the environment.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about working in your industry? Can you explain what you mean?

For Sonantic, many fear that AI voices will take actor’s jobs. It’s an understandable fear as most don’t understand artificial intelligence and there’s a lot of content being spread around from different angles, increasing the fear. However, this is indeed a myth.

Entertainment studios do not want to cut out actors, nor do we. That’s why we built our platform in an industry-supporting way, especially as John comes from the world of Hollywood. Actors are an integral part of the appeal when it comes to deciding what movie to watch or what game to play. Fans have their favorite actors who have a real talent that makes the film or game into a work of art. Actors play out their roles, serve their fans, and help a great deal when it comes to marketing.

Just as CGI hasn’t taken away from the jobs of the cinematographer, we won’t take away actors’ jobs either. This in no way will prevent actors from working real jobs but rather give them the option to work virtually at the same time, enabling them to scale their talents and create more content.

It’s also important to understand that a Sonantic voice model can only do what the actor can teach it to do — they are at the core of our technology. Voice technology can actually give actors more opportunity, not less. Actors can take on multiple projects simultaneously. They can generate passive income — unless you’re an A or B list actor, this is not something you’ve likely been accustomed to. They can avoid straining their voice and age discrimination, extending their careers well after retirement.

What are your “5 Leadership Lessons I Learned From My Experience as a Woman in Tech” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

Be positive, everything is fixable. > When everyone is looking to you as a leader to fix problems but you’re also the same person who has to inspire everyone else, positivity is key. No one likes stress and no one wants to be miserable. Being a positive, problem solver not only reinforces your team’s belief during a difficult time but it also inspires them to know that they can and will get through every challenge that comes their way.
Simplify > Remember the best things in life are simple. How can you solve a problem if you make it more complicated? You can’t, so it’s best to focus on taking steps forward and taking a big problem and making it smaller. Then taking your small problems and making them disappear.
Surround yourself with great support > The life of a founder is lonely and there’s a lot on your shoulders. By surrounding yourself with smart and helpful peers and advisors, you’ll be able to learn and grow much faster.
Be grateful for both the hard times and good times. > Everyone likes a challenge and the feeling of overcoming that said challenge. Startups are supposed to be hard, if it was easy, we wouldn’t enjoy our jobs. Understanding the difficulties and being thankful for the learning will help ground you and guide you to happiness.
Don’t forget yourself > Founders are the foundation of their company. They work hard and sacrifice a lot while taking high risks. It’s important for physical and mental health that you don’t over do it and build in time to take care. You aren’t good to anyone if you aren’t good to yourself.

I would love to help on anything related to climate change as I believe it’s the greatest threat to humanity. I don’t have any specific ideas on how to save the world and think Bill Gates is already on it, but I do think the world as a whole needs to be aware and start taking action to help prevent our world from dying. If we can come together to do this, then we are saving the entire population from extinction in the future.

Yes, absolutely. Oprah Winfrey. She’s an incredible entrepreneur, philanthropist and role model who persevered through challenging circumstances to become the woman she is today. Reading her stories and seeing her career take off has been an immense help to me and so many others in the world.

Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success on your great work!

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Zeena Qureshi of Sonantic was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Author TShane Johnson: Five Ways To Develop More ‘Grit’

The idea is to remember that “the leader fits all.” In a business sense, this means being able to adapt and accommodate all employees and those in support roles by taking on various leadership styles. Being nimble is extremely important when you’re the person on top. All leadership styles work for me, but for different reasons and around different people.

As a part of my series about “Grit: The Most Overlooked Ingredient of Success” I had the pleasure of interviewing TShane Johnson.

When Marine Corp veteran TShane Johnson was in his 20s, he died three times after a terrible motorcycle accident, and later endured two years of homelessness on the East Coast. Having overcome these tremendous obstacles on his journey, Johnson now focuses his efforts on raising funds to help homeless veterans and bring awareness to the issue of veteran suicides. He has completed a series of Hike Across America tours, each time covering approximately 7,000 miles and speaking in more than 60 cities along the way. During his 2019 Hike Across America tour, he also challenged the world record for fastest 1-mile run carrying a 100-pound pack. Johnson broke that record and is now training to break two marks in the Guinness Book of World Records: the most pushups in one hour and the most pushups over 12 hours.

Now age 40 and a full-time, single father, Johnson owns and operates several successful businesses he created; he’s the author of three books; and he is in high demand as a motivational speaker. Along the way, he has inspired employees at big companies such as RedBull, the U.S. Navy, Hyatt, Best Western Hotel and Resorts, Caesars Entertainment and more.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what events have drawn you to this specific career path

I don’t think I chose this specific career path; it chose me. The fact that I experienced death gave me the ability to live. When I faced death, God chose for me to live that day — my time wasn’t over and only he and I knew that. God said to me, “I want to allow you to live, it may be painful, but I need you to live.” Years later, my Hike Across America project raised awareness of veteran suicides and delivered 10,000 hygiene kits to homeless veterans and others in need. But it also allowed me to have conversations with these people and better understand their struggles. It made me want to help change their perspectives, which then made me a speaker. I knew it was time to help change people with my words and my experiences. People started to tell me how I changed their lives, whether it was about drugs, the military, diverse challenges … it was all God’s work.

Can you share your story about “Grit and Success”? First can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey?

I’ve had many journeys, but the first major hard times that impacted me — literally — was when a car full of gang members ran my motorcycle off the road and then robbed me as I lay bleeding. They left me with a smashed ribcage and injuries to my lungs and other organs. I managed somehow to crawl to a fire station, where I received treatment and was airlifted to a hospital, and during that process I flatlined three times. Each time, the paramedics and doctors brought me back. I lost 50 pounds in the first two weeks due to my injuries and knew the road back was going to be difficult.

The next major hard times I faced were economic rather than physical. In my 20s I built a successful mortgage company and was enjoying a six-figure income when the market collapsed. I went from driving a brand-new Mercedes to a Honda to absolutely nothing. I ended up spending the next two years homeless, walking endlessly and trying to earn enough money to eat one meal a day. It was humbling to say the least.

Later, I managed to move to Charlotte, North Carolina, with $500 to my name. I’d taken a job at a gym and then soon found a great corporate sales opportunity, which I jumped at. Ironically, my car was repossessed that first day on the new job, as without the gym job I no longer qualified for the loan. There went my $500! I felt frustrated and hopeless as I walked back to my empty apartment. Pretty soon the new corporate job sent me to a Manhattan sales conference, because I quickly became the number-one seller. Paychecks took a while to process back then, and I remember taking all the bagels and the bananas at the conference, so I could eat the rest of the day. The $300 gift card they awarded me would completely go toward transportation, so I felt both hope and hopelessness in a matter of seconds.

Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?

As I lay in the hospital bed after that crash, enduring what would be a long and painful recovery, my father challenged me to choose the pain rather than give up. And there was a lot of pain, and it sucked. This experience helped shape one of my core philosophies, which is you have to “embrace the suck.” Choose the pain and know it is reshaping you, getting you to that next level.

My endless walks while I was homeless taught me another core philosophy that ended up becoming my second book, “Keep Your Feet Moving: Seven Principles to Get You Through Hard Times.” Your greatest power is to just keep moving through times of hardship. I put this into practice on a much larger scale when I did my Hikes Across America and walked thousands of miles to benefit homeless veterans and raise awareness about veteran suicides. It was this same drive to keep moving that helped me break the mark set in the Guinness Book of World Records for fastest 1-mile trek carrying a 100-pound pack in 2019. And I’m applying that same principle in my training today, as I ramp up to breaking two pushup records on May 1.

As a single father to my 6-year-old daughter, I am constantly driven by my desire to be her hero. She inspires me to do greater things and surmount challenges — and she even helps me train now, yelling “put that cookie down!” when I’m about to cheat on my training diet. She’s worse than my drill instructor! And she is my “why,” she’s the reason I do it all.

So, how did Grit lead to your eventual success? How did Grit turn things around?

Grit is the key component to success, and it’s what helped me turn my life around and even fight to stay alive when I was on the brink. It’s what made me drag my battered body to a fire station after being thrown into a brick wall at 45 mph, robbed and left for dead. It’s what drove me to pick myself up after losing millions of dollars, and go to Dunkin’ Donuts to use their Wi-Fi and start my next business. It’s what made me walk everywhere when I had no car. Grit is an integral part of life; it’s that drive to keep going. It’s embracing the pain that we experience in the thick of the fight, whether we are fighting to survive or fighting to accomplish a seemingly unattainable goal. Grit is the anger and frustration that pushes you over that hill. Grit is giving more than you think you have to give, digging deep and finding that last bit of energy. Grit is the opposite of giving up.

Having a life that is 100% pleasure isn’t real. Try to imagine that. There is no high without a low, no good without evil, no rewards without effort, and no success without grit. My past pushed me, and the trouble and pain I’ve felt is what made me who I am. Grit is the ability to take that pain and keep going, with the knowledge the pain is simply what you feel on the way to where you want to go.

Based on your experience, can you share five pieces of advice about how one can develop Grit? (Please share a story or example for each)

Keep your feet moving. In the Marine Corps, you learn the fastest way to complete something is to never stop. You can slow down, you can walk and you can rest, but never ever stop. This will teach you to always keep moving forward no matter how tough it is. I’ve died three times. I have been homeless. I’ve suffered major medical issues. I have been alone, but no matter what I always kept my feet moving.

Embrace the suck. Pain is inevitable. As a matter of fact, it is the catalyst to greater things in most cases. Learn that pain is not always your enemy. Right now, I do almost 1,000 pushups a day for training. Do you have any idea how painful it is for one’s body to endure that much training? But I embrace it because I know the outcome will be breaking a 32-year-old world record, and I will be the only person in the world to complete that.

Know your “why.” I love this one. Honestly if you do not have a passion, then no matter how strong you are, you will break. It is a shame that fictional superheroes exist to our children when in reality we could be that example to them every day. I want my daughter to see her father as her superhero, so that it sets a real example for her to believe and follow.

Suck it up, Buttercup. No one is coming to save you, and it’s lonely at the top. Zero time for excuses! When I was homeless, not one person was coming to save me, and, honestly, I probably would not even have let them. I put myself there and it was my responsibility to get myself out and not be an emotional vampire on others. So, suck it up and get it done.

Take massive action. As business leader and motivational speaker Art Williams said, “That’s great. Just do it.” Get out of your own way and, if you won’t, at least get out of my way. When I write my goal down and commit, I take massive action to make it happen. You don’t train daily for a 19,325-pushup, 12-hour world record without taking massive action. So, whatever it is you want to do, do it now!

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped you when things were tough? Can you share a story about that?

At my lowest points, I honestly didn’t have anyone who helped. They say that it’s lonely at the top, but it’s lonely at the bottom, too. When I lost everything, the only person I felt I could count on besides God was myself. That’s a mindset that can sometimes set in too hard, however. I remember once when I was walking home overloaded with groceries, back when I was walking miles each day as I tried to get back on my feet and also extend a helping hand to my sister and her son. All the grocery bags broke in the middle of the road. It was pouring rain and felt like things couldn’t have been any worse in that moment. A lady tried to help me, and I didn’t want help. I was rude to her. I was angry. I was hurt. I will never forget what she said back to me, “Sometimes we go through hard times. It’s okay to ask for help.”

Looking back, I greatly appreciate people in my life who have helped me by inspiring me to push harder. My father was a champion bull rider who worked out constantly to stay in shape, and he inspired me to start doing “card pushups,” where you’d pull cards from a deck and do the combined number of pushups. As a result, when I joined the Marines I was the one guy who never got tired of doing pushups.

Right now, I am grateful for the help of my world-class trainer, gold medal athlete and Golden Gloves champion Jamie McGrath. She’s no stranger to grit and understands the mindset of what it will take to do a grueling 12 hours of pushups, and she pushes me to my absolute breaking point. Sometimes people help you by making things tough, and she definitely does that — by not having pity on my prior injuries and making me work until I throw up!

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

I have used my success to bring goodness into the world by being the version of me I always wanted to be and impacting people from all over the world. I use my struggle and my story to inspire people in a way that makes them want to get up and change their lives. Because of my experiences, I have been able to make connections and relationships with people from all walks of life. I genuinely believe in people. I fight for them to be successful and invest myself in that fight because I know that person is capable of more. It is a wonderful feeling to hear someone tell you that you’ve helped change their life. That’s what I try to do by being real, by pushing them to understand who they are and what they deserve. Not everyone has a dramatic brush with death like I did, but our dreams can die too — and dreams die quietly without any fanfare. I want to remind people to hold onto those dreams and goals, feed them so they become reality.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

My new project is called “Pushups for Purple Hearts,” a dual record-breaking event in support of the National Purple Heart Honor Mission. Starting at 6 a.m. May 1 at Southpaw Training Center in Pineville, North Carolina, I will be attempting to break two world records: the most pushups done in one hour (currently that record is 2,919), and the most pushups in a 12-hour period (that record is 19,325). The 12-hour record, held by Paddy Doyle, was set in 1989 on May 1, so if all goes well I’ll be breaking it exactly 32 years, to the day, that he accomplished that mark.

All proceeds will help bring Purple Heart recipients from across the nation to the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor and tell the stories of valor that these combat wounded and those killed in action embody. The amount of pain I will endure is nothing compared to the pain they have experienced. It is the least I can do to help this organization raise funds to continue doing amazing things for those who have given the ultimate sacrifice. My hope is that not only will my effort help in a fundraising capacity for the National Purple Heart Mission’s Patriot Project, but it will also inspire people to challenge themselves to go above and beyond, to overcome setbacks and accomplish things they never could have imagined.

What advice would you give to other executives or founders to help their employees to thrive?

The idea is to remember that “the leader fits all.” In a business sense, this means being able to adapt and accommodate all employees and those in support roles by taking on various leadership styles. Being nimble is extremely important when you’re the person on top. All leadership styles work for me, but for different reasons and around different people.

You have to remember that not everyone is going to like you or your style. People are driven for all different reasons — some will be driven by money, others by ego, status or family, and so on. I am driven by the knowledge that I can do anything and everything because of where I come from.

Bring back Dad, the HERO! I think dads need to step up and understand they are a very important part of the home life and that nothing — not even work — is more important than being a dad. I go into this in my third book, “Done by 2:30: The Essential Guide to a Successful Work Life Balance.” Simply put, there is no balance! Family is first, everything else is second.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life living like most people can’t.”

–Anonymous

This sums up what it means to set aside comfort and work toward your goal. I have always said that as human beings we are all amazing and can do incredible things, but you’ve got to have the grit to put in the work, and that often means pushing yourself far beyond your comfort zone. Years ago, I pushed myself to just keep living and recover from my injuries. Then, I pushed myself to build businesses after suffering extreme losses, and now I’m pushing myself physically through pain with each long training session to break these two pushup records. We should embrace pain more. Pain gets a bad rap. Pain means you are pushing through to level up.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

I’m @Tshanejohnson on all social media platforms.

Author TShane Johnson: Five Ways To Develop More ‘Grit’ was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Ashleigh Koontz of Seek

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. We’ve all been programmed to think that as leaders, we shouldn’t ask for help and that doing so is a sign of weakness. I think having the ability to admit when you need help shows a great amount of humility and strength. It’s something I’ve struggled with quite a bit in the past, but I am continuously trying to improve.

Ashleigh Koontz is an entrepreneur, marketer, and sales specialist with over 15 years of professional experience. As Seek’s Director of Marketing, she specializes in current and forecasted technology trends. She primary focus is on augmented reality for e-commerce.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

This question would be a lot easier to answer if I followed a traditional career path, but I’ve never done anything the traditional way and I don’t think I’d be who I am today if I did.

Over the past 15 years, I’ve worked as a retail store manager, a photographer, a photo-booth owner, a ring designer, a marketer, and at one point I was even a character at Walt Disney World. As you can see, my career path has been anything but linear. But no matter where that path has taken me, I have always relied heavily on my knowledge and passion for technology.

As a young teen, my interest in tech really blossomed when my dad brought home some old computers from the school he worked at. My brother and I spent days taking parts from each computer until we built one that would function properly. I will never forget the feeling of accomplishment when we got to play Solitaire for the first time on our new computer — a computer that we built.

Learning through experience has been something my parents have encouraged my whole life and it’s how I continue to learn and grow today professionally.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

This is going to totally show my nerd card, but I’d have to say the original Star Wars trilogy had a pretty significant impact on me growing up. My dad was a huge fan to the point of having a dedicated room of unopened toys and memorabilia. When most kids were getting quizzed on the differences between mammals and reptiles, I was getting quizzed on the differences between AT-AT and AT-ST walkers.

This significantly impacted life because as a young girl whose favorite movie wasn’t the traditional “Little Mermaid” or “Beauty and the Beast,” my love for Star Wars really opened my eyes to the gender norms of our society. It helped me to realize that I didn’t have to fit in the box society built for me. I could have just as much fun with toys from the “boy” section as I did with my Barbies.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in the AR industry? We’d love to hear it.

After losing my job at a large retailer, I promised myself that my next position would be a career move and not just a job to “pay the bills.” I was browsing LinkedIn one day and noticed that the Utah Women in Sales group was hosting a job fair. On one of their posts, I saw a comment from Seek’s CEO, Jon Cheney. He was asking if he could attend the fair because he was looking for some “rockstar salespeople.”

This led me to his profile where I saw a video of him in Walmart showing a LEGO set in augmented reality. I was familiar with AR after spending the summer of 2016 playing Pokémon Go, but I hadn’t considered its true potential in the commerce world. After previously being the manager of a retail store, I had an immediate understanding of the benefits AR could have for brands and their customers. I was completely wowed, and I wanted the opportunity to wow others. I reached out to Jon immediately and, after one of the most exciting interviews I’ve had, he offered me the position and the rest is history.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?

When I first started at Seek, I was reaching out to marketing agencies for potential partnership opportunities when I received a response from someone at Deloitte. Every year Deloitte hosts tours for some of their clients at NRF’s Big Show and they were interested in possibly using us as their AR stop during the tour.

After months of back-and-forth conversation and three successful meetings, Seek was selected to be their AR partner. During the show, they brought many executives from some of the biggest brands in the industry to our booth. It was eye opening to see people who see just about everything in the retail world get truly excited by our technology. The reactions AR gets is one of the things I love most about what I do.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

When I was a photographer, my specialty was birth stories. I got a call in the middle of the night that one of my moms was in labor and since it was a home birth, I packed up and headed to the home address on the questionnaire. When I was just about there, I got a text to just go straight into the back bedroom where they were.

Not sure if it was because I was still in a sleepy stupor or I was just in a hurry, but I didn’t think to verify the address with them and ended up heading to their old house — lived in by someone else.

After almost getting the cops called on me for trying to “break in” at their old place, I finally realized my mistake. Luckily the new tenants knew my clients very well and we were all able to laugh it off in the end. The lesson? Verify, verify, verify.

My husband Joe has been my biggest supporter throughout my career. We have five amazing kids, and he currently has the incredibly important job of being the stay-at-home parent. He gave up his career as a successful sales executive so that I could pursue my dream and for that I am incredibly grateful.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

We just released our newest feature, Nexus, which is the first truly scalable 3D marketplace. With Nexus, brands can easily make 3D model requests using specific requirements to ensure they are of the highest quality and compatibility across any platform.

Before Nexus, the 3D model creation process was clunky and time consuming — consisting of a lot of unnecessary back-and-forth communication between brands and modelers. Our platform significantly reduces the hassles associated with 3D model making, regardless of whether a brand needs 20 or 200,000 models at a time.

In today’s world, time is precious, and Nexus is going to save people a lot of it.

One thing I’m excited to see is how brands execute on their AR strategies. We know that the AR advertising market is projected to grow from $1.41 billion this year to over $8 billion by 2024. As brands continue to reinvent the consumer experience to meet new expectations and behaviors, AR won’t just play a supporting role — it will be a driving influence.
It is also worth noting that consumers’ familiarity with AR is higher than ever. This will push the industry to create faster, smoother, and more integrated experiences. Anything less, and the average consumer will move on. Nailing down apparel try-ons is going to be a huge milestone for the AR industry
I am also on the lookout for the developing marriage between AR and hardware. Hardware will be what truly makes AR mainstream. I think the industry isn’t too far away from seeing quality products like AR glasses hit the market and transforming parts of our everyday lives. The company that’s going to make it happen, in my opinion, is Apple. When Apple comes out with its AR smartglasses, it will change the world. They’re going to do their best to make it feel like something that everyone should be wearing. I think people are going to have to get used to people doing things in front of their faces with their hands. Maybe there’s going to be some weird shifts in how people interact with each other. But after the weirdness passes, that’s how we’re going to run our lives.

What are the 3 things that concern you about the VR, AR and MR industries? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

Widespread adoption of AR has been hindered by a lack of standardization. Manual, time-consuming, and expensive processes have meant many brands have struggled to create and distribute AR experiences at scale across multiple platforms. Thanks to recent developments there is now infrastructure in place that enables levels of automation the market has not yet seen before.

An entire AR advertising campaign with multiple different 3D assets can now be stored and easily launched across a limitless number of social platforms such as Instagram, Snap, Facebook, and most recently Shopify, as well as browsers like Safari and Chrome, and devices like iOS and Android. This kind of shift is not only going to fuel AR adoption across multiple industries, it’s also going to move brands away from delivering mediocre and single platform AR experiences to more immersive storytelling — engaging audiences with impactful content across the multiple platforms, browsers, and devices they live on.

I think the entertainment aspects of VR, AR and MR are apparent. Can you share with our readers how these industries can help us at work?

On the corporate side, the pandemic has shown that a strong sales staff used to being on the road can be just as effective in XR meetings provided they have tech that is easy to use for both sides. While XR/VR and AR may not completely replace human interaction in some part of the sales cycle, there does seem to be a new normal developing that deeply integrates XR for both the cost it saves in travel as well as the convenience AR can bring to training and corporate communication strategy. XR will become a vital part of the workplace experience especially as the tech becomes more user friendly, despite the occasional growing pain of user adoption. Case in point, the recent incident of the lawyer who made the news by having trouble removing the kitten face filter on a zoom call.

Are there other ways that VR, AR and MR can improve our lives? Can you explain?

What’s so great about AR is that it layers on top of the real world, which means you have limitless options to enhance the world in whatever way you want. From XR headsets to integrated heads up displays in cars, we can look forward to seeing more examples of AR going beyond an application that requires us to pause and pull up our phones.

Right now, women make up only 28% of the workforce relating to STEM. While this number has increased over the last few years, there’s still a huge gap and continuous need for improvement. In order to fulfill this need, I think we need to start with our children. Being a mother of three girls myself, I’ve noticed the obvious lack of girls in the STEM programs offered at schools. If parents and teachers encouraged students to pursue their interests regardless of the status quo, and if girls were more often exposed to women role models in STEM, I think it would have an overall positive outcome on our society going forward.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about working in your industry? Can you explain what you mean?

A huge misconception is that the world isn’t ready for AR technology. Due to COVID and social distancing, the need for an alternative to in-store shopping has grown substantially. AR fulfills this need quite well and as more brands adopt AR technology, we are seeing an increase in awareness and the number of people using it in their everyday lives. Once companies like Apple release their AR glasses, we will see the use cases grow exponentially and slow adopters will undoubtedly be left behind.

What are your “5 Leadership Lessons I Learned From My Experience as a Woman in Tech” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

Never stop learning. When it comes to technology there is one thing that will never change, and that is the fact that it’s ever evolving and what may be true today, may change completely tomorrow. I make it a point to never stop researching and continuing my education to ensure I am the best version of myself I can be.
The Platinum Rule. We’ve all been taught the golden rule which is “Treat others the way you want to be treated”, but one of the best things I’ve learned from a past employer is the platinum rule which is “Treat others the way THEY want to be treated.” No two people are the same, so what works for me may not work for someone else. I keep this in mind whenever I’m interacting with anyone whether it’s in a professional setting or at home with each of my kids.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help. We’ve all been programmed to think that as leaders, we shouldn’t ask for help and that doing so is a sign of weakness. I think having the ability to admit when you need help shows a great amount of humility and strength. It’s something I’ve struggled with quite a bit in the past, but I am continuously trying to improve.
Stay authentic. When I started early in my career, I tried to be what everyone else wanted me to be. The anxiety of saying something wrong or not being good enough to share my ideas was crippling. What made it worse was that I could tell when others were being inauthentic, and I hated it. We are all human and we all make mistakes. The more open and honest we are with ourselves and others, the faster we’ll learn what makes each of us special.
Lead by example. I’ve had the absolute pleasure of working with and learning from some of the most talented individuals I’ve ever met. The leaders I learned the most from were the ones who were always working with and supporting their team. They strived to earn respect and never demanded it. Anyone can tell a person what to do, but it takes a true leader to show them.

Working at a tech startup in Silicon Slopes, I have been made aware of the obvious lack of women founders and women investors in the industry. If I could inspire anything, it would be a movement that supports underprivileged women in achieving their dreams and creating an amazing future for themselves. I honestly believe there are so many brilliant ideas out there that can change the world and we just need to enable the minds of those who hold them.

I would love, love, love the chance to meet the founder of SPANX, Sara Blakely. She’s a complete powerhouse and built her company to what it is from literally nothing. She also founded the Sara Blakely Foundation where she donates half of her wealth to empower women. She’s the kind of woman I aspire to be one day.

Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success on your great work!

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Ashleigh Koontz of Seek was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Amy LaMeyer and Martina…

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Amy LaMeyer and Martina Welkhoff of the WXR Fund

There has been a lot of talk about VR’s potential to build empathy, and I think that’s very real, but perhaps was overstated at the peak of the most recent hype cycle. Companies like Embodied Labs are creating powerful experiences that help people understand what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes. In the case of Embodied Labs, it’s better to understand various scenarios elderly people might experience. That kind of learning can be transformational and healing. I think the important distinction is to view VR as an opportunity to educate, but not to conflate it with actually having a given lived experience.

Amy LaMeyer and Martina Welkhoff form a nucleus of know-how and vision into the virtual reality ecosystem as startup founders, globally recognized industry influencers, and venture capitalists. They are Managing Partners of the WXR Fund, which invests exclusively in what they know to be the two greatest opportunities of our time: the next evolution of computing and women-led startups. They are advocates for the underrepresented and are always happy to connect with innovators changing the VR/AR/AI landscape. Find them on LinkedIn, Twitter, our through WXRfund.com.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

Martina Welkhoff: I had a very atypical entry into AR/VR/XR. I moved around quite a bit throughout my childhood and young adult years. I was born in Canada, moved to the United States and spent much of my childhood bouncing around small towns in the Midwest, attended college on the East Coast pursuing pre-med, and then traveled and worked on organic farms for nearly a year after graduation. Drifting away from my medical school plans, I settled in Seattle for my first “real” job — coordinating youth programs for the Major League Baseball Players Trust. It was there I met my future co-founder of my first company, an enterprise mobile gaming platform. After that I was hooked on the startup space. I later went on to found ConveneVR, a VR production studio, and became more entrenched in the AR/VR/XR world, and eventually connected with the right team to build the WXR Fund to invest in two of the greatest opportunities of our time: the next wave of computing + female entrepreneurs.

Amy LaMeyer: I launched my career by jumping in the deep end of the technology pool. Right after graduate school I joined a growing startup, focused on scaling the Internet, as it transitioned into a publicly traded company (Akamai Technologies). I spent most of my time there on corporate development, which ultimately involved investment and mergers & acquisitions, cybersecurity, content delivery, media and ad tech. I then took all of that technical and financial experience and pivoted to the spatial computing industry, advising AR/VR/XR and artificial intelligence companies on corporate ventures, M&A, artificial intelligence, and engineering. And through that I was introduced to Martina, which led to the decision to join her in building the WXR Fund.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

Amy: When I was first learning about augmented and virtual reality about five years ago, I started every morning with the Voices of VR podcast by Kent Bye. It is an encompassing view of all things virtual reality. He’s now nearing his 1000th episode — literally a timeline of the growth of the XR space.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in the X Reality industry? We’d love to hear it.

Martina: Since my first company was in social gaming, I’ve always been passionate about technology that could help people build authentic connections and create shared experiences. The first time I put on a VR headset, I was enamored with the possibilities the immersive digital landscape could provide and how it could bring people together — especially after designing experiences for mobile phones for several years.

One especially memorable moment in my early days of VR exploration was the first time someone gave me a virtual “hug.” I was playing a game with a friend in a different city, and when we won his avatar leaned over and wrapped his cartoon hands around my shoulders. I know it might sound silly, but that was when I realized just how transformative the technology could be. I felt like I was in the same space with my friend, celebrating a victory together. The pandemic has made those sorts of opportunities for connection even more salient.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?

Amy: During the pandemic, many conferences have gone virtual, including South by Southwest (SXSW). I recently experienced venues in SXSW via VR that I have been to dozens of times in real life, and I had the opportunity to connect with individuals across the globe through their virtual conference. The virtual experience increased accessibility and lowered social barriers to connect with people from diverse backgrounds that I likely wouldn’t necessarily have met had it not been for the new VR format of SXSW.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Martina: One of the first projects I was fortunate to work on was a feminist production with artist Drue Kataoka called Yes! Now is the Time. We were hosting an event in VR and live streaming it out to a larger audience, so there was quite a bit of pressure to get things right. During our technical rehearsal, one of the engineers had someone come to his door, so he took off his headset and set it down. In the VR environment, this had the horrifying effect of looking like he’d been decapitated, and his head plopped l to the floor in front of us. Thankfully, we realized ahead of the event that it was important to tell the speakers not to remove their headset unless it was an emergency.

Amy: My business partner Martina has been a key figure in my career success. We met in early 2018 when I was chosen as a mentor as part of the WXR Accelerator. We realized we had a shared mission to create opportunities for women-led startups in the AR, VR, XR and AI, and both recognized the huge financial and social impacts these investments can deliver. We continued to build our relationship over the course of a year while deciding to raise a fund focused exclusively on women-led startups pioneering the next wave of computing. I wouldn’t want to be on this journey with anyone else.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Martina: I recently joined the Advisory Board for Find Ventures, an organization that’s providing early stage grants to underrepresented entrepreneurs to help grow startups to the point where they can attract institutional capital. I was drawn to the mission of this organization because traditionally the first checks to new founders come from friends and family, but many founders from underrepresented backgrounds do not have people in their network who can invest. The structural inequity in venture capital is vast and deeply entrenched, so I’m drawn to solutions addressing that in new ways at various stages of the startup lifecycle.

Amy: We are also really excited about the companies we are investing in and the remarkable work they have underway. While we are not able to discuss all of them in depth quite yet, a few of the companies we are excited about working with are Obsess, a virtual store platform for experiential e-commerce, and Embodied Labs, an immersive health care training platform using VR. Along with the fascinating startups we’re seeing in the e-commerce and training spaces, we’re also really excited to get more involved in education, remote connectivity and productivity, and telehealth.

Amy: The XR space is particularly exciting right now. There are weekly, sometimes daily, announcements of growth in the industry, especially in the education, remote connectivity and productivity, and telehealth sectors. The pandemic has been a catalyst to the ecosystem that is ready to support a new computing paradigm: 5G, depth cameras, gaming engines, processors and headsets.

As the VR and AR technologies combine with AI, we will be able to have a more personal integration, especially in areas like training and education. Prisms VR, teaching math through VR and immersive environments, is one example of this movement in the education sector. And we mentioned Embodied Labs earlier, which is a great example of how VR is used for training in health care.

We’re also seeing household names like Apple, Facebook and other major tech companies drop hints that they are working on smart glasses — ultimately a hands free augmented digital world existing on top of the reality we’d see without smart glasses. It’s really exciting to see this gain momentum so quickly.

What are the 3 things that concern you about the VR, AR and MR industries? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

Martina: Privacy is a concern top of everyone’s mind. Immersive experiences have the potential to collect an extraordinary amount of personal data, so it’s imperative that products are created with strong security and ethical standards, and ideally transparent, accessible privacy policies.

Emotional and psychological safety are also a concern. The visceral nature of XR is what makes it so exciting and appealing, but it comes with great responsibility to protect users from potential harm. A simple example of this would be exposing a user to a traumatic experience in VR that could have long-lasting negative impact. Experiences should be designed so that users understand exactly what they are opting into and always have easy, effective ways to disengage or report harm.

And finally, accessibility and equity. Like any new technology, there are barriers to access that mean certain groups are more likely to have exposure to the technology than others. Historically this has led to a small, privileged population reaping the benefits of technology and disproportionately influencing how technology evolves. We have an opportunity with XR to be more thoughtful about accessibility across multiple dimensions, such as physical ability, socioeconomic status, race, gender, and more, but it will require intention and investment across the entire industry.

I think the entertainment aspects of VR, AR and MR are apparent. Can you share with our readers how these industries can help us at work?

Amy: There is a real convergence of gaming and entertainment with retail, education and remote work, among other industries. Presence, immersion and easy-to-use interfaces will enable our ability to connect with colleagues, partners and isotherms with the convenience of reduced travel. It will also provide time efficiencies and convenience working from opposite sides of the coast.

I believe in five to ten years we’ll have transitioned away from many flatscreens in the workplace. We’ll communicate, work, engage and build workplace communities in 3D virtual and augmented environments. When our kids enter the workplace in ten or twenty years, they will wonder what all the flatscreen were for.

