Digitally Curious

Our guest is world-famous and while you may not heard of her, you may have heard her voice!

Aussie-born and now back in Australia, Karen Jacobsen’s speaking voice is in over 1 Billion GPS units and smartphones worldwide giving directions.

From a single voice-over booking, she created her empowerment brand “The GPS Girl”, teaching the five directions for “recalculating" in business and life.

An award-winning Singer and Songwriter, Karen's musical career highlights include sharing the bill with Norah Jones, Neil Sedaka and Christopher Cross and singing the national anthem at major sporting events including 80,000 people at the Giants Stadium for the New York Jets.

A TEDx speaker, Karen has enjoyed wide media coverage including the NBC Today Show, ABC World News Tonight, the CBS Early Show, The New York Times, NY Daily News, Glamour magazine, being named one of People Magazine's Most Intriguing People and she hosted her own web series "Navigating New York with The GPSGirl".

Karen's voice is in demand in the studio as a Voice-Over artist recording customised voice systems and advertising campaigns and in-person as an entertainer and speaker for Corporate events around the globe.

As an Author, Karen’s book "The GPS Girl's Road Map for Your Future” gives direction for getting more of what you want in business and life.

We covered a range of topics including

• Karen's Hero: Olivia Newton-John
• How Karen became "Aussie Karen" in Siri
• How the recording process worked
• How Karen uses voice interfaces in real life
• Will AI replace the human voice assistant completely?
• The time Karen found out she was the voice behind "Aussie Karen"
• Karen's Son's reaction to his mummy being in her phone
• Karen's most interesting voiceover job
• The GPS Girl and corporate audiences on recalculating
• Transferrable skills from a signer to a corporate presenter
• The new reality of performing in a post-covid world
• Advice for people wanting to perform as a singer or speaker and how to build confidence
• Tips for improving your public speaking
• How Karen recalculated in March 2020
• Karen's new life in The Whitsundays, Australia
• The blueprint for a real ambassador
• The magic about The Whitsundays
• Three Actionable tips for recalculating your next destination

Resources mentioned on the show
A Passionate Life - Ita Butrose
Tourism Whitsundays
Olivia Newton-John

More on Karen
Karen on LinkedIn
Karen on Twitter
Karen's Music Website
The GPS Girl

Thanks for listening to Digitally Curious. You can buy the book that showcases these episodes at curious.click/order

Your Host is Actionable Futurist® Andrew Grill

For more on Andrew - what he speaks about and recent talks, please visit ActionableFuturist.com

Andrew's Social Channels
Andrew on LinkedIn
Andrew on YouTube
@Andrew.Grill on Instagram
Keynote speeches here
Order Digitally Curious

High-growth, high-performance companies need to do extraordinary things to remain competitive. I recently had the opportunity to see how leading professional services firm Genpact is leveraging their sponsorship of the Envision Formula E Racing team in ways beyond what they imagined when they teamed up in 2018.

I was invited to Silverstone, the home of British Racing to view first-hand the Envision Racing cars, as well as speak to one of the team drivers, Robin Frijns  as well as Team principal, Sylvain Fillipi, and understand how Genpact’s partnership is giving the team a competitive advantage.

Owned by leading digital energy company Envision Group, Envision Racing is one of the founding and leading outfits in the FIA Formula E World Championship

As we will hear in my 2-part podcast series, the championship is more than just a racing series, it's a battle for the future. Formula E cars, powered by pure electricity, are paving the way for the cars of tomorrow.

Genpact is a principal partner of the team, and as we will hear from Genpact’s Chief Digital Officer, Sanjay Srivastava, their partnership goes way beyond their logo on the cars.

Genpact powers many of the solutions to analyse the reams of data from the car after each race and provide actionable insights to tune the car for peak performance under race conditions.

Sanjay explains in the first podcast: “Not only have we helped deliver performance on the racetrack, not only have we helped with the race against climate change, we've actually taken these learnings and applied it to a real business.”

