After receiving an executive MBA at Harvard, Priyanca Ford became the Founder and executive board member at Kronos Fusion Energy, a startup building a roadmap to the full commercialization and monetization of fusion energy generators by 2032.

In this episode we discuss the technology and infrastructure behind the Kronos Fusion Energy Generator, Priyanca’s insights from COP28, and the future applications of fusion energy designs. We also discuss funding and how to be product-centric.

Here are Priyanca's action items!

In this episode we interview Kashmera Self, an industry recognized, forward looking fintech leader with 20+ years of experience in corporate strategy, innovation, and product commercialization. As VP, Strategy & Innovation at Interac, she leads a team in pursuing emerging topics including open banking, artificial intelligence (AI), value exchange, and blockchain to establish the long-term corporate strategy that helps steer the future of financial services here in Canada.

We discuss how Kashmera evaluates opportunities on emerging trends, works on strategy development for a large scale company, stays up to date with ever-evolving technologies, and builds meaningful partnerships. She also shares more about her role in launching and expanding Interac Debit mobile payments.

Action items:

Rachel Wong is the co-founder of Monday Girl, which connects Gen-Z and Millennial women with new job, career, and networking opportunities. Previously she worked at Uber to help launch the service in key Canadian markets, and has led multiple teams in strategy and operations. Rachel has also been named a Bay Street Bull 30 Under 30 recipient.

In this episode, we discuss how Rachel balanced working at Uber and Monday girl, the process of networking with global brands, and how she keeps her startup platform relevant amidst the changing career landscape.

Here are her takeaways:

Today we are joined by Dave Rouse, the CEO of CarbonClick. CarbonClick connects individuals and firms with carbon offset projects at the point of sale. All offsets are certified, and it is the only platform in the world that provides full transparency and "track and trace" to the source of the offset. Carbon Click has helped 1300 businesses and 230,000 individuals take climate action.

In this episode we discuss Dave's founder story, why he switched from medicine to engineering, and how Carbon Click calculates the amount a purchase impacts one's Carbon Footprint. We also go over developing meaningful partnerships and Dave's mentorship work with Climate-X.

Action items:

In this episode we sit down with Léonard Boussioux who is an incoming professor at the University of Washington in the Information Systems and Operations Management department. He was a Ph.D. candidate in Operations Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has developed and deployed machine learning and deep learning models to address high-stake challenges, including healthcare operations, pollution management, hurricane forecasting, and ecosystem preservation.

We discuss how Léonard decided to pursue advanced mathematics and physics in university, his new focus of developing predictive and prescriptive methods to enhance decision-making in sectors such as healthcare, agriculture, and climate, and the data he deals with across these sectors. We also go over the significance of multimodality in order to maximize potential from data sources.

Here are his 3 action items:

1. Try to have a positive outlook on life.

2. Surround yourself with positive people, and be part of different teams.

3. Be curious and have gratitude for what you receive.

Obaid Ahmed is an expert in building technology, UX/product design, large-scale software design, and business models. He created UmmahHub as a project to bring crowd-funding to Muslim communities around the world. He was the recipient of the Youth Business Entrepreneur in 2012 and was involved in the YoungMaker project which introduces the concept of technology to young members of our community via a 3D printer. Obaid was recently working on building the future of conversational apps using Voice, text, and AI working @Walmart Global Tech as the director of engineering.

We discuss his day to day tasks working at Walmart Global Tech as the director of engineering as well as his thoughts on the future of conversational experiences and advances in natural language processing like Chat GPT. 

Action items:

Network as much as you can.

Learn to communicate your ideas.

Be curious.

Tune in to our conversation with Thusha Agampodi, who is the Director of Engineering at Aurora Solar, a cloud-based solar platform that uses data, automation, and AI to make solar projects simple and predictable. After studying computer systems engineering at Carleton, she worked in various engineering roles at Tread, Magnet Forensics, and Blackberry. 

In this episode we discuss what goes into building an engineering team, how to manage personalization and simplicity when building systems, and approaches to allocating resources in terms of talent, budget, and time in tech projects. We also discuss what it's like being the only woman in the room in male dominated fields like engineering.

Thusha's action items are:

Jennifer Francis is a technology mentor, advisor, and angel investor. She is a former executive in the information technology and services industry, with experience in Enterprise Software, SaaS, Go-to-market Strategy, and Strategic Partnerships. She is the co-founder of SheBoot and is a Board Member of Invest Ottawa and is on the Board of Directors of the Capital Angel Network. Previously she was the Vice President of Financial Analytics Business at IBM.

In this episode, we discuss Jennifer's journey of becoming the co-founder of SheBoot and an Invest Ottawa and Capital Angel Network board member. We also talk about what factors most determine a company's success, how startup ecosystems are created, and more!

Action items:

1. Don't spend too much time planning out your entire life—focus on what your next step is.

2. Look at opportunities to open up your options rather than narrow them down. 

Brian Adams is the CTO at Salient Energy, a startup developing zinc metal batteries based on aqueous electrolytes for large scale energy storage applications. Previously he was a postdoctoral research associate at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory where he studied the electrodeposition and stripping of lithium metal.

In this episode we discuss the chemistry behind zinc metal batteries and how they differ from lithium ion batteries, how Salient chooses where to execute pilot projects, and the process of creating 3 year roadmaps for future pilot plants and factories. Brian's action item is to start working on projects that might not fit into the curriculum of high school or even university, as developing projects can build an abundance of important skills!

In this episode we chat with Isabella Grandic, the founder of BOOB BLURB, a conversation starter for taboo topics. She’s building BOOB BLURB to break the stigmas with women’s sexual and mental health. Isabella is a Morehead Cain Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was the previous director of EMM, a project to reduce maternal mortality via misoprostol distribution to treat postpartum hemorrhaging in Nigeria. She was also the program success manager at The Knowledge Society as it expanded from a Toronto-based program to a global one.

Tune in to learn about femtech, how BOOB BLURB got early adopters, and Izzy's process of turning her idea into a tangible card game.

Here are Izzy's action items!