Are there other ways that VR, AR and MR can improve our lives? Can you explain?

Martina: There has been a lot of talk about VR’s potential to build empathy, and I think that’s very real, but perhaps was overstated at the peak of the most recent hype cycle. Companies like Embodied Labs are creating powerful experiences that help people understand what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes. In the case of Embodied Labs, it’s better to understand various scenarios elderly people might experience. That kind of learning can be transformational and healing. I think the important distinction is to view VR as an opportunity to educate, but not to conflate it with actually having a given lived experience.

Amy: Statistics show that there is still a wide disparity of engagement between women and men in STEM. Continued encouragement and updated learning models are areas of focus that will inspire more women and girls to participate. I also think that networking groups that support women specifically will help encourage further growth. The leadership of women in the space also needs to be recognized and amplified more effectively.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about working in your industry? Can you explain what you mean?

Martina: I think a lot of people are intimidated by AR/VR and think they need to have a degree in computer science or a lot of specialized experience to dive in. It is of course helpful to have a technical background, particularly for product roles, but there are so many different types of experiences and skill sets that are valuable at AR/VR companies, and necessary to help the industry evolve. My advice for anyone, especially women, who want to break into the AR/VR industry is to start exploring, building, and meeting people. Don’t wait until you meet arbitrary qualifications.

What are your “5 Leadership Lessons I Learned From My Experience as a Woman in Tech” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

Martina and Amy’s Top 5:

Fail forward. I (Martina) have a plaque by my bathroom mirror that says, “There are no mistakes, only lessons.” Women are often under a high level of scrutiny, particularly in leadership roles with high visibility, and sometimes we are our own harshest critics. I used to be incredibly hard on myself, and it’s taken years of strong mentorship and therapy to finally learn to let things go and embrace a growth mindset.
Build self-awareness and confidence in your leadership style. It’s taken a long time to realize that leadership is not “one size fits all” and the world needs a lot of different types of leaders. Some of the advice women get might make sense for one person or context, but not for others. For example, Amy often finds in her leadership style that in most cases there is no need to apologize or caveat, and recommends reducing the use of “sorry” and “kind of.” Martina’s leadership style doesn’t necessary follow that same rule of thumb. Find what works for you and cultivate those attributes.
Be concise and don’t over explain. Yeah. That’s the whole lesson.
Every decision is just a step on your journey, and not the last step of your journey. Decisions don’t need to be perfect, just allow yourself to learn and grow.
Remember to celebrate both the big and small wins. We’re all moving so fast these days, it’s easy to let victories pass you by and move on to the next challenge. We’re big believers in taking a moment to acknowledge and celebrate when things go well. It’s good for team morale and it helps people to avoid burnout.

You are both people of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

Amy: I would encourage a deeper awareness and action for global climate impact across all areas — enterprise, government and consumer. XR can help the effort in many ways: by replacing some physical objects with digital objects, by reducing the amount of travel needed while still fostering human connection, and by providing digital representations that educate on the impact of climate change, to name a few.

Martina: I admire Mellody Hobson of Ariel Investments for all that she’s achieved in her professional life and the way she advocates for increasing diversity in the business world. I’d love to take her to lunch!

Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success on your great work!

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Amy LaMeyer and Martina… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Author & Former Miss USA Terri Britt: 5 Steps That Each Of Us Can Take To Proactively Help Heal Our

Author & Former Miss USA Terri Britt: 5 Steps That Each Of Us Can Take To Proactively Help Heal Our Country

BE AWARE OF YOUR FEELINGS. Society tells us that to feel is wrong and that we need to be strong. But as long as we continue to live by this belief, we will be disconnected from who we really are.

I stuffed my emotions down for years due to living by this belief. But the more I suppressed myself, the angrier I got. I’d wear my happy face mask and then all of the sudden blow up at the people around me. It was a horrible cycle of anger and guilt that I didn’t know how to end until I gave myself permission to feel.

As part of our series about 5 Steps That Each Of Us Can Take To Proactively Help Heal Our Country, I had the pleasure of interviewing Terri Britt.

Spiritual coach, intuitive healer and former Miss USA, Terri Britt, helps people claim their crowns and own their worth so that they get off of the hamster wheel of stress and struggle, and open up to receive the love, nurturing and support they deserve. She is the founder of the Women Leaders of Love global community and is the award-winning author of “The Enlightened Mom: A Mother’s Guide for Bringing Peace, Love & Light to Your Family’s Life.” For over 20 years, Terri has coached people from all walks of life, including television executives, entrepreneurs, doctors, nurses, coaches, parents, teens and kids. She has been featured on Today, NY Nightly News with Chuck Scarborough, Fox News Channel, Good Day Atlanta, On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, People.com, HuffPost, and Thrive Global, and was the former news anchor for Movietime, now known as the E! Channel. To learn more, go to www.terribritt.com.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you. Can you tell us a bit about how you grew up?

I was raised to be a “good little Southern girl.” I grew up in Cabot, Arkansas, which at that time had two stoplights and a population of 4,000 people. We were the typical American family. Dad worked and mom stayed at home to take care of my younger sister and me. My life centered around playing sports, working really hard to have the best grades, being involved in lots of extracurricular school activities and clubs, and spending Friday nights at the high school football games.

Dad was the authority of our home and Mom suppressed herself to be the good wife and mom. Both of my parents lived by the Good Child Rules and put themselves on the backburner to take care of my sister and me. Self-denial was the name of the game. They lived by the belief that the kids come first and then the spouse.

I attached myself to Dad’s way of life because he seemed to be having a little more fun out in the world, and because he constantly told me that I could be anything I wanted to be.

I struggled with a battle inside of me. I wanted to believe that I could be anything and, yet, the Good Girl Rules in my mind said it wasn’t okay. So, I got angry.

Instead of allowing my anger to teach me what was hurting inside me, I was told to stuff it down. Good little girls don’t get mad. But I did get mad. In fact, just months prior to winning Miss USA 1982, at the age of 20, I tried to beat up my boyfriend and put my fist in his window. He wasn’t loving me the way I craved to be loved.

It would take me a long time to understand why I suffered. But what I know for sure is that in spite of all the accolades and achievements I had, I lived in lack and on a hamster wheel of stress and struggle trying to prove my worth to receive abundance, success and love.

Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

“Love Without Conditions” by Paul Ferrini changed my life. It wasn’t until I decided to heal my anger that I stumbled upon this book. It would take me some time to discover it.

My anger issues didn’t end at Miss USA. I carried them into my career in the television industry and then as a wife and mom. Thankfully, I didn’t hit my kids like I did my old boyfriend. Instead, I stuffed my emotions down until I exploded in an emotional fit of tears. It was when I saw my dad die that I finally began to wake up.

My dad, my hero, died a broken man at the age of 54 from lung cancer. He had lost everything in bankruptcy, became an alcoholic, and smoked himself to death.

While in therapy after Dad’s passing, I realized he had no forgiveness for himself, and had shut down to receiving love. My big AHA came when I realized I was just like him. I had no forgiveness for myself.

My therapist suggested getting into meditation and I found myself taking classes at an energetic healing school in Southern California. My whole world opened up as I learned about energy and how false beliefs cause the blocks that shut us down from receiving a life we love. My favorite part of the schooling was learning that I could see those energetic blocks and clear them. Woohoo! It was so much fun.

I learned that my outer world is a mirror to my inner world. Energy attracts similar energy, and that if I were reacting to anything with lower level emotions like anger, frustration and blame, it was my cue to go within and heal the false beliefs and past memories that were causing my pain and suffering.

I began to “find myself” during that schooling. It was amazing! With each release of hidden false beliefs, my anger gradually began to dissipate and I was finally finding a sense of peace that I had never known.

It was then that I read “Love Without Conditions.” I had just completed almost two years of study at the healing school and was diving deeper into looking at my life. Through my classes, I now understood the power of releasing hidden false beliefs, as well as the power of giving myself permission to honor and love the way I was created. But after reading Paul’s book, I knew there was more.

I COMMITTED to loving myself unconditionally. I then sat down in meditation and a miracle showed up.

Little Terri, my five-year-old inner child revealed herself. I cried and cried, realizing that I had never loved or acknowledged her. Then I heard very clearly in my ear, “Get up and write this Terri. This is the beginning of your book.”

That book was “Message Sent: Retrieving the Gift of Love,” my journal of awakening. By listening to the guidance, I stepped onto a journey of loving that little girl inside of me. I used the tools that I had learned in the healing school and began watching how I reacted to people and situations. I knew that I had attracted them to help me heal. I knew they were a gift telling me that if I weren’t neutral or loving then something was hurting that little kid inside of me.

I became what I call the Divine Parent to my inner child. I gave her permission to “stop performing” for love and approval. No longer did she need to prove her worth. By loving her, talking to her, and giving her a voice, I created a deep connection within and finally felt the love and approval I’d been seeking my whole life.

By stopping the performance and nurturing that little kid, I let go of blaming my hubby for my unhappiness. The walls between us came tumbling down and my kids quit fighting. My whole world opened up. Miracle after miracle showed up because of reading “Love Without Conditions” and making the commitment to love myself.

Do you have a favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life or your work?

My favorite quote is actually one that came through me in what I call a Divine download during meditation…

“Your worth isn’t determined by others. It’s determined by how you treat yourself.”

How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?

I have a global community called Women Leaders of Love. We are women who take a stand for unconditionally loving ourselves. We know that in doing so, we get off of the societal hamster wheel of trying to prove our worth, and set an example for our families, communities and the world to watch us and learn.

We know that unconditional love is a high vibration, and in choosing this for ourselves, we align with God. By honoring and loving the way we were created, we feel seen, heard and valued. We know at our core that we are worthy and are enough. And in this loving state, we open up to receive miracles and abundance, ending lack, pain and suffering. As Women Leaders of Love, we know our greatest act of service is loving ourselves first.

In life we come across many people, some who inspire us, some who change us and some who make us better people. Is there a person or people who have helped you get to where you are today? Can you share a story?

I see every person as a gift to dive deeper into knowing who I am and what I believe, and into loving myself so I might be an expression of love and thrive in every area of my life. But if I were to pick one who stands out, it would be a police officer who gave me a ticket years ago.

I had taken my young daughter to school late one morning and parked in a loading zone. This was a place people often parked to drop off their kids. So, I didn’t think anything of it. I walked her to the school office to get her checked in and then to her classroom. When I returned to my car, the officer was giving me a ticket. I asked him why and he said I was too close to the handicapped zone. I was surprised because I was one of those people who got angry at others for parking in these special spots when they didn’t need them.

I was shocked when the officer gave me a $300 ticket. Oh, my goodness! I asked, “Can’t you give me a break?”

He replied in a very smug tone with his arms crossed over his chest, “In my opinion, you don’t deserve a break mam.”

Anger boiled up and every hair on my body stood at attention. “I WILL take you to court,” I said. And then got in my car and drove off.

As soon as I turned the corner, I began bawling. I was so angry! But because I knew everything is a mirror to the energy and beliefs I hold within me, I said, “God, I know there’s a gift here, but I’m really pissed right now.”

I received an intuitive hit immediately. It told me that I had experienced issues my whole life with speaking up to men. And, not only had I spoken my voice by telling the man I would take him to court, but he was in fact the epitome of a male authority figure because he was a police officer.

Woohoo! I was so proud of myself. But for three days, I continually heard over and over again, “In my opinion, you don’t deserve a break mam.” It was eating at me. So, I used my spiritual tools and stayed in gratitude waiting for the gift to be revealed.

I finally sat down in meditation to retrieve the gift. I looked at that officer’s message once again, asked for the gift, and got to the truth: The officer was showing me how I treated myself. I didn’t give myself a break.

And with that realization, all of my anger melted away. I knew it was up to me to be kind and gentle to myself.

That police officer changed my life. I will forever be grateful for him. He helped me take a deeper step into loving myself.

Ok, thank you for all that. Now let’s move to the main focus of our interview. The United States is currently facing a series of unprecedented crises. So many of us see the news and ask how we can help. We’d love to talk about the steps that each of us can take to help heal our county, in our own way. Which particular crisis would you like to discuss with us today? Why does that resonate with you so much?

I see the division in our country as our biggest issue. Anger, frustration and blame have become the norm. Families and communities are torn apart.

This is likely a huge topic. But briefly, can you share your view on how this crisis evolved to the boiling point that it’s at now?

This divide we’re currently experiencing, especially with people pointing fingers at those who disagree with them, is actually due to survival fears being triggered. We all want to feel safe and loved. So, when someone disagrees with us and threatens our way of being and the beliefs we feel are the truth, the tendency is to react in anger, blame, judgment and frustration.

But there is something even deeper going on.

When we are in survival, we’re not trusting that God/The Universe has our back and that we are loved and supported, no matter what is happening in the world. We aren’t open to receive the abundance that is there for all of us. In other words, we don’t feel worthy.

Most people will tell you that they are worthy, but when you see the constant hamster wheel they live on in survival mode, trying to get it right and do it right to win love, success and happiness, you realize that they are holding subconscious beliefs that tell them they aren’t enough simply for being who they are.

I believe this survival mentality that leads to division begins in the home.

Most parents tend to do everything for their family members, especially the kids, at the expense of themselves. They work and work so their kids will feel more happiness, love and success than they’ve felt. But from an energetic perspective, the parents show the kids that being loving means it’s not okay to receive, so the kids grow up with this subconscious belief, often never realizing that it exists.

Parents also tend to believe that it’s their job to prepare their kids for the future. They send messages to their children that they either need to “be good” or “be the best” to WIN life’s rewards. But what they’re doing, often unconsciously, is telling their kids that they are not enough.

If you feel you’re not enough, whether consciously or unconsciously, if you believe that to be loving you must give and give before you can receive love, or if you believe that you must work yourself to death to win at life, you will continually live in survival mode and lack. Your relationships will suffer, and so will your work, money and even your health. In other words, you haven’t claimed your crown and owned your worth.

To shift out of survival mode and into thrive mode, you must raise your Worthiness Quotient.

Your Worthiness Quotient is how open you are to receiving love, nurturing and support from God/The Universe and the world around you, simply for who you were created to be. That means no performing or trying to get it right. How high or how low your Worthiness Quotient sits is determined by how much you love yourself.

The old family paradigm teaches us to have a low Worthiness Quotient. It teaches us to perform and seek love outside of ourselves. It’s why we’re in lack and survival, and why there’s so much division. To shift from a low Worthiness Quotient to a high one, we must each commit to healing and break the generational cycle of emotional chaos, stress and struggle.

Can you tell our readers a bit about your experience either working on this cause or your experience being impacted by it? Can you share a story with us?

Some of my family, friends and I sit on opposite sides of the political aisle. Over the last couple of years, I found myself getting angry every time I talked to them. Because I know that if I’m being triggered it’s a call to go within and heal, I took each situation as an opportunity to not only learn about myself, but to also understand what was going on with the mass consciousness.

I believe we are in a spiritual awakening. Our outer world right now is mirroring our inner world. The division we are experiencing and even the pandemic, are a call to look at our mindset. Think of the virus as a mirror to the virus in our minds that says, “We must compete. It’s you against me.”

If we all took this opportunity to go within and own our worth, and committed to healing our thoughts, beliefs and energetic blocks that shut us down to receiving unlimited abundance, we would shift from lack to love, from Poverty Consciousness to Prosperity Consciousness. Not only would we find peace within ourselves, but we would come together to create peace in our world.

Ok. Here is the main question of our discussion. Can you please share your “5 Steps That Each Of Us Can Take To Proactively Help Heal Our Country”. Kindly share a story or example for each.

Here are 5 Steps to Raise Your Worthiness Quotient to End Lack and Division:

COMMIT TO UNCONDITIONAL LOVE. It was when I decided to heal my life and committed to loving myself unconditionally that little Terri, the kid inside of me, showed up and my life transformed. I became the Divine Parent to her and began to raise my Worthiness Quotient to abundance because I was treating her as if she was worthy of being seen, heard and valued. To become the Divine Parent to your inner child, imagine the little 5-year-old inside of you and say, “I love you. From this day forward, I’ve got your back.” Build a relationship with this little kid within, just as you would with a new friend. Then pay attention to how you’re performing and trying to prove your worth to WIN love, success and happiness. Know that this is the little kid inside of you just wanting to feel safe and loved by you.
BE AWARE OF YOUR FEELINGS. Society tells us that to feel is wrong and that we need to be strong. But as long as we continue to live by this belief, we will be disconnected from who we really are. I stuffed my emotions down for years due to living by this belief. But the more I suppressed myself, the angrier I got. I’d wear my happy face mask and then all of the sudden blow up at the people around me. It was a horrible cycle of anger and guilt that I didn’t know how to end until I gave myself permission to feel. Your feelings are God’s greatest messengers. They tell you when you’re in alignment with God or when you’re not. Negative feelings such as anger, frustration and blame are due to hidden subconscious beliefs being triggered. Be aware of your feelings and how you react to daily life. Know that if you’re feeling any emotional angst, the little kid inside of you is hurting. Have compassion for this child and give yourself permission to feel everything in a safe, loving place.
YOUR OUTER WORLD IS A MIRROR TO YOUR INNER WORLD. You energetically attract things to you that match your vibration. See your negative reactions to your outer world as a gift to go within and heal the subconscious beliefs that say you’re wrong for being who you are or that you must meet a certain standard to receive life’s rewards. Go back to the story I shared about the police officer. By embracing the gift of him giving me a ticket, I was guided back in time to see the belief I took on that said I didn’t deserve a break. I had learned this belief by watching my mom and dad. Embrace the daily crap. Talk to your inner child. Allow his or her feelings to guide you back to a similar situation from the past. Ask your inner child what the false belief was you took on back then that is causing your pain now.
STOP THE PERFORMANCE. As you allow your feelings to guide you to the false belief that is causing your current pain and suffering, you have two options: You can choose to continue on this path which says, “I must perform and prove my worth by denying who I really am.” Or, you can stand in your truth and choose to release the belief knowing that anything that causes you pain and suffering is not the truth. Let’s go back to my police officer story. I allowed my feelings to guide me back in time and discovered that I had a false belief that said I didn’t deserve a break. This belief caused a tremendous amount of stress for me, especially as a mom. I knew it wasn’t the truth, so I told little Terri that she had my permission to take breaks and that I was going to quit being hard on her. To stop the performance, release the belief that causes your pain and suffering and then ask your inner child, “What is your truth?” Be the Divine Parent to that little kid and give him or her permission to stand in that truth.
NURTURE YOURSELF INTO ABUNDANCE. We often know what we need to do to love ourselves and, yet, we don’t act upon our intuition. Or, if we do, we get buried in guilt believing that if we love and nurture ourselves, we will hurt other people. The truth is that we hurt others when we stay stuck and take out our pain on them. The most loving thing you can do is to take inspired action into loving yourself. When I got the message after receiving the ticket that I needed to be kind and gentle to myself, I gave myself permission to stand in the truth that I deserved a break. However, if I had stayed at that point, I would have had an awareness but nothing would have dramatically shifted. So, I took inspired action. Whenever I felt I was being hard on myself, I’d ask little Terri, “What do you need from me to feel nurtured and loved?” And then I’d take inspired action, following the guidance.Nurturing yourself without guilt moves you into alignment with God so you feel worthy and open up to receive the abundance you deserve. Ask what your inner child needs from you to feel nurtured and loved. Take inspired action.

Commit to unconditional love. Pay attention to your feelings. See your outer world as a gift to go within and heal. Stop the performance and nurture yourself into abundance. Be the parent to your inner child. Treat yourself as if you’re worthy of being nurtured, loved and supported, and the world will mirror this back to you. These are the steps we each can take beginning today to end emotional chaos, lack and division.

It’s very nice to suggest ideas, but what can we do to make these ideas a reality? What specific steps can you suggest to make these ideas actually happen? Are there things that the community can do to help you promote these ideas?

Over the last 20+ years as a spiritual coach and healer, I have seen people’s lives and their loved ones’ lives shift because they took the steps that I just shared. When we each take responsibility for what’s going on in the world, knowing that it is a reflection to us, and commit to healing, we become Leaders of Love and the change we want to see in the world.

We are going through a rough period now. Are you optimistic that this issue can eventually be resolved? Can you explain?

I do believe we can heal the division in our world. But I believe it’s up to each of us to do the inner work. I also believe that we are at a time when people will finally step up.

If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?

We all have the power to create change. We claim that power when we commit to unconditional love.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂

LOL! I’m sure so many people say Oprah, but I’m going to say it anyway. She touches so many people’s lives with the awareness she brings to help people move into Prosperity Consciousness. I’m talking about prosperity in every area of your life. She helps people raise their Worthiness Quotients and has probably never even heard that term since it was guidance that I received.

How can our readers follow you online?

www.terribritt.com

To take the Worthiness Quotient Quiz and find out how open you are to receiving the life and love you deserve, along with some tips and tools to shift it, go to www.terribritt.com/quiz.

To join us in our Women Leaders of Love community, grab my Worthiness Quotient Breakthrough Bundle that has my Women Leaders of Love e-book and three guided meditations at www.terribritt.com/leaders.

On Social Media, find me at:

https://facebook.com/womenleadersoflove

https://www.instagram.com/terri_britt/

https://twitter.com/terrileabritt

https://www.linkedin.com/in/terribritt/

This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!

Author & Former Miss USA Terri Britt: 5 Steps That Each Of Us Can Take To Proactively Help Heal Our was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Ÿnsect: Antoine Hubert’s Big Idea That Might Change The World

To feed the planet of tomorrow, we need to massively increase protein productivity today and insect protein is one of the solutions. Ÿnsect contributes to this global challenge by offering an effective, natural, and sustainable solution: producing more food with less impact, in a profitable way with a highly scalable technology we could deploy everywhere on Earth.

As a part of my series about “Big Ideas That Might Change The World In The Next Few Years” I had the pleasure of interviewing Antoine Hubert, President, CEO and cofounder of Ÿnsect, the world leader in natural insect protein and fertilizer production. He also chairs the cooperative insect industry association, the International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed (IPIFF) and is Board Member of LFD (France Digital Farm). Prior to co-founding Ÿnsect, Antoine worked on scientific projects in environmental risk assessment, biomass, and plastics recycling. He is an agronomy engineer who co-founded NPO WORGAMIC and the company ORGANEO.

Thank you so much for doing this with us Antoine! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you please tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I grew up in the French Alps where I was passionate about nature, ecosystems, and insects (especially butterflies)! My involvement in agronomic studies was a natural progression: I followed the links between the earth, nature, and food. The path between agronomy and insects was only a small step!

Can you please share with us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

Beyond the different fundraising initiatives and their exhausting closing processes, my greatest pride was the day we got the result of an exhaustive life cycle assessment study showing that the value chain of the vertical farm we are building is carbon negative. Across Ÿnsect’s entire food chain, we avoid and sequester more CO2 than we emit. Today, this is proof that we can reconcile the great challenges of our time: feeding the planet, fighting climate change, and preserving the environment.

Which principles or philosophies have guided your life? Your career?

The main philosophy of my life is to do anything I could do at my small scale for a better world for everyone. On the last day of my life, I would like to be able to say that I have done everything I can to bring more harmony to this planet, even if it is a relatively small contribution. This is the “hummingbird and forest fire” philosophy: I want to do my part.

In terms of career and management, my philosophy is to always hire people who are more skilled than me. This is the only way to grow your company. Each founder must accept this without ego and focus on the area where he/she is really the best.

Ok thank you for that. Let’s now move to the main focus of our interview. Can you tell us about your “Big Idea That Might Change The World”?

Ÿnsect’s goal is to reinvent the food chain by offering food that is natural, healthy, tasty, and sustainable to consumers around the world every day. Ten years ago, we created a new agri-food industry with the crazy idea of breeding and processing insects to contribute to the major challenges of our time: feeding the world’s population, preserving resources and biodiversity, and fighting global warming. Today, this insect market is no longer just an idea: it is our daily life. We are advancing together on unchartered paths, unexplored lands, and thus giving back to the insect the forgotten yet rightful place at the base of the food chain. Our responsibility is to ensure the safety from farm to fork: that of our employees, our products, our consumers of course, but also of our partners.

How do you think this will change the world?

The analysis is simple: By 2050, we will have to increase global food production by more than 70% to meet the needs of our planet’s population. And we need to do this with only 5% more agricultural land. Today, farmed animals consume 20% of the world’s protein, in direct competition with human consumption, while fish, water, and soil resources are dwindling.

To feed the planet of tomorrow, we need to massively increase protein productivity today. As the FAO has pointed out, the insect could be one of the solutions. Ÿnsect contributes to this global challenge by offering an effective, natural, and sustainable solution: producing more food with less. Thus, unlike traditional animal feed:

It requires 100 times less agricultural land to produce 2lb of insect-based protein, than to produce the same amount of animal protein
The production of insects consumes 25% less water than poultry farming
The production of insects does not use antibiotics

Since its creation in 2011, Ÿnsect has been breeding and processing insects into premium ingredients for animal nutrition. We develop innovations to breed insects on a large scale and automate processes to transform insects into raw materials of the highest quality. Our know-how is unique in the world and makes Ÿnsect an essential partner for food industry professionals, research laboratories, investors, and public institutions.

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this idea that people should think more deeply about?

I believe that the big challenge is accepting insects as part of the human diet. A large part of the world’s population eats insects, but we must be able to prove its properties and its benefits for the environment in order to reach more and have more impact!

Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this idea? Can you tell us that story?

After my studies, I went to New Zealand for an internship and discovered the richness of using earthworms for waste treatment and anti-waste. When I returned to France, in parallel with my job, I created Worgamic association, the objective of which was to reconnect urbanites to their food and to anti-waste. There, I met Alexis, one of the co-founders of Ÿnsect. We had a program that we were carrying out with the mayor of Paris in the schools where we installed vermicomposters. The association had grown, and we had set up a small “think tank,” which fueled our discussions. This is how, via an FAO report, we discovered insects. Indeed, this report showed that to feed 9 billion people by 2050, it would be necessary to produce 70% more with only 5% more land. The report pointed out that insects could be a solution. We then thought about developing a restaurant first, but in order to eat insects, we still had to produce them. This is how the idea of growing insects came about!

What do you need to lead this idea to widespread adoption?

Time! Twenty years ago, we would have never imagined eating raw fish. Today sushi has become an everyday dish!

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)

I have three that I would like to share:

– I would have liked for someone to tell me that protein regulation was very complicated and very time consuming to handle at the EU Commission level. We could have focused differently on our timeline to market and variety of product offering if we had known it would take more than 4 years to have the rights to sell proteins for fish feed.

– I would have liked for someone to tell me how difficult it is to get permit approval in France and how long it would take: permit approval for our flagship plant in Amiens took more than a year and process was suspended during France’s first COVID lockdown due to the State of Emergency. Luckily, we had a lot of support from French government, otherwise we could have ended up in another country.

– I would have liked someone to tell me how difficult it is to hire people in some positions which are very stretched on the market, especially in data, automation, and industrial positions. I would have anticipated more some recruitment. It is never too early to hire! As soon as you feel you are missing someone in the team, it is already too late, you are losing time in your progress.

Can you share with our readers what you think are the most important “success habits” or “success mindsets”?

The environment is the very foundation of our actions, a prerequisite, Ÿnsect’s reason for being. We have found ourselves on the concrete and factual elements of balance, solidarity, adaptability, and authenticity. These values determine Ÿnsect today, but we do not want them to remain fixed in order to always remain a driving force in the evolution of society. Being an explorer is part of our company’s conception, our state of mind.

We are constantly looking for balance, our own, but also that of our environments and our stakeholders. We maintain speed and good timing, avoiding agitation and haste. We cultivate boldness and creativity, while remaining focused on execution and driven by a culture of results. We reconcile our ideals with the pragmatism necessary to carry out our activity and responsibilities. We always favor consensus and firmly reject any extreme ideology, any radical or dogmatic stance. Frugality is one of our foundations: always consume the right amount of food to participate in the future of the planet. We think big and we think far ahead, we share the ambition and the desire to become a globally recognized player, a leader, while remaining very modest, particularly in terms of our contribution to the huge environmental challenges: we are doing what we can and we count on partnership and the accumulation of forces. We are realistic scientists who are neither excessively optimistic nor excessively pessimistic.

Like an anthill, we are a team composed of singular but complementary talents working towards a common goal. Every day, we work to reduce the impacts of our activity on our environments. We are committed ecologically, economically, and socially.

Some very well known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

To feed the planet of tomorrow, we need to massively increase protein productivity today and insect protein is one of the solutions. Ÿnsect contributes to this global challenge by offering an effective, natural, and sustainable solution: producing more food with less impact, in a profitable way with a highly scalable technology we could deploy everywhere on Earth.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

And Twitter: @Ynsect

And our website: http://www.ynsect.com/en/

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.

Ÿnsect: Antoine Hubert’s Big Idea That Might Change The World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Sarah Socia of OVR…

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Sarah Socia of OVR Technology

…Especially for young women beginning your career, when you’re interviewing at a company, don’t forget that you’re interviewing them, too. This advice has been helpful for me to ask the right questions to help me determine if it’s a good fit. I think finding a good fit is important, especially when you consider you spend about 40 hours at work per week, which is a good chunk of your waking hours.

Sarah Socia is the VP of Scentware at OVR Technology, a company in Burlington, Vermont dedicated to incorporating olfaction into virtual reality for better outcomes in training, simulation, health and wellness. At OVR, Sarah spearheads scent R&D and manufacturing, as well as provides a scientific lens for product initiatives and research projects.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

I was adopted from South Korea and grew up in a small town of fewer than 2000 people in Vermont. Growing up I had diverse interests and wasn’t sure what career path I wanted to go down. I toyed with the ideas of being an artist, chef, engineer, doctor, and lawyer to name a few; on my college applications, I chose different majors. Mainly, I was curious and wanted to explore.

Ultimately, I attended the University of Vermont and majored in neuroscience, and minored in both psychology and chemistry. As an undergraduate, I assisted research studying the effects of a chemotherapy agent on the taste system on a cellular level in the laboratory of Dr. Eugene Delay, which was a great experience for cultivating laboratory bench skills and learning about academic research but after college, I wanted to see what else is outside the walls of traditional research.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

I’m in the midst of reading Behave: the Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky. The book dives into how hormones, brain structures, experiences, evolution, and more contribute to complex human behavior such as violence and empathy, along with nuances of those behaviors and how we perceive them. It resonates with me because it transcends the segmented scientific disciplines and unites so many areas of science to better understand human behavior. I really appreciate a multidisciplinary approach to examine ourselves and the world around us. Sapolsky explains many factors that shape complex human behavior while also making the content very digestible.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in the X Reality industry? We’d love to hear it.

When I graduated college, I wasn’t looking for a job let alone a career in the X Reality Industry. In the beginning, I was ideally looking for something that mixed creativity, science and healthcare outcomes where each day was not a carbon copy of the last. However, most people I knew graduating with a neuroscience degree were following the more traditional paths of laboratory research in academia, graduate school or medical school. Less traditional paths weren’t well paved. So, when I first learned about OVR Technology and how they are incorporating olfaction into virtual reality for better real-world outcomes, I felt like I stumbled upon this unique magical opportunity. The work I do at OVR really blends together everything I was looking for: recreating scents is a mix of art and science, the product’s application isn’t for entertainment, but for real-world outcomes in markets including healthcare, and my input for strategic decisions often tap my learnings about neuroscience, sensory science, and psychology. Although my journey to the XR Reality industry wasn’t a laid-out map, I am inspired to continue because of the exciting progress and evidence that demonstrates how these new technologies can be used for positive change.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?

In a recently published study, Dr. David Tomasi and team at the University of Vermont Medical Center were investigating the use of Olfactory Virtual Reality on wellbeing and reduction of pain, stress, and anxiety. Participants were immersed in the OVR Technology multisensory camping environment and asked to self-report levels of pain, stress, and anxiety during three timepoints (before, after, and immediately after the OVR experience). It was really exciting to support one of the first studies investigating olfactory virtual reality in an inpatient setting and being part of the groundwork of OVR Technology research. We’ve had a lot of positive anecdotal feedback from our demo experience, but it feels very validating to have some promising scientific data on the use of OVR, especially the use in a clinical setting; before experiencing olfactory virtual reality, the median self-reported stress level of patients was “9” on a 1–10 scale, and then immediately after experiencing OVR, the median self-reported stress level was “3”.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Not all the scents created at OVR are particularly pleasant. We create a variety of malodors such as urine, feces, and burning flesh for medical VR applications and high-risk occupation training. So one day, I went to the office to work on a project with a coworker and I kept getting faint whiffs of a “feces” smell. I thought I might be imagining it, but after a while, I realized I had gotten some of the formulation on my shirt from production earlier in the day, and my coworker was too polite to say anything. Anyway, I learned to always have a spare set of clothes

I’m very grateful for Kara McGuire who is a fellow woman in science and whom I’m fortunate to call a friend. Kara introduced me to the flavor and fragrance industry and has been an inspiring example of someone who doesn’t wait for opportunities to present themselves, and energetically embraces changes and challenges. I’m extremely grateful for her support, advice, and friendship.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

We have some really exciting projects in the works. Currently, we’re working in collaboration with Daniel Stricker and his company DP Immersive, on “Shifting Homes”, an immersive multisensory virtual reality experience highlighting the effects of climate change in Samoa. Virtual reality is a powerful tool that facilitates understanding and connection to events happening around the world — there’s a level of “presence”, the feeling of being there, that a video or news article just doesn’t quite achieve.