My discussion with Sanjay was wide-ranging and covered many topics around data, analytics, and how the learnings from the racetrack are making it into their customer engagements in a meaningful way. 

This podcast is timely, ahead of the London 2022 E-Prix to be held this weekend at ExCeL London – home of the world's first indoor/outdoor circuit where I will be a guest of Genpact to record a second podcast with Shibu Nambiar, their Chief Operating Officer.

Resources mentioned on the show
Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson

More on Sanjay
Sanjay on LinkedIn
Sanjay on Twitter
Genpact Website

More on Sylvain
Sylvian's Bio
Envision Racing Website
London 2022 E-Prix

Disclaimer: This podcast was a paid partnership with Genpact. I was solely responsible for the content of the podcast.

Thanks for listening to Digitally Curious. You can buy the book that showcases these episodes at curious.click/order

Your Host is Actionable Futurist® Andrew Grill

For more on Andrew - what he speaks about and recent talks, please visit ActionableFuturist.com

Andrew's Social Channels
Andrew on LinkedIn
Andrew on YouTube
@Andrew.Grill on Instagram
Keynote speeches here
Order Digitally Curious

What does playing soccer in your youth have to do with being the CEO of a high-growth tech company? If you’re Christina Kosmowski from LogicMonitor then it has everything to do with how to coach a team for success. Christiana was an early employee at Salesforce where she helped to develop their customer success program, and later did the same at Slack.  

Her Twitter bio describes her as a customer-obsessed CEO changing the very role of IT with customers at the centre. She is a Wife, Mother, Engineer, STEM advocate, and Soccer lover. 

As CEO of LogicMonitor, Christina is responsible for accelerating the company’s hypergrowth and delivering on its brand promise of helping C-level executives and their teams thrive through transformation.  

Prior to assuming the role of CEO, Christina served as LogicMonitor’s President, leading go-to-market strategy, R&D, customer success and operations.  

Christina came to LogicMonitor from Slack, where she spent four years building and leading Customer Success and Enterprise Go To Market Teams and also spent 15 years at Salesforce, where she oversaw functions including renewals, consulting, support and customer success.  

This is s a fascinating episode to peek inside the workings of a successful Software as a Service company and understand how they delight customers.  

In this episode we covered:  

• The difference between customer success and customer service   
• The difference with a Software as a Service business   
• Biggest learnings from Customer Success teams at Slack and Salesforce   
• Becoming a customer-obsessed CEO   
• Sharing insights across clients by connecting them   
• Collaborating with clients   
• Christina’s authentic personal brand   
• Lessons from the pandemic   
• The “where is Christina” channel in Slack   
• Adapting management styles due to the pandemic   
• Analysing customer losses   
• How Christina’s engineering training has helped her career   
• What Christina said “yes” to multiple opportunities   
• Advice for secondary school students   
• The influence of soccer on leading teams   
• Why human relationships should be an industry priority   
• Christina’s Personal “board of advisors”   
• Selecting mentors   
• The best piece of business advice ever given   
• Innovation at Logic Monitor   
• Best practices to develop a customer success program   
• Promoting STEM in schools   
• Connecting the sales & engineering teams   
• What’s the future of customer success?   
• Quickfire round   
• Three Actionable tips to delight your customers   

Resources mentioned on the show
The Leader you want to be - Amy Jen Su

More on Christina 
Christina on LinkedIn
Christina on Twitter
LogicMonitor Website

Thanks for listening to Digitally Curious. You can buy the book that showcases these episodes at curious.click/order

Your Host is Actionable Futurist® Andrew Grill

For more on Andrew - what he speaks about and recent talks, please visit ActionableFuturist.com

Andrew's Social Channels
Andrew on LinkedIn
Andrew on YouTube
@Andrew.Grill on Instagram
Keynote speeches here
Order Digitally Curious

I've always been fascinated by how technology can improve healthcare, and over the years at my keynote talks, audiences have asked me for my view of what's next.

