Founder's Voyage

Sharon Cunningham is the CEO and co-founder of Shorla Oncology, an innovative specialty pharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing oncology drugs for women’s and pediatric cancers. Recognized as Ireland's Best Young Entrepreneur of 2019 and EY Entrepreneur of the year 2024, Sharon brings deep expertise at the intersection of finance and biotech. With a chartered accountancy background, an executive MBA, and experience scaling and exiting a previous pharma startup, Sharon is leading Shorla Oncology’s push for accessible, life-changing therapies in areas often overlooked by larger firms.

💡 What You’ll Learn from Sharon's Journey:
🔸 The Power of Mentorship: Sharon credits key mentors as fundamental to her personal growth and resilience, emphasizing the importance of seeking diverse advisors at every career stage.
🔸 Building in Overlooked Markets: By focusing on women’s and pediatric cancers, areas often ignored due to lower commercial appeal, Sharon demonstrates how passion, expertise, and mission-driven strategies can uncover meaningful entrepreneurial opportunities.
🔸 Team and Culture Matter: She highlights that skillsets alone aren’t enough; attitude, adaptability, and a shared mission underpin her team’s rapid progress and innovative culture.
🔸 Navigating Growth and Change: Sharon offers candid insights on fundraising, pivots, and the vital role of being in love with solving the problem, not being wedded to one solution, even in the face of regulatory and logistical setbacks.

You can connect with Sharon on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ to follow her journey.

🎥 Big thanks to VidOps for supporting Founders Voyage. Use code voyage at ⁠vidops.io⁠ for 10% off expert audio, video, animation, and photography services.

👏 Props to the stellar crew: Nancy Nash, Daniel M. Melo, Carlos Javier Chacón Sánchez, Matthew Ray, and host Spencer Walker-Fooks. You bring this show to life.

🥂 Want to support the journey? Join us on ⁠Patreon⁠ and help amplify more voices like Sharon.

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Miranda is an accomplished social entrepreneur and co-founder/CEO of ZigWay, a social enterprise dedicated to supporting low-income families in Myanmar. An MIT Bootcamp alumna, Miranda has mentored multiple bootcamp cohorts and brings a unique perspective as a first-generation immigrant, seasoned finance professional, and global development leader. Her achievements include spearheading innovative fintech and food security solutions for underserved communities, leading emergency food distribution during Myanmar’s upheaval, and navigating dynamic, politically volatile markets with resilience and deep compassion.

💡 What You’ll Learn from Miranda's Journey:

🔸 Resilience in Crisis Leadership: Miranda’s experience steering a mission-driven venture through Myanmar’s military coup and civil unrest reveals how leaders can rapidly adapt, pivot operations, and keep teams motivated in times of deep uncertainty.

🔸 Building Solutions with (and for) Your Community: Her journey demonstrates the importance of deep user research and co-designing solutions directly with those you seek to help, pivoting from financial to food interventions when local feedback pointed to new priorities.

🔸 Purposeful Adaptation & “Loving the Problem”: Miranda’s story highlights why entrepreneurs should fall in love with the problem, not the solution, enabling creative pivots, from launching nano-loans to delivering humanitarian aid, while staying grounded in purpose.

🔸 Operating Safely in High-Risk Environments: Drawing from her frontline work in Myanmar, Miranda shares detailed best practices for organizational security, discreet supply chain operation, and supporting team wellbeing in conflict zones.

You can connect with Miranda on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ to follow her journey.

🎥 Big thanks to VidOps for supporting Founders Voyage. Use code voyage at ⁠vidops.io⁠ for 10% off expert audio, video, animation, and photography services.

👏 Props to the stellar crew: Nancy Nash, Daniel M. Melo, Carlos Javier Chacón Sánchez, Matthew Ray, and host Spencer Walker-Fooks. You bring this show to life.

🥂 Want to support the journey? Join us on ⁠Patreon⁠ and help amplify more voices like Miranda.

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Iman Urooj is an accomplished entrepreneur and business development leader, currently serving as Head of Business Development at SafePay, a pioneering fintech startup backed by Stripe and a Y Combinator alum, focused on transforming online payments in Pakistan. Recognized as a top-five finalist and audience favorite in the Visa Everywhere initiative (MENA region), Iman has an extensive background in coaching entrepreneurship through MIT Bootcamps and brings a global perspective shaped by her Pakistani and Venezuelan heritage. Her expertise lies in navigating regulated markets, building resilient business relationships, and mentoring the next generation of entrepreneurs, especially in emerging markets where digital adoption and gender equality are rapidly evolving.

💡 What You’ll Learn from Iman's Journey:

🔸 The Power of Polite Persistence: Discover how Iman's unwavering, yet respectful, approach to stakeholder and partner engagement enables her to break through even the most resistant organizations, demonstrating the value of resilience and patient advocacy.