In no particular order, three things that excite me about the industry are: (1) the use of virtual reality in healthcare, (2) the rapidly growing body of VR research, and (3) continuous innovations pushing the boundaries.

It’s exciting that virtual reality isn’t just an entertaining gaming technology, but also has promising applications in healthcare. It’s being used to train surgeons, improve patient relaxation, reduce patients’ chronic pain, and more. These boundary-pushing capabilities are partially due to the rapid increase in VR adoption over the past few decades, which has been fueled by relatively affordable VR headsets entering the market. Another reason for VR adoption in healthcare is the growing body of research that validates peoples’ assumptions about the capabilities of VR; there are thousands of published studies. Along with research in healthcare, there are many groundbreaking studies exploring the potential of VR. An interesting area of research is virtual embodiment — there are studies demonstrating people feeling ownership and agency over a virtual body. This embodiment illusion has enabled people to ease death anxiety through virtual out-of-body experiences, as well as develop empathic connections by existing in a virtual body different from their physical body.

What are the 3 things that concern you about the VR, AR and MR industries? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

A few things concern me about the VR, AR, and MR industry including the lack of prolific adoption, VR being dismissed as just a gaming technology, and user privacy. The headset sales are growing each year, but we’re still early in the adoption cycle. I’m optimistic that we will see more adoption as more people experience the technology, lower-cost options are available at the consumer level, and VR, AR, and MR industry infrastructure continues to grow. However, time will tell. It also concerns me that people have a narrow view of the potential of VR, AR and MR. When people think about these technologies they often think about entertainment and gaming, but these technologies can also be used to create positive outcomes in the workplace, healthcare, and education. Again, I think many people just need to try out the technology. We’ve had people that are skeptical about the addition of olfaction to virtual reality and dismiss the impact of smell, but then they try it and the gears start turning about all the ways it could be implemented. Lastly, I’m concerned about user privacy. With the connectedness and convenience that technology allows us, there are legitimate concerns about privacy including user personal, biometric, and psychometric data. I think it’s important that standards and guidelines are created for developers and companies by various stakeholders including consumers.

I think the entertainment aspects of VR, AR and MR are apparent. Can you share with our readers how these industries can help us at work?

VR, AR and MR are great tools for job training and skills acquisition, especially for high-risk occupations such as EMTs, and firefighters. Using VR, people can be immersed in various training scenarios that may otherwise be expensive to simulate, difficult to repeat, or potentially dangerous. These technologies can also be used to increase relaxation in the workplace which may result in greater productivity and engagement. There are studies that suggest nature VR environments, in particular, promote relaxation. A person who works in an office environment could be transported to a virtual forest, smell pine and flowers, and be led through a guided meditation.

Are there other ways that VR, AR and MR can improve our lives? Can you explain?

There are many applications outside the workplace where VR, AR, and MR are improving lives, especially within healthcare. Dr. Skip Rizzo and team at the University of Southern California developed a multisensory virtual reality exposure therapy program called Bravemind to help treat veterans experiencing post-traumatic stress. Another example is Dr. Tomasi and colleagues at the University of Vermont Medical Center (UVMMC) who recently completed a study investigating the use of OVR Technology for wellbeing and reduction of pain, stress, and anxiety in the inpatient psychiatry unit. Participants self-reported levels of pain, stress, and anxiety before being immersed in an OVR camping environment, and then immediately after, as well as 1–3 hours after the OVR experience. The median patient self-reported scores were reduced across the board immediately after, and the reduction was maintained 1–3 hours after.

Satisfied? No, I’m not satisfied with the status quo regarding women in STEM, but I am optimistic that we’re heading in the right direction. According to the Census Bureau, in 1970 women made up 8% of the STEM workforce, which has increased to 27% in 2019 — so we’re headed in the right direction but not there yet. I think it’s important to encourage women at a young age to pursue careers in STEM by providing them with opportunities to explore those fields, promoting diverse role models, and not gendering occupational roles. I also think it’s important for businesses in the STEM field not to grow complacent and continue to strive toward equality by breaking down the barriers for women to be in leadership roles and creating a healthy diverse workplace environment.

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/01/women-making-gains-in-stem-occupations-but-still-underrepresented.html

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about working in your industry? Can you explain what you mean?

There are pervasive myths about virtual reality, as well as olfaction. As previously mentioned, many people think about VR, AR, and MR only in terms of entertainment, but these technologies can be levered for better outcomes in the real world. I think it’s important to underscore their capabilities in the realms of healthcare, training, and education. In regards to olfaction, our sense of smell is one of the most underappreciated senses. There’s a study referenced in TIME that found more than half of young people surveyed would rather lose their sense of smell rather than their laptop or cellphone. I’d like to dispel the myth that olfaction is just a “nice to have”. Our sense of smell provides us with insight into the invisible, silent, chemical world around us, and it is our only sense directly connected to the limbic system, which includes brain structure involved in memory, emotion, and behavior. Our sense of smell is responsible for the majority of what we perceive as flavor and notifies us of potential dangers such as spoiled food and nearby fires. A whiff of a familiar smell also has the powerful ability to evoke vivid memories.

What are your “5 Leadership Lessons I Learned From My Experience as a Woman in Tech” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

First, especially for young women beginning your career, when you’re interviewing at a company, don’t forget that you’re interviewing them, too. This advice has been helpful for me to ask the right questions to help me determine if it’s a good fit. I think finding a good fit is important, especially when you consider you spend about 40 hours at work per week, which is a good chunk of your waking hours.

Second, celebrate your successes. It’s easy to get caught up in the forward momentum and where you’re headed next, but remember to pause and celebrate your successes.

Third, you can produce so much through collaboration. I’ve been working with our Head of Design/co-founder, Erik Cooper, on our circular economy initiative, and we were experimenting with techniques to best refurbish our cartridges. It was a collaborative process, bouncing ideas off each other, about developing the process, as well as finding and creating the tools for scaling the process. It was fun to hear about how we’d each approach a problem differently, and build upon each other ideas.

Fourth, don’t be afraid to ask for what you want and need. Oftentimes the worst scenario is being told no, and more often than not you’ll be surprised with the outcomes. There have been times I’ve asked to sit in on meetings when the topic content sounds interesting or asked for a half-day off to recharge on a sunny day. You are your own best advocate.

Fifth, being busy doesn’t mean you’re making progress. At OVR, we’ve recently adopted an OSKRs framework, which is like OKRs (objective and key results), with an added S for strategy. It’s been a reminder to consciously think about our day-to-day work and assess whether or not it’s contributing to where we want to go.

Part of what drew me to OVR was that the company is centered around creating a better virtual reality for a better reality. I would love to inspire a movement where VR, MR, and XR were affordable and widely available to use as tools that promote health and happiness in regards to both mind and body.

I would be interested in having lunch with Daniel Kahneman, Nobel prize-winning psychology/economist. I’ve read his book Thinking Fast and Slow which included decades of his fascinating research around decision making, cognitive biases, and heuristics. I would be interested to learn about the journey and evolution of his research, as well as events and people that influenced and inspired him.

Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success on your great work!

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Sarah Socia of OVR… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Anna Lejerskar of EON…

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Anna Lejerskar of EON Reality

Women in tech are rare, but you are the leader when you get to a leadership role; it has no gender. And rest assured, things will go wrong at some point, and you will have to deal with a problem. The higher you get in your career, the more issues you will have to deal with. But this is why you were selected as a part of the leadership team, to be able to deal with problems, take the heat and solve it. Never get engaged emotionally and just focus on three steps: find the problem, address the problem and fix it.

As a part of my series about “Lessons From Inspirational Women in STEM and Tech”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Anna Lejerskar.

Anna Lejerskar is EON Reality’s Executive Vice President and Head of the EON Reality Learn For Life Foundation . She graduated from Russian University of People’s Friendship with a masters degree in business administration. Mrs. Lejerskar has been the driving force behind EON Reality’s outreach to Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East through the establishment of the EON Learn for Life Program, EON World Heritage Initiative, and the KnowledgeBit Initiative. These programs, along with her work in CIS countries, have helped grow EON Reality’s presence globally. Mrs. Lejerskar has a decade of international business experience and is currently engaging with various international partners to provide better access to Augmented and Virtual Reality technology and help make education available, affordable, and accessible.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

I grew up in Riga, Latvia (the former USSR), into a family of Russian descent. My father was a construction businessman; my mother used to work as a cosmetologist and a TV presenter. I believe my brother and I had a blessed childhood. Like many childhoods, it was perhaps not a perfect one, but this is what I liked about it.

My brother and I were raised in a loving and free-minded atmosphere with solid traditions. My parents always valued education and always supported anything I wanted to learn. I was always coming up with some new things that I wanted to learn or do immediately, and they were always encouraging my (which were always of paramount importance) ideas. I remember myself as a very social and curious child. When I was 12, my father suggested that I move to Moscow to study, and I was courageous enough to say yes. My mother and brother followed me to Russia about a year after me. I spent about ten years studying and eventually getting my master’s degree from the University of Peoples Friendship. The experience was an exciting time in my life. I got to learn quite a lot and meet a lot of amazing people. After that, I moved and lived in Italy for several years and then one day woke up and opened my eyes in California. Needless to say that I prefer warmer weather and have been residing here since 2010.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

I have to confess, and I love Harry Potter. Yes, I am 34 now, but I still feel like a kid, and I genuinely love magic. Besides, this movie is amazingly detailed with many positive messages. Fantasy movies always inspired me. Is magic possible? And what are those magic things in our daily lives? I think some of us can honestly do magic in the way they can achieve incredible things. It just depends on what you believe in and how much you are willing to make a better change. My little sister loves this movie too, and we watched it perhaps 100+ times. It inspires me to stay curious and creative, and it inspires her too.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in the X Reality industry? We’d love to hear it.

I wish I could say that since I was 5, I dreamed about working in the XR Industry. No, I did not. XR did not even exist as an industry back then. But as with many things in our lives, I got into the XR industry by pure coincidence. I was visiting California and was young and in need of a job, so I decided to look for an international company based in the US to work for and somehow got introduced to EON Reality.

However, when I joined the company and got to view the industry from an insider perspective, it started to grow on me for how much value it could bring, specifically in education.

I have always seen first hand the importance of quality education for the youth. Since I was young, I was very fortunate to have my parents’ unwavering support to get a better education. In some countries, not excluding where I come from, the outdated perception that getting an education is not as crucial as getting married continues to hold. Getting an education was a significant step and building block for my future life. It opened a lot of doors for me and future opportunities.

Yet, It is not something everyone has access to today. Technology is maybe not the magic pill for all the world’s problems, but after traveling to more than 90 countries worldwide, I could see how much impact it could have on living standards. My professional journey took me worldwide and showed me how uneven access to education is today. That is what inspires me to do my best and provide solutions that can help solve this inequality.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?

After my first year of working at EON Reality, Dan ( CEO and Chairman of EON Reality) was considering expanding my responsibilities with a promotion to Global Business Development Manager. But to test me, he asked me if I really loved to travel. As I said, I was young and curious and said yes.

The year after this, I was home for a total of 3 weeks.

The period was absolutely crazy and fascinating at the same time. Just being able to visit all the countries, meet different people and cultures changed my life forever.

It was such an eye opening experience which I consider the most inspiring adventure of my life. Since then, I have never been able to stay at rest for long and am always ready to get out on my next adventure to learn more about the world.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

When I was starting, I was on a frantic, jam-packed schedule trying to meet as many people as possible to showcase what XR technologies could do. I had a business meeting in a remote town somewhere in Germany on a Saturday during one of these trips. When I say remote, I mean I needed to take two flights, two taxis, and a train to get there. As fate or Murphy’s law would have it, the second flight was delayed, and the entire trip was hanging by a thread.

Somehow, I considered canceling the meeting but decided to give it a try thanks to blind optimism, if you will. The train was late of course. By the time I arrived at our destination, I had realized the same train I was on was the only train I could take to go back — and it was only 2 minutes before it was headed back.

The doors opened; I stepped out on the platform and shook the person’s hand, and said, “Hello, my name is Anna Lejerskar. Nice meeting you; I am thrilled to finally meet you face-to-face, I believe it is essential for our future conversations. But now, unfortunately, I have to leave on the same train to catch my flights. Looking forward to talking to you soon and Goodbye!”

The person was speechless.

I traveled 10 hours to get a meeting that lasted a minute. The biggest lesson? Instinctively, we all want to battle right to the end, but you can not always control everything in your life. As long as you know you have done your best, don’t be stressed, embrace each moment as a learning experience, and you can go to bed with a clear conscience.

I want to thank all the people I have met throughout my journey because everyone I work with has taught me something negative or positive.

As they say, it always takes a village, and so I need to credit the team at EON Reality I have been working with for over a decade. They have helped immeasurably in one way or another and continue to be a source of support and strength.

But I do need to thank my husband, Dan Lejerskar, an AR/VR visionary in his own right and for seeing the potential in me. He has always supported my vision and encouraged me to share my ideas freely. There is only so much one can do alone, but there is almost always a partner who is a well of strength in every success story. I have been lucky to live with the person who let me be who I am.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Yes, I do! I am currently working on Learn for Life, a not-for-profit arm at EON Reality whose mission is to bring awareness that technology is not something out of reach and is readily available. Our primary mission now is to leapfrog development in communities that need it the most and to provide the support and resources to help them create a 21st-century learning environment — which means easy access to the classroom and the teacher, no matter where they are. This is in line with our mission statement at EON Reality — Knowledge is a Human Right. I would like to live in a world where no one is denied access to education just because of where they came from; whether you are a primary school student in a remote village in North of Ghana or a youth looking for opportunities to learn a trade. And this is what I am striving to achieve with Learn for Life

It is endless, in my opinion. There are so many areas that XR can impact already today and is set to grow over time.

But if I would pick 3 I would say:

The potential to weave all the complementary technologies such as haptics, neural sensing technologies, and A.I. into AR/VR to make that killer learning app. The pioneering advances in these technologies make the virtual world even better at mimicking the real one and making VR/AR a space to watch out for!

The potential pervasiveness of VR/AR technology and how people can use the technology for daily life. Since COVID-19 hit, it has completely upended the way we live and what we knew of living. Technology became a central part of keeping everything together in so many different ways, and people are starting to be aware of the influential role it can play.

Throughout 2020, we witnessed a massive uptake with an 819% increase in our EON-XR platform usage as institutions started to realize video conferencing limitations. We quickly realized teachers needed VR and AR’s power to provide contextualized and interactive learning for students to keep their already short attention spans from wandering.

So when taking AR and VR, for example, virtual traveling started becoming a means of seeing sights and monuments in a time when no one could travel, sometimes even taking you back in time to discover truly fascinating places right where you are. When we replicate this experience in the classroom, it becomes so much more powerful when students can travel to historical landmarks to view and explore ancient Pompeii to understand life in ancient Rome with a personal virtual guide. Boring history lessons with an outdated textbook will soon become a relic of the past; now, isn’t this truly a fascinating thought?

The value it holds for Industry 4.0. There has been an explosion of use cases for industries since COVID-19 hit the scene, particularly for its precise training applications. VR has its origins in heavy industries such as oil and gas and even in flight simulators and was used to create training for emergencies without putting anyone at risk. VR is a compelling medium for immersing people in a designed environment and changing their behaviors in reality, with the added benefit of being realistic, repeatable, and scalable.

So the sky is the limit when it comes to creating new scenarios for learning. Walmart, for example, has taken bold steps to revolutionize training for its in-store associates using VR and is now reporting 30% higher employee satisfaction and are seeing improved test scores of 10 to 15% compared to traditional training. If we can replicate this learning workflow across the different industries, we are essentially looking at a turnkey solution in a matter of days and not quarters. This will be a massive leap for us in terms of productivity and efficiencies.

What are the 3 things that concern you about the VR, AR and MR industries? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

The first one is the lack of awareness surrounding this technology and its accessibility. The majority of people do not realize it is readily available. There is an existing perception that XR technology is a Silicon Valley fantasy — high-end and expensive. The truth is that you can use it already today, and it will become more common in the years to come. We are trying to raise awareness that XR technology is not as out of reach as you would imagine. And we are walking the talk by creating a zero-code platform like EON-XR to allow anyone to create content in minutes without any pre-existing knowledge in programming or coding.

Secondly, there is a dangerous perception that technologies like AR and VR are putting jobs at risk and, consequently, growing resistance to adopt them. I take the view that while technology is used to automate certain positions, it is paradoxically creating more meaningful jobs. From the educational perspective, we see resistance from some educators who see their role as the expert in the room, and these technologies are changing that status quo. They also argue that the technology delivered from a smartphone or tablet is a distraction.

However, what this technology does is changing its role to a facilitator of learning. Instead of simply delivering information, they have more time to play an essential role in getting students to critically analyze and synthesize information, which in my opinion, is the actual process of learning.

After all, one can google information, but can you google knowledge? Today, students are digital natives; they are used to smartphones and tablets, so we are merely talking to them in their language. The cultural shift in mindsets is a barrier we need to overcome. EON Reality is now engaging with teachers and educators to show them how XR technology is helping and not harming them.

Another concern is the speed of hardware catching up with software speed to guarantee VR/AR has the means to hit a critical mass. We faced some hard times in 2017 when hardware expectations fell short of reality. As a software company, we pivoted by making our solutions available on a VR/AR viewing device that everyone had — the smartphone. We continue to look forward to hardware developments at an accessible price point for the average consumer. We see that with Oculus Quest now, but we expect to see much more activity in this space and hopefully have that iPhone moment for AR and VR in the coming years.

I think the entertainment aspects of VR, AR and MR are apparent. Can you share with our readers how these industries can help us at work?

Using VR to design training can help create an engaging experience and enhance learning by transforming how lessons are delivered. Firstly, with VR, there is less cognitive load, and it becomes easier to process the information. And by anchoring instruction to experience, trainees are actually able to visualize and live “reality” as they learn. VR is a great solution for technical training, especially for medical procedures, which requires many hours to achieve proficiency.

When we add a gamified approach to learning, the lesson stops becoming a delivery of pure facts and instead becomes an interactive lesson that offers challenges and rewards. Why would ten grown men assemble on a court shooting balls through hoops? The desire to win. We have all experienced the drive to compete and outperform others, even ourselves. By drawing on human psychology and using the same principles, we can quickly create an addiction to learning.

One of the benefits of introducing gamification is its natural high and its impact on knowledge retention. By combining realistic VR environments or AR elements with gamification, lessons are entertaining and fun yet engaging and effective.

Are there other ways that VR, AR and MR can improve our lives? Can you explain?

Fundamentally, I think there are so many ways that XR can improve our lives at work. Its potential to create jobs is enormous. There are millions of job opportunities in promising and impactful areas such as medicine, aerospace, and environmental studies, to name a few.

VR and AR technologies’ beauty is their malleability in creating any training scenario you want while being realistic, scalable, and with proven benefits. Just ask Walmart, Boeing, and the US Army, which recently announced a $22bn program using AR technology for training.

So if we are looking to create a strong base of knowledge workers for the future, XR technologies have both the capacity and ability to provide meaningful tools to develop more effective and efficient ways of learning. And in combination with data analytics and A.I, this would enable us to access a potent tool to access what is understood and not by the learner. These tools will drive truly effective learning that would have been a utopian ideal in the past. This will consequently create a new generation of workers who can be upskilled, retrained, and trained, making lifelong learning available at the flick of a switch.

Absolutely not.

The women in my family have always been great role models for me, and I could witness the levels of success a woman could achieve. Even though we have roughly the same ratio of women and men globally, we do not see the same ratios represented in the workforce. There is a 26 percentage point difference according to the International Labour Organization. I think it matters to have a diverse set of voices at the table, and I am looking forward to seeing a world where we have a workforce made up of 50 percent women.

We are far from where we need to be, especially when we have figures of women making up 27 percent of the STEM workforce, and these figures are even lower in the XR industry. The pandemic has not helped. The lack of representation is a challenge of multiple dimensions. Fundamentally, we need to solve the problems of access to education. We continue to see low participation levels in higher education, especially in developing economies, and we need to offer more opportunities for women to participate. One of the critical conditions of working with Learn for Life is that institutions must show that they promote women’s participation in their programs.

And generally speaking, I think perceptions that women should play specific roles at home continue to exist, which is really two full-time jobs if you ask me! Dispelling these perceptions will take a long time, but in the meantime, what I am doing at EON Reality is offering women more freedom at work. This could be the flexibility to work from home and at the hours they choose. I want to offer them the opportunity to climb the career ladder if that is what they choose without having to choose between sacrifices.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about working in your industry? Can you explain what you mean?

The number one myth is VR and AR are solely for gaming. Although I see these mindsets slowly shifting, there is still a need to raise awareness of the power of AR/VR as an incredible social force of change. When I say that, of course, I mean AR/VR’s potential for transforming lives through education. We are starting to see greater adoption of the technology beyond gaming and used for education — but it is still far from where I envision it. For instance, just think about flight simulators; for example, it has become the de rigueur in a pilots training course. And we’re supposed to trust them with our lives when we are thousands of kilometers up in the air! VR and AR have proven benefits for learning; this has been verified in countless studies conducted worldwide.

So what about doing the same for our classrooms? So when AR/VR is seen as an indispensable part of learning, I think that’s when I can say, yes, we’ve made it. We’ve dispelled the myth; we’ve made it everyday technology.

What are your “5 Leadership Lessons I Learned From My Experience as a Woman in Tech” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

Never put up with toxic people. Their negativity is a poison and eventually will fester and affect the culture of your organization. Never allow that because you’re allowing cancer to spread slowly but surely when you put up with it.

Women in tech are rare, but you are the leader when you get to a leadership role; it has no gender. And rest assured, things will go wrong at some point, and you will have to deal with a problem. The higher you get in your career, the more issues you will have to deal with. But this is why you were selected as a part of the leadership team, to be able to deal with problems, take the heat and solve it. Never get engaged emotionally and just focus on three steps: find the problem, address the problem and fix it.

Value your time. Money is way cheaper than time; the money you can make, but not the time. The projects I take on will always have a value, both intangible and tangible.

You can’t know everything, and you should be well aware of it. As a leader, you are supposed to use your leadership strengths to get the best out of your team and achieve better goals together. Keep your ego low, be objective if someone in the group understands the topic better, and let him/ her shine.

Never stop moving forward and think big. Don’t get stuck in the past; look into the future. The difference between hallucination and reality is how much work you put into it.

I would like to see a movement to change negative perceptions towards Technical Vocational Education and Training. TVET skills are necessary for a sustainable economy and are undoubtedly one of the best investments a country can make, yet it is often perceived as second-class. Too often, these crucial professions’ societal perceptions dissuade youths from considering vocational trades as an option. This restricts their choices and pathways and limits the growth of society and the economy at large.

I would like to see more countries following the German model where the country has become the forerunner in technology and industry because of the emphasis given on skills development for its people. I would like to spearhead a movement to encourage youths to explore new vocations with XR technologies and discover for themselves their latent talents. I am convinced I would be a carpenter if I had the chance to be exposed to it earlier in my youth. And this is why I am so passionate about this, and would like to give everybody a chance to do the same.

I would like to meet Elon Musk. I am very intrigued by space travel and how it extends the frontiers of human knowledge. Of course, I would like to bring up the idea of recreating space environments in XR so while we may not be on SpaceX flight, we are not left wondering!

Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success on your great work!

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Anna Lejerskar of EON… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Brand Makeovers: Catherine Blakemore of Treadaway Co On The 5 Things You Should Do To Upgrade and R

Brand Makeovers: Catherine Blakemore of Treadaway Co. On The 5 Things You Should Do To Upgrade and Re-Energize Your Brand and Image

Stop using stock photography and get unique brand photos. Having your own unique photographic style and recognizably authentic situations depicted (especially for you service-based businesses) is an easy first step to maximizing your existing brand equity and building more. Hot tip: See if your customers want to be part of it!

As part of our series about “Brand Makeovers” I had the pleasure to interview Catherine Blakemore.

Catherine Blakemore is a fiercely pragmatic and solutions-oriented strategist resolving business problems using design thinking, a keen understanding of brand experiences, and a little bit of humor. She is the Founder of Treadaway Co., a brand strategy and design consultancy serving a global client base in non-profit, healthcare, law, real estate, interior design, and consumer goods. Holding a B.A. in Communication and a master’s degree in Strategic Communication, she is a big believer in learning as much as you teach, giving back more than you’ve been given, and seeking understanding before trying to be understood.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit more. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I’ve built a brand strategy and design firm in some odd amalgamation of my eye for design, background in strategy, and unparalleled obsession with following consumer and service brands. No one thing led me to practice in this space. Still, countless little things keep me going from the satisfaction of seeing a good before and after LinkedIn profile in our personal branding work to the pure joy on a founder’s face when they see their business vision come to life online and in print.

Can you share a story about the funniest marketing or branding mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Oooph! The mistakes are plentiful and equally cringeworthy. One instance was while I was still a student and we were tasked with the strategy development for a downtown arts project where it was being branded as the “storybook” capital of America, and we created a full presentation and conducted research on the “storytelling” capital of America. The client let us move through the entire presentation before letting us know at the end just how far off we were from that slight word shift of “book” to “telling.” I’m grateful every day that situation was a student project for a client and not a paying client of my studio in the early days! Though the stakes weren’t high, it taught me that having multiple checkpoints and sign-offs throughout a project is critical for accuracy and for better ideation, execution, and buy-in. The devil is in the details…

Are you able to identify a “tipping point” in your career when you started to see success? Did you start doing anything different? Is there a takeaway or lesson that others can learn from that?

The tipping point in my career was a mindset shift that many solopreneurs have to make. I had to stop thinking of my business and “me” as the same. That simple shift freed my business from ego, freed myself from the fear of being wrong, and ultimately led to better profit-building practices as the financial elements separated along those lines as well. The lesson for me was to remember that my self-worth doesn’t come from the success or failure of my business and my business’ brand can have different tactics than my personal brand.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Maybe it’s naïve, maybe it’s silly, but I think every project we’re working on is exciting! One initiative we’re hoping to bring to market soon is a comprehensive personal branding package that we’ve trialed with a few folks to great success. This package would be fundamentally different than the work we do in business brand strategy and design but one that reaps tangible benefit for our clients, especially in the climate of individuals creating and building platforms of influence. It’s a more accessible package that doesn’t necessarily require the individual have a business but helps develop them as a thought-leader in their respective space. We’re big believers in the power of the individual so this feels like an awesome next evolution of the branding work we’re already doing.

What advice would you give to other marketers to thrive and avoid burnout?

Find a passion project! Exercising your creativity in spaces outside of what you do day-in and day-out for clients is hypercritical. Create something just for the sake of creation without any imposed budgetary and visual restrictions. See what comes out from pure flow-state creativity and then when you’re hitting a stuck point in a work project, pop over to your passion project and let your freak flag fly. Not only is it a great way to learn new skills or practice a rusty one, but it might also turn into your favorite portfolio piece or a pitch piece to a client on their brand’s potentiality.

Ok, let’s now jump to the core part of our interview. In a nutshell, how would you define the difference between brand marketing (branding) and product marketing (advertising)? Can you explain?

This is a big question. If you ask five different brand strategists, CMOs, advertisers, designers, and marketers, you’ll get 100 different answers. I’ll answer for how we approach this as a brand strategy and design studio. Branding is a process-based activity that, truthfully, never ends. It’s a constant combination of activities — including listening — to create an intrinsic understanding in your audience’s mind. Advertising, on the other hand, is a finite campaign-based approach to inform your audience of your product or service’s value to them specifically. Branding is showing; advertising is telling.

Can you explain to our readers why it is important to invest resources and energy into building a brand, in addition to the general marketing and advertising efforts?

Absolutely! I can sum it perfectly by adapting a principle from Greg McKeown’s book Essentialism. He says in the book, “If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.” The same goes for branding. If you don’t build your brand, something else will. It’s the difference between influencing the narrative or letting the narrative run wild. Don’t let your brand be a bad Mad Lib. Just don’t.

Let’s now talk about rebranding. What are a few reasons why a company would consider rebranding?

Well, first, let’s get a common misconception straightened out. A lot of companies who want a logo update or messaging shift think they want a rebrand. That’s not a rebrand — that’s a brand update or brand evolution. A rebrand is a complete pivot in your brand. You’re changing the way people think of your business in a major way. We’ve written about this in our blog, so I’ll sum up the four top reasons to rebrand: 1) You’re changing the services or products you provide, 2) You are changing your core customer base, 3) You have a reputation to recover, and 4) You are redefining your business’s focus. True rebrands are not something to undertake lightly or flippantly.

Are there downsides of rebranding? Are there companies that you would advise against doing a “Brand Makeover”? Why?

There are definite drawbacks to conducting a comprehensive rebrand. One of the most significant parts of branding includes building brand equity. Brand equity is that intangible feeling your company creates in the mind of your audience outside of what you offer. To sacrifice the brand equity you’ve built over the years for the sake of a rebrand is a serious conversation you should have with your branding firm and your customers. Generally, I’d advise against a rebrand if your company doesn’t fall into the four scenarios we discussed. Outside of that, most companies just need a refresh (usually a refinement) or a better deployment and application of their existing visual identity elements and brand messaging.

Ok, here is the main question of our discussion. Can you share 5 strategies that a company can do to upgrade and re-energize their brand and image”? Please tell us a story or an example for each.

Yes! This is a great question and can also apply to people building personal brands as well.

Strategy 1: Stop using stock photography and get unique brand photos. Having your own unique photographic style and recognizably authentic situations depicted (especially for you service-based businesses) is an easy first step to maximizing your existing brand equity and building more. Hot tip: See if your customers want to be part of it!
Strategy 2: Ask and listen. So many companies make the mistake of only discussing a rebrand in a boardroom. You have a customer base and, if you’ve done a good job this far, they want to be in conversation with you. Engage with them! Give them a peek under the hood of what brand-building tactics you’re considering. Invite them into the conversation and glean as many insights as you can from their feedback. I promise you will identify a pattern or two that contradicts what you thought you knew about your brand.
Strategy 3: Don’t be 50% in five places when you can be 100% in two. This is especially true for my small businesses who don’t have robust in-house marketing teams. You don’t need to be giving 50% to five different platforms. Focus your creativity, attention, and budgets on two and drive your customer base there. Stagnation is a brand killer, so if you don’t use that Twitter account, signal it as dormant and pin a tweet inviting your customers to Instagram — or wherever it is you keep your brand fresh.
Strategy 4: Utilize more user- and employee-generated content. People connect with people. Give them someone to connect with! Share content from your customers ,whether it’s photos, testimonials, funny comments, or something else. Share updates from your team, whether it’s a desk or WFH setups, go-to coffee orders, or day-in-the-life of your CFO! Doing that will help humanize your brand and create buy-in from all sides.
Strategy 5: Consider an identity or logo refresh. If you thought you need a rebrand, dial it back slightly and consider an identity or logo refresh. Updated typography and color choices are a great way to make something “old” feel new. But keep in mind what brand equity you might be losing and also the costs associated with reprinting and repurchasing anything with your old identity elements! Don’t sacrifice consistency for newness.

In your opinion, what is an example of a company that has done a fantastic job doing a “Brand Makeover”. What specifically impresses you? What can one do to replicate that?

How about a recent example I’m betting 80% of users didn’t even notice? Hulu’s brand refresh by UK-based DixonBaxi. Rather than a comprehensive identity redesign, Hulu created a unified brand experience using an evolution of their existing identity elements. They created something fresh and clean that didn’t sacrifice brand equity or require major overhauls of the existing brand experience. This is something you can do right now for your personal brand or your business’ brand. Evaluate your consistency. Update your colors. Give your copywriting a shift and an edit. Boom! Makeover complete.

I’m reasonably sure this movement is already happening but… humanizing your brand! I believe that people — the individuals that make up these larger systems and collectives — are the most important. When we value people first, amazing things can begin to happen. This can start with listening to their stories and perspectives. It can expand by sharing and giving voice to underrepresented experiences. Then it can elevate by honoring that businesses are built by people and not the other way around.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

One that is constantly pinging around in my head is that one from Essentialism by Greg McKeown. He writes, “If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.” For me, there is no time, relationship, and financial advice better than that. I first read Essentialism years ago and have since re-read it multiple times, each time soaking up more and more of what it means to live as an essentialist does. Plus, it’s a great brand-building strategy, too!

How can our readers follow you online?

Connect with me on LinkedIn! I want to know you and your story, what led you to this article, and what business idea you’ve been thinking of pursuing.

Thank you so much for these excellent insights! We wish you continued success in your work.

Brand Makeovers: Catherine Blakemore of Treadaway Co On The 5 Things You Should Do To Upgrade and R was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Non-Fungible Tokens: Artist Ali Sabet On The 5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly…

Non-Fungible Tokens: Artist Ali Sabet On The 5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly Successful Career In The NFT Industry

Focus on your art and stay true to who you are as an artist. Some have tried to change in order to fit a mold that they believe will bring in more money. Most of the time this has the opposite reaction.