Finally, I managed to grab two leading figures on this subject: Dr Simon Wallace, Chief Clinical Information Officer at Nuance Communications, and Umang Patel, Chief Clinical Information Officer at Microsoft to help explain this important topic.

Simon is a GP & public health doctor providing consultancy services to healthcare organisations. He has 20 years of commercial experience modernising & improving the delivery of healthcare. 

Previously he was at Hutchison 3G, AXA,  GSK & Worldcare UK.

Umang has worked across commercial and public sectors in healthcare both from payor and provider perspectives and was an early employee at Babylon Health, commercial leader at Aviva, and a NHS Leadership Academy Fellow and practising clinician at Frimley Health.

On the back of the news that Microsoft has agreed to acquire Nuance Communications for $19.7 billion and the transaction is now approved and complete, I spoke to Simon and Umang about how significant this alliance is for the future of digital health.

They are both passionate clinicians and have a deep understanding of how healthcare will be improved with the use of the latest technologies.

I managed to ask many of my "What's the future of healthcare" questions I've wanted to ask for a while, and also confirmed some of my futurist predictions.

In this wide-ranging chat, we covered:

• The Nuance & Microsoft Alliance
• Nuance & conversational AI
• Future health plans from Microsoft
• Can technology restore the NHS to full health?
• Open data vs patient privacy
• The power of AI in transforming healthcare
• What we've learned from the pandemic about driving innovation
• The success of the NHS app
• Importing fitness data into health systems
• The untapped power of speech & AI in healthcare
• What does the Healthcare Professional of the future look like?
• What does the Hospital of the future look like?
• The promise of a "digital pill"
• Using voice to establish patient wellbeing
• Simon's & Umang's proudest projects
• 3 Actionable things to better understand the benefits of digital health solutions

Resources mentioned on the show
United Nation The Case for Integrating Ireland
Better Off Dead: Jack Reacher
Karen Jacobsen - "Aussie Karen" Siri voice

More on our guests
Simon on Linkedin
Umang on Linkedin
Umang on Twitter

Nuance website
Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare Website

Thanks for listening to Digitally Curious. You can buy the book that showcases these episodes at curious.click/order

Your Host is Actionable Futurist® Andrew Grill

For more on Andrew - what he speaks about and recent talks, please visit ActionableFuturist.com

Andrew's Social Channels
Andrew on LinkedIn
Andrew on YouTube
@Andrew.Grill on Instagram
Keynote speeches here
Order Digitally Curious

In a world full of misinformation, which media sources can you trust?

Enter The Conversation, an independent source of news analysis and informed comment written by academic experts, working with professional journalists who help share their knowledge with the world and deliver truthful stories that anyone can read and understand.

To learn more about this unique resource, I spoke with Chris Waiting, Chief Executive Officer of The Conversation UK.

Chris previously held senior management positions at the BBC and more recently at the Associated Press. He holds an MA from the University of Cambridge and an MBA from the London Business School.

We discussed a number of important topics including:

• How The Conversation democratises knowledge
• Conversation's roots in Australia
• How The Conversation addresses the decline in media trust
• How The Conversation differs from mainstream media
• The Future of Journalism in the age of misinformation
• The rise of Fake News
• How data influences the stories covered
• The tagline "Academic rigour, journalistic flair"
• The business model
• Fact-checking stories

Resources mentioned in the show
Tim Marshall - Prisoners of Geography

More on Chris
Chris on LinkedIn
Chris on Twitter
The Conversation website

Thanks for listening to Digitally Curious. You can buy the book that showcases these episodes at curious.click/order

Your Host is Actionable Futurist® Andrew Grill

For more on Andrew - what he speaks about and recent talks, please visit ActionableFuturist.com

Andrew's Social Channels
Andrew on LinkedIn
Andrew on YouTube
@Andrew.Grill on Instagram
Keynote speeches here
Order Digitally Curious

Public relations is no longer just about sending press releases - increasingly PR has become integrated with sales and marketing functions and relies upon practitioners having a solid grasp of data.

To find out more about the future of PR and communications, I spoke with Heather Kernahan, the Global CEO of Communications company Hotwire.