🔸 Authentic Relationship Building: Learn the art of fostering genuine, trust-based business relationships by balancing tenacity with authenticity, showing that true curiosity and empathy are the keys to long-term success over purely transactional connections.

🔸 Women’s Leadership & Financial Empowerment: Gain insights into navigating male-dominated, regulated industries as a woman, maintaining self-respect, and advocating for financial independence as a cornerstone for both personal and societal change.

🔸 Embracing Change & Lifelong Learning: Be inspired by Iman's approach to thriving amid uncertainty, adapting to new industries, and continuously upskilling, underscoring the necessity of staying hungry, humble, and passionate no matter your starting point.

You can connect with Iman on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ to follow her journey.

🎥 Big thanks to VidOps for supporting Founders Voyage. Use code voyage at ⁠vidops.io⁠ for 10% off expert audio, video, animation, and photography services.

👏 Props to the stellar crew: Nancy Nash, Daniel M. Melo, Carlos Javier Chacón Sánchez, Matthew Ray, and host Spencer Walker-Fooks. You bring this show to life.

🥂 Want to support the journey? Join us on ⁠Patreon⁠ and help amplify more voices like Iman.

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Liz is a seasoned entrepreneur, educator, and advocate for sustainability with a track record spanning high-tech, consumer electronics, strategic planning, and environmental activism. Her diverse journey includes founding a surf shop that championed eco-friendly practices, working in corporate finance, and later pivoting into user research and product management at Google. Liz has also been a dedicated mentor and facilitator in the MIT venture leadership bootcamps, where she empowers others to find product-market fit and master design thinking. Her experience bridges the corporate and nonprofit worlds, and she is passionate about catalyzing circular economies, environmental responsibility, and community-driven change.

💡 What You’ll Learn from Liz's Journey:

🔸 Embrace Failure as Fuel: Liz highlights the importance of learning from and even celebrating failures, using them as stepping stones toward innovation and personal growth.

🔸 Leverage Transferable Skills: Her ability to pivot across industries, from accounting to user research to product management, demonstrates the power of building and applying a broad skill set in new contexts.

🔸 Drive Change Locally and Globally: Liz shows that meaningful impact starts at the community level, but can scale through collaboration, partnerships, and persistent advocacy, even when federal or global legislation lags behind.

🔸 Build with the Customer in Mind: Methodologies like customer journey mapping, disciplined entrepreneurship, and catalytic questioning are central to Liz’s toolkit for designing products and services that genuinely solve customer problems.

You can connect with Liz on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ to follow her journey.

🎥 Big thanks to VidOps for supporting Founders Voyage. Use code voyage at ⁠vidops.io⁠ for 10% off expert audio, video, animation, and photography services.

👏 Props to the stellar crew: Nancy Nash, Daniel M. Melo, Carlos Javier Chacón Sánchez, Matthew Ray, and host Spencer Walker-Fooks. You bring this show to life.

🥂 Want to support the journey? Join us on ⁠Patreon⁠ and help amplify more voices like Liz.

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Sangeetha Parthasarathy is a healthcare entrepreneur, SaaS leader, and trauma therapist whose career spans three continents. With roots in India and professional experience in the US and UK, she brings a unique perspective to maternal health, mental well-being, and the intersection of culture and entrepreneurship. Sangeetha is the founder of the Sangpath Inc, and an advocate for decolonizing both birth and mental health practices, focusing on culturally sensitive, trauma-informed approaches.

Her work bridges the worlds of corporate leadership, nonprofit advocacy, and direct client care, making her a sought-after mentor for aspiring social impact founders.

💡 What You’ll Learn from Sangeeta's Journey:

🔸 Embracing the Pivot: Sangeeta emphasizes that it’s okay for founders to change direction, highlighting the importance of letting go of shame and honestly re-evaluating purpose when the landscape changes.

🔸 The Power of Co-Regulation & Support Networks: She underlines how entrepreneurial and personal journeys are strengthened by meaningful partnership, community, and collaboration, both for yourself and those you serve.

🔸 Decolonizing Mental Health & Birth Work: Sangeeta demonstrates the impact of challenging colonial, individualistic models by centering cultural context, language, and collective approaches in care and building organizations.

🔸 Balancing Impact and Sustainability: She shares hard-won wisdom on finding equilibrium between doing purpose-driven work and maintaining financial sustainability and personal well-being, for herself and her family.

You can connect with Sangeeta on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ to follow her journey.

🎥 Big thanks to VidOps for supporting Founders Voyage. Use code voyage at ⁠vidops.io⁠ for 10% off expert audio, video, animation, and photography services.