Ali Sabet (@sabet) is an Iranian American artist that is regarded as one of the top selling artists on NFT. He is recognized for his paintings of beautiful and confident women with large breathtaking eyes and his signature long lashes and defined lips. He is also known for his unique Pixopop (@pixopop) characters.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

Absolutely, thank you for having me! I was born in Iran and my family moved to Orange County, California when I was just 9 years old. I didn’t know much English, was shy and very tall for my age. I started drawing before I learned how to write so I turned to art. It was my release. I graduated from Cal State Fullerton in 1998 and my first job was working for one of the top advertising agencies in the world as an Art Director. It was an amazing experience. I later opened my own agency and alongside my branding work I continued to paint. I decided to focus on my art full time in 2018 and this year entered the incredible NFT world of art and am now ranked as one of the top 100 artists globally.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

The book Quantum -Touch: The Power to Heal by Richard Gordan changed my life. It helped me remove resistance in my life. I also realized that collectors were drawn to my paintings not just for the design but the healing energy I put in each. Later, I learned how to heal others. One of my collectors had dealt with health issues that included a lot of shaking on one hand. I saw her stop shaking for the first time in a very long time right in front of my eyes. It was magical.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in this new industry? We’d love to hear it.

I was one of the lucky ones that knew what I loved early on. I did not do that well in every subject in school but everything I turned in had some artwork or doodling on it. I remember turning in a composition when I was 9 years old and the teacher gave me a low grade but I turned the page and she put incredibly positive and encouraging remarks about the doodles I had on my composition book. I realized that even though I wasn’t the best student, art was the one way that I could always connect with people and communicate with them in a deep and meaningful way.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?

I had a vision of a symbol and it looked like a person holding an equal sign. I called it LOVEQUALS SERVICE. It’s also made up of the number 1, omega, square root and the equal sign. From alpha to omega, the root of all is “love”. I started embedding this symbol in all of my artwork. Soon came another symbol and then another and now I know a mysterious script called Sabe Love Symbols. I can write and paint this language in a fluently but have yet to decode it. Clients have found their name in a different language in paintings, the name of their child, etc. I now incorporate this language in all of my paintings.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I can’t think of a funny mistake but I will share a cool memory. I remember making my Pixopop characters and hoping they would be the next Hello Kitty. It wasn’t until 20 years later that it really started getting recognition and now on NFT they are collectables. The lesson is to do what you love and not worry about immediate success. You will be in awe at how it all comes together at some point…even if it is 20 years later!

An art collector named Spencer Brown became one of my mentors. He helped me understand that in the art world you need an audience. You also have to have programs that get people excited about your work. This has helped me gain a following on social media and make the transition to painting full time. It also may be the reason I have done so well in the NFT world.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

I’m working on a few large paintings for a few collectors. I also designed the first hypercar vehicle to be auctioned in NFT. You actually get a physical car. I have a few incredibly exciting collaborations that I can’t touch on right now but I will share as soon as I can.

NFT stands for Non-fungible token and is part of the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum is a cryptocurrency like bitcoin. For artists, NFTs can be a digital painting, drawing or music. This has opened up an exciting new way for artists to share their work and for collectors to invest in what they love. For those that are new, I recommend buying digital art that you love instead of just collecting for investment.

The NFT industry seems so exciting right now. What are the 3 things in particular that most excite you about the industry? If you can, please share a story or example for each.

NFT is exciting and for artists it is a game changer. The art world will never be the same again.

The ability to communicate with collectors directly. The app Clubhouse holds NFT discussions where collectors can hear directly from the artist why a certain piece was created and ask questions directly. They also get to discover new artists from different parts of the world that they may not have found otherwise.
Being able to create anything that I love knowing there may be an audience in the world. This is a game changer for artists. If you want to make money as a professional artists, sometimes you have to focus the majority of your art on what has done well in gallery sales, etc. With NFT, it has opened up a huge audience for artists and you feel safe sharing different types of art knowing it will connect with different audiences.
Collaborating with emerging artists and well known celebrities. In the time I have been on NFT, I have done many collaborations with both new and recognized artists. The beautiful thing is that this type of digital art is bringing together painters, musicians, and specialists in animation and digital art in a way we have never seen before.

What are the 3 things that concern you about the industry? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

I’ve not seen anything that concerns me. I do believe there is a bit of a learning curve to getting your work on the platform but there are new innovations and platforms that are being introduced that is addressing this.

The App Clubhouse has free sessions for new people that I also attend that provide direction.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about NFTs? Can you explain what you mean?

I’ve heard critics say that the long term view of NFTs is unknown. That can be said about anything new. The reality is that once you start attending the NFT sessions on the App Clubhouse and getting to know both the collectors and the artists, you realize that there are some incredible digital art that is being launched on this platform that has already dramatically changed the way we view and collect art.

What are the most common mistakes you have seen people make when they enter the NFT industry. What can be done to avoid that?

I think one of the most common mistakes is to just start buying art in hopes it increases in value. The seasoned collectors have shared that they only invest in art and artists that they love and connect to.

How do you think NFTs have the potential to help society in the future?

We don’t have to wait for the future. It is happening right now. Non-profits from around the world are connecting directly with artists and auctioning for their cause in this space. I was just a part of an auction that sold one of my digital pieces for $55K. The charity worked with multiple artists and raised over $300K.

Focus on your art and stay true to who you are as an artist. Some have tried to change in order to fit a mold that they believe will bring in more money. Most of the time this has the opposite reaction.
Don’t shy away from collaborating with artists that you respect and love. If you are new and talented, you may get a flood of collaboration requests. Be selective and find artists that you connect with and the end result will be magical.
Have a presence Twitter and Instagram. You need to have these accounts to communicate with collectors and other artists. Make sure they can direct message you. Some have created an account just for their NFT world instead of just using their personal account. Announce your pieces on these platforms. I reached out to Whale Shark ( one of the biggest collectors of NFT art) and let him know that I would love him to look at my work. This tweet changed my life. He became a collector and one of my biggest supporters.
Give back to the NFT community. Once you get your artwork up and start promoting yourself, participate in the App Clubhouse NFT sessions to help answer questions and help other artists. You can also support other artists by sharing their social media posts and commenting when appropriate. The entire NFT community appreciate your efforts — from artists to collectors, it’s very much a family atmosphere even if there are thousands of people involved.
Participate in NFT Clubhouse rooms that connect you directly with collectors and other artists. The app Clubhouse has been key in my success in the NFT world. Don’t underestimate the power of attending these sessions, listening and sharing. The connections you make on this platform is life changing.

I am a big believer in energy and healing. I incorporate it in my art and healing sessions. The more awareness I can bring to the importance of being conscious of the type of energy you release through your work and daily life, the better this world will be. Most people don’t realize just how impactful one person can be.

I would love to have lunch with Elon Musk. He is an extraordinary individual that is continuously changing and contributing to our world.

Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success on your great work!

Thank you for this opportunity to share my story!

Non-Fungible Tokens: Artist Ali Sabet On The 5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Anastasia Pash of…

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Anastasia Pash of Globetrotter VR

Grow your network and have allies. “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” I heard that phrase during my first week as a trainee, fresh out of University. Let this be your mantra as you create a valuable network around yourself.

Anastasia Pash is an entrepreneur and digital media creator. She has producer award-winning virtual experiences for travel brands, governments and NGOs. She founded Globetrotter VR, a platform that allows users to experience destinations from their couch, with the help real tour guides and virtual reality. She is a public speaker and an activist for environmental sustainability and gender equality in the VR industry. Anastasia is an ambassador for Women in Immersive Tech, an NGO breaking barriers and inspiring women in immersive tech all over the world.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

I grew up between Russia and Cyprus. Being a 90s kid, I was raised on sci-fi movies and was captivated by the promise of technology and virtual reality. My father was an early adopter, so we’d always have the latest gadgets at home. I never read instructions, and for most part I still don’t, I like to figure out things on my own. I went to a very traditional catholic all-girls school, and always felt like an oddball there. After finishing school, I moved to the UK where I studied Law. I went to Warwick, which was very international. I loved what a melting pot the University was, and how different my friends were. I must confess I didn’t enjoy studying law very much, and I passed all my exams by crash-studying “Nutshells”. The rest of my time was spent on student societies, organizations and events. It was then that I realized that I am much more entrepreneurial than anyone ever imagined.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Big Magic”. After graduating from University, I was launched into a career in the City of London. I worked for top names such as UBS, D.E. Shaw and CVC Capital. I enjoyed working with brilliant people on big deals. But I always had a longing to be more creative. Listening to this book, gave me so much perspective, and I finally gave myself the permission to create, experiment and put myself out there. It was liberating and I recommend it to anyone who wants to live a more creative life.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in the X Reality industry? We’d love to hear it.

I never wanted a career in the XR industry. I was just curious about virtual reality. In 2016, I was writing a travel blog and I had an idea that it would be really fun to incorporate virtual reality into it. I thought it would be a great way of giving people a better insight into a destination. I bought the cheapest 360° camera I could find on amazon and started experimenting with it. It was such a pain to shoot and process the footage. Premier Pro didn’t have the plugins it has today for editing immersive video. Youtube didn’t recognize 360° formats so you had to inject the metadata separately. My 2014 laptop could barely handle 4K video. But the first time I saw one of my videos in a headset, I knew that I was onto something. I started knocking on doors and demonstrating what was possible with this new technology. Soon enough, I was working on commercial projects creating content for hotel brands and Tourism Boards. Of course, I had to upgrade my gear! A few years later, I find myself leading a whole team of brilliant people in a VR start up. It’s been a fun ride, but I never really thought of it as a career, more as a passion pursuit.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?

The initial idea for Globetrotter VR was an immersive guide to help travelers plan their trips. In February 2020, we were designing our MVP — a virtual guide to Barcelona. In March 2020, Barcelona, and the rest of the world, went into lockdown. At the time, the authorities were saying this was going to be a two-week measure, and I remember thinking “This is going to last way longer than that, and it will devastate travel and the global economy.” As my UX designer and I sat locked up in our respective homes, figuring out what tools to use for remote collaboration, I decided to pivot the company to create interactive and immersive virtual tours. I don’t regret that decision. We’re seeing so much interest from both businesses and consumers in our product due to continued lockdowns, but beyond COVID-19, the solution has value for people who are unable to travel to all the destinations they want due to physical, financial or time constraints. Also, the travel industry is looking for new ways to entice travelers after the pandemic. Finally, companies who have gone remote are always looking for exciting online team building activities.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I consider myself a very well-rounded person, and when I was starting out, I thought that I would be able to get my company off the ground as a single founder. I found out quickly that investors shy away from single founders, especially single female founders. I quickly realized that if I want to build a great company, I need a brilliant team. I really enjoy working with my team and seeing the different perspectives and opinions that shape our products.

Yes, and not just one! My partner and my best friends have been incredibly supportive of me and I wouldn’t be able to do it without them. My partner has been there for me from day 1 and has encouraged the transition I made from the corporate world to starting my own business. I am also grateful for amazing friends who are brilliant and successful, and always help me see the light. Finally, I’m grateful for our angel investors who took the risk and trusted us to build something valuable. It’s so important to surround yourself with people who believe in you and give you strength. Doing a start-up is tough, but it’s also a lot of fun, and you want to be with people who will be there for the good and the bad.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

At Globetrotter VR, we’re constantly creating new travel experiences. Right now, we’re working on Dubai, Budapest, Edinburgh, Milan, Paris, New York, and have many other exciting destinations in the pipeline. We’re collaborating with amazing tour guides, and content partners in these cities, so each experience is unique, and the production is a fascinating process. We aren’t trying to replicate walking tours but creating truly interactive and immersive virtual experiences in their own right. We’re also excited that our business model allows tour guides who have been so hard hit by the pandemic to have an alternative source of income.

The XR space is a really exciting one, as there is always something new and cutting edge happening. I’m really excited for hardware becoming more user-friendly and not as clunky. I can’t wait to try the Apple’s Mixed Reality headset, as I’m hoping their designers will do the same thing to VR headsets as they did to PCs. I’m also excited about alternative to wearables, such as Ricoh’s Warpe, which would be great way to display 360° content and 3D art. I’m also really excited for the opportunities for new interaction between people around the world that VR is creating. For example, we’ve seen, friends who haven’t seen each other in over a year due to COVID-19 and travel restrictions, enjoy a virtual walking together while being in their respective homes. Twenty years ago, this was sci-fi. Today it’s a reality, and I look forward to pushing the envelope in this direction.

What are the 3 things that concern you about the VR, AR and MR industries? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

I have some concerns about the health impactions of the current VR and AR headsets on our eyesight. Manufacturers do warn users to not spend too much time in the headsets, but we all know that once you’re in the virtual world, you easily lose track of time. I personally spend hours at a time creating in Quill. The other thing is the need for more diverse content. As with many industries, it can be difficult for women, BAME or other minorities to secure funding for their project. It’s paramount that we acknowledge this and make provisions to enable these creators tell their stories.

I think the entertainment aspects of VR, AR and MR are apparent. Can you share with our readers how these industries can help us at work?

The early adopters of XR technologies in Europe are in the automotive, aviation, and machinery sectors, but the medical sector plays also an important role. The technology upgrades the way that we have meetings, share information, instructions and monitor the work being done. Benefits from implementing AR/VR technologies at work include huge increases in efficiency, safety, productivity, and reduction in complexity. The opportunities to create more efficient and collaborative creative teams are really exciting for me, especially now when we’re seeing a massive shift towards remote work.

Are there other ways that VR, AR and MR can improve our lives? Can you explain?

Immersive training — or training and education powered by immersive technology is already disrupting how we learn. I’m particularly excited about how the technology will allow kids around the world to experience history, languages, sciences and learn creative and problem-solving skills through interactive and immersive applications. At Globetrotter VR, we’re currently speaking to language schools to enable students to go on “virtual trips” to different cities where they can learn the language, while touring the city and learning about its culture and history. No more having to sit through boring lessons during which you don’t retain a thing!

Of course, I’m not satisfied. While we’re seeing small improvements in the field in terms of representation, women are still underpaid, underfunded and are often harassed by their male colleagues. These questions should be asked to men during their interviews along with “What are you going to do to improve that?” Once hired, their pro-activity to make improvements in this area should form part of their performance reviews.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about working in your industry? Can you explain what you mean?

I’m not aware of any “myths” of working in the XR industry. I can only say that when I was getting into it, I was surprised by how collaborative, creative and this industry is. Everyone I’ve met during events and festivals, from big time producers, to award-winning creators, are super down to earth, fun and a little crazy. I love the sense of community and camaraderie we have in XR.

What are your “5 Leadership Lessons I Learned From My Experience as a Woman in Tech” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

Don’t be a good girl. No one will pat you on the head if you stay quietly on the sideline. Don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself, your team and your beliefs.

Grow a thicker skin. You will get rejected a lot — job and funding applications, partners, pitches. Don’t wallow on the no’s and think of every “no” as a step closer to a “yes”.

Know thyself. Learn about your strengths and weaknesses, get to know your saboteurs. Develop your emotional intelligence to grow as a leader.

Help other women. Be of help wherever you can to other women in the industry — whether it’s providing feedback, making an introduction, writing a reference, or even simply listening.

Grow your network and have allies. “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” I heard that phrase during my first week as a trainee, fresh out of University. Let this be your mantra as you create a valuable network around yourself.

I would start a movement to ban commercial fishing around the world. As we speak, high-tech and heavily subsidized fishing fleets from the West are pillaging the oceans around Africa and Asia, destroying important marine eco-systems and as a consequence, the balance of life on our planet. They are also taking away food from communities that relied on the ocean for sustenance for centuries. If you like fish, ask for locally sourced and line caught.

I’d love to have a lunch with Michelle Kennedy, the founder of Peanut. I recently attended a mentoring session with her, and she was really bright, witty and sharp. I’d love to learn more about her experience as an entrepreneur, and I think we’d have a great time!

Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success on your great work!

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Anastasia Pash of… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Future Is Now: Barney Mannerings of Vega On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up…

The Future Is Now: Barney Mannerings of Vega On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The Financial System

The only way out is through. You can’t undo the problems created by modern society or technology by going back the way things were, we have to move forward and develop technological and progressive solutions to the challenges we face.

As a part of our series about cutting edge technological breakthroughs, I had the pleasure of interviewing Barney Mannerings, Founder of Vega and a blockchain and finance expert. He designed multiple releases of the London Stock Exchange’s core trading system and matching engine, and worked in capital markets for 15 years prior to starting Vega. He is also Co-Founder of Pik, a SaaS offering for publishers that was funded by Google’s DNI Fund. Barney brings his expertise in financial products, trading systems technology, and blockchain solutions to leading the vision and strategy for Vega.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I studied Computer Science at university and was very into cryptography and privacy. Ultimately, I decided I didn’t want to be a full time programmer and ended up working in financial services creating systems for banks, stock exchanges, etc.. I was working in finance during the 2008 financial crisis, which exposed a lot of issues. The Bitcoin whitepaper was published shortly thereafter, and I did a small amount of mining to deepen my understanding of how it worked. I also got involved in ethereum early on and recognized the possibilities with this decentralized smart contract network. Realizing the potential of this novel technology and combined with my past exposure to the problems inherent to centralized finance, I embarked on founding Vega, a capital-efficient, decentralized derivatives trading protocol that bridges traditional finance and DeFi. My aim was to create a fair and equitable alternative for people who needed trading services and financial services on a more peer-to-peer basis to break the grip of the large banks and institutions that suck value out of the system.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

Since I started my career, an ongoing narrative has been learning just how much room there is for improvement in finance and business in general.

From a theoretical and academic background, it’s easy to assume, when you look at all the incredibly smart and motivated people working on the problems — in finance and tech, particularly — that things which are well understood are also well implemented and optimised. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Early in my career, I worked on a project that was costing something like £400 million to build an insurance system. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the company doing the work had bought the ancient, COBOL powered system from a dead insurance company, given it some branding and glossy sales materials, and sold it as the latest and greatest.

By the time I came to suggest the whole thing could be done for a 10th of the budget (if that) and found no takers, I was less surprised.

This same experience, of finding unbelievably bad, expensive, and manual solutions was repeated many times across a multitude of organisations and projects, particularly large investment banks and other financial institutions. As I learned, I discovered the causes of this, from perverse incentives (you’re more likely to get paid more in a big organisation for managing more people and convincing your boss what you do is important than for reducing the cost, even if it’s just as important) to risk aversion (no one gets fired for buying Accenture, Oracle or IBM or for making small incremental improvements).

I also discovered that to break out of this cycle takes two things: the right relationships and a lot of trust (and someone to take on the risk). At the moment, the incentives are too great once you reach a certain size, and so the only real solution in many cases comes from startups: disruption and creative destruction. This is what led me to leave that world and start Vega.

Can you tell us about the cutting edge technological breakthroughs that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?

With Vega, we are making market creation and derivatives trading as efficient, scalable, and usable as possible. There are many markets introduced today through centralized gatekeepers that are simply not capital efficient and don’t address the hedging needs of specific regions, professions, or situations. By combining the speed of products that exist in traditional finance with the capital-efficiency and low-fees enabled by removing middlemen through decentralization, we are paving the way to markets that address the needs of traders in a much fuller capacity.

How do you think this might change the world?

Centralized capital markets are set-up to prioritize the interests of the most-monied players over the “little guy,” excluding more businesses and people the further down the wealth chain one goes. These gatekeepers wield extraordinary influence in creating the markets that drive local, regional, and global economies and in determining who gains access to risk hedging and wealth creation opportunities and who does not. High trading fees limit access to a privileged few, and data-sharing practices often go against the interests of traders.

Vega allows anyone to create a market with its decentralized derivatives trading protocol to better meet the risk-hedging needs of traders. By eliminating centralized gatekeepers, Vega allows for instant settlement (< 1 sec), removes conflict of interest from markets, reduces fees, and enables the throughput (up to 10K TPS) necessary for high-volume derivatives trading. Vega deploys its unique fairness protocol Wendy to ensure that orders are processed in a just manner without granting settlement priority to the highest bidder.

Unlike centralized gatekeepers, Vega allows participants to run the markets via decentralized community-operated governance, enabling markets to be created quickly in response to unanticipated events, such as a pandemic or city-wide power loss.

Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

There is a version of finance that is much worse than what we have now. What happens, for example, if the crypto world becomes hyper-capitalistic? The few hundred people who got involved in bitcoin early are billionaires, but such a system that rewards early adopters to such an extreme extent is not equitable. The concentration of wealth in the hands of a few is exactly what decentralization is supposed to be attempting to avoid, especially when you consider the possibilities of involved militias and wealth used as a tool of oppression and inequality. The best way to combat this type of dystopia is through open-source information, protocols, and governance, which will develop in line with the needs of their users over time.

Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?

The 2008 Financial Crisis definitely shined a light on the fault lines in the traditional trading space, but I was also at a point in my career where I was ready for a change. I had to decide if I was going to work for someone else or start my own project; I explored a startup funded by Google’s DNI Fund about journalism and advertising before my Vega Co-Founder, Ramsey Khoury and I decided to start the project that became Vega.

What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?

Mass adoption of any novel technology in finance requires good UX or trusted custodians to manage value on behalf of customers, mirroring a CeFi experience. Regulatory acceptance and clarity is also helpful.

What have you been doing to publicize this idea? Have you been using any innovative marketing strategies?

We are approaching our mainnet launch and have many exciting developments in the pipeline beyond that major milestone that we are sharing with our community and the press.

There are so many people who have supported me along the way, but I owe so much to my Co-Founder Ramsey Khoury. He manages the business strategy and investor relations for Vega, priming it for growth.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

I hope that by increasing access to markets that are more affordable to use we are doing our part to make wealth creation and hedging more accessible, regardless of a person’s geographic location, banking status, or net-worth.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)

It’s impossible to overestimate the time and effort involved in fundraising
Prioritization is important for efficiency
Sometimes the best path forward is focusing on one big important thing at a time
Understanding the lay of the land is incredibly valuable when starting a company
The only way out is through. You can’t undo the problems created by modern society or technology by going back the way things were, we have to move forward and develop technological and progressive solutions to the challenges we face.

I firmly believe that everyone gets richer when everyone is invested in, because that means everyone’s value has increased. We should, as a society, be willing to fund the less fortunate and help people to thrive, recognizing that it’s a net-positive for all of us. Climate change is another global issue that requires humanity and ingenuity to come together to solve. If we invest in people and in green tech, we can help people and save the planet.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“I like deadlines. I like the whooshing noise they make as they go past.” — Douglas Adams

I love this quote, because it’s funny, but also because trying to manage work based on deadlines doesn’t work. In my view, the best way to accomplish goals is to create habits and processes that set you up for success.

Some very well known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

Vega is a capital-efficient, decentralized derivatives trading protocol that bridges traditional finance and DeFi. By eliminating centralized gatekeepers, Vega enables high throughput, instant settlement, and low-fee trading. Vega increases access to risk hedging and wealth-creation opportunities by enabling anyone to create a new market, meeting the needs of SMEs and traders around the globe.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

Website: https://vega.xyz/
Medium: https://medium.com/vegaprotocol
Twitter: https://twitter.com/vegaprotocol?s=20
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/3hQyGgZ
Community forum: https://community.vega.xyz/

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.

The Future Is Now: Barney Mannerings of Vega On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Brand Makeovers: Kimberly Brizzolara of ‘Brands That Get You’ On The 5 Things You Should Do To…

Brand Makeovers: Kimberly Brizzolara of ‘Brands That Get You’ On The 5 Things You Should Do To Upgrade and Re-Energize Your Brand and Image

Don’t Let Your Old Brand Hold You Back from Making Big Moves. Doing something drastic is always going to feel scary. And some people are always going to caution you against it. But sometimes you need to be bold to do what’s right for your brand, even if it means changing a cherished core principle.

As part of our series about “Brand Makeovers” I had the pleasure to interview Kimberly Brizzolara.

Kimberly is the Founder and Creative Director of Brands That Get You — where she helps early stage founders build the kind of brands that audiences obsess over with a collaborative, flexible, and streamlined approach unlike any other agency that’s based on Kimberly’s experience founding her own consumer brand. Kimberly has developed Fortune 500 brands (Netflix, Gap, Wyndham), created indie darling brands (Biossance, Patchology), rebranded global brands (Crabree & Evelyn), run creative teams at in-house brand (Sephora), and started her own brand (Archer). Her work has won over 80 awards — including Clios, Addys & 30 Under 30 — and she earned her BA and MA at Stanford.

As a kid, I loved watching old reruns of the television show Bewitched. Darren, the husband in the show, worked in advertising. He was pitching ad campaigns and coming up with taglines. I always thought that seemed like such a fun job.

In college at Stanford, I majored in Creative Writing. The department exuded excellence. Who couldn’t learn great writing from literary masters like ZZ Packer, Julie Orringer, Elizabeth Tallent, and Tobias Wolff — who was my advisor.

I stayed on to earn a MA in Media Studies, and I designed my own curriculum that included a focus on advertising. For my thesis, I studied the effects of gender stereotypes in advertising. I demonstrated how advertising is inherently the means of communication that’s the most reliant on stereotypes, because the extremely short storytelling format leaves little time for character development. I also showed how advertising is the most impactful means of communication, because of its pervasiveness and the amount of unconscious exposure people have to it. That’s why I believe that brands need to be responsible for the stereotypes they portray. If they use their impact for good, they have the power to create healthy models for a better world.

I also worked as a Research Assistant for the Revel Project — an organization that explored ways to create prosperity through venture creation in the developing world, particularly India. My work centered on determining the differences in the presentations of American and Indian narratives, then using my findings to restructure the corporate narratives of American companies to make them more appealing to an Indian audience.

By the time I graduated, I could write. I could write fast, and excellently. And I knew a great deal about advertising theory and how to structure compelling brand narratives. But I didn’t have a traditional portfolio of ads I had written, which you need to get a job at an agency.

So I took a job as an account manager at an agency called Digital Impact. My first client used our creative services. Our team was understaffed, so I got to try my hand at writing the creative briefs. And I did the thing that all creatives really love — I started writing my own copy into the briefs.

Luckily, the Executive Creative Director liked what he read. And instead of being annoyed that I was trying to do his team’s job, he set up a meeting with me to talk about my career aspirations. He made a spot for me in the creative department, and he became my mentor throughout my early career.

Can you share a story about the funniest marketing or branding mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I’m not sure this counts as a mistake — but my Art Director partner and I were creating a launch campaign for a new Gateway computer when I was first starting out. While we were concepting, we ended up switching roles. I came up with the visuals and found the perfect image, and he wrote the tagline. That campaign ended up winning a number of big industry awards from the Addys and the One Show.

I’ve been in environments where the writers work very separately from the designers, and I know the creative concepts are always more impactful when there’s a strong collaboration between both teams. This just drove home how important the connection between visuals and copy is in marketing.

My biggest tipping point came this year, when I started my own agency. I began 2020 as the co-founder of a completely different kind of business: a men’s personal care company called Archer that was set to launch in 2020 with a dry shampoo designed to perform post-gym and post-commute. But when the pandemic started, gyms closed indefinitely and commutes gave way to quarantine, which meant that the two primary use cases for my hero product disappeared.

I completely pivoted and went back to my branding roots to start Brands That Get You on my own. Armed with the lessons learned from my experiences with Archer, I’m now able to understand and solve for the struggles of founders in a way that I never would have been able to before.

As a creative, it can be really easy to sit back and wonder why clients can’t just pick something or why they don’t understand how good your idea is. But as a founder, when it’s your company and your money and your investor presentations, the stakes are so much higher. I designed my Branding Sprint™ framework to give founders the confidence they need to make these high risk calls.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

This January, I celebrated the liftoff of one of the most inspiring & meaningful companies I’ve ever had the honor to brand (and my favorite company I’ve ever named!). That company is Ace of Air — the world’s first zero-waste beauty & wellness brand. They’ve pioneered a 100% circular model, which means customers buy the products and borrow the package. They even ship in a “Boomerang Box,” a returnable shipper that gets reused up to 100 times. Ace of Air elevates every standard for beauty and wellness — taking no shortcuts, never compromising, and raising every bar to super human heights.

I worked on Ace of Air over the course of two years when I was Director of Strategy & Editorial at Bartlett Brands, a superstar agency based in SF. And we were honored to have a superstar client team — including supermodel humanitarian Petra Nemcova and badass Stephanie Stahl, the former CMO of Revlon & Coach.

Right now, I’m branding a new company that I’ve named Dear Planet. They’re also set to do an incredible amount of good for people and the world. They’re launching an innovative disinfectant that’s as powerful as bleach and literally safe enough to drink — so it’s safe for adults, kids, babies, and pets. And their product is packaged in an pioneering aerosol alternative that does zero harm to the environment.

What advice would you give to other marketers to thrive and avoid burnout?

It’s good to specialize and understand a market extremely well — but don’t limit your thinking to a single vertical.

I ran an editorial team at Sephora for two years; I had beauty clients at Bartlett Brands; and I continue to have many beauty clients. So naturally, I know a lot about beauty. When I’m working with a beauty client, it can be tempting to put on beauty goggles. But you can’t only see the world through that lens.

One person I have to thank for inspiring this kind of thinking is my husband. He reads more books than anyone I’ve ever seen — and on such a wide variety of topics. Right now on his desk, there are books as varied as Neoclassicism in the North: Swedish Furniture and Interiors 1770–1850; Impro: Improvisation and the Theater, and Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman.

As creative or a marketer, you never know what you’re going to read or listen to next that could inspire a new way of thinking or a fresh technique you can apply to your work. Take in experimental experiences to be on the edge of the zeitgeist. Do basic stuff to keep in touch with the universal. Be an expert — but expand your breadth.

Ok, let’s now jump to the core part of our interview. In a nutshell, how would you define the difference between brand marketing (branding) and product marketing (advertising)? Can you explain?

I explain the difference between brand marketing and product marketing using the classic 5 W’s (and One H).

Your brand marketing is based on the Who and the Why. It’s about creating an immersive experience that a certain type of consumer (The Who) identifies that ties into your company’s purpose and reason for being (The Why).

Your product marketing is how you answer the rest of the questions: The What you’re selling and The When/Where/How people will use it in their lives.

Brand is the strategy. Product marketing is the tactics.

Can you explain to our readers why it is important to invest resources and energy into building a brand, in addition to the general marketing and advertising efforts?

Two reasons — loyalty and love. There’s always going to be a new competitive product on the market with shiny new features.

But the brand keeps customers loyal. They come back year after year because they identify with the brand. And the brand inspired love. It makes people excited to talk about it or tweet about it or wear it on a shirt.

Let’s now talk about rebranding. What are a few reasons why a company would consider rebranding?

A lot of companies who come to me have launched quickly and proved their product hypothesis. Now, they want to level up and evolve from a product into a true brand.

I’ve also seen companies who decide that their current customer should not be their future customer. They recognize that a rebrand will help them appeal to a new target.

And lastly, I’ve worked with companies where something fundamental about the business has changed — for example, they’re decided to put a huge focus on sustainability or they’re going global or they’ve made a huge mistake.

Are there downsides of rebranding? Are there companies that you would advise against doing a “Brand Makeover”? Why?

Every rebrand comes with a risk. You might lose current customers — and you need to be ok with that, because you’re planning on acquiring new customers.

I’d advise against rebranding if there is not a specific business reason. Don’t rebrand “just because.” And don’t rebrand if you can’t fully commit to it. Before you start a rebrand, it’s good to think about what you’re going to feel comfortable changing as part of the process (your imagery? your tagline? your logo? your name?). The most disappointing thing is to do the work of rebranding, and then to not roll it out.

Ok, here is the main question of our discussion. Can you share 5 strategies that a company can do to upgrade and re-energize their brand and image? Please tell us a story or an example for each.

