This is the first episode in our visionary college series, where we cover the entrepreneurship education and community at the #1 entrepreneurship school in the US, Babson College. I talk Sumukh Setty, the former President of E-tower (Babson's premier entrepreneurial community) and past podcast guest, and Jason Shatsky, another senior at Babson University, and the current president of E-tower. In this conversation, we talk about why they chose Babson, get an inside look into E-tower, learn about Jason’s experience transferring to Babson, advice for getting into this selective university, unique opportunities, potential downsides of the school, things they wish they knew coming in and much much more!

Welcome back to the 21st Century Visionary podcast, the one and only podcast designed to bring young people the content and community to dream and execute on their inspiring vision for society. In this special episode, we are releasing the recording of the first live 21st Century Visionary talk in partnership with TILE.org and The Nebula challenge featuring the amazing and insightful Roger Spitz. 

Based in San Francisco, Roger Spitz is the founder of Techistential, the global Foresight, Strategy & Futures Intelligence platform. Roger is also founding Chairman of the Disruptive Futures Institute. He has two decades of experience leading investment banking businesses, advising CEOs, Founders, Boards, and Shareholders of companies globally on how to future-proof their business. As the former Head of Technology Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) with BNP Paribas, Roger advised on over 50 transactions across the world with an overall deal value of $25bn. Roger is also an advisor to a number of Accelerators, Incubators, and Venture Capital funds in Silicon Valley including Berkeley SkyDeck and Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center.

In this conversation, we covered Roger's unique career trajectory how he got into Foresight and Futures thinking, His current work with Techistenial and the Disruptive Futures Institute, The role of AI in the future, The AAA framework to future proof our careers, reforming the education system, the rise of generalists, Roger’s investing criteria, must-read books, and much much more!

Welcome back to 21st Century Visionary, the one, and only podcast featuring the stories of young entrepreneurs and leaders to provide you with the knowledge and inspiration to take action on your vision for society. This is the second part of a two-part conversation with Yashvardhan Sharma. In this conversation, we dive into Yash's personal story. Yash opens up about a severe speech impediment he had from a young age, the social anxiety that came with it, and how he overcame all of that by drawing lessons from a 2000-year-old philosophy. We also get into why he decided to take a gap year, productivity hacks, favorite books, his vision for the future, and much more!

"Last month, we hit 140,000 people. I could not have imagined that we would hit that milestone in the entire history of the website."- Yashvardhan Sharma. 

Welcome back to 21st Century Visionary, the one and only podcast that covers the stories of young entrepreneurs and leaders to provide you with the knowledge and inspiration to take action on your vision for society. Today I am talking with Yashvardhan Sharma. Yash is the Founder & Editor-in-Chief of the Tidings Blog, a student-run blog with articles on economics, economic history, and history. To date, they have published over 100+ academic articles reaching over 200,000 people around the globe. He is also the Founding Head of Operations at The Kudrat Initiative, a recycling and upcycling non-profit that has recycled close to 1,000lb of paper. He graduated high school in India and is currently taking a gap year to work on his ventures. In this first part of a two-part conversation, we covered everything that goes into building a successful publication including the early beginnings, assembling and motivating a global team, maintaining objectivity and credibility, finding interviewees, guerilla marketing strategies, and creating systems. With that please enjoy this value-packed episode with: Yashvardhan Sharma.

Today’s episode features the amazing Stephanie Su. Stephanie Su is a rising Bay Area high school senior passionate about technology, business, and design. She is the Lead Director of Superposition, a non-profit bridging the gender gap in tech through creating an empowering community and educational opportunities including the Bay Area's largest all-women and non-binary hackathon. As Lead Director, Stephanie has expanded Superposition beyond a 24-hour hackathon and reached 60,000+ individuals in 47 countries. She also serves as Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of Ad Astra Youth, a non-profit empowering youth leader by fostering student initiatives through consultations, mentorship, and community-building. Outside of working on Superposition and Ad Astra, Stephanie helps lead Project CreateAFuture, debates competitively, and studies CS and math. In this conversation, we covered the different aspects of leading Superposition including leading a team of over 10 members, securing partnerships with tech companies such as Uber and Facebook, increasing event attendance tenfold from the previous year, and hosting virtual workshops to a global audience. We also touched on her other initiatives Project Create a Future and Ad Astra as well as her advice for other young leaders.

