ExecuTalks

A fourth generation Puget Sound native and nascent New Yorker, Kurt has always felt passionately about authentic, full-flavored foods, free of artificial additives. Kurt is the owner and head chef of Sugar Mountain, a creative food company that is home to extraordinary food brands and restaurants, from the award-winning Beecher’s Handmade Cheese to The Butcher’s Table, a swanky steakhouse that features Mishima Reserve, Sugar Mountain’s American Wagyu beef brand. With each operation, Kurt’s goal is to demonstrate how quality ingredients make for delicious meals, without added food colorings, flavor enhancers, or preservatives. Beyond the retail world, Kurt is effecting change in people’s eating habits through his book, Pure Food, and through The Beecher’s Foundation (501c3). Through education and community engagement, the Foundation inspires people to eat real food and vote with every food dollar.

In our conversation Kurt takes us way back to his early childhood growing up in Seattle, what struggles he faced at work coming out of college, and ultimately, what inspired Kurt to purchase businesses like Seattle’s famous Pasta & Company and start Beecher’s Cheese, one of the most successful food brands in the world.  And if you stick around until the end, you will get to hear all about Kurt's ambitious philanthropic goal of changing the way America eats.

In this special episode, we chat with Chris George, a serial entrepreneur who has successfully started and managed 7 businesses in his career (most recently Founder of Certified).  His first business that he started in college, was a debt collection agency that he worked in for almost a decade.  His most recent venture was a subscription-based men’s fashion company: Gentleman’s Box.  Today, he’s chairman of the subscription trade association, a for-profit association that he co-founded. You’ll want to listen closely because in this episode we discuss business strategy, marketing tactics, and what it takes to be successful as an entrepreneur in any industry.

In this episode, we cover the man behind the largest biotechnology IPO in history, Steve Harr.  Steve co-founded Sana biotechnology, a company that  went public earlier this year (2021) and raised almost $600 million dollars in its IPO.  Sana is changing the way diseases are cured.  Their approach is based on repairing and controlling genes within cells, essentially engineering cells so that they are better equipped to fight off diseases.  Prior to co-founding Sana, Steve served as an executive at Juno Therapeutics, a biotech company that was acquired for $11 billion in 2018, and worked as managing director at Morgan Stanley for over a decade.  If you stick around for the whole episode, you'll get insight into the extreme highs and lows of Steve's career journey, you will hear what Steve would advise his younger self, and you will get a peek into how he thinks about leadership.

In this episode, we hear from Finimize CEO & Co-Founder, Maximillian Rofagha.  He grew up in Berlin, Germany, attended a very diverse, international high school, and went on to study economics and international relations in Scotland.  He did a year abroad in the U.S., and interned at eBay, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey and Company, and a German Stock Exchange.  After college, he worked in management consulting for a year and half before starting his first business.  3 and half years later, he started Finimize, a company that was sparked by a movement, a community of people that believe everyone should have access to financial information that is not complicated to understand.  Today, Finimize is building the world’s largest and most engaged finance community, democratizing financial information for people who need it most. 

Headquartered in London, Finimize has amassed a community of over 1 million people from all over the world.

Mary grew up on a very rural, cattle ranch in New Mexico just above the US-Mexico border, where she learned to drive when she was just seven years old and had no television in her home.   She attended Williams college, in Massachusetts town near the New York-New Hampshire border.  She first intended in going into politics, then fell in love with drama and theater, so she shifted her major.  After college, she decided to study law.

After law school, Mary went to work for a natural gas utility in El Paso, TX, the city in Texas that borders Mexico and New Mexico.  She worked as an in-house lawyer at the utility for several years, then went to work for a traditional law firm for a short period of time before she realized she didn’t like working as a traditional lawyer. So, she went to work for the (FERC) Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. abbreviated FERC or “FERC”.   She spent her time prosecuting utility companies that were not abiding by the law.  After 4 years, she went back to work for El Paso Electric Company, where she would work her way up to the CEO position. 