Reassess Your Competition — and Your Market
By definition, if you’re rebranding, your current brand has been on the market for at least a short period of time. And during that time, a lot may have changed. You want to take a strategic look at both the current competitive space and the future market that you want to dominate. Then, decide what’s the right move to make your brand stand out in both.
When beauty brand Biossance launched as “nature meets science,” this idea was interesting. But the market quickly became crowded with same-same brands. Biossance needed to turn the conversation to a Biossance-specific strength, so we tapped into eco-luxury and the science of simplicity — highlighting squalane, their superstar biotech ingredient. Now, Biossance is one of the leading clean beauty brands in Sephora, and Reese Witherspoon is their ambassador.
Another example is Ao, a skincare brand coming out of New Zealand. They recognized that the clean and clinical approach that had worked from them abroad wasn’t going to be enough to entice a customer in the oversaturated US market. That’s why our strategy focused on a combination of very rich environmental storytelling and the credibility of the founder, the leading derm in New Zealand. Now Ao flies off the shelves in Credo and Nordstrom.
Use Your Current Customers as a Resource
One of the best things about a rebrand is knowing that you already have a built-in potential focus group of people who have engaged with your brand. And there are lots of ways to tap their experience — including sending them surveys, doing interviews, and asking what they think of some of your new brand ideas. And one of my favorite ways to get your customers involved actually requires the least amount of effort: you can mine your customer reviews for data and insights.
-This past year, I rebranded a skincare company called Y’OUR Skincare. And during the course of their Branding Sprint, we combed through their reviews. We found that a lot of the positive reviews from their customers had similar phrasing — whether people had been struggling with acne or wrinkles or dryness, they were happy and amazed that the skincare “just worked.” The simplicity of this phrasing inspired their tagline: “It Just Works For You.”
Look at Where You Are and Where You’ve Been
Over the course of its lifetime, a brand creates a lot of assets. When you’re beginning a rebrand, you should go back and take stock of where you began, how you’ve evolved, and where you are now.
For ipsy’s rebrand, we postered the walls of an entire conference room with marketing assets made through the years — the good, the bad, and the ugly. We divided them up by channel, then we spent a day running around with post-it notes, marking up and talking through the likes and dislikes.
And if the brand has grown quickly, there’s a good chance a lot of your assets have been created quickly. Such was the case with Rodan & Fields, which grew into the #1 skincare brand in the U.S. in a record number of years. With multiple teams creating marketing assets and independent consultants who sold the products with free reign to make their own materials, taking stock of all the messages was incredibly enlightening.
Get Back to Your Basics — and Get Inspired
Whether you’re a company that’s been around for one year or twenty years, there’s a reason that it was founded. That reason is a good one, and it can be (and should be) inspiring to your rebranding efforts.
With Crabtree & Evelyn, we dug down deep to the roots of the brand, originally founded in 1971, and uncovered humanist principles and a pioneering spirit of exploration. This drove the rebrand’s conceptual direction, as expressed in the new tagline “Born Curious. Grown Wild.”
-Similarly, for the rebrand of Paula’s Choice, we went back to the story of founder Paula Begoun, who came to fame on Oprah where she was known as the “Cosmetics Cop” for her radical honesty about beauty brands and the lies they tell. This kind of transparency was the heart of her brand — and a perfect fit for today’s consumer. The new tagline for Paula’s Choice that we built the rest of the brand around? “Truth in Beauty”
Don’t Let Your Old Brand Hold You Back from Making Big Moves. Doing something drastic is always going to feel scary. And some people are always going to caution you against it. But sometimes you need to be bold to do what’s right for your brand, even if it means changing a cherished core principle.
When I first started working with Patchology, they had built a business making serious (and seriously expensive) anti aging treatments powered by “patch” technology. They had also recently started making benefit-targeted sheet masks. This was right around the time that the market for sheet masks was exploding. When we approached their rebrand, they knew they wanted to focus more on the mask side of the business — and that this meant majorly changing who their customer was.
We said goodbye to the soothing spa-brand vibes for the 45+ set, and hello to a bright and fresh brand with a plucky personality that was custom made for early millennials. And instead of patch technology, we repositioned them (and their existing name) to highlight quick-fix solutions (aka patches) and called it “Beauty at the Speed of You.”

In your opinion, what is an example of a company that has done a fantastic job doing a “Brand Makeover”. What specifically impresses you? What can one do to replicate that?

I may be biased — but I have to shine a serious spotlight on Crabtree & Evelyn. Their rebranding effort was the biggest, the boldest, and the most well executed I’ve ever seen.

When David Stern took over as the CEO of Crabtree & Evelyn, the company and their customers were quite literally dying. Ask anyone below the age of 40 about Crabtree & Evelyn, and the responses would be the same: “My grandmother likes that brand.”

Most CEOs in David’s position would step in and see that change needed to happen to appeal to a younger demographic. But few would have the courage and audacity to so completely turn over the brand.

David and Ashley Souza, the brilliant head of brand and product development, had us focus entirely on a millennial consumer in twelve urban cities around the globe, shuttering 250+ stores to create an entirely digital model, and shelving 200+ outdated products to relaunch with three entirely new lines. And when it came to the creative, we changed everything but the name of the company.

At the same time that so much was changing — the brand was being fearlessly reinvented in a way that was both true to its history and appealing to its target.

To replicate this kind of rebrand, you need to act as both a historian with a rich cultural knowledge of your company and aa a futurist with a forward-thinking vision of your customer. That’s where the magic lies.

I would inspire a movement of dreaming big. For three years, I served as CMMMO (Chief Marketing, Merriment, and Motivation Officer) of Big Imagination, a nonprofit that fuels bold and inspiring projects for the betterment of humanity.

As our first initiative, we converted a Boeing 747–300 jumbo jet into the biggest moving art installation the world has ever seen. After four years of building by our community, The 747 Project premiered at Burning Man — and it will find its forever home later this year in downtown Las Vegas, where it will be installed permanently as an immersive gathering space. Our project was built by hundreds, funded by thousands, and shared by millions. And everyone will always be welcome aboard.

When we named ourselves Big Imagination, it was because we wanted to take magical, seemingly impossible ideas and make them a reality — motivating people to think differently about themselves and the world’s challenges. And I know that the world needs big imaginations now more than ever.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

I’m a tremendous fan of Ryan Holiday and what he’s done to bring Stoic philosophy to modern day. One of my favorite quotes is this one from Epictetus, Discourses, 4.4.39: “Keep this thought at ready at daybreak and throughout the day — there is only one path to happiness, and that is giving up all outside of your sphere of choice.”

When I stepped back and began recognizing the distinction between what was up to me (in my control) and not up to me (not in my control), it made me feel much more calm and centered. I understood that expending valuable energy and emotion on the things that were not in my control was not a productive use of my time — and time is my most valuable resource. I know who I am and what I stand for. And I try to focus on things I can control through the decisions I actively make.

How can our readers follow you online?

The best way to follow me is to subscribe to my weekly Brands That Get You newsletter where I give away my secrets that drive the world’s best brands.

You can also visit my website and follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Thank you so much for these excellent insights! We wish you continued success in your work.

Brand Makeovers: Kimberly Brizzolara of ‘Brands That Get You’ On The 5 Things You Should Do To… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Shaya Zihajehzadeh of…

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Shaya Zihajehzadeh of FORM

Always maintain a healthy life-work balance. Don’t compromise life for work or the other way around. After years I realized that it’s possible to have a better balance by proper planning and having honest conversations about what matters to you.

Shaya Zihajehzadeh is a senior data scientist at FORM where she develops AI algorithms for the FORM Smart Swim Goggles, a pair of smart swimming goggles that feature an augmented reality display that shows real-time performance swim metrics to swimmers. She got her PhD degree in 2017 and has been working on AR products over the past 10 years. She is interested in the development of robust and computationally efficient sensor fusion and machine learning algorithms for wearable sensors primarily targeted at health, fitness, and active sports applications.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

I was born and raised in Iran. My father was a university professor in economics, and our house was always filled with books. I grew up loving to read and was very curious about how things worked. I went as far as breaking things apart, just to understand them and then put then repiece them back together. Back then, it never occurred to me I would end up in STEM.

I graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering in Iran before moving to Canada to pursue my PhD. When I first arrived, what struck me most was the immense nature and Canada’s multicultural society. Now I call beautiful Vancouver, BC, my home.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

Working in a male-dominated profession, I’ve always benefited from building up my self-confidence to be my best self at work. I enjoy reading self-help books that better both my personal and professional life.

One book I’d recommend is “The Gifts of Imperfection” by Brené Brown. This book is about improving your well-being and finding self-acceptance. It helps readers embrace their imperfections and accept themselves for who they are, rather than trying hard to live a fake life in a bid to impress others.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in the AR industry? We’d love to hear it.

The very first AR product that I worked on was actually a very interesting one that inspired me to pursue my career in this industry.

I worked at sports technology company Recon in 2012, helping develop smart ski goggles with a heads-up display (HUD). Back in those days, I didn’t know how to ski, but that internship inspired me, and by the end of my term, I was hitting the slopes.

After finishing at Recon, I was inspired to stay in the sports tech industry. From smart ski goggles, I began developing algorithms for smart glasses with a HUD for cycling and running and then on to my current work, smart swimming goggles.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?

I think the most exciting job in my career so far is the job I have! I’m a Senior Data Scientist at FORM, where I develop algorithms for FORM Smart Swim Goggles, the world’s first augmented reality (AR) swim goggles. These swim goggles allow swimmers to see their performance metrics like pace per 100, distance, calories and stroke rate in the see-through AR display in real-time.

My love for swimming has deep roots in my childhood. I was a toddler when I first began swimming lessons, and that love for swimming only grew when I started to swim competitively later on.

As a swimmer, this is my dream job.

Being at FORM lets me apply my skills as a data scientist and marry them to my sport and develop a product to help swimmers of every level.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I’ve made many mistakes along the way and I try to learn from each one of them. It’s funny, when I look back, I thought I should know everything, but I was also shy about asking questions. I spent a lot of time figuring things out on my own that could have easily been solved by asking simple questions from the right person.

Over time I realized that I’m not supposed to know everything; I should ask questions even if they seem silly.

My PhD supervisor, Dr. Ed Park is one of the most influential people in my new life in Canada. It wasn’t easy to leave my friends and family behind to come to Canada. When I first arrived, Dr. Park was the only person I knew and his supervision in my degree helped me get to where I am today.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Urm…I have a different project at the moment! I recently had a baby, and he takes up most of my time!

When I do get some free time, I read about state-of-the-art data science techniques and their applications. When I do head back to work, I can’t wait to use these new techniques to develop new exciting features for the FORM goggles!

The VR, AR, and MR technologies have many applications, and I’m most excited about their applications in healthcare and education. The fact is that soon, these technologies will become an integral part of our everyday lives.

In healthcare, these technologies can be used for the early detection of diseases through longitudinal monitoring of patient’s data and detecting subtle changes. Monitoring micro-movements of our head, torso, hands and eyes can tell us about a person’s cognitive and physical function, and even detect diseases such as schizophrenia, anxiety, depression and autism. These technologies have already been adopted in therapy where they can be used to treat patients with anxiety disorders and phobias.

What are the 3 things that concern you about the VR, AR and MR industries? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

I’m mainly concerned about the effect of these technologies on physical and mental health as well as the potential privacy issues.

For example, AR or VR headsets’ prolonged use could introduce users to new safety risks not typically associated with electronic devices. These risks may include neck issues and headaches and prolonged exposure to potentially harmful optical radiation.

Social isolation is also a concerning aspect of these technologies. The whole VR experience takes place within a single user’s field of vision and excludes others from physically participating with them.

Moreover, when using AR applications in the real world, we reveal vast amounts of information about ourselves. This information ranges from our behaviour and movement in virtual environments and facial expressions, speech data or even eye movement patterns which can be used to uniquely identify us.

As we develop these technologies, it’s crucial to ensure their impact on our lives and wellbeing is carefully considered. This should not be an afterthought to alleviate potential damage but baked-in as a fundamental part of their development.

I think the entertainment aspects of VR, AR and MR are apparent. Can you share with our readers how these industries can help us at work?

These industries have significantly impacted the way we train in the workplace. They support a faster learning curve by providing immersive demos and step-by-step tutorials in context with the subject matter’s physical manifestations.

Complicated 2-D schematics in a manual can become interactive 3-D holograms that walk the user through the process. Through virtual experiences workers such as first responders and emergency utility crews can safely be trained on how to undertake potentially dangerous tasks.

Are there other ways that VR, AR and MR can improve our lives? Can you explain?

AR, VR and MR are not futuristics technologies looking for mainstream usefulness; they’re certainly changing how we lead our lives. Some applications have already been integrated in our everyday experiences. The backup cameras on today’s cars, for instance, with superimposed digital guidelines for parking is a form of XR most drivers now take for granted.

In fitness, AR can help us stay focused and take part in exercise by offering an element of fun at the same time. If you spend time in the gym, then it can revolutionize your workouts.

Many of us find that we learn more efficiently when we see things visually and so, augmented reality is encouraging this form of learning. Teachers and students are beginning to benefit from AR as it enables them to learn topics such as astronomy at a faster rate.

These are just a few applications. These technologies make it possible to visualize, make decisions and enrich our lives in ways that give us the power to improve the way we live.

More than ever before in history, girls are studying and excelling in STEM. However, this increase in girls in STEM is not yet matched by similar increases in the representation of women working as engineers.

STEM fields are often viewed as masculine, and teachers and parents often underestimate girls’ math abilities as early as preschool.

As parents, we should work hard to break these gender stereotypes in early childhood.

In the workplace, we need to create a culture where women feel welcome. Recruiting, retaining and promoting women in STEM does not just happen–it has to be driven very deliberately.

Every aspect of a company’s culture including the recruitment process and the promotion needs to be monitored, re-evaluated and fine-tuned. This gender diversity in the workforce ultimately enhances creativity, productivity, and innovation.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about working in your industry? Can you explain what you mean?

As a data scientist, most people think you have to be a mathematical genius. This myth comes from a lack of understanding about what a data scientist actually does.

Although a data scientist should have a deep understanding of statistics, probability and predictive models, with the sophisticated software we use, today’s data scientists need to focus on understanding the interpretation.

So if someone is interested in data science but is intimidated by the mathematical complexity that seems to come with it–they need to think again!

What are your “5 Leadership Lessons I Learned From My Experience as a Woman in Tech” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

Always be yourself. Staying true to your own personality is ultimately what makes us unique–that’s our strongest asset and biggest contribution to the workplace.

Never stop learning! Mentoring is also a great opportunity for us to learn as well. You can’t teach something unless you learn all aspects of it.

Trust yourself to share your new ideas and thoughts.

Be receptive to negative comments. Negative feedback can be valuable because it allows us to monitor our performance and make the important changes we need to make.

Always maintain a healthy life-work balance. Don’t compromise life for work or the other way around. After years I realized that it’s possible to have a better balance by proper planning and having honest conversations about what matters to you.

Technology has proved an effective organizing tool in support of peace. If I could inspire a movement, I’d like to widen access to technology for women in rural areas and developing countries, reduce social barriers, and promote gender inequality.

There are several people that I’d like to meet if I could! If I want to pick one, I’d pick Oprah Winfrey, who is one of the most influential women in the world.

Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success on your great work!

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Shaya Zihajehzadeh of… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Stanley M Bergman of Henry Schein Inc: 5 Steps That Each Of Us Can Take To Proactively Help Heal Ou

Stanley M. Bergman of Henry Schein Inc: 5 Steps That Each Of Us Can Take To Proactively Help Heal Our Country

Recognize the vital role of physicians, including dentists — The current vaccine roll-out does not fully recognize the vital role of primary-care physicians and other office-based practitioners, including dentists, in the effort to expand COVID vaccination nationwide. Office-based practitioners have deep, trust-based relationships with patients and understand their health histories. Polls show patients much prefer to get a shot from their doctors, who can administer both the vaccine and the truth. As trusted leaders within their communities, office-based practitioners can help their patients overcome vaccine hesitancy, reduce health inequities, and ultimately ensure more patients are vaccinated.

As part of our series about 5 Steps That Each Of Us Can Take To Proactively Help Heal Our Country, I had the pleasure of interviewing Stanley M. Bergman, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Henry Schein, Inc.

Since 1989, Stanley M. Bergman has been Chairman of the Board and CEO of Henry Schein, Inc., a Fortune 500® company and the world’s largest provider of health care products and services to office-based dental and medical practitioners, with more than 19,000 Team Schein Members and operations or affiliates in 31 countries and territories. Henry Schein is a member of the S&P 500® index. In 2020, the Company’s sales reached $10.1 billion. Henry Schein has been a Fortune World’s Most Admired Company for 20 consecutive years.

Mr. Bergman serves as a board member or advisor for numerous institutions including New York University College of Dentistry; the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine; the Columbia University Medical Center; University of the People; Hebrew University; Tel Aviv University; the University of the Witwatersrand Fund; The World Economic Forum’s Health Care Governors; the Business Council for International Understanding; the Japan Society; and the Metropolitan Opera. Mr. Bergman is an honorary member of the American Dental Association and the Alpha Omega International Dental Society. Mr. Bergman is the recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor; the CR Magazine Corporate Responsibility Lifetime Achievement Award; the 2017 CEO of the Year award by Chief Executive Magazine; Honorary Doctorates from The University of the Witwatersrand, Western University of Health Sciences, Hofstra University, A.T. Still University’s Arizona School of Dentistry and Oral Health, Case Western Reserve University, and Farmingdale State College (SUNY); and Honorary Fellowships from King’s College London — Dental Institute and the International College of Dentists.

Mr. Bergman, his wife, Marion, and their family are active supporters of organizations fostering the arts, higher education, cultural diversity, and grassroots health care and sustainable entrepreneurial economic development initiatives in the United States, Africa, and other developing regions of the world.

Mr. Bergman is a graduate of The University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and is a South African Chartered Accountant and a NYS Certified Public Accountant (CPA).

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you. Can you tell us a bit about how you grew up?

My wife, Marion, and I were born and educated in South Africa. My parents, Arnold and Ruth, were refugees from Nazi Germany. They came over to South Africa in 1936 and opened a store. They were brave, hard-working people.

We lived in the city of Port Elizabeth in an area called South End. By the late 1960s, South End was still one of the few remaining racially integrated communities in apartheid South Africa, and I was fortunate enough to grow up there. During my youth and into adulthood, I learned the richness of diversity and the special community that is built through a deep understanding and connection to other cultures. Then the apartheid regime destroyed the vibrant harmony of our South End community. Neighbors were forced apart, and my parents, friends, and hundreds of small business owners were forced to relocate to segregated neighborhoods.

Bearing witness to the horrors of apartheid, my wife, Marion, and I left South Africa early in our professional careers to raise a family in a free society where everyone had equal opportunity. Here in America, we cherish the idea that all people have the opportunity to choose their destiny — to advance and optimize their own careers and live by their own personal values. We deeply appreciated how much was possible in this land of opportunity when we arrived all those years ago, and we continue to believe that no dream is too big for America.

Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

Mandela’s Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age, by Richard Stengel and President Nelson Mandela, made a significant impact on my understanding of what it means to be a resilient leader. The book is filled with wonderful lessons from President Mandela that are illustrated with fascinating stories from his life. President Mandela was committed to being a leader and standing for his beliefs, even when he was in shackles. When he was released from prison, one of his first acts was to invite his jailer to visit his home as his guest. They ate together. That impressed me as an act of profound leadership.

President Mandela also communicated that courage is not the absence of fear — it is learning to overcome it. Courage is the way we choose to be, and it is displayed in large and small ways. We will be faced with countless challenges in our business. It is learning how to be determined to courageously overcome those challenges that will make us stronger individuals and a stronger company.

As shared often with our Team Schein Members, sometimes the challenges that we face may seem daunting. As we face the many challenges in our lives and in business, we also should keep in mind President Mandela’s words that “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” Whatever one’s professional or personal goals, remember that many of today’s advancements and accomplishments were once considered impossible.

Do you have a favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life or your work?

One must “think big” and never accept no as an answer. “Thinking small” will keep you safe, but likely stationary. However, if you “think big,” there is a good chance that your goals will be within reach. As Robert Kennedy said, “Some men (and women) see things as they are and say, ‘why?’ I dream things that never were and say, ‘why not?’” I have come to realize that “why not?” is one of the most important questions to continually ask oneself throughout our lives.

How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?

When I was 16 and 17 years of age, I helped organize summer camps for a youth movement in Port Elizabeth, which focused on taking small steps to improve our world. That experience taught me to be optimistic and always look for the good in people. Even today as a CEO, I still strive to apply the leadership lessons I learned as a camp counselor: treat people how you want to be treated, engage everyone in the mission, there is a role for each individual, and every individual can make a difference.

We all need mentors, and we all should be a mentor to others. I encourage everyone to seek out caring people as mentors. There are so many good people in the world. The wonderful mentors in my life have made all the difference.

There was Jay Schein, who invited me to be a part of his family’s business. Jay believed in giving young passionate associates a chance and mentoring these young people. I had just turned 30 years old when I joined Henry Schein, and Jay asked me to raise $3 million for the business. The only loan I knew about at this time was for a $2,000 automobile loan, but Jay had the confidence in me, which in turn gave me confidence. He entrusted his family company’s continued growth to me upon his untimely death in 1989.

Then there was the late Dr. Edward B. Shils, who pioneered the field of entrepreneurial studies, and in 1973 founded and led the world’s first center for dedicated research and teaching on Entrepreneurship, at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He was the first academic to write about “intrapreneurship,” which is entrepreneurship within a large organization. He helped us learn how to be comfortable while working through ambiguity, recognizing that important decisions are not always clear, but more often shaded.

There are my colleagues at Henry Schein, who inspire me every day with their fresh perspectives and prove that “teamwork makes a dream work.” There is our conservative Chief Financial Officer, who has never seen a deal that he likes, and our exuberant Chief Strategic Officer, who has never seen a deal that he does not like. Together they provide a clear view of the left and the right. There is the Vice Chairman of Henry Schein and my partner of 45 years, who helps focus on our priorities by reminding us that “we can do anything, but we can’t do everything.” There is our Chief Administrative Officer, who heads up human resources and drives our company’s value-based culture of caring about others. And there are the millennials, who are bringing an entirely new set of expectations and enthusiasm to the workforce, and who certainly will be a great generation as they grapple with the huge challenges of our time. These young individuals remind me that organizations do not need “bosses.” Organizations need leaders who will be coaches, facilitators, and mentors — leaders who will inspire us and support people and ideas.

Muhammad Ali once said, “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth.” I urge everyone to give back by being a mentor to others. You will receive much more than you give.

The global health care ecosystem, indeed, the entire global community, continues to experience the unprecedented and devastating impact of COVID-19. From the beginning of this crisis, Henry Schein has focused on working to ensure the availability of vital personal protective equipment (PPE) and other health care products, tests, and now advocating for vaccines to be administered by office-based physicians and dentists.

We are concerned that current COVID-19 vaccine distribution efforts in the U.S. do not fully recognize the vital role that physicians and other office-based practitioners can play in getting shots into as many patients’ arms as possible as quickly as possible. As a result, we are advocating for physicians’ and dentists’ engagement in COVID-19 vaccine distribution.

As one of the nation’s largest distributors of flu and other vaccines to office-based health care practitioners (where the majority of Americans receive their inoculations), we have historically aligned with health care professional associations and others to advocate for their practice and professional needs, especially in this most challenging period. We also know that these providers maintain long-term and trusted relationships with their patients, which is particularly important for communities of color from a health-equity perspective.

Of course, we fully support all avenues to achieve widespread immunization. We are not advocating for one channel of distribution of vaccines over another. Instead, our view is that multiple channels are vital in this effort to overcome vaccine hesitancy and speed the process, but that the system, thus far, isn’t fully leveraging primary care physicians and dentists.

This is likely a huge topic. But briefly, can you share your view on how this crisis evolved to the point that it’s at now?

For decades, warnings have gone around and around, cautioning the world to prepare for a pandemic. Throughout those decades, we’ve seen occasional attention paid by the general public to the subject of pandemic preparedness. Unfortunately, despite all the warnings from infectious disease experts and the broader medical community, many tend to have short memories. Heightened concern during every outbreak of a virus tends to fade over time. This is human nature.

Perhaps now, as the novel coronavirus continues to surge in cities around the world, our response will be different. That’s not just mere optimism; there’s good reason for hope. We are optimistic that this time, with the coronavirus front and center, the world will fully appreciate the importance of pandemic preparedness now and in the future.

We want to emerge stronger than ever from this crisis. To do that, we need to break the circle of interest and disinterest so that we, as global citizens, finally learn the lesson that preparedness matters. It matters if we are to strengthen the receiving, distributing, and dispensing of our Strategic National Stockpile, implement a coordinated vaccination dissemination plan to get “shots in arms,” and leverage the nation’s trusted community of physicians and dentists in the administration of the COVID-19 vaccine as more supply becomes available.

Can you tell our readers a bit about your experience either working on this cause or your experience being impacted by it? Can you share a story with us?

Henry Schein has long advocated that in our increasingly interconnected world, a health crisis anywhere is a global health crisis everywhere. Infectious diseases do not carry passports.

In 2015, we called on the WEF to think collectively about pandemic preparedness and response, and for leaders from all sectors of society to come together as partners with a shared vision of creating a safer world through more effective pandemic preparedness and response. The GAVI Alliance, a public–private global health partnership that increases access to immunization in poor countries was founded at the WEF, as was the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), an innovative global partnership with public, private, philanthropic, and civil society organizations working together to accelerate the development of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases. However, we knew that it was equally as important to establish a partnership aimed at strengthening the supply chain for PPE. This led to the formation at the WEF of the Pandemic Supply Chain Network (PSCN), a public-private partnership created to improve the efficiency of the supply chain for PPE.

We were deeply concerned about the fragility of the PPE supply chain and that much of the PPE was primarily sourced from just a few places in the world. In our view, relying on subsidies to build factories in the midst of a pandemic is not the answer. We need to ensure that factories remain open once the pandemic has passed and that the price of PPE stabilizes so that domestic manufacturers can compete. It was also troublesome that there was no organized emergency product list and no directory of information regarding where to get those products when an emergency struck. It was obvious that a common understanding among stakeholders of the key medical supplies needed to effectively respond during a health crisis would be critical to supporting emergency responders.

As the co-founder and private-sector lead of the PSCN, Henry Schein has been in direct contact with the World Health Organization (WHO) and other multilateral and domestic organizations from the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, we have partnered closely with the U.S. government and other industry partners as a participant in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) COVID-19 Supply Chain Task Force (originally managed by the White House and then FEMA). We worked with the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) to deliver essential products to COVID-19 testing sites. We also worked with the U.S. government to source and accelerate the availability of PPE for front-line health workers where they were needed most. Because we were the only member of the task force to serve both the dental and medical community, we have been uniquely positioned to engage with government officials and health agencies on the unique needs of oral health professionals.

Ok. Here is the main question of our discussion. Can you please share your “5 Steps That Each Of Us Can Take To Proactively Help Heal Our Country”. Kindly share a story or example for each.

In support of the U.S. government’s efforts to end the COVID-19 pandemic, here are five steps that can be taken to help heal our country.

Step 1 — Recognize the vital role of physicians, including dentists

The current vaccine roll-out does not fully recognize the vital role of primary-care physicians and other office-based practitioners, including dentists, in the effort to expand COVID vaccination nationwide. Office-based practitioners have deep, trust-based relationships with patients and understand their health histories. Polls show patients much prefer to get a shot from their doctors, who can administer both the vaccine and the truth. As trusted leaders within their communities, office-based practitioners can help their patients overcome vaccine hesitancy, reduce health inequities, and ultimately ensure more patients are vaccinated.

Step 2: Provide education on the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccine

We live in a world, unfortunately, that increasingly distrusts science. As a result, too many people question scientific advances such as the new vaccines developed using mRNA technology. Office-based physicians know their patients, and patients trust what they learn from their physicians, who understand immunology and can explain in detail how the vaccines work, why they are safe, and why getting everyone vaccinated as soon as possible is vital to restoring public health.

A successful vaccination campaign requires trust, education, and accessibility. We must focus on these three pillars to overcome the barriers that contribute to the lower vaccination rates we see in communities of color. Trust is the foundation of the relationship between patients and health care providers. Trust is key to transforming a vaccine into vaccination.

Step 3 — Accelerate vaccination process across the nation

This is a huge missed opportunity to accelerate vaccination across the nation. Office-based practitioners have a physical presence in every community nationwide — large and small, rural, and urban. This is where the majority of Americans already receive flu and other vaccines from office-based physicians. If just 100,000 physicians delivered 10 shots a day, we would have 60 million additional “shots in arms” in two months.

Step 4 — Advocate for vaccine equity

COVID has laid bare the terrible racial inequities in access to care we face in this country. It is imperative that all sectors work together to ensure fair and accessible care, vaccination, information, and affordable testing. Building equity in plans to distribute the vaccines, including culturally sensitive, multi-lingual outreach tailored for local communities, will also be essential for closing gaps in health outcomes.

On March 16, 2021, 24 members of Congress sent a Congressional letter urging federal officials to include primary-care physicians and other office-based practitioners, including dentists, in the effort to expand COVID vaccination nationwide. In addition to members of Congress, senior government officials and leading minority health professionals have been providing up-to-date information relevant to minority health professionals on the epidemiology, prevention, and treatment of COVID-19.

Step 5 — Continue to practice social distancing and wear a face covering

We all have a responsibility to protect ourselves, our families, and our communities by continuing to practice social distancing and wearing a face covering. Recent reports from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) affirm that “a cloth face covering is a critical tool in the fight against COVID-19” and in reducing the spread of the disease, particularly when used universally within communities. There is also increasing evidence that maintaining physical distance, of at least three to six feet, can help prevent people who have COVID-19 from spreading the virus to others.

We recognize that there may be no single solution to this issue, but our experience has taught us we can’t get there unless we engage the community, invest in creating cultural competency throughout the health care chain, and support the development, recruitment, and retention needs of diverse professionals.

As an example, we have partnered with the Black Coalition Against COVID (BCAC), a Washington, D.C.-based community initiative that seeks to provide trustworthy, science-based, information curated for the Black community about COVID-19 and the vaccine development process in an effort to help save Black lives at the national and local levels. Together with BCAC, we are addressing the significant lags in vaccination rates and working together to offer action-oriented strategies to accelerate equitable access to the COVID-19 vaccine.

In 2020, BCAC launched “Making it Plain,” a local and national level series of educational, open-forum virtual town hall conversations led by senior government officials and leading minority health professionals on the epidemiology, prevention, and treatment of COVID-19. Since its inception, we have held sessions focused on “Minority Health Professionals and COVID-19 Vaccine Dissemination,” and “What Black America Needs to Know About COVID-19 and Vaccines.” Recently, we held a third town hall for minority health professionals that emphasized the vital resource primary-care physicians and dentists are in the COVID-19 vaccination effort because of the high level of trust they have with their patients, their understanding of a patient’s health history, and their physical presence in every community across the country. Specifically, we spoke about the opportunities to complement existing distribution efforts as a way to strengthen equitable vaccine access and uptake by ensuring that all health care providers — in close partnership with community-based and faith-based organizations — have the dedicated resources and support needed to receive and administer the vaccine to their patients, especially to those who rely on and feel most comfortable visiting their local and trusted office-based provider. The fact that more than 29,000 health professionals tuned in for the event, clearly underscores the deep interest and engagement of health professionals in promoting vaccine equity.

To help reduce the spread of COVID-19, we also need to increase focus on promoting access to health among underserved communities. For example, the Henry Schein Cares Foundation, in partnership with The UPS Foundation, launched “Wearing is Caring,” a public health awareness campaign designed to raise awareness of health care disparities in underserved communities, the need for social distancing, and the importance of wearing face coverings to help reduce the spread of COVID-19 in hot spots. The campaign is aligned with guidance from the CDC and WHO that encourages the use of cotton or cloth face coverings in public spaces to reduce community spread.

To help address the health disparities that have impacted communities of color, we have donated face coverings to local safety net health systems and other local partners in support of CDC Foundation’s Crush COVID initiative, which supports health equity and investing in communities disproportionately impacted by coronavirus as a key pillar.

The ‘Wearing is Caring’ campaign is another demonstration of Henry Schein Cares Foundation’s commitment to help advocate for public health, health equity, and wellness. Together with non-profit organizations and valued supplier partners, our foundation can help support local safety net health systems, which provide essential care for those most in need.

We are going through a rough period now. Are you optimistic that this issue can eventually be resolved? Can you explain?

We are incredibly optimistic that we can make a difference and the dental industry’s advocacy efforts are beginning to take effect. On March 11, 2021, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services amended an emergency declaration under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act) to permit dentists and dental students, among other providers, to administer COVID-19 vaccines. The federal declaration allows licensed dentists nationwide to administer COVID-19 vaccines. At least 28 states allow dentists to administer COVID-19 vaccines, and the amendment overrules state laws that prohibit dentists from doing so, according to the American Dental Association. By making COVID vaccines available to physicians and dentists, we would open hundreds of thousands of additional vaccination sites in the U.S., enhance vaccine uptake, reduce health inequities, and accelerate the nation’s efforts to return to normalcy.

If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?

My advice to young people from my cumulative life experiences is to give back. The more you give, the more you get back, and the best way to do well is to do good. As business leaders, we have a moral obligation to act in the service of society. My childhood lessons from my parents helped me understand that as business leaders we also have an obligation to be responsive and responsible leaders who contribute to the greater good of society. It also makes good business sense, as Benjamin Franklin’s idea of enlightened self-interest illustrates — businesses, universities, and communities cannot succeed in failed societies. As you move forward, find innovative ways to partner with others, in the public and private sectors, in the service of society. Doing well by doing good really works.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂

I would love to have lunch with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to underscore the importance of oral health to overall health and the crucial role that oral health care practitioners play in the health care continuum. There is an increasing body of evidence that underscores the close connections between periodontal disease and many non-communicable diseases, such as cancer and diabetes, along with Alzheimer’s and heart disease. Oral health is a key component of primary care, and dentists need to be involved in an individual’s overall health. During the pandemic, oral health care practitioners played a key role in our front-line response, but they could not always procure the necessary quantities of PPE, COVID tests, and now vaccines. As a nation, we have made substantial progress on vaccinations, and we applaud the Administration’s focus on health equity. To get even more shots in arms, we need to elevate the role of primary-care physicians and other office-based practitioners, including dentists, in the United States and around the world in addressing global pandemic response, remembering that viruses don’t carry passports and that we need to protect and vaccinate everyone to truly defeat the pandemic.

How can our readers follow you online?

Your readers can follow me on LinkedIn and learn more about Henry Schein’s business and corporate social responsibility programs at Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!