Heather has spent her career immersed in technology and moved over to Hotwire from Eastwick Communications after its acquisition in 2016.

Prior to this, she was at Autodesk, where she focused on integrated brand communications and led the development of the company’s first sustainability report.

Heather says she “builds outrageously successful teams, companies and brands”, and is the author of an upcoming book UNSTUCKABLE, to be published in 2022.

We recorded this episode live and in person at Hotwire’s London office.

Hotwire has a concept called "Behaving famously" - which means purposely going out and making connections with people; It’s an expectation of everyone that works at Hotwire, no matter the role - you need to behave famously.

We discussed a number of topics related to communications and PR including:

• How PR has changed during Heather's career
• The most effective campaign over the last 12 months
• How dynamic can communications be?
• The need for data literacy in PR
• The role of PR in revenue generation
• Selling more "shirts and shoes"
• Account-based Marketing (ABM)
• PR reps as business people
• The role of PR in remote selling
• The importance of your digital first impression
• Diversity and inclusion in modern communications practices
• The Hotwire Into Tech initiative
• Evolving the agency
• Hotwire's team "Behaving famously" 
• Content that cuts through the noise
• Coaching Executives around thought leadership
• Are print and broadcast still important in the comms mix?
• Meeting the needs of a 24-hour news cycle
• Branded content opportunities
• Heather's upcoming Book - "Unstuckable"
• The one key message from the book
• The importance of Podcasts in the PR mix
• Using LinkedIn for promotion & recruitment
• Lessons from the pandemic
• The role of data in the PR company of the future
• Quickfire round
• 3 Actionable tips for using communication in your business

Resources mentioned in the show
David Goggins: Can't Hurt me
Jane Wurwand: Skin in the game

More on Heather
Heather on LinkedIn
Heather on Twitter
Heather's Website
Hotwire Global website

Thanks for listening to Digitally Curious. You can buy the book that showcases these episodes at curious.click/order

Your Host is Actionable Futurist® Andrew Grill

For more on Andrew - what he speaks about and recent talks, please visit ActionableFuturist.com

Andrew's Social Channels
Andrew on LinkedIn
Andrew on YouTube
@Andrew.Grill on Instagram
Keynote speeches here
Order Digitally Curious

If you had the chance to speak with the former CMO of Salesforce about the future of Marketing what would you ask them? I had the chance to do just that on this episode of the Actionable Futurist Podcast, speaking with Stephanie Bushcemi who is currently the CMO of Confluent.

She was previously EVP and CMO of Salesforce and held the same role at IHS Markit, and also spent a number of years at SAP heading their Marketing functions.

We recorded the episode live at the Kafka Summit in London and spoke about a range of topics related to Confluent, and the platform Kafka that came out of LinkedIn, as well as hearing her thoughts on where marketing and events are headed in 2022 and beyond.

Stephanie is a strong advocate for real-time data, especially when it comes to marketing campaigns.

She was previously EVP and CMO of Salesforce, and held the same role at IHS Markit, and also spent a number of years at SAP heading their Marketing functions.

Prior to SAP, Stephanie was at Hyperion, acquired by Oracle, where she spent nearly a decade, in various marketing leadership positions building the performance management category and Hyperion's presence within.

An example used at the Kafka summit we were both attending was:

“When you cross the road you prefer to use real-time data to make a decision that the road is clear or would you use data that is 5 minutes old?”