After spending a huge portion of her career in El Paso, Mary decided to join Puget Sound Energy in Bellevue, WA in 2019 to take on an ambitious challenge. 

Today, Puget Sound Energy, employs more than 2,500 people, and serves over 1 million customers.

Today’s guest is Scott Torrey, PayScale CEO.  Scott always knew he wanted to be in business, so he attended a commerce-focused college and worked in consulting after college.  After an 8-year career in consulting, Scott pivoted and joined Concur which was later acquired by SAP, and would remain there for 20 years of his career.  He took a very short break before a recruiter presented an opportunity to lead PayScale in 2019.   PayScale serves 100 million monthly website visitors, powers compensation information for over 35 million employees and 7,000 companies, with a vision of democratizing compensation information. 

Today’s guest is Surabhi Gupta, Robinhood’s VP of Engineering.   Surabhi grew up in India and pursued an education in computer science.  She participated in an internship with Microsoft, and her research focused on artificial intelligence and natural language processing.  She worked on creating a system for producing scalable summaries of conversations extracted from video content.  Surabhi then took a job with Google as a software engineer and worked on improving the relevance of search results for users. Eventually, Surabhi got introduced to executives at Airbnb, and was exposed to the search problems they were aiming to solve.  She joined as a software engineer on the search team in 2013, and in 4 years became the Director of Engineering, overseeing the entire engineering team.  While she was there, the company had grown from just 60 engineers to 1,500 engineers.  Surabhi spent almost 7 years of her career at Airbnb before leaving to join Robinhood in 2020.   Robinhood's  mission is to democratize finance and investing for everyone, offering commission-free trading.  Never before has any financial services company offered commission-free trading.  This is a completely new approach, and it’s what drew Surabhi in to join their mission and lead their engineering team.  Today, Surabhi leads Robinhood’s engineering team of more than 500 people. 

Today, we make history.  It’s the first time we’ve had an executive from the city on our show.  All of our guests before this show have been business executives. Today’s guest is Debra Smith, Seattle City Light’s CEO.  She graduated with a finance degree from Arizona State University, and kickstarted her career in the oil industry working for ConocoPhillips.  Shortly after, transitioned into commercial banking in Portland, then moved into utilities at the Eugene Water and Electric Board, then Central Lincoln PUD, before joining Seattle City Light in 2018.  Now, you’ll want to be sure to stick around until the end because Debra takes us through not only her career journey, which pivoted from oil and gas to banking to utilities management, but her personal journey that impacted her career progression.  Her challenging childhood with her parents being unhappily married, the breakups, divorces, and ultimately, the personal lessons from all of her experiences.  

In 2018, Debra was nominated by Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan to lead Seattle City Light, Seattle's largest department by budget, as the CEO & General Manager.  Today, Debra leads Seattle City Light, responsible for providing power to the entire city, has over 1,800 employees, and is responsible for 25% of Seattle’s entire budget as a city. 

Today’s guest is Adena Hefets, CEO & Co-Founder of Divvy Homes.  She grew up in Long Island, New York to immigrant parents who lived paycheck to paycheck, and were not financially stable, and this drove her ambition to be financially independent at a very young age.  

She would go on to work in lots of finance roles like investment banking, private equity, venture capital, and also worked in product management, before starting Divvy Homes with her cofounders.  In 2016, Adena started Divvy Homes with two other co-founders with a mission to make home ownership accessible to everyone.  Today, Divvy has raised almost $300 million in funding, and is changing the world of real estate. 

Today, you will hear from Ryan Hogan, CEO & Co-Founder of Hunt A Killer.  He joined the Navy out of high school, got admitted into a very competitive military program after 6 years of hard work, started multiple businesses that needed multiple pivots, until they ended up failing.  In 2016, a few years after Ryan’s last business had failed, he got together with his childhood friend Derrick and together, they began thinking of how they could create experiences for people that felt real.  Hunt A Killer was born, and today, with a mission to provide first-class entertainment to mystery and thriller lovers around the world, Hunt A Killer has been listed by Inc. Magazine as the 6th fastest-growing private company in 2020, and one of the World's Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company.