Cait Espe spent nearly 15 years running operations for a luxury day spa and salon in the Seattle area, where female leadership at every level was simply the norm. Then she moved into B2B tech SaaS in 2019 and found out how fast a seat at the table stops being guaranteed. In this episode, Cait and host Tara Kathryn Nelson pull apart the difference between a mentor, a sponsor, and an ally, why you need all three at different points in a career, and how to tell which one you are actually asking for. They also take on whether large language models trained on decades of male-authored material are quietly writing women out, and what a better prompt can do about it.

Key Events

00:00 Welcome & Guest Intro

00:01 From spa operations to tech, and the culture shock

00:04 Mentor, sponsor, ally: the difference

00:06 Why male allies change the room

00:08 Where women actually land on the org chart

00:11 Are LLMs leaving women behind

00:15 Prompting for female sources

00:17 Ask for what you need, out loud

00:21 Embrace the discomfort

00:22 Olivia Dean and the theme song question

• Tip worth stealing: Know which kind of support you are asking for. In Cait's framing, "a mentor talks to you, a sponsor talks about you" - an ally helps prepare you, a sponsor helps position you. It is the difference between someone saying she deserves to be heard and someone saying she deserves this role. Figure out which one your career needs right now, then ask that person specifically.

• Music: Olivia Dean - Cait's current listening and her answer to the theme song question. Dean won Best New Artist at the 2026 Grammy Awards. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYKlku5Zg5FnAc3bgY7kQnA

Connect with Us:

• The show: https://rosierewired.com/ · MTMG: https://www.mtmg.eu

• Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/rosie-rewired/ · https://www.linkedin.com/company/mtmg-eu

• Suggest a guest or come on the show: [email protected]

AI engineer Akshata Mallikarjunappa spent years on compliance and risk at Amazon before moving into AI engineering, and she brings both halves of that job to this conversation with Tara Nelson. She walks through what AI adoption actually looks like inside a business, using her current work at a coffee roastery - green bean sourcing, wholesale, multiple cafes, food production, finance and front-of-house - where the win wasn't magic, it was killing a stock take that used to eat hours and putting every invoice in one place. She also makes the case that the split between the compliance person and the engineering person no longer works, and explains why traceability - the why, what and how behind a decision - is the hardest thing to get from a system we still treat as a black box. Plus: why she started studying psychology after studying artificial intelligence, and the simulation result that stopped her cold.

Key Events

00:00 Welcome & Guest Intro

00:02 What translating AI actually involves

00:05 AI inside a coffee roastery

00:10 What compliance at Amazon taught her

00:16 Traceability and the black box

00:19 How she became an AI engineer

00:22 Psychology, sustainability, and intelligence

00:25 The resource cost of running AI

00:29 What AI still doesn't have

• Tip worth stealing: Set the legal and safety requirements first, then design the system around them. As Akshata puts it, it's "not always output first and then compliance later, rather the other way around" - and she argues compliance has to be embedded deep enough in the system that it can't be overlooked.

• Worth a look: University of Limerick - where she completed her master's and ran sustainability workshops for students, colleagues and professors. https://www.ul.ie

Connect with Us:

• The show: https://rosierewired.com/ · MTMG: https://www.mtmg.eu

• Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/rosie-rewired/ · https://www.linkedin.com/company/mtmg-eu

• Suggest a guest or come on the show: [email protected]

Melissa Contreras started her career in marketing and sales in Peru, working seven days a week to prove she was worth it - until a hot air balloon accident off the coast of Lima made her rethink everything. In her first-ever podcast appearance, she tells Tara Kathryn Nelson how she rebuilt in Madrid with an MBA, took a LinkedIn message from a UK recruiter into a job she was convinced she was underqualified for, and Googled acronyms under the table while nodding along in meetings. She talks candidly about the moment she stopped pretending, why listening and empathy turned out to be the skills that got her hired, and what happened when a recruiter asked for her salary expectations without naming a range. If you have ever wondered whether you can move into tech without an engineering degree, this is a working answer.

Key Events

00:00 Welcome & Guest Intro

00:01 Workaholic in Peruvian sales

00:04 The hot air balloon accident

00:05 Madrid, an MBA, a restart

00:07 One LinkedIn message into tech

00:08 Faking it, then asking anyway

00:10 Listening and empathy as tech skills

00:12 The recruiter who would not name a range

00:14 Imposter syndrome and the pay gap

00:19 Different backgrounds, and your ego

00:21 Advice for the next generation

00:24 You never start from zero

• Tip worth stealing: Stop nodding along. When Melissa did not understand something technical, she started saying "I have a dummy question" or "can you repeat that, please?" instead of pretending. It bought her a moment to think, and it earned more trust from her technical colleagues than faking it ever did.

Connect with Us:

• The show: https://rosierewired.com/ · MTMG: https://www.mtmg.eu

• Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/rosie-rewired/ · https://www.linkedin.com/company/mtmg-eu

• Suggest a guest or come on the show: [email protected]

Hospitality and telecom expert Melinda Kinney breaks downhow hotels and small businesses can audit their current technology, eliminate waste, and redirect spend into future-proofed solutions. She explains why RFPs must look beyond the next three to five years, how AI is reshaping requirements, and where leaders commonly overspend on legacy services.

With nearly 30 years in telecom, Melinda outlines a simple three-step path:inventory what you have,

align to business needs,

then source smarter options—delivered with a “heart of hospitality.”

Key Events Timeline

🎙️ 00:00:00 Welcome & who Melinda helps (hospitality + small business).

🧭 00:03:00 RFPs and true future-proofing beyond 3–5 years.