👏 Props to the stellar crew: Nancy Nash, Daniel M. Melo, Carlos Javier Chacón Sánchez, Matthew Ray, and host Spencer Walker-Fooks. You bring this show to life.

🥂 Want to support the journey? Join us on ⁠Patreon⁠ and help amplify more voices like Sangeeta.

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Monica is an award-winning entrepreneur, speaker, and founder of InnovatorsBox, a company dedicated to transforming workplace culture and unlocking creativity at every level of an organization. With a background that spans international relations, nuclear security, and consulting for Fortune 500 companies, Monica is internationally recognized as a thought leader on creativity, inclusion, and people development. She is the author of "Rethink Creativity," a sought-after keynote speaker, podcast host, and the creative force behind innovative content, workshops, and music designed to inspire positive change and organizational resilience.

💡 What You’ll Learn from Monica's Journey:

🔸 Embracing Your "Otherness" as a Strength: Monica’s multicultural upbringing and experiences highlight how being different can sharpen your empathy, observation, and bridge-building skills, a superpower for innovative leaders.

🔸 Building Creativity into Everyday Routines: Creativity isn’t just for big projects, it starts with small, intentional changes in your daily habits and approaches, making you more adaptable and resilient over time.

🔸 Sustainable Success through Self-Care: Monica emphasizes that personal well-being and fun are vital ingredients for long-term entrepreneurial success; taking care of yourself supercharges your creativity and prevents burnout.

🔸 Redefining Impact: True success isn’t just about numbers or accolades; it’s about the ripple effects you create, the lives you touch, and the environments you transform, even if the full impact isn’t immediately visible.

You can connect with Monica on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ to follow her journey.

🎥 Big thanks to VidOps for supporting Founders Voyage. Use code voyage at ⁠vidops.io⁠ for 10% off expert audio, video, animation, and photography services.

👏 Props to the stellar crew: Nancy Nash, Daniel M. Melo, Carlos Javier Chacón Sánchez, Matthew Ray, and host Spencer Walker-Fooks. You bring this show to life.

🥂 Want to support the journey? Join us on ⁠Patreon⁠ and help amplify more voices like Monica.

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Our guest today, Fay de Waal, is a dynamic and passionate sustainability innovator, materials scientist, and diversity advocate. With experience with multiple master thesis, a specialist in the recyclability of offshore wind turbines, an analyst at 414, and founder of the Libra Network, Fay exemplifies holistic thinking in both technical and social realms.

Her work bridges sustainable engineering, stakeholder management, and gender equality, while her commitment to entrepreneurial problem-solving is matched by her drive for continuous learning and impact.

💡 What You’ll Learn from Fay's Journey:

🔸 Systems Thinking in Sustainability: Fay demonstrates why solving large challenges like wind turbine recyclability requires a holistic view, accounting for material lifecycles, data limitations, and interdisciplinary collaboration, not just technical fixes.

🔸 The Critical Role of Data: Her experience shows how better data management and transparency, across supply chains and product life cycles, are fundamental for enabling true circularity and informed decision-making in both business and policy.

🔸 Redefining Success: Fay’s journey is a reminder that success isn’t measured solely in output or hours worked, but in finding balance, enjoying the process, and pursuing projects aligned with your values and passions.

🔸 Diversity as a Sustainability Driver: Through founding Libra Network and her advocacy in STEM, Fay underscores that diverse voices and equitable workplaces are not just social goods, but essential ingredients to devising robust, resilient solutions for the future.

You can connect with Fay on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ to follow her journey.

🎥 Big thanks to VidOps for supporting Founders Voyage. Use code voyage at ⁠vidops.io⁠ for 10% off expert audio, video, animation, and photography services.

👏 Props to the stellar crew: Nancy Nash, Daniel M. Melo, Carlos Javier Chacón Sánchez, Matthew Ray, and host Spencer Walker-Fooks. You bring this show to life.

🥂 Want to support the journey? Join us on ⁠Patreon⁠ and help amplify more voices like Fay.

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Reuben McQueen is the co-founder and CTO of Open Kit, an AI consultancy focused on helping organisations strategise, develop, and integrate cutting-edge AI solutions to reduce costs, minimize errors, and boost efficiency. With a background in computer science and years of entrepreneurial experience, Reuben has navigated the challenges of founding and scaling a tech business, from university projects to winning public sector contracts. He is also passionate about education, supporting student engagement in computer science and entrepreneurship as an enterprise advisor.

💡 What You’ll Learn from Reuben's Journey:

🔸 Embracing Business Model Evolution: Discover how staying flexible and rapidly iterating your business model, such as shifting from fixed-cost to consultancy-first approaches, can be critical for survival and growth in a changing market.