Today's episode features the young finance wizard Rohan Gupta. Rohan was 12 when he made his first investment in stocks. Since then, his passion for investing has only grown as he headed his school’s investment club, bringing in guest speakers such as renowned investors Tim Draper and Howard Marks. He went on to found StreetFins, a platform aimed at simplifying finance for the younger generation by creating educational content. As part of this initiative, he hosts the podcast Finance simplified where he interviews successful investors and professors on various Finance topics. Rohan is currently a rising freshman at the University of Southern California. We talk about his first investment, the role of psychology in investing, connecting with famous investors, teaching Finance, starting Streetfins, favorite books, his vision for the future, and much much more!

Today we are joined by Megan Cui and Mingjie Jiang, co-founders of the organization Execute Big. Execute Big is dedicated to helping more students, leaders, and schools dream big and execute big through providing travel grants for students to attend hackathons, doing event consulting, and conducting research. Before founding Execute Big, Megan and Mingjie helped organize Hack Chicago and Hack Cincinnati, the Midwest's largest high school hackathons. Megan is currently a rising sophomore at Harvard University, studying economics and computer science. Mingjie is a rising freshman at UC Berkeley intending to study computer science. This was an extremely interesting conversation where we talked about their personal stories, the CS education landscape, adapting to COVID-19, and their advice for other young people.

Today's episode features Wes Woodson and is co-hosted by Wonho Do, a friend, and an incoming freshman at the NYU Stern School of Business. Wes is the chief storyteller of the hidden company and the founder of Feet2Feet. Through the hidden company, Wes has sparked a movement presented through the form of street-wear clothing, to encourage people to be themselves, unapologetically. Feet2Feet is an organization dedicated to providing footwear to the underprivileged. They have been able to partner with Reebok and many individual donors to distribute over 400 sneakers to shelters. Wes graduated from Babson College this year with a degree in Global Business Management. We talk about his entrepreneurial roots, the power of storytelling, building a clothing brand, authenticity, overcoming self-doubt, and much much more! With that, please enjoy my wide-ranging conversation with the inspiring  Wes Woodson.

" I have a weird attachment to synthetic biology, which is achieving biological immortality. I want to be a part of this revolution right now and leave a mark as a huge figure who made an impact through the biological revolution. But, the main plan is leaving the world better than we found it."

Today's guest is Hassan Sohail. Hassan is the young co-founder of Solvify, which is aimed at addressing the global water scarcity and food insecurity problems. He has helped develop an intelligent super absorbent nano-powder to do just that. In 2018, Hassan and his cofounder Hasham won the social innovation prize at the Diamond Challenge, an international business competition. We talk about his origin story, the scientific underpinnings of his idea, pitching to investors, favorite books, future plans, the next technological revolution, and much much more!

"When you're a younger founder, you should really own it... I can tell you that there are certain things that don't come into play with age like your work ethic, your determination, your grit, or will to not give up. I think that (those traits) definitely contribute to a startup's success far more than experience."

Today's guest is Victor Luo. Victor started his first company NEAT at the age of 15, to provide educational opportunities to impoverished rural children in China. Neat provides scholarships to students facing financial hardships so they can finish high school. He went on to found the tech company Bound which creates software to help companies run smooth and punctual meetings. At the age of 20, Victor took a gap year to join Bound full time as the co-CEO, leading a time of 8 employees. We talk about his story, guerrilla marketing tactics, managing a team, his favorite reading hack, learning from failure, and much much more!