In our Season 3 opener, Simi welcomes Paul Grewal, Chief Legal Officer at Coinbase.

As Chief Legal Officer, Paul spearheads all legal and regulatory matters for the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, which also IPO’d in April at a valuation of $65 billion. A friendly face in the world of law and tech, Paul previously served as Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Facebook. He began his career as an intellectual property attorney and as a U.S. Magistrate Judge for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California He sat on the bench for 6 years, and during his judge service, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts appointed him to the Magistrate Judge Education Committee. Paul holds a degree in Civil and Environmental engineering from MIT, and a JD from UChicago. In this episode, Simi maps Paul's unconventional path from the courts to crypto and what the day-to-day of his work looks like.

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Youtube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

Simi speaks with Ann Mukherjee, CEO and Chairman at Pernod Ricard North America. 

Ann is a marketing maven turned rebel executive at various household consumer companies: Pernod Ricard, Kraft Foods, and Pepsi. As Chairman and CEO of Pernod Ricard North America, she heads up hallmark brands in the spirits industry: Absolut, Jameson, Kahlúa, and others. Unafraid to center cultural issues, she led the Absolut team in taking a stand on consent; rallied the company’s manufacturing facilities to produce hand sanitizer in support of FEMA’s response to COVID-19; and she’s currently calling on brands across industries to stop hate speech online. 

Ann joined Pernod Ricard from S.C. Johnson, where she broke ground as their first-ever Global Chief Marketing Officer and, later, ascended to the role of Global Chief Commercial Officer — overseeing a $12 billion business division in 90+ markets. She previously made a decade-long impact at PepsiCo, most recently as President of Global Snacks and PepsiCo Global Insights, and as Chief Marketing Officer for Frito-Lay North America. She similarly transformed brands at Kraft Foods Group for over a decade, after starting her career at Citibank Diners Club. In this episode, they talk about her leadership fundamentals and the anecdotes behind some of her most iconic marketing campaigns.

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Youtube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

Simi welcomes Snigdha Sur, Founder and CEO of The Juggernaut. The Juggernaut is a subscription media company and community that produces deep-dive reporting on South Asia(ns).

A trailblazer with a passion for telling South Asian stories? Dare I say more?

Snigdha Sur began her career journey at McKinsey.  She subsequently moved to India and channeled her long-time passion for media into independently consulting for companies like Buzzfeed and Quartz. Shortly after, she pursued media investing and helped develop the launch strategy for Reese Witherspoon's media company, Hello Sunshine. What's more, Snigdha has ties to Bollywood, having worked in film production with Phantom Films which produced the Netflix hit, Sacred Games. She is an alumna of Yale, Harvard Business School, and the esteemed Y-Combinator. In this episode, Simi dives into Snigdha's journey to and experience building The Juggernaut — from its name down to the numbers. She speaks to fundraising struggles, her passion for Bollywood (and a chance visit with SRK), and how her experience in media shaped her vision for the company. Dive into Snigdha's story for her secrets to success and a round of South Asian story-telling. 

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Youtube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

It's not all that often we see South Asians in sales. This week, Simi welcomes Renu Gupta, Head of Sales at Thrive Global. 

Renu is a seasoned sales executive who’s traversed some of the most ambitious tech companies in the world. She currently serves as the VP of Sales at Arianna Huffington’s famed company Thrive Global, a behavior change platform tackling the burnout epidemic. Previously, she served as a Director of Sales at Slack for Large Enterprise, where she built the sales team and closed Fortune 100 customers.  She has an extensive record in the tech space: having worked and led sales teams at Dropbox, Google, and Cisco.
 
A trailblazer in two traditionally male-dominated arenas (sales and tech), Renu has a record-breaking repertoire. In this episode, she shares how she got her start and paved her path to the C-suite. Want to learn what it takes to sell well and sell yourself? Listen to this episode.

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Youtube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

Can you imagine a world without Google Maps? Well, imagine building it. Simi meets the man behind Maps, Manik Gupta, Investor and Former Chief Product Officer at Uber. 

Manik Gupta mapped the world from scratch as a Product Leader for Google Maps, where he also spearheaded the Maps launch in India and led the parent company’s acquisition of Waze. His foray into tech began out of college, when he founded an e-commerce startup called BuyItTogether.com, which he subsequently sold. Afterwards, he joined Hewlett Packard, managing their e-commerce initiatives in Asia-Pacific.

