Building with Carnelian

In this episode, growth strategist and founder Andrew Flynn shares his insight in the synergy of business development and community revitalization. Andrew holds 20+ years in Fortune 100 consulting, product development, and data‑driven marketing. Now, he’s growing The Valley, a rural tech innovation hub that began as a gathering space and continues to unfold as an incubator for new ventures.

Andrew reflects on the puzzle of rural revitalization, emphasizing that the key leverage point is identifying and mobilizing local assets. His story with The Valley and Cambridge, New York, is a case study for how business can build sustainable social impact.

You can learn more about The Valley at their website.

How do you build an impact that will outlive you?

For Meghan Gardner, the answer lies in assembling evidence and assets across sectors. Meghan is the founder of two purpose-driven organizations. Guardian Adventures, her social enterprise, advances science and cultural education for clients including the Smithsonian and The Cherokee Nation. CulturaConnector, her nonprofit, builds a model of scalable, adaptable, and community-owned trauma-informed care at 1/20th the cost of traditional group therapy. 

Listen today and hear how Meghan's strategic creativity, commitment to purpose, and attention to data accelerates global growth in economic capacity and mental health.

Interested in supporting Meghan's work? You can learn more about their pilot program here and help them meet their funding goal here.

In this episode of Building with Carnelian, host Lauren Chuhta sits down with Jonna Crocker, a founder, operator, and constituent of the Fighting H.A.R.D. Foundation. Jonna mobilizes her niche perspective to build a growing support system for children with rare diseases. She is as on-the-ground as it gets, and a testament to people-for-people impact.

Jonna shares her insight on the versatility required for progress in the modern purpose-driven space. Calling upon her business background, she reflects on what it takes to get for-profit entities involved in meaningful contributions. Join Jonna and Lauren as they unpack how to build, run, and support enterprises that deliver real impact with rigor and heart.

In this episode of Building with Carnelian, host Lauren Chuhta sits down with Priya Abiram, founder of Operation Period, a startup developing menstrual health technology for use in astronomy spaces including SpaceX and NASA. A Forbes 25 Under 25 honoree, Priya has built her company at the intersection of deep science, social impact, and a market most founders never think to enter.

Priya walks through what it has taken to build Operation Period from the ground up, the early conversations with investors, the relationships that have shaped how she leads, and the way she develops and mobilizes data inside her company. She and Lauren get into what it means to be a founder navigating the startup space as an immigrant and woman of color, and what she has learned about pushing an idea for social impact into rooms that were not built with her in mind.

In this episode of Building with Carnelian, host Lauren Chuhta sits down with Arden Whitley, Senior Development Director at Ronald McDonald House, whose career has carried her from Rhodes College through animal welfare and into children's and family health, where she has spent years building the fundraising infrastructure that keeps mission-driven organizations running.

Arden walks through the fundamentals of development work — funding diversification, navigating corporate and foundation giving, and scaling development operations — and reflects on what the transition between cause areas taught her about how money moves in the nonprofit space. She and Lauren get into what the field looks like today, why development is so often misunderstood, and what keeps her in the work.

In this episode of Building with Carnelian, host Lauren Chuhta sits down with Dr. Jenny Aker, Professor of Development Economics at Cornell University and co-chair of MIT's Poverty Action Lab, whose 25 years of fieldwork across 21 countries in Africa and Latin America has taken her deep into the question of what it actually means to measure impact.

Dr. Aker breaks down what development economics really is, what impact evaluation requires in practice, and why drawing a true causal relationship between a policy and its outcomes is harder and more important than most people realize.

Welcome to the Carnelian Ventures podcast, hosted by Lauren Chuhta. This show explores the powerful intersection of venture operations and social impact. Join us as we dive into how storytelling and data can be mobilized as evidence to empower your pitches, investment evaluations, and everyday decision-making in the venture capital space.

Drawing on her background in global development and research into how language shapes decision-making across various global institutions, Lauren investigates how to scale good intentions into tangible, widespread impact. By bringing together diverse perspectives and breaking down the gates to resources and data, this podcast aims to benefit the community and help stakeholders make confident moves.

Tune in for a variety of engaging episodes, including:

• Guest interviews with founders, investors, and operators sharing real-life lessons from the field.
• Solo thought leadership covering market trends, data-informed decision-making, and what makes a founder backable.
• Panel discussions where investors and operators debate strategy and exchange valuable perspectives.
• Deep-dive case studies exploring growth journeys and analyzing deals that closed phenomenally or didn't close at all.
• Industry news reacting to current headlines and policy shifts.
• Interactive Q&A sessions driven directly by your questions and feedback.

New episodes drop every other Tuesday. Subscribe to join the conversation, and let your input shape the topics and guests we bring on the show!