Stanley M Bergman of Henry Schein Inc: 5 Steps That Each Of Us Can Take To Proactively Help Heal Ou was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A Hogwarts-Equivalent For Children: Sigourney Belle’s Big Idea That Might Change The World

Teaching people from a young age to follow their intuition is the pathway to their genius. If more people are living from their genius, we can create so much more in the world. If children are aligning themselves with their intuition, they’ll be more confident and successful. Right now, our schooling system focuses on what society says a person should do and how they should act. In the schooling world I’d like to create, people would have the ability to find out what they want to do for themselves, without people telling them otherwise.

As a part of my series about “Big Ideas That Might Change The World In The Next Few Years” I had the pleasure of interviewing Sigourney Belle Weldon.

Sigourney Belle Weldon is an entrepreneur, author, spiritual teacher and business medicine facilitator. She made the conscious choice to embrace her authenticity in life, soul and business, which has helped her achieve net-new and greater successes. She has created and scaled several successful businesses globally and has coached thousands of clients worldwide as a business oracle through her revolutionary spiritual healing modality, the Feminine Frequency Formula. Sigourney is also the author of the internationally best-selling book, Leviathan. In her latest book, Wild Business, she offers readers a new paradigm of business consciousness by overthrowing the conventional rules and norms of our society and creating a positive movement to ensure more people, especially women, succeed in business by dropping their façade and realigning with their core truth(s). She is the founder of The Dark Empire, a full-scale branding machine that helps companies successfully build out their brand identity and establish a meaningful digital presence. Sigourney also counsels companies on strategic planning, presentation mastery, exploration and innovation.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you please tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Ever since I was a child, I’ve been a very intuitive person, and I always knew that I was destined to help people. I grew up constantly questioning mainstream education and business models and knew that my beliefs didn’t align with the status quo. It wasn’t until I had a near death experience at 26 years old that I began to understand what my purpose in life was.

I was on a trip to India visiting a boy I’d been supporting through his schooling. We happily met up to share a meal. Knowing that I enjoy trying to live like the locals do on my travels, he suggested we meet at a casual local restaurant that he said had the best food in town. Even though I was hesitant, I decided to try the restaurant. Unfortunately, my intuition was right, and the next day, I got really sick. After a week in bed without food or water, the owner of the hostel I was staying in came to check on me and arranged for me to be taken to a local hospital.

I was diagnosed with dysentery, a bacterial infection that had left me incapacitated and very near to death. I was paralyzed, but it felt more like I was experiencing some sort of spiritual awakening versus a physical death. While brutal, this near-death experience led me directly to the work I do today, and to where I personally feel the most fulfilled: helping others overcome their physical, spiritual and inherited pains and drawing them closer to their divine, eternal being.

Can you please share with us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

After many years of working in traditional therapy and holistic healing, I decided that I wanted to pause this career path to become an author. At that time, I used to use a raven wing for healing and I had lost it. In a ritual I did after losing the wing, I called it in to get another one. A week later, a girl named Raven contacted me saying she really loved what I stood for and wanted to ghost write my next book. I felt like the universe was confirming that my work as an author was meant to be!

Which principles or philosophies have guided your life? Your career?

I have one philosophy that coincides with both life and career: I believe that sovereignty of choice and freedom are imperative in building a business. Our traditional business models don’t allow for personal power + freedom to be had, and COVID-19 is shifting this. It is making us all slow down, reassess our lives and sit with what we truly want. Many people are breaking free of mainstream business models to start working for themselves. When you have sovereignty in your life, your career strengthens and vice versa.

Okay, thank you for that. Let’s now move to the main focus of our interview. Can you tell us about your “Big Idea That Might Change The World”?

I want to have principles of magic and intuition taught in schooling systems. I can visualize starting a Hogwarts-equivalent for children starting at a young age. Children innately follow their intuition, and when they step into the adult world, it gets rejected because society tells us how to live. We’re told what’s the norm and what not, and if you don’t follow the status quo, you’re thought to be an outsider. This is why if we teach people to follow their intuition rather than being taught that there’s only one right way to do something, we would see more people thriving in our society.

How do you think this will change the world?

Teaching people from a young age to follow their intuition is the pathway to their genius. If more people are living from their genius, we can create so much more in the world. If children are aligning themselves with their intuition, they’ll be more confident and successful. Right now, our schooling system focuses on what society says a person should do and how they should act. In the schooling world I’d like to create, people would have the ability to find out what they want to do for themselves, without people telling them otherwise.

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this idea that people should think more deeply about?

Children need guidance because their logical minds are still developing. If you let their intuition run free while they’re learning, that’s also an issue. With too much freedom, there’s a possibility for chaos, without order. I believe that it is important, within cultures, that elders’ wisdom is respected, provided the information and teachings are appropriate for those learning. Where this becomes difficult is that each individual operates differently. I believe we need models which are able to support the individual learning blueprint of a child, not a one size fits all approach.

Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this idea? Can you tell us that story?

I was a “bad” student from the start. Well, not really bad, but I just didn’t fit into mainstream education models. Because my intuition was so strong and I didn’t agree with what society was telling me was correct, I couldn’t absorb any of the information being taught because it didn’t interest me. I was hard to discipline and created a lot of issues for myself in school. However, this is because I didn’t have a model that worked for me and I needed to be able to explore creatively. This is why I’d like to provide others with this model to emulate. To keep children connected to the realms of imagination & magic.

What do you need to lead this idea to widespread adoption?

Firstly, a system which supports us to assess learning styles and individual blueprints. I dream of a schooling system where we are aware of children’s astrology charts, amongst other maps which help us to assess the individual learning needs and genius of a child.

We would need to actually show that this model works. We need to inform teachers on how this practice works and let them transition to it slowly. It can’t happen overnight. It’s also important that the teachers understand this model and lead by example. With this, we can show that the practice really works and provide a model for future generations.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)

The roadblocks I hit are there to teach me: In the beginning I thought every roadblock was there to tear me down. However, I’ve found that these aren’t setbacks in my career. Rather, they are showing me what I need to move toward. The first year I started my business, I had legal problems come up. While this was detrimental at the time, it showed me that I needed all of the appropriate law contracts in place before anything else.
Outsource anything that isn’t your genius: For a while, I had people on my team who didn’t align with my beliefs. However, it wasn’t until one time that I was bitten by a tick and got very sick that I realized the people on my team weren’t there for the right reasons and didn’t support me. After returning from my illness, the people on my team had all left the company. I found this ironic because a tick represents something being sucked out of you, and that’s kind of what my team was doing to me. They were taking from the business, but not adding to it. Realizing this gave me the opportunity to find people who really aligned with my beliefs. Since then, all team members that have joined me have stayed by my side for a year or more.
Be honest about the work you’re doing: There was one woman who came into a job at my company, but she didn’t like being there and she neglected to share that information with me. She ended up taking a few too many risks for my business that had the potential to ruin a lot of relationships I had made. If she had only spoken up, this could have been avoided. I was also extremely busy at that time and was not spending enough time checking in with the team- this has prompted me to have more regular review dates to ensure that my team members are satisfied and enjoying working within my business; which is of utmost importance as I want my team to thrive.
Have patience: Know that it takes time. Pace yourself and don’t burn yourself out. In the beginning of my business, I wanted everything to go right, so I overdid it. I worked extra hours, and did everything I could to get my business off the ground. This nonstop lifestyle takes its toll after a while. Now that I’m pregnant, I can see the toll that overworking took on me, and now it’s my opportunity to slow down and take it all in.
Know that people want to support you: You need to believe that you’re worthy of support. I worked so much in the beginning of my career that I often forgot to look after my wellness. I wanted to do everything myself and didn’t ask for help. However, I had people around me that could have helped me be more successful and not have the massive burnout that I did: I just needed to know that I was worthy of that support, which after a lot of self work, I now do.

Can you share with our readers what you think are the most important “success habits” or “success mindsets”?

Having a morning daily ritual that includes visualisation + meditation is one of the best things that I do to have a successful mindset and bring ideas to life. If our creativity is stuck or stifled, we are not productive. Creating and maintaining a daily ritual opens up your mind and empowers you to achieve what you hope for in any given day.

Movement is also key. When our own life force is not engaged, our business will also become stagnant.

Moving your body and getting out into nature, to keep your energy and creative levels high. I personally receive one bodywork/energy alignment session a week, as well as exercising and getting out into nature daily. This ensures that my creative energy is flowing and not stagnant, which is essential in order to maintain a business that is thriving, innovative and alive.

Some very well known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

We are already looking for solutions as to how we can live on Mars, in case the Earth becomes inhabitable.

My desire is to see that this does not become the case; that we start tending to the environment we live in so that our children and the future generations are nourished by the land that they live on.

The change that we are needing right now, is largely dependent on the minds of the future generations to come. We’re at a pivotal point in the world where we can make a change, starting with our youngest generation. They are the generation that will help give back in philanthropic ways, and our energy should be spent making sure we are providing them with the resources needed to change the world for the better.

This is why I desire to recreate schooling systems that are using sustainable technology, that are working with/on the land and that support the individual genius and blueprint of a child to come alive.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sigourneybelle/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sigourneybelleasatara
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sigourneyweldon
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-IhYxWpMKzaMPPYiEtFNIg
Website: https://www.sigourneybelle.com

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.

A Hogwarts-Equivalent For Children: Sigourney Belle’s Big Idea That Might Change The World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Open Innovation: Warren Tuttle’s Big Idea That Might Change The World

If I can change the big companies, then I can change the world through them. Companies historically that have only developed new products inside the company are somewhat limited to opening up to many more possibilities that are across American and around the world. P&G learned that today — — 50% of their new products come from outside the company. As an expert in open innovation, I facilitate the grassroots innovation that is going on and give it a home in large companies to then take those products to market using their resources and brands. It’s a win-win for both the inventor and the company.

As a part of my series about “Big Ideas That Might Change The World In The Next Few Years” I had the pleasure of interviewing Warren Tuttle, author of “Inventor Confidential: The Honest Guide to Profitable Inventing” (HarperCollins, March 2021). Warren Tuttle takes his years and years of overseeing the Open Innovation product programs for leading companies in the housewares, table top, power tool, hardware and direct response television/As Seen on TV categories and sharing that knowledge of successful consumer product inventions with the public. Warren served as president of the non-profit United Inventors Association of America for 12 years.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you please tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I started my career as an entrepreneur. It was when I had one of my businesses when I met my first inventor of a consumer housewares product. I helped him launch his product which changed my life. Everything I have done since that time has been dedicated to helping inventors get their product to market which led me to setting up open innovation programs with several large consumer product/consumer goods companies.

Can you please share with us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

My first launch of an inventor product — — which is still one of my favorites — — was MISTO, the olive oil sprayer. The inventor came into my retail store 25 years ago and showed me the product which was quite novel. It was an alternative to using Pam, the supermarket oil sprayer. MISTO was environmentally save and heart-healthy. It was a pleasure to help him take the product out to retailers and customers across American and, eventually, around the world. It went on to sell many, many millions.

Which principles or philosophies have guided your life? Your career?

At the top of the list of principles is ethics. Running your business to reflect your own ethical principles is very important. It is all about striving for higher ethical standards. That involves always being up front with people even when the news is bad and being consistent and of your word. It’s particularly important when dealing with thousands of people. There is no time to not do the right thing. Integrity and my relationships with other human beings is what is most important in my life.

Ok thank you for that. Let’s now move to the main focus of our interview. Can you tell us about your “Big Idea That Might Change The World”?

My open innovation platform is quite unique. I serve as the bridge between two cultures: between large corporations and individual inventors. Believe me, they are totally two different cultures.

I have to introduce the cultures to one another, translate between them, vet things and I have to be very credible in both worlds to make licensing agreements happen. I am very good at it and have solidified many relationships. It has changed the world. While I’m not big enough by myself to change the world, if I can influence companies and individuals, then I have done my part to change the world through larger companies. Open innovation and the world of inventors is a game-changer.

How do you think this will change the world?

If I can change the big companies, then I can change the world through them.

Companies historically that have only developed new products inside the company are somewhat limited to opening up to many more possibilities that are across American and around the world. P&G learned that today — — 50% of their new products come from outside the company. As an expert in open innovation, I facilitate the grassroots innovation that is going on and give it a home in large companies to then take those products to market using their resources and brands. It’s a win-win for both the inventor and the company.

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this idea that people should think more deeply about?

We live in challenging times for inventors because they have to find the right path to market. What I do through open innovation, the “unintended consequences” could be if the inventor selects the wrong firm to work with and find out later that the relationship wasn’t all they had hoped it would be.

Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this idea? Can you tell us that story?

I had brought many different products to market on my own — — partnering directly with inventors — — when I met with the team at Lifetime Brands. They proposed that I come and work with them to help them build relationships with the inventors and inventor community. Starting with Lifetime Brands as their Open Innovation Director resulted in many licensing deals as well as my working with other companies securing over 100 licensing deals and working with many thousands of inventors. These products have generated well over one billion dollars in retail sales over the years.

It is that “tipping point,” that resulted in years and years of open innovation and working directly with inventors and as the backbone for writing “Inventor Confidential: The Honest Guide to Profitable Inventing.”

What do you need to lead this idea to widespread adoption? CAN WE CHANGE THIS QUESTION TO:

How do we grow the inventor community?

We need to educate inventors the right way to develop their products which includes building prototypes, filing for patents and give them a realistic path to approaching large companies for potential licensing agreements. The non-profit United Inventors Association is one step. Insights from “Inventor Confidential” is certainly another.

What are your “4 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)

How long the odds are for an inventor to have a successful product to be taken to market. Only a small percentage of inventors are successful which is why I am a big advocate in teaching them the right way. Inventors have to understand that the odds are long.
Be careful how you spend your money. As an inventor, you have many choices on how to spend your money and you have to be wise and prudent about where and when you spend your money.
I wish I knew more about the national innovation ecosystem and all of the different shareholders which include big tech, pharma, university inventors — because we all have our own self-interest. It is different for each group.
How hard writing a book is. Writing a book takes twice as long and is twice as hard as you ever dreamt possible. I certainly learned that when writing “Inventor Confidential.”

Can you share with our readers what you think are the most important “success habits” or “success mindsets”?

In the inventor world, it is being thorough and methodical. It is doing your due-diligence when you have an idea and doing a deep vetting of the marketplace. Building a prototype that proves function will lead to filing the proper patent claims.

Some very well-known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

There is not enough collaboration between independent innovators and large companies in America. That is primarily because both parties fear each other. I have proven that the two sides can work together. I am always available to help any inventor or company bridge that gap.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

https://inventorconfidential.com/

https://twitter.com/wwtuttle

https://www.instagram.com/tuttleinnovation/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/warrentuttle/

https://www.facebook.com/TuttleInnovation

https://www.amazon.com/Inventor-Confidential-Honest-Profitable-Inventing/dp/1400219574/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2TQ5LO6TINXAD&dchild=1&keywords=inventor+confidential&qid=1611343822&sprefix=Inventor+Confide%2Caps%2C140&sr=8-1

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.

Open Innovation: Warren Tuttle’s Big Idea That Might Change The World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Randy Carver of Carver Financial Services: Rising Through Resilience; Five Things You Can Do To…

Randy Carver of Carver Financial Services: Rising Through Resilience; Five Things You Can Do To Become More Resilient

To be resilient, you need to have a clear vision and passion that it’s still the main goal no matter what happens to you. I faced a lot of setbacks in my life, but my vision remained the same. I just had to find new and creative ways to achieve it. You might have to adjust your approach to reach your goal. In each instance, I used the setback as a new opportunity to learn about myself and added to my skill set.

In this interview series, we are exploring the subject of resilience among successful business leaders. Resilience is one characteristic that many successful leaders share in common, and in many cases it is the most important trait necessary to survive and thrive in today’s complex market.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Randy Carver.

Randy is President and founder of Carver Financial Services Inc., an independent registered investment advisor and he is a registered principal with Raymond James Financial Services Inc. (member FINRA/SIPC). After a lifetime of numerous health setbacks, Randy and his firm now manage in excess of $2 billion AUM for clients globally. For Randy, it’s not financial planning, it’s personal vision planning — defining a personal vision, designing a plan, and monitoring progress to ensure success.

Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory?

At the age of 12, I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Over the next three years, doctors worked to remove the entire lobe of my left lung, parts of my right lung, spleen, and thymus. I went through chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgeries. Later another mass needed to be removed that paralyzed my vocal cord. Incredibly, years later, after enduring all of that, I learned that I had been misdiagnosed and actually had malignant thymoma.

As a result of the time in the hospital, I missed a lot of school but became a fan of The Wall Street Journal. That is how I started to learn about financial markets, investing, and business. I started a catering business in my mom’s kitchen at 15 and then founded two successful home-renovation companies.

Once in college, I took what I learned from the Wall Street journal and would borrow money from my professors and invest it in futures. Upon graduation, I joined a brokerage firm but acquired enough clients to open my own branch four months later.

But, just two years later, I faced another setback when a single-engine plane I was piloting crashed. I suffered collapsed lungs, broken ribs, a cracked larynx, and a crushed nose. I couldn’t speak for almost a year.

While these experiences could have stopped anyone in their tracks, they spurred me to be more creative and resilient. A year after the crash, I founded Carver Financial Services Inc. in December of 1990, using my background as an innovative way to approach clients’ finances managing $2 billion.

Can you share with us the most interesting story from your career? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

In the mid-nineties, I could see email would be significant and there was no reliable local internet. With a partner we became an internet service provider. I’ve had a website since 1995, and was involved in internet radio more than 20 years ago. Due to my childhood setbacks, my mindset had developed into one where I saw possibilities of what could be for the future ahead of my competition.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

Most firms are investment centric. We work with clients to help them get clear on what’s important to them and then work to achieve it. We call our trade marked process Personal Vision Planning. The planning is based on your vision, not investments.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

Early on, there was one doctor in Toronto who kept saying he was going to save me. He looked for possibilities and solutions rather than focusing on the problem. This shaped my mindset personally and in the business world.

Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. We would like to explore and flesh out the trait of resilience. How would you define resilience? What do you believe are the characteristics or traits of resilient people?

It’s moving forward with your vision regardless of what happens. Picture a guy with a yo-yo walking up a hill, and the yo-yo is going up and down. If you’re focusing on the up and down, you don’t see the progress moving up. A resilient person has a specific vision, is passionate, persistent, and disciplined.

When you think of resilience, which person comes to mind? Can you explain why you chose that person?

I think about Elon Musk because he was told all the things he’s achieved were impossible and did them anyway. No one knew who he was 30 years ago. Richard Branson is another one. He’s done some amazing things and is entirely self-built. He didn’t even finish high school.

Has there ever been a time that someone told you something was impossible, but you did it anyway? Can you share the story with us?

I was told I wasn’t going to live when I was 12 years old. But I did. That experience shaped my mindset and was critical in leading to my success in the financial world.

Did you have a time in your life where you had one of your greatest setbacks, but you bounced back from it stronger than ever? Can you share that story with us?

Not being able to speak after my crash was a catastrophic setback when you’re in a sales role. But I focused on what I could gain versus what I was giving up. It made me a better listener, which helped me be more concise in what I was trying to say. This helped keep the business growing.

Did you have any experiences growing up that have contributed to building your resiliency? Can you share a story?

I was supposed to be an Outward Bound instructor and would have been one of the youngest instructors at 12. To be an instructor, I had to complete a physical where they found a huge mass in my chest. I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. St. Jude’s turned me away, and I was told I would be dead in six months. But we found doctors to treat me, and I survived.

Resilience is like a muscle that can be strengthened. In your opinion, what are 5 steps that someone can take to become more resilient? Please share a story or an example for each.

Create a vision.
Do one thing every day to make that vision a reality.
Develop a support team.
Use your time efficiently and prioritize tasks.
Look for the opportunity in every situation, especially the tough ones.

To be resilient, you need to have a clear vision and passion that it’s still the main goal no matter what happens to you. I faced a lot of setbacks in my life, but my vision remained the same. I just had to find new and creative ways to achieve it. You might have to adjust your approach to reach your goal. In each instance, I used the setback as a new opportunity to learn about myself and added to my skill set.

I think people need to take responsibility for their own futures financially. When I started in the business, people retired at 65, and they died at 69. Now people retire at 55, and they never die. There’s a price to that, and if people aren’t prepared. It’s going to hurt the country and people individually.

We are blessed that some very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them 🙂

Richard Branson. I find it very interesting what he’s done. You talk about persistence and thinking outside the box. I think I can relate to a lot of that.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

Facebook: @carverfinancialservicesinc

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!

Randy Carver of Carver Financial Services: Rising Through Resilience; Five Things You Can Do To… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Jieun Kim of Talespin

Support your peers. In one of my previous roles, I started and led a women-supporting group. It was a time for women to meet for casual discussions about any topic and feel safe to speak their minds. During our meetings, we discovered there was a recurring theme surrounding a point of confusion we all shared regarding how promotions happened and the right tools to navigate to the next level. I would encourage other women to start a similar women’s group to ideate, support each other and share new ideas.

Jieun Kim is a vice president of product at Talespin, where she brings over 20 years of product development expertise across emerging technologies, mass market consumer products, and spatial computing platforms. Kim joins Talespin to help scale its extended reality (XR) learning content library and training administration and skills data platform

Prior to Talespin, Kim served as the director of product at Boston Consulting Group Digital Ventures, where she focused on driving digital innovation for the company’s Fortune 500 clients and led the virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) practice. Previously, she was a senior staff member at Qualcomm, launching new AR experiences and helping partners bridge digital and physical worlds.

Earlier in her career, Kim spent five years at Disney as a product development manager leading software development, engineering, UI/UX design, branding and manufacturing. These businesses spanned consumer electronics, advanced tech toys, mobile apps, and audio and video products. During Kim’s time at Disney, several of the products in her portfolio received awards and patents, including two CES Innovation Awards.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

was born in Korea and moved from Seoul to Los Angeles during childhood. This move made me a resilient person, and as a result, throughout my life, I have been more adaptable to change.

I have two daughters, and when I look at other parents, I notice that many are afraid of letting children experience change, even as small as moving homes or changing school districts. Parents often believe that stability results when there is no change, but I think that will do more harm than good and lead to children struggling later in life when they are met with change. This year, we saw children experience change on a massive scale due to the pandemic, and I was inspired to see just how resilient children could be. Adaptability and resilience are two qualities that I learned growing up that I make sure to pass on to my children because they are not only important for everyday life, but they are important in the workforce as well.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

One interview that made an impact on me is Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk from 2012. During her discussion, Amy talked about human body language and the mind, but one topic that resonated with me was her message about imposter syndrome. This is something I, and a lot of individuals, struggle with. Although I know the value I bring to a company, I still struggle at times and wonder “am I good enough”, “am I smart enough”, “do I belong here”? Amy’s TED talk made me realize that no matter how successful you are, imposter syndrome can still sneak up on you, but you should never doubt your worth.

I grew up in a culture where boys were encouraged to not only follow their dreams, but aspire to greatness. There was not as much pressure or expectation put upon young girls. Instead, we were taught to be “good enough” vs. the best, and this was probably a huge contributing factor to my own imposter syndrome.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in the X Reality industry? We’d love to hear it.

I began my career at Disney and worked there for about eight years. While working there, I managed user experience for Disney Mobile as well as a team called “Toy-morrow” where we focused on the toys of the future. It was there that I discovered my passion for bridging the gap between physical products or environments and the digital world. For example, when the iPad first came out, I worked on Disney AppMates which paired a physical car with capacitive footprints that users could place on top of an iPad and use in a game environment. Throughout my time at Disney, I worked on several projects including Disney Creativity Studio and Disney Infinity, all of which connected the digital world with a physical product. When I began working at Qualcomm I was creating similar experiences, such as, Vuforia Smart Terrain technology for gamifying landscape. Through this game, users could scan their actual environment and use that space as a game landscape.

This theme of merging technology and physical environments to create exceptional experiences has become a common thread throughout my career, and something I bring with me in my current role at Talespin.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?

At one point in my career, I was conducting usability testing for LEGO Fusion, which required me and the product builders to observe how children played and interacted with the toys we were creating. As you can imagine, with young children in a playroom, things got pretty wild. There were M&M stains on the furniture, tears and even accidents.

Designing products for children helped me grow as a product person. When you’re designing a product for children who can’t read yet, you have to make sure it is easy to use and visually show how it works without words. To design a good product for children, usability testing was critical. As crazy as little kids tasked with playing can be, watching them interact with various products helped me to prioritize the end-user experience.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

My family immigrated to the United States when I was a child, and this meant that I didn’t have any family members, relatives, or mentors to help me navigate through corporate America.

Fast forward a few years, and I graduated from college in the 1990s during the dot com boom where there were plenty of career advancement opportunities, even for a young graduate. I thought I was following the directions when I accepted a new job offer — I gave two weeks’ notice to my line manager, thanked the leadership team for the opportunity, and then notified my project team of my departure. It turned out that my project manager was extremely disappointed that I didn’t go to her first so that she could negotiate a counter-offer for me to stay. There were so many things that were not included in a college syllabus and corporate manuals — building relationships and trying to get support from industry leaders and personal networks was a lesson for me then. I think many women don’t do this enough, and a lot of times try to tackle a situation on their own. Women should look around and see who they can speak to for advice and support. You’d be shocked how many people are willing to support you.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Floyd Norman, the legendary Disney Animator, writer, and comic book artist is someone I worked with during my time at Disney and is an inspiration to me personally.

I worked with Floyd when he was a subject matter expert (SME) consultant for Disney Creativity Studio, and despite all of his successes, I was completely blown away by how humble of a person he was. One piece of advice he shared with me was to “look forward to failing, falling on your face, because that teaches you to be humble, that you are not perfect and that you still have a lot to learn”. Floyd taught me to believe in my dream but to always remain humble and continue to seek out new opportunities to learn.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

At Talespin, we create training modules, or courses, for enterprise companies. We’re currently in the process of expanding our existing library of learning modules and will have more to share soon!

Ok, super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. The VR, AR and MR industries seem so exciting right now. What are the 3 things in particular that most excite you about the industry? Can you explain or give an example?

What I am most excited about is that virtual reality use cases are expanding. In fact, VR seems to have outgrown its consumer roots and we are seeing increased adoption of this type of technology within the enterprise. For consumers, VR gaming and entertainment is ubiquitous, but how can we take that benefit and expand it to employers and employees? Talespin’s training solutions provide companies with a unique opportunity to quickly train a multi-generational workforce because VR writes to our memory like a real experience would, and provides emotional muscle memory, effectively collapsing the distance between learning a new skill and using it.

Another aspect of the industry that I find exciting is that VR makes it possible to learn both hard and soft skills. At Talespin we offer training courses that help people develop stronger soft skills, like giving an employee difficult feedback or navigating crises at work as a leader. We also provide training on process-based skills, like navigating water damage within a home as an insurance claims agent. VR creates an environment where users become emotionally and physically immersed and as a result, provides learners with a safe place to fail and try again.

Finally, I am excited by how customizable these training modules can be — with VR there is an opportunity to design training courses that are both broadly applicable across industries (think soft skills and leadership training) as well as get extremely specific, with learning modules that tackle industry-specific use cases (insurance, for example).

What are the 3 things that concern you about the VR, AR and MR industries? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

One area that concerns me about this industry is that it has to deal with hardware limitations. VR headsets are expensive and it can be difficult at first for companies to invest in this type of technology at scale. The enterprise applications for VR however are hitting their stride as businesses realize the true ROI that investing in VR can bring to their organizations for improving learning and collaboration. Statistics from Talespin’s enterprise deployments have shown that customers are experiencing a 70% increase in training satisfaction over classroom learning, a 22% increase in decision-making accuracy compared to prior training methods, a 400% increase in ability to elaborate on subject matters, and a 5x annual reduction in training costs per employee.

Another area that I find somewhat concerning is that it takes time to develop new content and to develop it correctly. This requires resources and budget to bring these exceptional enterprise training experiences to life. Talespin is currently working on ways to make these types of training more accessible to everyone despite individual knowledge of Unity.

I think the entertainment aspects of VR, AR and MR are apparent. Can you share with our readers how these industries can help us at work?

When I started driving, going to a new location was a big deal. The night before, I created a driving plan with a Thomas Guide map and then hand-wrote directions in large font so I would be able to read them while driving. Now, I enter the address of where I’m going into my navigation system and can go pretty much anywhere I want, and I have more confidence on the road and can get to my destination safely because I’m no longer looking down at the piece of paper in my lap for directions.

That’s what extended reality (VR, AR, MR) does for enterprises in various industries. It optimizes process and drive efficiency, it gives workers more confidence with their job, and they can successfully complete the work safely and on time.

Are there other ways that VR, AR and MR can improve our lives? Can you explain?

I believe that extended reality technologies will eventually give us a sixth sense. What I mean by this is that with further development of VR, AR and MR we are going to have access to a lot of information and skills that we didn’t before.

Although our smartphones already provide us with access to a lot of information, many workers have to be out in the field day in and day out, and that sometimes means there is no connectivity or they simply don’t have the time to look up how to perform a certain task. It’s not enough to rely solely on your smartphone for information. VR, AR and MR training will enable that sixth sense for humans, where we will be in a situation and we will know immediately how to react because of the immersive training we have undergone.

As I mentioned earlier, I have an 11-year-old daughter and a 16-year-old step daughter. There was a huge effort from schools to inspire girls in STEM when they were growing up. However, many girls are not too excited about the industry and I don’t completely understand why there is that gap. My guess is that it’s hard for the girls to visualize the end state. Even though the effort to get girls enrolled in STEM is monumental, if they don’t see the benefit at the end (e.g., being able to invent new products, design the most beautiful digital murals, etc.) it’s hard to get young people excited about it. When my youngest daughter was a toddler, I used to apply Disney ideation methods where I’d ask her to sketch a product concept board and include bullet points of its features, a picture of the product, and a list of value propositions. She created product concept boards that were relevant to my work at the time and designed “future of petrol station”, “smart working desk”, “smart car”, and many other things. She still loves coming up with new inventions and tries to solve today’s problems.

Ultimately, I think today’s STEM programs fail to connect the dots between today’s learnings and the types of exciting futures and the impact that young women can make by pursuing STEM.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about working in your industry? Can you explain what you mean?

I was once turned down for a position and the feedback was that I seemed “too nice” (and wouldn’t be able to handle tough stakeholders) and “not technical enough”. I wonder whether I would have received the same feedback if I was male. There is a bias that comes with being a woman, and it works against many women especially in a fast-paced male dominating tech industry. This situation made me think of a college professor of mine who commented about my name Jieun Kim, and mentioned how it’ll be beneficial for me when applying for jobs because no one will know my gender.

It’s unfortunate that even today when applying for jobs women have to worry if their gender will influence how they are perceived and if they will be hired.

What are your “5 Leadership Lessons I Learned From My Experience as a Woman in Tech” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

Yes, I deserve to be here. Imposter syndrome is something that a lot of individuals struggle with, and it can often hold us back from achieving our dreams. It’s important to remind yourself that you deserve a seat at the table.
Yes, there is still a lot to learn and ways to improve myself. This is almost self-explanatory. There is always more to learn, if we were all experts then there would be no room for personal growth or expansion.
Don’t be afraid to fail. You should look forward to failing and falling on your face because that teaches you to be humble.
Be yourself. In a previous role, I received feedback that I was too aggressive when trying to get work completed. At another company, I was told I was too passive and cautious and I needed to be more assertive. I realized that I didn’t change, I was simply perceived differently. Instead of trying to figure out ways to change yourself to fit in, it’s important to just be yourself and do what you believe is right.
Support your peers. In one of my previous roles, I started and led a women-supporting group. It was a time for women to meet for casual discussions about any topic and feel safe to speak their minds. During our meetings, we discovered there was a recurring theme surrounding a point of confusion we all shared regarding how promotions happened and the right tools to navigate to the next level. I would encourage other women to start a similar women’s group to ideate, support each other and share new ideas.

My daughter was born a perfectionist. As a toddler, she enjoyed drawing, but when she drew a line that wasn’t perfect, she would erase it. If the paper still showed a faint mark of a pencil, she’d cry and erase until the paper was torn.

I think some women feel that way — that there is a higher standard and women have to be perfectionists to be hired for a job, win someone’s trust or get the next promotion. I certainly did.

So when I had to calm my crying daughter, I taught her that it’s alright to make mistakes. In fact, we can make a wonderful and unexpected design out of what she deemed a mistake in her drawing. I continued to teach her that we shouldn’t strive to be perfect, and my daughter learned that a mistake can actually make her drawing even better. Eventually, she’d be proud of new design elements that were added to her drawing which started by a “mistake”.

I also believe that working women shouldn’t strive to be perfect. It’s ok to make mistakes. That’ll allow us to be more outspoken, not censor ourselves in meetings, and show the creativity of handling mistakes into bigger and better opportunities for the company.

Michelle Obama. After reading her book Becoming, it was incredible to see that she also had a little impostor syndrome as the former First Lady and was still beloved by the nation.

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Jieun Kim of Talespin was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Preston Buhrmaster of Venerated Capital Group: Rising Through Resilience; Five Things You Can Do To

Preston Buhrmaster of Venerated Capital Group: Rising Through Resilience; Five Things You Can Do To Become More Resilient

Prepare For All Outcomes — Preparing oneself for all potential outcomes is crucial in one’s ability to display resilience in even the hardest situation one faces. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Often times if you prepare for all possible outcomes, you will mitigate problems before they even occur, and those that remain become much easier to swallow.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Preston Buhrmaster.