🤖 00:05:00 AI’s rapid impact on tech planning and budgets.

✂️ 00:06:30 Immediate wins: cut unused legacy services to reduce spend.

📋 00:08:00 The three-step approach: audit → business needs → market options.

❓ 00:10:00 MTMG Questions

Notable References

A quick way to unlock savings is to map your invoices toactual usage, retire anything you no longer need, and replace outdated tools with modern equivalents that support where your business is headed.

Helpful Tip: Start with a line-by-line audit of telecom/ITinvoices, cut unused legacy services, and reinvest the savings into future-proofed solutions.

Books Mentioned: How to Do the Work by Dr. Nicole LePera —self-help on meaningful change (Amazon).

Podcasts Mentioned: Huberman Lab — science-based tools for health & performance (Spotify).

Music/Artists Mentioned: “Home” by Michael Bublé — go-tomood boost (official YouTube video).

🔗 Connect with Us:

✅ Check out our website: www.mtmg.eu

✅ Learn more about the amazingsoftware we use to create these podcasts (Descript):https://get.descript.com/mtu0tl2zr3g7

✅ Want the same microphones we use? Get a discount (use coupon code “MTMG” for 10% off):https://www.maono.com/?ref=ulcbmcjk

📧 Suggestions or want to appear on a future episode? Email: [email protected]

💡 Need expert help to maximize your IT investments? Reach out: [email protected]

🔔 Don’t forget to subscribe to the Podcast and follow us on LinkedIn!

https://www.linkedin.com/company/mtmg-eu

Fractional CMO Anne Mitchell breaks down how small andmidsize B2B firms can stop doing random acts of marketing and build a simple, end-to-end system that actually produces pipeline. She explains why only a small slice of your market is ready to buy right now and how a nurturing engineturns the rest into future revenue. You’ll hear a practical framework for sharpening positioning (think: becoming the UCaaS leader in your city), keeping websites aligned to your message, and using AI without sounding like everyoneelse. Real, workable advice—no fluff—plus examples from the channel and growth-stage teams.

Key Events Timeline

🟢 00:00:00 Welcome + why “random acts of marketing” fail
🚀00:01:00 Founding ChannelSpring to serve underserved partners
💼00:03:00 Fractional CMO value: Fortune-100 expertise in ~10 hours/month
🔁00:05:00 Holistic system: 5% in-market, nurture the other 95%; fix the website first
🎯00:09:00 Nail the niche: one offering, multiple buyers; UCaaS-in-St. Louis example
❓00:16:00 MTMG Questions

Notable References

When in doubt, return to the buyer. Anne’s go-to move is the“So what?” test—ask it five times until the benefit is unmistakably clear for each decision-maker (CIO, CFO, CRO).

Books Mentioned: Well-Oiled Operations™: HowBusiness Owners Scale Up While Scaling Back — Stacy Tuschl (Amazon; practical systems for delegating). Amazon

Connect with Us

✅ Check out our website: www.mtmg.eu

✅ Learn more about the amazingsoftware we use to create these podcasts (Descript): https://get.descript.com/mtu0tl2zr3g7

✅ Want the same microphones weuse? Get a discount (use coupon code “MTMG” for 10% off): https://www.maono.com/?ref=ulcbmcjk

📧 Suggestions or want toappear on a future episode? Email: [email protected]

💡 Need expert help tomaximize your IT investments? Reach out: [email protected]

🔔 Don’t forget tosubscribe to the Podcast and follow us on LinkedIn!
https://www.linkedin.com/company/mtmg-eu

Security teams are drowning in alerts — but what if youcould automatically rank every asset by business impact and focus only on what truly matters?

In this episode of Rosie Rewired (MTMG’s Women in Techconversations), host Tara Nelson sits down with Roselle Safran, CEO & Founder of KeyCaliber to unpack the missing link in cybersecurity: bridging “is this a security concern?” with “is this a business concern?” — so teams canruthlessly prioritize with limited resources.

You’ll hear how KeyCaliber uses common security data sources (like EDR and vulnerability scanning) to discover assets (including shadow IT) and compute an asset criticality / impact score (0–100) using asset behavior analytics — then connect those insights back to business applications so CISOscan communicate risk in terms boards and CFOs actually understand.

In this conversation:

Prioritization driven by business impact, not just severity

Finding coverage gaps fast (and why most orgs don’t reallyknow everything they have)

MSP/MSSP use cases: turning discovery into a strongermanaged security cadence

2026 advice: stop chasing shiny objects — nailIdentify/Protect fundamentals

AI in security: what’s real, what’s hype, and how teams canuse LLMs for reporting

Women in cybersecurity: confidence, representation, and why skills are learnable

Chapters (timestamps approximate):

00:00 – Welcome to Rosie Rewired

02:00 – Security vs. business risk: why prioritizationbreaks

05:00 – Data-driven “crown jewels” + impact scoring

08:00 – Translating cyber risk for boards & execs

10:00 – MSP/MSSP playbook: discovery → coverage gaps →ongoing cadence

14:00 – 2026 focus: fundamentals over shiny objects

20:00 – AI in security: attacker + defender realities

24:00 – Women in cyber: confidence, pathways, andrepresentation

31:00 – Wrap-up

Links & resources

KeyCaliber: https://www.keycaliber.com/

Roselle Safran: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosellesafran/

MTMG: https://mtmg.eu/

Tara Nelson:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/tara-nelson-220a62208/

Contact us for comments and suggestions:  [email protected]

#Cybersecurity #CISO #RiskManagement #WomenInTech #MSP #MSSP#NIST #AISecurity