🔸 Building Resilience through Sales Pipelines: Learn why prioritizing early investment in outbound sales and consistent lead generation can protect your company from the feast-or-famine cycles that challenge many startups.

🔸 Navigating Technical and Ethical Hurdles in AI: Understand the complexities of building AI SaaS, from API cost challenges to the importance of data sovereignty and ethical considerations when deploying AI models for clients.

🔸 The Value of Complementary Co-Founder Dynamics: See how balancing differences in personality and work style within your founding team can be a decisive advantage, fostering better decision-making and sustainable growth.

You can connect with Reuben on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ to follow his journey.

🎥 Big thanks to VidOps for supporting Founders Voyage. Use code voyage at ⁠vidops.io⁠ for 10% off expert audio, video, animation, and photography services.

👏 Props to the stellar crew: Nancy Nash, Daniel M. Melo, Carlos Javier Chacón Sánchez, Matthew Ray, and host Spencer Walker-Fooks. You bring this show to life.

🥂 Want to support the journey? Join us on ⁠Patreon⁠ and help amplify more voices like Reuben.

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Mark is an accomplished engineer, entrepreneur, and fintech leader originally from Ghana and now based in South Africa. With a background in electronic engineering and experience spanning food production, investment banking, and technology, Mark currently leads the fintech advisory at Absa Group in South Africa, spearheading efforts to bridge gaps between banks and startups across Africa. He's the co-founder of Honeybee Chilli Sauce and has a rich history of building businesses, overcoming funding challenges, and mentoring others. Mark’s unique path blends technical expertise, entrepreneurial grit, and a passion for enabling innovation across sectors.

💡 What You’ll Learn from Mark's Journey:

🔸 The Value of Perseverance: Success in entrepreneurship takes time. Mark’s experiences highlight the necessity of persisting through setbacks, “dark patches,” and slow progress to build lasting, meaningful ventures.

🔸 Building Trust Before Growth: Creating new products, especially in unfamiliar markets, requires gaining customers’ trust, which is a gradual process that can’t be rushed, but pays off with loyal, returning customers.

🔸 Leveraging Diverse Experiences: Mark demonstrates how skills and lessons from one industry, engineering, food, or finance, can be transferred and applied to new challenges, fueling adaptability and innovation.

🔸 Action Over Aspiration: Ambition needs to be paired with practical steps. Mark emphasizes that translating ideas into consistent, tangible action is what separates dreamers from doers in the entrepreneurial world.

You can connect with Mark on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ to follow his journey.

🎥 Big thanks to VidOps for supporting Founders Voyage. Use code voyage at ⁠vidops.io⁠ for 10% off expert audio, video, animation, and photography services.

👏 Props to the stellar crew: Nancy Nash, Daniel M. Melo, Carlos Javier Chacón Sánchez, Matthew Ray, and host Spencer Walker-Fooks. You bring this show to life.

🥂 Want to support the journey? Join us on ⁠Patreon⁠ and help amplify more voices like Mark.

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In this episode of Founders Voyage, we welcomed Natalia Suniga, an accomplished PhD Sociologist and Foundress of Strategy Of Things where she develops 360 strategies connecting brands, communications, culture and business.

Natalia lead the TikTok Creative Operation for more +10 markets in LATAM, worked for UN and spoke at SXSW 2022. With a PhD in Social Sciences, years of impactful research, and experience guiding global brands at communications agencies, she has developed a keen understanding of how brands must evolve to connect with new generations.

💡 What You’ll Learn from Natalia's Journey:
🔸 Embracing Interdisciplinary Paths: Natalia’s career shows how combining academic insight with practical industry roles can unlock new forms of innovation and leadership, empowering entrepreneurs to draw from diverse backgrounds.
🔸 Social Change as Strategic Value: Learn how embedding diversity, gender perspective, and social causes into your business strategy can create authentic connections with audiences and drive long-term brand relevance.
🔸 Adapting to New Generational Mindsets: Natalia explains the importance of understanding and engaging Gen Z not simply as consumers, but as creators and participants in social movements, challenging traditional marketing approaches.
🔸 Courage to Pivot: Her story highlights the value of moving beyond fear and making bold pivots, even when unconventional, to align your work with evolving passions, skills, and emerging markets.

You can connect with Natalia on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ to follow her journey.

🎥 Big thanks to VidOps for supporting Founders Voyage. Use code voyage at ⁠vidops.io⁠ for 10% off expert audio, video, animation, and photography services.

👏 Props to the stellar crew: Nancy Nash, Daniel M. Melo, Carlos Javier Chacón Sánchez, Matthew Ray, and host Spencer Walker-Fooks. You bring this show to life.

🥂 Want to support the journey? Join us on ⁠Patreon⁠ and help amplify more voices like Natalia.

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