Preston Buhrmaster is the Founder and CEO of Venerated Capital Group, a private financial and investing advice company based in Syracuse, New York. The most popular products developed by Venerated Capital Group include the ‘Investors Institution’ Private Discord Server and ‘Investors Insight’ Weekly Market Report. With Investors Insight, Buhrmaster aims to revolutionize the way in which market data is transmuted and trade ideas are communicated between analysts and traders across alike. Buhrmaster also boasts a reputation for providing the training and resources credited to the success of countless students that have joined the Investors Institution.

Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory?

I grew up in Saratoga Springs, NY which was known for its thoroughbred horse racing and mineral springs. My journey became around the time I became interested in collecting limited edition sneakers as I then had to come up with a means to fund the expensive hobby. I took to the sidewalks of the Saratoga Race Course with two friends to sell bottled water for $1 and soda’s for $2. The town brings. In thousands of tourists each Summer, most of which are going to spend a day at the track, if not make it the centerpiece of their time in the city. You could go to BJ’s and buy a large case of water for under $5 and turn that small investment into over $30 by selling each bottle for just $1. This allowed me to build up capital as I continued the business for a few Summers while building up my connections in the sneaker business with hopes of transitioning to making that passion its own source of income. I began using my earnings from selling water to purchase multiple pairs of shoes on each release so that I could use the profits to pay for the pair I would keep and wear. It was a great gig for a while, especially as a middle schooler, though I knew it had more potential. I then teamed up with one of my partners in selling water as well as his older brother to develop a business, New Release Bot, which provided industry leading sneaker bots to the masses. The bots we offered enabled others to utilize the same technology that we used for purchasing limited edition sneakers automatically, before they sell out, and in bulk with efficiency and minimal effort. This business was a massive success, growing alongside my business of reselling sneakers. I served the needs of hundreds of clients worldwide, which was an amazing feat for such a young age. I followed this by founding multiple other businesses throughout high school and early college, spanning from wireless charging, to clothing, to services, drop shipping, and so much more. While doing all of that, I was focusing heavily on my passion for finance and investing. I interned at an accounting and wealth management firm in my senior year of high school, on the accounting side, and was exposed to the extremely diverse and interesting world of finance. This stemmed a new passion for learning how to study the markets and begin investing once I turned 18. Move a few years down the line and I would found Venerated Capital Group, a private financial and investing advice company, leading the industry in investment education services. Venerated Capital Group is the home of the Investors Institution, a private discord where I mentor students and teach them how to trade as well as Investors Insight, a private business, financial and investing newsletter tailored to the modern trader.

Can you share with us the most interesting story from your career? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

One of the main reasons that I am so passionate about my career as an entrepreneur is the freedom that it provides, especially with the ability to move on your own schedule, not someone else’s. When I was 16, I planned a trip with a few of my close friends that I resold sneakers and traveled to conventions with. We are all huge fans of Travis Scott and had been dying to see him in concert, so we finally decided to make it happen by fitting it into one of our trips downstate. Travis Scott is still one of my favorite artists to this day and it had been a dream of mine for some time to see him in concert. I set my mind on saving up for the trip, planning it diligently, and most importantly, making it happen. He was doing a show at Terminal 5 in Manhattan, one that would be infamous for Travis Scott due to a fan jumping off the top balcony during the show. The show was absolutely crazy as the energy throughout the crowd was almost indescribable. Someone thought it was a good idea to dive off the top balcony at the venue, hoping they would be caught I assume, though they ended up being paralyzed after hitting the ground on landing. Seeing this occur in front of me really made me realize how fast things can change in life as well as that I need to thoroughly consider every action before I put it into movement. Had I made a thoughtless decision like that person did, I wouldn’t be able to share the even more interesting story that I have from the show. My experience would have been much, much different. Anyways, we got in a massive line that was so out of control that NYPD took to lining the street and managing the crowd outside the venue as we waited to get in. My friends and I got there pretty early and were fortunate enough to be near the front of the line. This was crucial so that we could quickly purchase the merchandise we wanted from the show and rush to the front of the crowd for the best experience. After spending hours in the crowd waiting to get in, we fought our way to the merchandise stands and purchased some tees quickly. This was no easy task, though we knew they could resell for much more after the show. Mission complete; now time to make our way to the front of the crowd. We all pushed our way through masses of people until we all reached the bar that blocked off the stage area from the crowd. I was dying of thirst after some time being crammed in the swarms of people at the show when something awesome happened. We all started yelling at Travis Scott to throw water at the crowd to cool us off. To my disbelief, I was fortunate enough to have him pour water on me during the show and I even captured it on video. It was a surreal experience seeing something that I could have only dreamed of happen before my very eyes. The show was electric and to this day is still my favorite concert that I have attended to date, even including other times I’ve seen Travis Scott preform.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

Venerated Capital Group stands out from other financial and investing advice companies with our specialization in investment education services and our highly detailed financial and investing newsletter, Investors Insight, which is released on a weekly basis. Truthfully, I cannot think of another company who is doing exactly what we are. There are many similar companies in the market, though our unique ability to cater to the needs of traders of all skill levels, experience and even benefit analysts and investors alike with our market reports and insight. The members of the VCG team and I work both day and night to continually provide the support and resources necessary for our clients to become confident and consistent traders so they can start dominating the market like a pro.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

One person whom I am extremely grateful for their help in getting me to where I am today is Venerated Capital Group’s investment analyst intern, Austin Verde. The impact that he has left on the company in his short time with us is immensely positive as Austin continues to push us to improve in every way. When I originally interviewed Austin, he had demonstrated interest in our commission sales associate position, though we both soon realized he could benefit the company with his unique expertise and background much more as an investment analyst. Austin showed a keen knowledge for the markets and his passion and drive aligned perfectly with the company’s values. In one of our first conversations, Austin mentioned the idea for us to create a weekly market report, which was brilliant. I was shocked that I hadn’t thought of the idea prior. Information is knowledge and knowledge is power. The key to becoming a confident and consistent trader lies in one’s ability to build a strong foundation of knowledge and their ability to apply that knowledge to analyzing the market data at hand. In order to trade efficiently and make smart plays before the big moves, it is crucial to have access to premium market data that is provided in an easy-to-use format. We both were so eager to make the idea a reality that we released our first weekly market report within a week of Austin joining Venerated Capital Group. We have been working each week to improve the report and tailor it to our client’s needs, based upon their recommendations and feedback provided. I am so grateful for Austin’s excellent vision and his strong work ethic that is demonstrated in each and everything he does.

Resilience is one’s ability to continuously spring back from failure and never accept the outcome of defeat in any given situation. The only way to avoid failure is by simply not trying at all. Anyone who seeks change is going to face failure or defeat along their path toward success in whatever it is they aim to achieve. The difference between the winners and losers throughout life is that the winners never considered accepting failure as an option whereas the losers used as an excuse to claim defeat. One of the key traits of resilient people is their emotional intelligence, or sense of control over one’s emotions. If you are unable to control your emotions, it may enable the highs to be too high and the lows to get too low. Having that kind of a mindset will undoubtedly result in defeat as one will learn to expect to experience the high of their accomplishments and for the same reasons become crushed by the lows that accompany setbacks faced along the way. Never accept failure as an option, it is really that simple. If you are able to regulate your emotions and recognize the subconscious elements behind them, you will be able to control your destiny. Your thoughts manifest into your actions and your actions are what result in the life you live today. Resilient people also demonstrate strong problem-solving skills, which accompanies the rationale of never accepting defeat. A true problem solver uses each setback or failure to craft a more diligent solution to the problem at hand going forward. If you are able to control your emotions and use each problem faced as means of reaching the end goal, you are on the path toward resilience. Keep on tugging along and embrace each step of the journey, as the tough times are where those who are resilient have been known to thrive.

When you think of resilience, which person comes to mind? Can you explain why you chose that person?

When I think of resilience, there are many people that come to mind, though one person in particular is Elon Musk because he truly has never accepted defeat as his outcome. He has had companies on the verge of bankruptcy, countless setbacks with his innovations pertaining to each of his companies. Elon always says that failure is not an option and that is what I feel true resilience is. If you fail with a given task, take it as a lesson and use what you have now learned to creatively solve the problem and make it a success. Failure is only an outcome if you accept it and that is something that Elon definitely embodies with every project at hand. I use his endless resilience as motivation to keep pushing toward my goals, no matter how far away or impossible to reach they may seem. Building self-driving cars and rocket ships is no small task and failures are imminent along the path toward innovation with his companies Tesla and SpaceX. There were endless people rooting against the success of Musk and his companies, though he has always embraced that as more reasoning to continue pushing toward his goals. I work each and every day to hold myself to the same principles as they are proven to deliver results and I too hope to change the lives of others for the better.

Has there ever been a time that someone told you something was impossible, but you did it anyway? Can you share the story with us?

More times than not, I have been told that my ideas were impossible, rather than that I could make them a reality. One time that I recall in particular is the countless times my parents told me that I should give up on learning how to trade and give up my passion for being an entrepreneur because it wasn’t a sound path. Personally, I would have skipped attending college to pursue the two full-time had it been fully my choice, though attending Syracuse University has been a lifelong goal of mine. Throughout high school, I was told that reselling sneakers was not a solid source of income, even though it is what allowed me to save up to purchase my first car and fund all of my high school fun. The worst thing that I ever did was giving into their negative influence and stopping reselling sneakers to begin working for our family’s business. At that age, I already knew I would not be carrying on the business as I saw far greater potential in taking my own course and hence working there yielded no benefit aside countless hours of manual labor each week. I was trading my time and energy for an hourly wage of which was much less than I valued my time at. I knew what I could make on my own and eventually quit, setting back on the course to found my latest startup, Venerated Capital Group. Though I gave in to their pressure for some time, it further solidified my interest in forging my own path. A year later now, Venerated Capital Group is continually growing and I am excited for what the future is set to entail for the company and all involved.

Did you have a time in your life where you had one of your greatest setbacks, but you bounced back from it stronger than ever? Can you share that story with us?

This story is one that I took a long time to come to means with and begin to move past, as it was easily my greatest setback at the time, though I learned such valuable lessons from it. Over this past summer, in July 2020, I had excellent returns throughout the month from trading options contracts. I was heavily focusing on strategies for day trades and occasionally swing trades. An account I started with not even $500 grew around 9x up until this huge mistake. My small account challenge was going great until I had the idea to short Tesla stock after the insane run the stock experienced at the time. I continually added to my positions until all of my free margin was in these puts, all of which didn’t hit. I erased a whole month worth of gains in a mere 3 or 4 trading days due to revenge trading and adding to a losing position. This taught me that what comes up can go down and you need to practice the same risk management strategies regardless of the current returns you are showing. This setback humbled me a lot as I saw all of my time and hard work conducting analysis and finding perfect entries for trades get wiped away far faster than it took to build up. This forced me to take a short break from trading in order to reevaluate my trading rules and strategies as well as analyze my losing trades so that this wouldn’t reoccur in the future. Looking back, I am truly grateful to have experienced this so early in my career as it has only pushed me to further develop my skills and knowledge of the markets.

Did you have any experiences growing up that have contributed to building your resiliency? Can you share a story?

There are many experiences that I had growing up that contributed to building my resiliency, though I will share one recent experience in particular. Over this past Summer, I set out to earn my New York Life, Accident and Health Insurance Agent/broker Examination Series 17–55 license. I attempted to do such while working all night, taking Summer classes during the day and in the midst of founding Venerated Capital Group. I honestly just had way too much on my plate at once, though I pushed through it and made it all work anyways. Fortunately, I had a great boss who was lenient when I had assignments or had to drive across Long Island to test for the license exam. I also was able to get an A in the class that I took over the Summer, which was a nice boost to my GPA. The one part where I had to show resilience was in passing the license exam, which I failed multiple times and even missed once due to traffic delays. On my first two tries, I failed the exam due to inadequate preparation as I lacked the time around my already hectic schedule. When I attempted to take the exam the third time, I got stuck in the ferry line and was late to my exam which meant I was unable to test on that date. This was a huge feeling of defeat as it was my last chance to test over the Summer and I would now have to figure out how to test for the exam while at school. In the beginning weeks of arriving at school, I spent much of my time preparing thoroughly for the exam and finally was able to pass the exam on that attempt. This felt amazing to finally accomplish, especially with all that I had to give up in order to make it possible. This is an accomplishment that I am very proud of because of the circumstances in which I had to overcome in order to achieve it.

Resilience is like a muscle that can be strengthened. In your opinion, what are 5 steps that someone can take to become more resilient? Please share a story or an example for each.

Resilience is most definitely a muscle that can be strengthened with the proper steps and a consistent effort. Resilience is not something that is naturally found within every person, though it is something that one can strengthen if the proper steps are taken each and every day.

Master Emotional Intelligence — Emotional intelligence is at the core of resilience as it is truly impossible for one to be resilient if they cannot control their emotions. You need to learn to embrace the highs and build from the lows, though you cannot allow either to overamplify itself. The ability to regulate one’s emotions is the first step toward rising through resilience.
Block Out Outside Influences — In order to remain resilient through the toughest times, it is essential to block out all outside influences, both negative and positive. You need to remain in control of your environment in order to rise through resilience. The cheers may get you too high and the criticism may push you too low if you listen to it. You know what is best for you, don’t let anyone else sway you differently.
Find Your Personal Meaning — In order to be resilient, you also must have your own “why” and develop a purpose behind your actions. If you approach a situation with purpose, resilience will often follow because the purpose will fuel your drive to push through even the toughest times. When you establish a clear sense of purpose, it helps to view setbacks from a broader perspective and move forward even stronger from them.
Always Be Seeking Growth — Another key element to rising through resilience is to always be seeking growth from every aspect. If you are comfortable where you are and fail to seek change, things will remain the same, or even get worse. You need to be constantly seeking growth in order to push through situations, because even the toughest ones only help you grow.
Prepare For All Outcomes — Preparing oneself for all potential outcomes is crucial in one’s ability to display resilience in even the hardest situation one faces. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Often times if you prepare for all possible outcomes, you will mitigate problems before they even occur, and those that remain become much easier to swallow.

If there is one reason and one reason only to rise through resilience it is that average sucks. Those who lack resilience often lack the steps I shared because they are scared of change, or even worse, they are comfortable with where they currently stand. Comfort kills creativity and if you lack creativity, it is hard to rise through resilience when tough situations or setbacks face you. Why would you want to stay in the same place as today a year from now, 10-years from now? I wouldn’t even want to be in the same place 6-months from today. If you do not continually push for change, you will be stuck living just another average life. Personally, I couldn’t fathom doing such. Average sucks. I am more scared of living another boring, old, average life than I am of any change or struggles that could come from forging your own path. If you too embrace the simple message that average sucks, you will be amazed by the new perspective that it gives you when rising through resilience. No matter what you aim to accomplish or achieve in life, keep in the back of your mind the following two words: average sucks. Never settle for less than you deserve, and that is the best.

If there was one person that I could have a meal with to talk about resilience, it would be Gary Vaynerchuk because everything he preaches is so valuable in rising through such. He is a firm believer in just doing you and staying true to who you are, regardless of the struggles you face. Gary is such a motivational person and the positive messages he spreads are often one of the things I listen to when I wake each morning. I’m sure I would be able to gain so much valuable information from a conversation with Gary, let alone the fact that he would most definitely be an enjoyable guy to have a glass of wine with. The way that Gary carries himself is something to admire as he is truly authentic and that is why his messages spread so far. It is so rare to find someone who you can genuinely relate to when seeking advice or listening to a motivational speaker because they all share the same generic advice. I hope to someday share my knowledge on the scale that Gary does, as I too hope to positively influence others to change the world.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

You can follow me on Instagram at @prestonbuhrmaster or Venerated Capital Group at @veneratedcapitalgroup. My Twitter handle is @pbuhrmaster and VCGs is @VCGmarkets. I am also active on LinkedIn, Facebook and Pinterest (@prestonbuhrmaster). Venerated Capital Group can also be found on LinkedIn and Facebook. I currently publish writing on my Medium, @prestonbuhrmaster and am in the process of launching a blog at www.VeneratedCapitalGroup.com to share strictly investment-centered pieces in the coming weeks.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!

Preston Buhrmaster of Venerated Capital Group: Rising Through Resilience; Five Things You Can Do To was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Aicha Sharif of Rocket Club: Five Ways To Develop More ‘Grit’

Dedication to life goals and not giving up even when the outcome isn’t always feasible: I earned a scholarship to college through not giving up on my dream of an education and keeping my grades up as well as doing volunteer work at the campus.

As a part of my series about “Grit: The Most Overlooked Ingredient of Success” I had the pleasure of interviewing Aicha Sharif.

Aicha Sharif is the Dean of Rocket Club, the award-winning, global entrepreneurship, coding and robotics academy for kids aged 7 to 14. Aicha’s passion for her works started as a child when she worked on her family’s farm in Morocco. She was the first female in her family to go to high school and eventually paid her way through college in England. She is Six Sigma and Hashin Kanri Certified and holds an MBA in Project Management and an MA in International Business from the London Business School. Aicha climbed the ranks quickly to become an executive at companies like Inhabitr and 3M. Aicha is very passionate about education, especially for girls and under-previliged children, she runs the SuperGirls Forum within Rocket Club and is an active volunteer with the Arman Roy Foundation. She enjoys building relationships and teams through inclusive and supportive cultural practices. When she’s not working, Aicha enjoys spending time with her two daughters (who are members of Rocket Club!), cooking, reading, and playing tennis.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what events have drawn you to this specific career path

My pleasure! I grew up in a small village in Morocco and had to fight for the right to go to school. I was the only girl in the village who actually finished elementary school. At the time, parents were pressured to keep the girls at home and marry them off young. Both my parents would work on the farm where myself and my nine siblings grew up for long hours and had no time to help any of us with our homework or guide our choices. When I graduated from elementary school, I had to move to another town to join a bigger school. Living with a new family at the age of 11 was no easy task, so I nearly dropped out of school the first year of middle school. My mom who has never had any formal schooling fought against that decision and helped me continue through high school.

These struggles provided me with a unique perspective about education and the importance of education and mentorship.

Can you share your story about “Grit and Success”? First can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey?

Well, I simply had to fight for every opportunity and create most of the opportunities that were pivotal for my success. As early as elementary school for me I had to excel, persevere and be the hardest working person in the room. I never strived to be the smartest because I prepared being around and with smarter people but I take a lot of pride in working hard. However, working hard alone is not enough, consistency is very important.

Making even small progress can make all the difference between a successful person and the next one. Early on in my career I joined 3M, an American multinational conglomerate corporation operating in the fields of industry, worker safety, US health care, and consumer goods, under their grad leadership program, where I earned the management’s trust by successfully completing a market research project which led to a new line of thermal imaging equipment launch in the UK that was deemed unfit for the European market. I earned the sales team trust through hard work and being a supportive team member which allowed me to meet their most influential clients. Having ideas is never enough, executing through building relationships and finding creative solutions is critical.

Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?

My biggest role model has always been my father, his story is so inspiring. He started working at the age of 6 years old and built a successful business from the ground up with no formal education or training. He worked hard, he problem-solved and he helped his community. He’d always tell us failure helps nobody, be kind, be happy and be successful.

I actually never thought about not continuing when things got harder and I think the reason for that is my curiosity and love for problem solving. I really enjoy the process of building and tinkering with ideas, especially the execution process. I’m naturally drawn to fast paced environments where I can work with other people to build something.

So how did Grit lead to your eventual success? How did Grit turn things around?

Grit is the only way to achieve results, even if we label an outcome as a failure, it’s still important to our future success. When we fail at something, we are actually just finding out ways to not fail again and we start from experience the next time. I’ve heard someone say, we don’t have failures, we just have painful learnings. I personally enjoy the grind and being productive, I’m motivated by what I’m going to discover and learn.

Grit has helped me turn so many situations around and sometimes it’s just a matter of timing or finding a connection. I will ask more than once and I will try as many times as I possibly can using creative thinking and almost always the outcome is positive.

Based on your experience, can you share 5 pieces of advice about how one can develop Grit? (Please share a story or example for each)

Dedication to life goals and not giving up even when the outcome isn’t always feasible: I earned a scholarship to college through not giving up on my dream of an education and keeping my grades up as well as doing volunteer work at the campus.
Have a purpose: I earned a top marketing spot in my first corporate job in a male dominated industry through consistently delivering results for my entire team.
Have empathy: I converted my corporate sales team to a new CRM platform and system through working individually with each one and not giving up even when they made it almost impossible to deploy
Don’t seek perfection: I completed my MBA after having my second daughter by taking evening and weekend classes. When it got overwhelming I remembered that perfection isn’t my goal but rather learning new skills and furthering my career
Don’t take no for an answer (ask again): I raised series A and B funding with my previous CEO through securing long term contracts with national clients. The grift deployed to earn the client’s trust meant we just didn’t take no for an answer.

I have had many amazing mentors throughout my life! About a year ago, I met Alex Hodara, CEO of Rocket Club, an award-winning coding and entrepreneurship children’s academy. He has been an incredible mentor and role model. I was transitioning from my previous start up, I had a couple of roles lined up but unfortunately COVID hit and I lost those opportunities. I met Alex around the same time and with his help and guidance I was able to grow into my current role as the Dean of Rocket Club.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

I’m always trying to pay it forward, I volunteer for the Arman Roy Foundation and mentor ex colleagues as well as most of my students at Rocket Club, specifically through the SuperGirls Forum, an interactive panel discussion where we inspire young girls in the program that they can do anything they set their mind to. I also sponsor a few families back in my home country, Morocco.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

I’m currently working alongside the team at Rocket Club to build our programming, such as:

SuperGirls Forum: I created an interactive panel discussion to inspire young girls in the program that they can do anything they set their mind to. This special program focuses on three areas: how to build confidence, sharpening your skillset and improving your networking skills.
Rocket Club Live: A free, daily interactive educational game show and Q&A featuring some of today’s most successful entrepreneurs and talent including Marc Randolph (Netflix Co-Founder) Jason Feifer (Entrepreneur Magazine EIC), Hannah Kamran (Head of Strategic Partnerships at Omaze), Jeff Zucker (Founder of Saltshaker Holdings), Vin Vomero (Founder of Foxy Al), Chris Zarou (Founder of Visionary Records), Bobbi Brown (Founder of Bobbi Brown Cosmetics) and more
Pairing STEM, Creativity & Entrepreneurship for Children: Rocket Club members combine their passions from knitting to calligraphy with entrepreneurship skills and a STEM education to create their own businesses.

What advice would you give to other executives or founders to help their employees to thrive?

I don’t think there is a one size fit all when it comes to leadership styles. I would say be authentic, empathetic and kind. Always listen more than talk and allow people to experiment and make mistakes completely unjudged.

Education to girls in rural and underserved areas around the world. My father always said women are half of society and they raise the other half so educating girls would have the most impact on poorer societies.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Be Kind, Be Happy, Be Successful. Kindest is the source of empathy, happiness gives us strength to keep going when life gets tougher and success enables us to help others.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

Rocket Club Official Website: https://rocketclub.com/

Rocket Club Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rocketclub/?hl=en

My LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aicha-sharif/

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.

Aicha Sharif of Rocket Club: Five Ways To Develop More ‘Grit’ was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Future Is Now: Nicholas Guida of Tamarack Aerospace On How Their Technological Innovation Will…

The Future Is Now: Nicholas Guida of Tamarack Aerospace On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up Air Travel

Regulatory aspects of certification will make you feel like a small cog on a big wheel when you’re trying to improve an industry. Keep going.

As a part of our series about cutting edge technological breakthroughs I had the pleasure of interviewing, Mr. Guida is an aerospace engineer with over 30 years of applied experience in the development of certified aerospace products.

For many years, Mr. Guida held a Designated Engineering Representative (DER) appointment from the Federal Aviation Administration with the unique skill sets of being authorized to show compliance in four separate areas of engineering (Structures, Loads, Damage Tolerance, and Fatigue). Mr. Guida was delegated by the FAA to create and review engineering for new and aftermarket airplane products including aftermarket passive winglets.

Mr. Guida’s extensive aerospace experience was earned through positions of increasing responsibility with several major OEMs, including Boeing, Pilatus, Aviat, Eclipse, and Quest Aircraft Companies. He founded his own consulting company in 2004, bringing his expertise and DER certifications to work on projects with Spectrum, Raytheon, SNC, API, Falcon, Hawker Beech, and more. Mr. Guida founded Tamarack Aerospace group in 2010, based on the invention of the Active Winglet.

Mr. Guida also enjoys skydiving, sailing, and inventing, and has competed in aerobatics. Mr. Guida holds single pilot type ratings for the CJ525 and Phenom 100 aircraft.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

All I’ve ever wanted to do was airplane-related. I jumped out of airplanes (skydiving) as a teenager and wanted to do anything with air. It was in my blood, like a calling.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

Prior to founding Tamarack Aerospace, I worked at big companies like Boeing, Pilatus, Aviat, Eclipse, and Quest Aircraft before I realized how much I wanted to work at a small company, and that was really the start of my whole career as an aviation entrepreneur. I realized that this is how I liked my life.

Can you tell us about the technological breakthroughs that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?

At Tamarack Aerospace, we invented and install Active Winglets on aircraft. Winglets are small aero foils installed vertically to the wing tips and are a positive addition to aircraft as they reduce drag and increase efficiency.

Compared to traditional passive winglets, which have been shown to reduce fuel usage measured in the 3% to 5% range, Tamarack Active Winglets reduce fuel usage by up to 33% percent in some aircraft like the more than one-hundred CitationJets flying now with our Active Winglets. This technology supports sustainable aviation practices by providing a significant and measurable reduction in CO2 emissions as well as reduced fossil fuel use. Tamarack Active Winglets also provide substantial value and added benefits to jet aircraft in many areas. These include increased safety, fewer stops, improved comfort, ride smoothing by instantly and automatically adjusting to turbulence, and a reduced carbon footprint. Active Winglet-equipped aircraft also need shorter runways to take off and land and get to higher altitudes faster, reducing noise pollution around airports while decreasing the danger of runway overruns by the planes.

Active Winglets are a breakthrough themselves, as just one application of the technology that Tamarack has been working on since 2010. We hold more than 30 patents and are always looking for new aviation innovations, as well as continually enhancing our current products.

How do you think this might change the world?

The carbon emissions standard set by The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is intended to require aircraft manufacturers to start producing more efficient airplanes, partly as a response to the UN’s goal to eliminate net carbon emissions by 2050. But even with new efficiency standards, international aviation still has a huge gap between its own environmental goals and expected emissions. Achieving zero fuel emissions by 2050 is an enormous task, and Tamarack’s Active Winglets, which save up to 33% of fuel usage for some aircraft, are up to the challenge.

The UN estimates that by 2050, aviation could be responsible for up to 25 percent of the world’s total carbon budget — so the focus is on the aviation industry to make real, significant changes immediately. This is where we can help.

Installing Tamarack Active Winglets on aircraft allows for an upcycle of older tech aircraft. We can retrofit the current fleet instead of building an entirely new fleet. This will contribute to the zero carbon emissions by 2050, and we want to be a part of that, marching toward that goal with other players of the industry.

Can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

It’s a downsize for the airframers who want to build a whole new fleet; however, the safety and sustainability benefits far outweigh any potential drawback.

Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?

I came up with the idea for Active Winglets suddenly while returning from a Steely Dan concert in 2009. Prior to that I’d spent years as an independent consultant (DER) specializing in aerodynamic/loads engineering. I spent time with Joe Clark’s Aviation Partners, as a consultant, working on passive winglets for Hawkers and Gulfstreams. The whole time I was doing this work, I knew that there just had to be a better way. I saw many disadvantages of winglets along with the good parts. This led to some critical thinking, followed by the “big idea.”

It was my work on passive winglets led me to my tipping point. It has always bugged me that passive winglets require aerodynamic compromise — this is something I felt like the world needed to figure out.

What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?

Passive Winglets were first invented in the late 1800’s, and since then they have consistently saved between 3–5% of fuel use. Therefore, when some people hear about Active Winglets and the massive fuel savings potential, they have a “too good to be true” mentality that makes it hard to adopt our technology. However, Active Winglets are proven, patented, and the most dramatic fuel savings technology for aircraft on the market today.

Ideally, I would like the opportunity to give more people the Active Winglets experience firsthand. Sometimes seeing is believing.

Firstly, the support of my wife, Tammy, has been essential. At Tamarack, we have esprit de corps, and a lot of smart people helped me navigate the business end. I’m grateful for my whole team.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)

It’s going to take 5x the money and 5x the time.
Regulatory aspects of certification will make you feel like a small cog on a big wheel when you’re trying to improve an industry. Keep going.
Established companies are very reluctant to look at new ideas from the outside.
Be prepared for cynics.
It’s hard to find top-notch people who understand entrepreneurial principles.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Never, Never, Never Give Up. — Winston Churchill

Some very well-known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

As Steve Jobs said, “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?” This is about participation and moving forward — you can use your technological prowess to make games and apps, or you can change the world. Do you want to back the next Candy Crush, or the next-generation technology that will make the world a better place?

How can our readers follow you on social media?

The Future Is Now: Nicholas Guida of Tamarack Aerospace On How Their Technological Innovation Will… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Divya Menon of CTRL-F

Female tech leaders are a community unto themselves. When I first started CTRL-F a year ago, I was more clueless than I am now. Hearing my frustration about how marginalized I felt, Ori Inbar recommended the names of a few female founders whom I should reach out to. These women understood me and I am so grateful to them for giving me a place to belong. Generally, I have found female founders to be helpful overall and there is a tighter bond in our AR/VR niche because there are so few players.

Divya Menon is a NASA kid turned tech founder. Having grown up in a family that sent missions to the Moon and beyond, Divya rarely felt intimidated by her own imagination and set out to create ctrl+f for real life. Today, she works on CTRL-F, a software application leveraging evolutions in spatial and cognitive computing to digitize a user’s memories and make them accessible like files on a computer.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s in Clear Lake. Clear Lake, at that time, was the hub for space innovation. It was not uncommon that I would look up at the sky and spot a plane flying straight up into the clouds, perfectly perpendicular to the ground, most likely piloted by one of my neighbors. People always swoon over my memories of astronaut neighbors but they were common in Bay Forest, our Clear Lake subdivision. On one hand, we all ate spaghetti at Frenchie’s like every other American family, but on the other, our dinner conversations were about how it felt to see the Earth from 300,000 miles beyond the ether. Moonshot ideas were a part of my formative years and that never left me; everything seems possible when you are raised by a community that frequently invalidated the word “impossible.”

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

America did not (and arguably still does not) have many Brown women depicted in television or film. There were Black women and White women but not much in between. In 1992, X-Men: The Animated Series aired in the U.S. after school. That is where I met Storm and her fulminating eyes, on our state-of-the-art television that I had to hit for it to work. As a pre-teen desperate to see myself as a part of American popular culture, Storm looked ethnically ambiguous enough where I could pretend she was Desi. That entire cast of mutants would become my gateway into the idea of augmented humans; and when I first closed my eyes to contemplate what CTRL-F would look like, it was very much how illustrators depict eye powers in comic books. Inspired by that imagery, CTRL-F’s UI gives our users a superhero experience on top of functionality.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in the X Reality industry? We’d love to hear it.

I chose augmented reality for its capacity as a medium for eyesight. In developing the basic idea for CTRL-F, I remembered something Lauren Jarvis, Head of Content Partnerships at Spotify, had said to us during the Pulse Conference at UCLA: she thinks of what she does as audio, not podcasts or music specifically. I thought of CTRL-F as a vision product and needed a medium for eyesight. Prior to CTRL-F, I owned a marketing agency with an office at Upload VR in The Marina. Somewhere in a space that housed a dozen VR companies strewn about a Duffy London, King Arthur Swing Table and a volumetric capture room, I had made a friend who was developing smart eyewear, Juan Jackson. I asked her whether smartglasses could handle a software that would identify, catalog, and recall items that a user sees and she said they could.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?

This is more of an interesting fact than an interesting story. In order to create CTRL-F, I have had to learn a tremendous amount of neuroscience as a part of understanding human memory. One of the things I learned is that for every bit of information that your eyes relay to your brain, your brain is relaying 10 times that back to your eyes. Your brain is constantly telling your eyes what it expects to see. There are some wild stories about Alcatraz prisoners in solitary confinement who have the most realistic hallucinations due to sensory deprivation, because, at that point, feedback is the only thing running without any sensory input.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Based on some of the prototypes I had seen in my friend’s office of what she was building, I was under the impression that AR eyewear already in-market would look fashionable and have full functionality. Imagine my surprise when Kyle, our technical co-founder, hopped on Zoom wearing something that could only be described as deformed bifocals, bulbous and with a display that was colorless and could barely tell time. That was when I first realized AR hardware is not as advanced as I thought and that I had a lot of research to do on the hardware side of spatial computing.

