A Geek Leader Podcast - inspiring technical and creative leaders around the world

Squirrel creates constructive conflict to achieve astonishing productivity gains. His intensive coaching and advisory work gives executives and their teams the tools to create and align on business goals, discard good ideas that don’t fit the strategy, and deliver high-impact, customer-visible results. For instance, companies using his Insanely Profitable Tech methods deliver new software to customers every single day, with constant learning and improvement that keeps them way ahead of the competition. Squirrel has transformed product lines, company cultures, and technical skills at over 300 organizations on every continent except Antarctica, in industries from finance to biotech to music and many more. He co-authored the book Agile Conversations and has recently released Squirrel’s Tech Radar, a simple method for assessing any technology organization in under two hours with no background in tech required. Learn more about Squirrel at https://douglassquirrel.com, and check out his community of thousands of executives learning together at https://squirrelsquadron.com. Or feel free to ring him anytime on the Squirrel-Phone, +44 777 3794 491; you’ll probably reach him at his home in Frogholt, England, where he lives in a timber-framed cottage built in the year 1450.

ALAN E. NELSON, Ed.D. is a leadership development specialist, trainer, speaker, and Lecturer of Management at the Naval Postgraduate School (www.nps.edu). He previously taught at USC, UCI, LMU, and Pepperdine. Dr. Nelson founded KidLead Academy, the world’s first online course to train parents how to develop their child’s leadership potential (www.kidlead.com). He also founded LeadYoung Training Systems, designing organizational leadership curricula for 3-23-year-olds (www.LeadYoungTraining.com). He is the author of 40 books and over 200 articles on personal growth and leadership and the founder of KidLead Inc., a nonprofit focusing on young leader development. Alan has a doctorate (Ed.D.) in leadership from the University of San Diego. During the first half of his life, he was an entrepreneurial leader in the social sector. In midlife, he concluded that leadership development could have a better return on investment by focusing on leaders while they’re moldable, not moldy. Since 2008, Alan’s been a pioneer in young leader development, designing age-n-stage curricula for 3-23-year-olds. Dr. Nelson has traveled to a variety of countries to train people with his curricula, along with interacting with 1000s of preteens and teens, as part of his research.

Jeff is a a leading voice and thought leader on customer centric product development. He helps organizations build better products and executives build the cultures that build better products. He is the co-author of the award-winning book Lean UX (now in it’s 3rd edition) and the Harvard Business Review Press book Sense & Respond. In 2020 he published the critically aclaimed book, Forever Employable.

Starting off as a software designer then product manager and finally entrepreneur, Jeff now works as a keynote speaker, trainer, coach, and board advisor helping companies put the customer in the century of every decision.

Most recently Jeff co-authored Who Does What By How Much?, his 5th book and 3rd with co-author Josh Seiden. This new book is the how-to guide for implementing Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) in every organization.

Dominic is a creative, goal-driven marketing leader that’s dedicated his career to the translation industry. Dominic brings proficiency in global marketing, demand generation, and go-to-market strategies as the Director of Marketing at MotionPoint. MotionPoint is a managed translation platform that delivers concierge-level, end-to-end translation to meet the needs of brands across desired languages and local markets. MotionPoint’s concierge-level managed translation service has led the industry for 22 years.

Greg has served on the Bigleaf Networks’ board of directors since 2020. He has a consistent track record scaling businesses and creating enterprise value through revenue growth, operational performance, and strategic acquisitions. Greg’s technology leadership career spans more than 25 years, where he has led multiple companies from start up to over $100 million in annual revenue. Prior to Bigleaf, Greg served as COO at HungerRush, a national leader in hospitality software. Prior to HungerRush, Greg spent eight years as EVP of Sales at Alert Logic, where he led sales, marketing, and other key area of the business.

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith has been recognized as one of the Top Ten Business Thinkers in the World and the top-rated executive coach at the Thinkers50 ceremony in London since 2011. Published in 2015, his book Triggers is a Wall Street Journal and New York Times #1 Bestseller! He’s also the author of New York Times best seller and #1 Wall Street Journal Business Book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, winner of the Harold Longman Award as Best Business Book of the Year.

Dean Guida has led his organization through decades of technological change, cultivating Infragistics from a small startup in 1989 into a global enterprise software leader. Dean oversees all aspects of Infragistics’ business operations and corporate direction, maintaining a steady focus on delighting the customer, delivering value to the market, and inspiring STEM students. With a developer and UX professional community of more than two million, Infragistics has achieved the highest awards in software development, and Infragistics enterprise apps help users collaborate and obtain insights and results for their companies. Dean has developed software solutions that accelerate design, development, and collaboration, including the trailblazing digital workplace platform, Slingshot. A regular contributor to Entrepreneur Magazine and a frequent podcast guest, Dean is the author of When Grit is Not Enough: An Entrepreneur’s Playbook for Taking Your Business to the Next Level (Inc. Original).

Carl is a Swedish-born author with a background in business and international relations. He studied economics at the University of Oxford and completed an MBA at the London Business School. He worked as a diplomat in Moscow and completed one tour of peacekeeping in Kosovo before moving into different roles in investment banking and corporate finance. His main interests are in future trends, disruptive technologies, socio-political and economic systems, risks and uncertainty, sustainable development, and all creative arts. Carl is interested in alternative history novels and realistic books about the near and far future. Despite, or probably because of, his background in economics and finance, he does not believe in single trajectory forecasts, but rather in base-case and outlier scenarios that open our eyes to how the future could unfold. He believes in chaos, in the sense that small changes to our current situation can have a large impact on future development. He is also interested in world-crafting books that describe carefully designed and internally consistent worlds. Carl is interested in the nature of man and in our creative and destructive potential. As a result, he is a keen reader of books on different utopias and dystopias. He tries to follow research institutes like the Future of Life Institute at MIT and the Center for the Study of Existential Risks at Cambridge, which he believes do very important work on what he would refer to as the meta-sustainability of our species. Among non-fiction authors that he finds insightful, Carl would mention Yuval Harari, Toby Ord, William MacAskill, Jared Diamond, David Wallace-Wells, and Nassim Taleb. Among fiction authors that inspire him, he would mention George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and Frank Herbert. There are of course many more. *The Dystopian Utopia* is Carl’s first book. It is a work of speculative fiction about one (of infinitely many) possible futures for humanity. He is married with two children, lives in Sweden, and enjoys sports and nature.

Chad Brown is a leadership engagement expert. He coaches founders and executives in the art and science of leadership for themselves, their teams, and clients to create new, unprecedented results and experience fulfillment in their work.

Chad founded a media production studio called Shade Tree Films in 2008 that has serviced global companies such as Volkswagen, Target, and Pixar Animation Studios.

This is where his love and passion for leadership and causing results through others was ignited.

He sold that company in 2021. He thrives in extreme environments and difficult

conversations. Over the last 7 years, Chad has trained and developed leaders at globally recognized brands like Lulu Lemon, and Ironclad Document Services along with many burgeoning start-ups.

When he is not engaging in meaningful conversations with leaders, you will find (or won’t be able to find) Chad on a wild adventure in the mountains with his family. He resides at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in Orem Utah with his wife Katie and three children Addison, Kenya, and Milo.

Richmond Alake is an AI/ML Practitioner with an academic background in computer vision, robotics, and machine learning. He has worked in software development and machine learning roles since 2016. Richmond has also taught online AI/ML/Data courses and written over 200 technical articles with over 1 million views. He is passionate about using technology to solve real-world problems.