We discussed a broad range of topics including:

• How Confluent came out of LinkedIn
• The birth of Project Kafka
• The need for real-time streaming data
• The role of Confluent
• Data in Motion is the future
• Why Stephanie became a Marketer
• Stephanie's experience as Salesforce CMO
• Why Stephanie moved from Salesforce to Confluent
• The similarities between Confluent and Salesforce as category creators
• Working on the Confluent IPO
• Tips for writing an IPO S1
• Advice for companies considering an IPO
• Does going public change how you go to market?
• The importance of open data
• How do you build a business on free, open-source software?
• Adapting to marketing in a post-pandemic world
• The need for marketers to be more data-savvy
• Getting out of the 4 walls of marketing
• What "customer 360" really is
• The value of communities
• The importance of influencers and advocacy in B2B marketing
• What the future of marketing looks like
• The likely mix between virtual and in-person selling
• Lessons learned as a Manager during the pandemic
• Three actionable tips for marketing in 2022 and beyond

Resources mentioned in the show
Educated by Tara Westover

More on Stephanie
Stephanie on LinkedIn
Confluence  website

Thanks for listening to Digitally Curious. You can buy the book that showcases these episodes at curious.click/order

Your Host is Actionable Futurist® Andrew Grill

For more on Andrew - what he speaks about and recent talks, please visit ActionableFuturist.com

Andrew's Social Channels
Andrew on LinkedIn
Andrew on YouTube
@Andrew.Grill on Instagram
Keynote speeches here
Order Digitally Curious

For many the interim model of working is not new, where senior, experienced staff are brought into a firm before a permanent role is filled. With work moving towards a more distributed model, and access to talent being widened beyond the city centres, will a hybrid workforce model, utilising freelance and permanent staff emerge?

To answer this question and more, I spoke with Charlotte Gregson, PhD the Country Head UK of Malt, a marketplace for independent management consultants and industry experts.

Charlotte is a former consultant with a career that didn’t take a conventional path. After an academic career culminating with a PhD in Chemistry at Imperial College, her mind for molecules exposed a love for leadership after a stint in healthcare consulting.

When she moved to consultancy Eden McCallum to build independent consultant teams, Charlotte began to recognise the potential the professional gig economy could bring for companies and their employees.

We discussed a range of topics to do with the hybrid working model including:

• What does COMATCH do?
• How COMATCH compares to Fiverr and Upwork
• How traditional consulting firms are embracing experienced freelancers
• How does a talent on-demand platform work?
• What sort of experts and consultants use COMATCH
• What's the future for "Exec" Gig Workers?
• Is "The Great Resignation" real?
• Managing the consulting "bench"
• Tips for working with a distributed workforce
• Emerging tools to help distributed teams
• Using COMATCH StyleMatch technology to match consultants to jobs
• Using AI to match clients with consultants
• Are clients developing a self-service mindset to source talent?
• How COMATCH drives innovation
• A view of the freelance world in 12-24 months
• Challenges of being a tech leader
• The impact of the freelance model on traditional consulting firms
• Attracting quality freelancers to the COMATCH platform
• The rise of the "The Third place"
• The COMATCH business model
• The differences across international markets
• The resistance to adopting a hybrid workforce model
• The need for talent transformation
• Advice for companies looking to integrate freelance talent into key roles
• Dealing with issues around due diligence, IP, security and confidentiality
• The future of flexible working?
• 3 actionable things to consider when setting a hybrid workforce strategy

Resources mentioned in the show
Miro whiteboard
Padlett whiteboard

More on Charlotte
Charlotte on LinkedIn
COMATCH  website

Thanks for listening to Digitally Curious. You can buy the book that showcases these episodes at curious.click/order

Your Host is Actionable Futurist® Andrew Grill

For more on Andrew - what he speaks about and recent talks, please visit ActionableFuturist.com

Andrew's Social Channels
Andrew on LinkedIn
Andrew on YouTube
@Andrew.Grill on Instagram
Keynote speeches here
Order Digitally Curious

May 25th 2022, marks four years since the General Data Protection Regulation, more commonly known as GDPR came into effect in the UK and the EU.  The GDPR's primary aim is to enhance individuals' control and rights over their personal data and simplify international businesses' regulatory environment. Four years on, though, are consumers adequately protected?

I spoke with James Walker, CEO of Consumer Privacy champion, Rightly, to better answer this question.

James is a consumer rights advocate and entrepreneur. He founded and grew Resolver, a free, independent resolution service with 18 million unique visitors a year that has solved six billion pounds worth of issues and is the largest independent resolution service in Europe. 