My “baby” cousin Vishnu “Vish” Nair. He has not only researched and helped build the product but also tested co-founders and played a significant role in my growth on what to expect of a technical leader. As an American woman, I am underrepresented in technical fields and, therefore, find it difficult to identify and vet technical co-founders. Vish, a recent Brown computer science graduate currently getting his Masters at Tufts, worked in a junior role at CTRL-F and knew not only which engineering skills were required for CTRL-F but also what he required in a mentor. He would tell me if someone was absent, arrogant, unprepared, or unskilled. He would also tell me if someone was kind, knowledgeable, and helpful.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

We are working on CTRL-F, which will bring the ctrl+f function to real life. There are obvious benefits to it but another is within the AR industry itself. AR eyewear is pricey. Big Tech and other hardware manufacturers will find it challenging to sell smartglasses without everyday functionality underpinning the technology; and the price of smart eyewear will only decline if there is a critical mass of user adoption. CTRL-F will be as essential to that movement as Maps was for smartphones — people will wonder how anyone found things before CTRL-F the same way we wonder how any of us got around before Google Maps. Already, we have a waitlist of almost 1,000 people who have said they need CTRL-F for everything from finding remote controls hidden by a runaway toddler to managing memory issues related to ADHD and brain trauma.

Augmented humans: Augmented experiences provide a heightened and surreal feeling to the common human experience; a user will very much feel superhuman. Superhuman eyesight is what CTRL-F and Big Tech are working on. AR can also enhance auditory experiences, which is what Bose is working on. There are others, like Dr. Brennan Spiegel, augmenting mental states, like altering a schizophrenic patient’s “voices” to make positive, encouraging statements.
Death 2.0: One of our technical advisors, Sudip Mishra, founded a project in augmented eternity. Augmented eternity, he explained to us, is digitizing an individual’s thoughts, behaviors, actions, etc., so that her/his imprint can live-on even after biological death. Cool stuff.
Alternative methods of relaxation: VR has tremendous application in the space of mental wellness. One of my favorite applications is TRIPP. There are also VR experiences that patients find more effective than opioids.

What are the 3 things that concern you about the VR, AR and MR industries? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

Privacy: Individuals will likely wear smartglasses/lenses for most of the day, eventually replacing smartphones completely. As a software company in that same space, we realize that we are privileged to data that our users would not want anyone to see, much less exploit for commercial decision-making. There are two methods that we are looking into as a remedy.
-The first is the idea of democratizing privacy. We feel that privacy is unique to each person. For example, I have a neighbor that wears open-back underwear on his balcony but I have another neighbor who never so much as opens his curtains. Their values on privacy vastly differ and technology, to be effective and desirable, must have elastic boundaries to meet diverse needs. We plan to hold forums with our users each month to ensure their privacy standards are met and will also allow them to vote on privacy measures rather than CTRL-F making unilateral decisions.
-The next method, which is not mutually exclusive from the first, is to employ blockchain technology (especially smart contracts). Blockchain, because it is distributed amongst peers and decentralized away from us, will 1) make our work and policies transparent and 2) put power to control privacy measures into the hands of the public, giving them an equal footing in conversations with us. Right now, privacy policies are lopsided in favor of those who hold power.
Competition from the CCP: In 2017, China formalized their plans to become the world’s greatest economic power by dedicating themselves to the development of AI. The policy is called “New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan”. China, a country that has typically lagged in technological advancements compared to the U.S., has already beat the U.S. by leaps and bounds in AI. In 2017, while they set up their development plan, the U.S. cut funding to government research in AI. Since AI develops exponentially both algorithmically and industrially, it is no surprise that China now leads in this category. AI and quantum computing are both vital to the betterment of VR/AR/MR.
Big Tech Monopolies: Small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy and if Big Tech monopolizes this fourth paradigm in computing, we could see bottom-up economic stimulation snuffed out. Every year, it gets harder for startups to compete against Big Tech. For example, it is impossible to find technical co-founders, because FAANG will buy top talent with extravagant salaries but demanding hours. Similarly, hardware development is next-to-impossible without large investments and Big Tech, between both their talent and money, leaves very little space for small business competitors. I have watched talented AR eyewear startup teams fail and sold for parts in the past handful of years.

I think the entertainment aspects of VR, AR and MR are apparent. Can you share with our readers how these industries can help us at work?

Using AR and cognitive computing, CTRL-F not only has personal use cases but professional ones, as well. Imagine you met someone at a conference. A year later, as you walk into a café during lunch, your smartglasses spot her at a far table eating alone. You have asked CTRL-F to always highlight instances of people you might know from work, so CTRL-F highlights her in your glasses, alerting you that: someone from your work life is nearby, her name is Sara, and she is the VP of Operations at Big Co. You walk up to her, say hello, and begin a conversation, quickly learning she is hiring for a role you would be interested in. Of course, there are also more mundane instances of how to use CTRL-F at work, like remembering where you read something, who said what, where you left your lunch bag, etc.

Are there other ways that VR, AR and MR can improve our lives? Can you explain?

CTRL-F’s main focus is finding lost or misplaced items. The idea started when I had lost a cheat sheet that I needed for a job interview. I wanted to just ask out loud, “where is my cheat sheet” and see this paper illuminated somewhere in my vision. However, all we had were modern versions of LoJacks and audio searches that made me feel more like a bat than a human. CTRL-F is using AR to create superpowered vision where you can use visual search when looking for an item around your house and the item will illuminate once it is found.

There is a night and day difference when I speak with male versus female tech investors. The latter are much more understanding that a woman has likely not had a previous working relationship with her technical co-founder but men have not fully appreciated that struggle. I would like to see co-founder-related investor questions shift from quantifiable, “how long have you worked together?” to qualifiable, “how do you both complement each other” or “what have you accomplished together so far?”

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about working in your industry? Can you explain what you mean?

Our promise is bigger than what we can deliver. Basically, if I could sum up our industry as a meme, CTRL-F very much included, we would be the expectation versus reality meme.

What are your “5 Leadership Lessons I Learned From My Experience as a Woman in Tech” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

Female tech leaders are a community unto themselves. When I first started CTRL-F a year ago, I was more clueless than I am now. Hearing my frustration about how marginalized I felt, Ori Inbar recommended the names of a few female founders whom I should reach out to. These women understood me and I am so grateful to them for giving me a place to belong. Generally, I have found female founders to be helpful overall and there is a tighter bond in our AR/VR niche because there are so few players.
Create non-traditional, technical roles for yourself and other women to work with technology directly. Women are getting more creative about how to gain access to tech roles without an education in technical fields. Allison Ferenci, co-founder of Camera IQ, helped me let go of the notion that the only way to be a woman in tech was to do tech. There are unique possibilities for roles in ideation and oversight that we could develop, roles that would not require tremendous technical skill but still have meaningful impact on invention/product.
Women have a shot at gender parity in spatial computing. Because the technology is being developed, that means the parts and languages are also in development — women would be studying languages at the same time as men. Further, nobody has established a name for themselves in this field because of its novelty, which means women can enter the space without a needing lengthy tech résumé.
Female engineers are coveted by FAANG more than any other segment. Hiring females in tech is near impossible because they either have business ideas of their own or FAANG is hiring them. As a result, female founders with AR/VR tech startups are leading all-male or largely male startup environments.
You can make up for the lack of a technical background by having a strong point of view. The common thread I found with all women in tech who do not possess a technical degree or experience is that all of us know exactly what we want to accomplish with technology. Technology is merely a vehicle to accomplish a mission and not the mission itself.

I am also working on ideas that will reshape the inequities of urbanism and housing. Across the globe in superstar cities, housing has shifted away from consumption and into speculation. In turn, prices of homes have skyrocketed while incomes have barely budged and families have become enslaved to rent and mortgages. Governments do little to stop this other than creating Affordable Housing for those who fall victim to the system. Very little innovation occurs in the space and you’ll find that it is riddled with natural monopolies. We must all ask ourselves who is benefitting from this system the most and was 2007/2008 just a small part of the problem rising to the surface?

Cathie Wood. Is she an actual genius? Does anybody know? I want her to advise me on everything from markets to business to beauty. She is living the dream and I don’t know if she needs an assistant but I would like to apply for that job and learn everything I can from her.

Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success on your great work!

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Divya Menon of CTRL-F was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Future Is Now: Chen Levin of XACT Robotics On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up…

The Future Is Now: Chen Levin of XACT Robotics On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The Robotic Industry

Reflecting on the past year with the challenges the COVID-19 pandemic has brought forth, I would focus on the next generation. As an adult, I was able to adapt and pull through the challenging times, making sure my employees felt as little strain as possible from their workplace. The education system took much longer to adapt and was not equipped in any way to deal with the new reality. My movement would be to adapt the education system to the 21st century. To make sure my children and their peers will be ready for the challenges they will be faced with in their future careers. Being able to react and adapt efficiently to a rapidly changing environment due to economic, social, environment, or even health crises, is a skillset that must be developed.

As a part of our series about cutting edge technological breakthroughs, I had the pleasure of interviewing Chen Levin.

Chen is a seasoned leader in the healthcare space with vast experience in management and operational positions. Throughout her career, Chen contributed to, and played an instrumental part of, the Israeli biomed industry’s continuous growth.

Prior to leading XACT, Chen served as the Executive Director of BioJerusalem, an initiative of the Prime Minister’s Office of the government of Israel to foster the biomed industry in Jerusalem, where she established numerous ventures and collaborations. Before BioJerusalem, Chen served as the CEO of Biomagnesium Systems Ltd., an early stage medical device company. Prior to this, Chen played a key role in the establishment of BioLineRx, Israel’s first Biomed Incubator (now a TASE publicly traded company).

Chen started her career in policy research, helping shape important government biomed industry support schemes. Chen is a member of the founding and steering committee of Women in the Life Sciences Organization (WLSO) in Israel.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

My entire career was in and around the medtech industry. I started out as an undergraduate student in 1998 doing policy research and helping shape some significant policy instruments to foster the, then emerging, medtech sector in Israel. Over five years in that first position, I was exposed to the entire sector and got to know many of the leading executives and decision makers. This was the foundation of my career, giving me a unique unbiased perspective into the needs and inner workings of a variety of companies all the way from seed startup companies, to large commercial stage companies that were acquired by multi-nationals, and across the sector from biomed to biotech to medtech companies. I got to know small, private funded service providers all the way to VC backed companies and cash positive operating companies. From there, it was only natural for me to move into the industry and apply what I had absorbed, building on that initial foundation, and expanding my experience through my various positions in finance, business development, consulting and fundraising roles, and two CEO positions to date, including the current one.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

Meeting Harel Gadot, the founder of MEDX and XACT Robotics over ten years ago. Harel and I met while I was consulting to one of the government agencies in Israel. Harel had just established MEDX, an investment management firm that is focused on medical device technologies developed in Israel, and I tried to help by making the connection to a tender then published to establish a medtech incubator. That effort failed, but some of the best things come out of failures! We stayed in touch, and almost three years later, in 2013 Harel established XACT Robotics and offered me the CEO position.

Can you tell us about the Cutting edge technological breakthroughs that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?

Developed by XACT Robotics®, our cutting-edge technology is called the XACT ACE™ Robotic System. XACT ACE is the first and only system to combine both planning and monitoring capabilities (i.e. navigation) with hands-free robotic insertion and steering capabilities to guide instruments into the human body during image-guided percutaneous procedures including biopsies, ablations, site-specific drug delivery and other local treatments. During these procedures, accuracy is extremely important as physicians need to ensure that the instrument precisely reaches a target. In many cases, movement by the patient or within the body can change the trajectory required to reach a target of interest. When a procedure is performed using conventional manual methods, if an instrument does not reach a target it is often necessary to repeat the procedure, increasing risk for both the patient and healthcare providers.

Imaging modalities such as CT scanners, ultrasound and MRI have advanced significantly over the last decade, making it possible for physicians to identify very small anatomic targets, but there has not been a robotic device to help with path planning and steering of the instrument until now. Our robot, the size of a tablet, is designed to be able to consistently deliver an instrument to a target with one insertion and with an average accuracy of less than 1.7mm in over 200 pre-clinical and clinical cases, representing a major advance in both timing and accuracy in percutaneous procedures.

This level of performance means that the technology can potentially support earlier diagnosis and treatment for many patients, lower the risk of complications from surgery, lead to shorter recovery times and support more efficient use of radiology services and resources. There are also a number of potential benefits for the physician, including the ability to complete more procedures in less time and reduce physical strain and other risks associated with some procedures.

How do you think this might change the world?

Demand for percutaneous procedures is projected to continue to grow in the years ahead and efforts to keep up with demand can present significant challenges to radiology teams and departments based on factors including limited availability of OR space to perform surgical procedures and limited time available from experienced radiologists. Even with years of experience, manual percutaneous procedures can have unpredictable procedure times and require multiple insertions when a needle must be removed, redirected, and reinserted to reach a target. These variables can limit the ability of IR practices to schedule multiple procedures in a day. In procedures involving radiation, delays in completion of the procedure and the need to reinsert a needle to reach a target can increase radiation or pathogen exposure to the radiologist and the patient. Additionally, manual procedures can put a significant physical strain on radiologists and technicians, who need to bend over each patient to complete the procedure, often based on multiple insertions.

XACT ACE™ offers a solution that may have a significant impact on both IR practices’ efficiency and patient outcomes. The robot can significantly help to improve the chances of procedure success on a first attempt and can be administered by a broad range of radiology professionals, including mid-level team members, as well as physician assistants and fellows. Performing needle insertion for percutaneous procedures “hands free” could help IR practices to better estimate procedure timing and could make it possible to perform many procedures at bedside or other locations outside a surgical suite. Optimizing accuracy and first-try success in reaching a target can lead to more predictable and consistent procedure times and staff utilization, improving FTE and facility resources and increasing revenue and profitability.

In addition to allowing for more predictable procedure times and reducing strain on IRs, XACT ACE™ also has the potential to support earlier diagnosis and treatment. Because the robot allows physicians to reach very small targets, this reduces the need to take a “watch and wait” approach for suspicious lesions in the body. This potentially has the impact to treat often life-threatening illnesses sooner than ever before.

Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

As technology advances, we are seeing so many innovations that are helping to provide patients with better experiences and address challenges that physicians have faced for years. One concern that many people have with technology is the idea that robots will eventually replace humans in the workforce. The XACT ACE™ system is a tool that actually helps to enhance the physician’s capabilities. XACT ACE™ is designed to combine advanced accurate technology with the physician’s many years of experience performing these procedures to be able to reach very small targets in one insertion.

Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?

We were aware of the current challenges with manual percutaneous procedures and knew that developers in the past had struggled to compensate for soft tissue movement. Our team really focused on the ability of XACT ACE™ to respond to the internal movement of tissues and targets by designing the robot to have non-linear steering capabilities. With these advanced capabilities, the radiologist can plan the trajectory and the instrument will reach the target anywhere in the body on the first attempt. We designed the advanced software algorithm to support 3-D trajectory planning and execution. If the target moves due to patient breathing, patient movement, or tissue compliance, the robot will compensate for that movement and still reach the specified target accurately in one insertion.

What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?

Our full commercial launch is underway in the US, Europe and Israel. We are currently having discussions with a number of leading hospitals and radiology centers of excellence across the globe about XACT ACE™. XACT ACE™ was FDA approved in July 2020 and since then in the US we have secured placements at a leading teaching hospital in Massachusetts and Sarasota Interventional Radiology in Sarasota, Florida. So far, our robotic system has been used clinically in lungs, liver, kidneys, retroperitoneal lymph nodes and general tissue targets in the abdomen. All our preclinical and clinical cases to date show that XACT ACE™ is able to accurately target a lesion within 1.7mm on average based on our clinical and preclinical experience in over 200 cases — 1.7mm is about the size of a head of a pin. When we meet with radiologists and hospital decision-makers, we share extensive data demonstrating the accuracy of our robot and how it can help empower radiologists, offer better patient outcomes and enable more efficient use of time and hospital resources. Based on all the benefits XACT ACE™ offers, we believe it is only a matter of time before the robot achieves widespread adoption.

What have you been doing to publicize this idea? Have you been using any innovative marketing strategies?

Right now, our main priority is meeting with physicians and hospital decision-makers one-on-one to show them how our technology works and how it can fit into their system. We have attended a variety of conferences to share the XACT ACE™ story and most recently attended the Society of Interventional Radiology SIR 2021 virtual conference. We are working with radiologists and other healthcare practitioners to provide demonstrations of our product and highlight how it can be used to empower them and allow for more accurate percutaneous procedures. We are also working to engage with physicians over social media and have developed the hashtag #XACTonTarget to help spread the word about XACT ACE™’s ability to consistently and accurately reach small targets in the body!

My family without a doubt. My eldest was born while I was well into my first CEO position with a medtech startup company. She was just a few months old when I had to fly out on a roadtrip across Europe to meet with potential strategic partners and raise additional funding for the company. I would not have been able to continue on this very demanding career path without a firm and supportive home base.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

I leverage my experience to mentor and help other entrepreneurs and young executives as much as my schedule permits. I have helped several entrepreneurs navigate their first steps in establishing startup companies with issues such as writing business plans, putting together their presentations, protecting intellectual property, raising funds, navigating founding documents and agreements, etc. In the past year, I have also taken on a board of directors seat in a startup company where I believe I can make a significant contribution from my own experience. I also take an active part in various forums and discussion groups to help others and leverage my network.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)

I believe that some of the most valuable lessons learned come from making mistakes. I have been fortunate enough throughout my career to learn and grow from various mistakes that all entrepreneurs make along the way. Conflict-of-interest situations between the Board of Directors and Shareholders are probably one of the most difficult territories to navigate, especially in a first start-up with little experience. Having said that, I don’t think it would have helped to receive any such advice early on. I probably would not have listened, and I would probably not have learned as much as I did if I had been spared from these experiences.

Reflecting on the past year with the challenges the COVID-19 pandemic has brought forth, I would focus on the next generation. As an adult, I was able to adapt and pull through the challenging times, making sure my employees felt as little strain as possible from their workplace. The education system took much longer to adapt and was not equipped in any way to deal with the new reality. My movement would be to adapt the education system to the 21st century. To make sure my children and their peers will be ready for the challenges they will be faced with in their future careers. Being able to react and adapt efficiently to a rapidly changing environment due to economic, social, environment, or even health crises, is a skillset that must be developed. It is too early to say what lasting effects COVID-19 will have on our lives, but there certainly will be. As a society, I think we all need to learn from the past year and become better equipped to handle such events in the future.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

It would have to be “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” By Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken.

I have been at crossroads several times in my life. Moving from Canada, where I grew up, to study in Israel where I stayed and developed my career, is just one example. The poem speaks of chance. I could have chosen to stay in Canada and ended up on a very different path than the one pursued. Maybe the alternative path would have been just as exciting and fulfilling. I chose one path over the other for no particular reason and it led me to where I am today. Sometimes it’s that one decision, that will have the most significant impact and there is no way to know in advance. Knowing that chance plays a role in important crossroads, and that we are not always in control is a humbling realization. I try to keep that mind as I continue on my journey.

Some very well known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

Autonomous robotics represents the next revolution in medicine. This revolution will truly democratize medicine, bringing equal level treatment worldwide. XACT Robotics is positioned to advance the first autonomous AI driven robotic system to market. The XACT ACETM system, already cleared for commercial use, is the world’s first and only hands-free robotic technology that combines advanced image-based procedure planning and monitoring with robotic instrument insertion and non-linear steering capabilities. The future is already here with remote control features, and artificial intelligence connecting the systems to the cloud just around the corner. XACT ACE™ is already the go-to-system for robotic percutaneous procedures.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

https://xactrobotics.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/xact-robotics/

Twitter: @XACTrobotics

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIhuAr-Z1NuvVlQrzNCFgFQ

The Future Is Now: Chen Levin of XACT Robotics On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Rising Through Resilience: Jessica Cowin of the American Heart Association On The Five Things You…

Rising Through Resilience: Jessica Cowin of the American Heart Association On The Five Things You Can Do To Become More Resilient

Know yourself and trust your gut feeling completely/and your moms! — You are the only person who knows yourself the best and many times you know something is wrong even when the doctors and tests do not show anything. My mom knew that something was wrong with my gallbladder for two years or tests and doctors saying everything was normal. My medication could cause issues and sure enough that is what it was. Felt relief after two years of not being able to eat anything and pain in my side and back.

Jessica Cowin is a volunteer for the American Heart Association‘s Go Red For Women “Real Women” campaign. Jessica has faced health issues since she was 2 days old — when she was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a rare birth defect in which the left side of the heart doesn’t develop. That led to heart and kidney transplants. Now, the 37-year-old Chicago resident is increasing awareness of congenital heart conditions and raising money for medical research.

Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory?

I was born with a rare congenital heart defect — Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS), Double outlet, right ventricle (DORV). That fancy title means that I was born without the left side of my heart. The right side of my heart developed, but I had no left side.

My mom had a normal pregnancy so my defect was not seen on any sonograms. After I was born a nurse noticed I was in distress and that is when they found out about my heart. There is only palliative care with HLHS, which means that there is no cure, only surgical repairs to help the heart maintain function. I had this intervention, which was a three stage series of surgeries — 4 days old, 18 months, 5 years. My heart needed a subsequent repair when I was 13, which was called a revised Fontan with pacemaker. My heart was already beginning to fail at that point and I was listed for a heart transplant a few months after I turned 16.

I have always been a very social person, love being around my friends, loved being in school. I missed a lot of school due to doctors’ appointments, surgeries, being sick. That was really hard for me. When I was 16, I was struggling to stay alive, and felt surrounded by this cloudiness. It really kept me from focusing on anything other than surviving. It’s such a weird, indescribable, feeling. A transplant is really the only true repair of HLHS. A transplant gives you a full, functioning, heart with both the right and left sides. Yes, you get a whole, healthy heart (I do get that question every so often). It replaced a failing half a heart. The cloudiness left me along with the inability to walk ten feet and be out of breath. It is an incredible feeling, taking a true and real deep breath. You don’t realize how sick you are when you are living it. Only after do you realize what a normal heart feels like. With the good of a transplant comes those complications too, nothing is perfectly fixed. 10 years after my heart transplant, I went into kidney failure and was listed for a kidney transplant. My younger sister saved my life by donating one of her kidneys to me. That was the scariest time in my life, ironically, knowing she was in surgery and just wanting to know that she was ok. I was just about to turn 25, she was 22. I am 21 years post heart transplant and 11 years post kidney.

We take for granted the “normal” parts of our lives. My “normal” included growing up going to the cardiologist, like all congenital heart defect (CHD) patients do, no matter how much we wish we didn’t have to be different from our peers growing up. I always wanted to play sports, but I couldn’t because after running five steps, I would get so tired, out of breath, my chest would be pounding in pain from the tiny bit of exertion. For me, I think this was the hardest part, not being able to be involved with things the way I wanted to, but at the same time, I did not know any differently, how that really felt. But from growing up “differently”, it made me really appreciate those little things in life and the ability to share my story. One of my proudest moments was when my memoir, The Hearts of a Girl, was accepted for publishing.

Can you share with us the most interesting story from your career? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

I don’t have a specific story, but in my job I talk to doctors who are the researchers doing the work in the congenital heart defect world. If it wasn’t for their research, I would not be here. Other patients would not be here. The researchers and their research is so important and continuing to fund their technology, surgical improvements, long term outcome care/support, devices, is the most important lesson and take away. Without that research I would not have survived.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

What makes The Children’s Heart Foundation stand out is our mission — To advance the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of congenital heart defects by funding the most promising research. The Children’s Heart Foundation is our story, we raise money to fund research. Our volunteers, the families, the patients living with a CHD are the story. Perhaps something special that we have been able to do is connect our families with the researchers doing the work and research itself. Our families/volunteers were able to personally ask questions to some of the researchers we have funded, and actually talk to them face to face (zoom). It was inspiring to watch and gives so much hope and excitement.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

Honestly, it has been my mom and sister. Without their support I would not have written a book or pursed further education. They push me (in a good way) to go for the things I want to accomplish, even though there is uncertainty in the outcome. They have been by my side at every doctor’s appointment — good, bad, or ugly. Having a support system makes all the difference in the world. They will never let me give up on my list of life accomplishments and will support me on tough decisions, although their opinions weigh heavily on how I approach those decisions.

My definition of resilience is the ability to getting through/overcome the touch moments, days, hours of those really dark times.

Persistence
Having support of family/friends
The mentality to just keep going, the confidence to do what you need to do
Keep moving forward
Hope
Ability to talk about your experience in the hope it can help someone else
Stubborn (just a little)

When you think of resilience, which person comes to mind? Can you explain why you chose that person?

I have had a role model in my mom of exactly that. She never gave up fighting for me and my health needs. If she needed something to happen, she figured out a way to make it happen, she is the most persistent person I know.

Has there ever been a time that someone told you something was impossible, but you did it anyway? Can you share the story with us?

When I was a kid, I definitely pushed my limits even though my mom or doctor told me to be careful. I had to try it for myself. I was stubborn and persistent and so much of my life was based on restrictions so to speak that I had to learn the hard way. I think so many things are told to be impossible when you are born with a CHD. It is hard for me to think of anything “normal” to explain.

Did you have a time in your life where you had one of your greatest setbacks, but you bounced back from it stronger than ever? Can you share that story with us?

That is a tough question. I think one of the greatest setbacks was being told I needed a kidney transplant. The idea of needing another transplant was tough. I needed to go for many pre/post treatments to make sure I would not reject my kidney, even though my sister was a near perfect match. I needed dialysis which was a horribly difficult for me. I did not have adequate insurance coverage and my mom was working on getting that, the hospital denied the surgery twice because we did not have the financial means to pay out of pocket. My sister started an online fundraiser and up until that point, I had never really talked about my heart condition. Because we were raising money, we had opportunities through media to share my story. That was the first time I really opened up about my heart condition and the need for a kidney. After the kidney transplant, I got more comfortable sharing my story openly and it really helped me decide to quit my job and write my memoir.

Did you have any experiences growing up that have contributed to building your resiliency? Can you share a story?

I always knew about the American Heart Association and always wanted to be a part of it. I never really knew if that was ever a possibility because the AHA focused on heart attacks and strokes and I had a CHD. I never knew how that could work out. When I heard of this opportunity, I was so excited, I cannot even express it. Something that I never thought was possible, became possible when the AHA introduced the CHD class being added to the Real Women 2021 Campaign. All I have ever wanted to do was share my story, be an advocate for other patients and families going through similar experiences and be involved with The Children’s Heart Foundation on a daily basis. I have been so excited to be a part of the inaugural year for women with CHDs.

Resilience is like a muscle that can be strengthened. In your opinion, what are 5 steps that someone can take to become more resilient? Please share a story or an example for each.

Know yourself and trust your gut feeling completely/and your moms! — You are the only person who knows yourself the best and many times you know something is wrong even when the doctors and tests do not show anything. My mom knew that something was wrong with my gallbladder for two years or tests and doctors saying everything was normal. My medication could cause issues and sure enough that is what it was. Felt relief after two years of not being able to eat anything and pain in my side and back.
Be persistent. Nothing will get done if you don’t keep following up. This is healthcare.
Be stubborn and don’t give up!
Have hope that things will get better.
Share your story if it means it can help at least one person.

I would make sure that everyone knew about congenital heart disease the same way we all know about cancer. CHDs are the #1 birth defect and yet barely anyone knows about it, cancer even falls after CHDs, but everyone knows about how to fund cancer research and what a diagnosis like that means. There are no true cures for CHDs. Surgical repairs can be done to maintain certain conditions for a lifetime, but no cure. I wish I could do this in all reality. That is why I advocate so hard for The Children’s Heart Foundation, the research we fund and the future research to be funded and get so excited about being involved with campaigns like Go Red for Women. I just want to make that kind of difference. Hopefully, one day someone like Oprah will see my story and more research than I have ever imagined can be funded! #crazylifegoals

Does it matter if they are living or not? I would love to have breakfast with Vivien Thomas and say thank you. Thank you for what you did for my future and the futures of millions of CHD patients. He was the true pioneer of the surgical technique that saved “blue babies” which is a known CHD, Tetralogy of Fallot and surgical techniques for improving circulation (transposition of the great arteries). If it were not for him, these techniques could have taken an even longer time to develop. Absolutely brilliant.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

Instagram — jcarmelc17

Facebook — Jessica Carmel (Cowin)

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!

Rising Through Resilience: Jessica Cowin of the American Heart Association On The Five Things You… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

NerdWallet CEO Tim Chen’s Big Idea That Might Change The World

NerdWallet has launched an initiative to drive deposits into credit unions that serve underrepresented communities. There are huge inequities in these communities, and many traditional financial resources are either unavailable to them or come with predatory fees and interest rates attached.

As a part of my series about “Big Ideas That Might Change The World In The Next Few Years”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Tim Chen.

Tim Chen, CEO of NerdWallet, co-founded the personal finance company in 2009 after working on Wall Street and realizing there was a need to give consumers better clarity around all of life’s financial decisions. Before founding NerdWallet, Tim was a hedge fund analyst at Perry Capital investing in payment processing firms, credit card networks and technology companies. He also worked as an equity analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston. Tim has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford University.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you please tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Around 2008 my sister came to me for advice on choosing her next credit card. I had previously worked on Wall Street so I thought this would be an easy task, but I was shocked at the results of a quick Google search: There were too many options to sift through and no easy way to do a side-by-side comparison of the features and benefits of each. When the spreadsheet that I made her started to go viral, I realized that consumers were in desperate need of unbiased financial advice and easy tools to help them make financial decisions confidently. So I created NerdWallet in 2009 to be that resource for all of life’s financial decisions.

Ok thank you for that. Let’s now move to the main focus of our interview. Can you tell us about your “Big Idea That Might Change The World”?

NerdWallet has launched an initiative to drive deposits into credit unions that serve underrepresented communities. There are huge inequities in these communities, and many traditional financial resources are either unavailable to them or come with predatory fees and interest rates attached.

Companies of all sizes can help address this inequity by simply banking their dollars with a credit union that serves low-income communities rather than a traditional bank. In doing so, companies can help fund loans for people in underserved communities who want to start a business, buy a home, or need to pay for an emergency expense, but may not have strong credit or cash in their pockets. By providing safe and fair lending options to these groups, these credit unions are helping create long-term, sustainable wealth in these communities, which is critically important during the post-pandemic economic recovery and beyond.

At NerdWallet, we’ve moved $2 million into Self-Help Federal Credit Union, which serves low-income working families in California, Washington, Illinois, and Wisconsin. It’s inspiring to see the impact credit unions like Self-Help have had on individuals and the larger community. For example, Self-Help Federal Credit Union provided funding support to Brighter Beginnings, a San Francisco-based organization that aims to support healthy births and successful development of children in communities with limited resources. With Self-Help’s support, Brighter Beginnings is able to give back to its community by helping parents who have limited financial, support and medical resources become self-sufficient so they can raise happy, healthy children.

To encourage like-minded companies to join the cause, we’ve partnered with Inclusiv, a nonprofit network of community development credit unions, to help interested companies find credit unions across the country who are accepting deposits. We’re also directing additional funds into three credit unions supporting underserved communities in the Bay Area, all of which are minority depository institutions: Self-Help Federal Credit Union, Northeast Community Federal Credit Union, and Cooperative Center Federal Credit Union. Our employees are also getting involved through volunteer and skill-based opportunities in our local community.

How do you think this will change the world?

Inclusiv and its CDCU partners are on the frontline of economic recovery, helping not just individual families and local small businesses, but also underserved communities as a whole by helping to increase cash flow and create new jobs. We’re already seeing these credit unions make a huge impact. In 2019 Self-Help helped finance the opening of Community Foods Market, the first full-service grocery store in West Oakland in over 50 years. West Oakland was once a food desert, but now it has a local grocery store that creates new job opportunities and allows residents to spend their grocery dollars in their own community.

At the same time, according to the S&P Global Ratings, U.S. corporations are sitting on $2.5 trillion in cash and investments — money that could be funding communities in need, but is instead sitting in traditional bank accounts. If more companies, not just those with a lot of cash on hand, redirected portions of their capital into credit unions serving low income communities, we could make incredible strides in supporting underrepresented communities.

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this idea that people should think more deeply about?

No. That’s what makes this such a smart, easy decision. Companies can get competitive rates, asset preservation, and quick ratio maintenance all while making a positive impact on communities in need. It’s a win-win.

Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this idea? Can you tell us that story?

NerdWallet’s mission is to help people make financial decisions confidently and we’ve long wanted to find ways to further that mission outside of the products we provide. During last summer’s important conversations surrounding racial equity, our employees became passionate about finding ways to give back to Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) and other underrepresented communities in a way that aligns authentically with our corporate mission. So I reconnected with a colleague from Self-Help Credit Union, which is a local credit union in the Oakland area, who had served on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with me years ago. Through those conversations, we began thinking through the best ways to support Self-Help, as well as other credit unions with a similar mission.

What do you need to lead this idea to widespread adoption?

Awareness. At NerdWallet we help people make smart money moves that they didn’t know were an option. We’re doing the same thing with this initiative, but on a larger scale. There are so many corporate decision makers who aren’t aware that their companies could be giving back just by moving their money from one place to another. But once the awareness is there,

I believe it’s a very easy decision. We’re hoping that as we spread that message and share the amazing impact stories, more companies will jump on board and follow suit.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

They can connect with me on LinkedIn here.

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.

Thank you for including me!

NerdWallet CEO Tim Chen’s Big Idea That Might Change The World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.