James has advised Government, Regulators and Ombudsmen on consumer rights and how to deliver better customer services. 

He is on the Board of the Dispute Ombudsman, a Consumer Expert to The Office of Road and Rail, a Non-Executive Director to Consumer Scotland, a co-founder and Non- Executive Director to The Collaboration Network and an advisor to Life Ledger. 

We covered a number of relevant and practical topics including:

• What is Rightly?
• What does Rightly do?
• What has been the reaction from advertising companies?
• What is GDPR & what's happened since its launch in 2018?
• What changes are required to GDPR to make it work as intended?
• What is my digital footprint, and how far does it extend?
• How does Rightly work?
• Can you check if companies have replied to your removal request?
• The Right.ly business model
• Brokering a fair value exchange for our personal data
• Brand’s obsession with data
• The need for transparency and openness
• Open Bankings' influence on open data
• The role of regulators
• Staying safe online
• Why breached data has a half-life
• Right.ly consumer research results
• What's next for Right.ly?
• Advice for the UK's Information Commissioner's Office
• The notion of the Polluter pays model
• Three things to do today to start controlling our data

More on James
James on LinkedIn
James on Twitter
Rightly website

Thanks for listening to Digitally Curious. You can buy the book that showcases these episodes at curious.click/order

Your Host is Actionable Futurist® Andrew Grill

For more on Andrew - what he speaks about and recent talks, please visit ActionableFuturist.com

Andrew's Social Channels
Andrew on LinkedIn
Andrew on YouTube
@Andrew.Grill on Instagram
Keynote speeches here
Order Digitally Curious

TikTok now has a billion users, so what makes it stand out from Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter?

To answer this I spoke with Aaron Goldman, Chief Marketing Officer of MediaOcean, a mission-critical platform for omnichannel advertising that connects brands, agencies, media, technology, and data. 

Aaron has been in the Marketing industry for over 20 years, including CMO roles at 4C, and Kenshoo, a leading enterprise marketing software company.

Aaron was awarded the LinkedIn B2B thought leader of the year in 2020, and is also the author of “Everything I Know about Marketing I Learned from Google” .

When he’s not busy Googling himself, Aaron is spending time with his wife and children, and spoke with me from Chicago.

Aaron has a deep understanding not just what what makes TikTok so different to other social media platforms, but also how brands should approach this new medium.

We covered a lot of ground including

• What is TikTok?
• Why is TikTok so engaging?
• What is the secret to TikTok’s success?
• Viewing creators as partners
• Do brands have a place on TikTok?
• The growth potential for TikTok
• Comparing Facebook vs Instagram vs Snap vs TikTok
• How easy is it to copy the TikTok format?
• Understanding the mindset of the user on each platform
• Where does TikTok fit into the media landscape?
• Why TikTok is the most akin to TV
• The strategic approach to TikTok for brands
• Measuring the impact of creators on TikTok
• The social commerce opportunity for brands on TikTok
• When does entertainment become shopping?
• What is the future of advertising?
• The value exchange and the value of our own data
• The opportunity for TikTok to start afresh
• Aaron’s experiment to sell his own data on eBay
• The rise of digital agents that work for us
• AdTech and the role Mediaocean plays
• Mediaocean’s partnership with TikTok
• What will advertising on social networks look like in 5 year’s time?
• Aaron’s virtual watercooler
• The move to a hybrid working mode
• Turning hybrid working into a competitive advantage
• Educating children about the healthy use of social media
• 3 Actionable things to do today to better understand TikTok

More on Aaron
Aaron on LinkedIn
Aaron on Twitter
Mediacocean website

Thanks for listening to Digitally Curious. You can buy the book that showcases these episodes at curious.click/order

Your Host is Actionable Futurist® Andrew Grill

For more on Andrew - what he speaks about and recent talks, please visit ActionableFuturist.com

Andrew's Social Channels
Andrew on LinkedIn
Andrew on YouTube
@Andrew.Grill on Instagram
Keynote speeches here
Order Digitally Curious