In this episode, they chat about Manik's time spent leading an 1100+ person team as the Chief Product Officer at Uber, where he helped lead the company through its May 2019 IPO and grow to 100 million+ monthly active platform customers. And they also touch on his departure, his reasons why, and what he's up to since: becoming a startup  investor and founding a non-profit, CVKey, devoted to helping small businesses battle Covid-19.

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Youtube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

In this episode, Simi welcomed Adi Raval to the pod. Adi currently serves as Head of Communications for Shield AI, a venture-backed AI company that serves the national security industry. 

Adi's work in comms has spanned some of the best and brightest teams in the world: he served as Head of Communications for TaskRabbit, which was acquired by Ikea. He led global media relations at the Bechtel Corporation, one of the largest engineering and construction firms in the world. What's more, he spent time as a Senior Crisis Communications advisor for Lime Bike. His comms experience extends to public service: Adi served as the Communications Director for President Obama’s “Power Africa” initiative, a unique public-private partnership designed to deliver clean energy to countries throughout Africa. He began his time in government as a U.S. diplomat based in Afghanistan. 

In a different lifetime, Adi also spent 12 years as a journalist with BBC and ABC News, including as the bureau chief in Iraq for BBC. In the episode, Adi shares how journalism paved his path to comms. He delves into his experiences abroad that shaped his career trajectory -- from covering the war in Iraq to Washington to venture. With serving society at the core of every decision, Adi has built a career around purpose and is a paradigm of passion and versatility. Be sure to check this one out!

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Youtube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

Sheel Mohnot is a serial entrepreneur, fintech investor, and acquired podcaster — so naturally this was quite the conversation for Simi.

A graduate of Carnegie Mellon and University of Michigan, Sheel was formerly a General Partner with the the FinTech Fund at 500 Startups. More recently, he co-founded Better Tomorrow Ventures, a fund leading pre-seed and seed rounds in financial technology companies around the globe. BTV raised a $75 million debut fund in 2020. 

But before delving into investing, Sheel was a founder — multiple times over. He first founded Innovative Auctions, a provider in auction software and consulting services. Later, he exited FeeFighters, a Stripe-like product that sold to Groupon in 2012, and also a food delivery company called Thistle. He even “exited” his popular podcast, “The Pitch,” a spin on Shark Tank where entrepreneurs pitched investors. It sold to Gimlet Media which was then acquired by Spotify. In this episode, Simi and Sheel chat about why fintech is the future, how he met one of his co-founders on a train in India, and how he landed himself in Ariana Grande’s “Stuck With U” music video. Put two startuppers and podcasters in a room? This one is a must-listen.

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Youtube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

In quite the role reversal for Anita Kumar,  Simi interviews the White House Correspondent and Associate Editor at POLITICO.

An expert on the institution of the presidency, Anita Kumar is currently covering her third president, Joe Biden, following eight years reporting on Donald Trump and Barack Obama. Prior to moving to POLITICO in 2019, she covered the White House for McClatchy’s, one of the country’s biggest local news companies.

She began her career in local and state politics, writing for the Washington Post and the Tampa Bay Times. She reported on Trump’s reelection campaign in 2020, Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016 and Obama's reelection campaign in 2012. Anita also became the first Indian American journalist elected to the board of the White House Correspondents' Association. In this episode, we leave few stones unturned. We chat about why Anita doesn't usually lean into her South Asian identity and what life covering the presidency really looks like -- from the White House greens to Air Force One.

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Youtube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

Rabia Chaudry is an attorney, advocate, and author of the New York Times bestselling book "Adnan's Story.”  

Her book follows the story of Adnan Syed, a very close friend of Rabia’s who was convicted for murder in 2000. His story and the plot holes revealed in the world-renowned podcast, Serial, which garnered national attention. But what many people don’t know was that it was Rabia who first brought the case to host, Sarah Koenig. 

Rabia herself is the co-host of 3 podcasts, one of which, Undisclosed, has accumlated 360 million+ downloads with its focus on wrongful convictions and that has led to the exoneration of nearly a dozen defendants. She previously practiced immigration and civil rights law for over a decade before moving into the CVE (countering violent extremism) policy sphere.  

In 2011 Rabia founded the Safe Nation Collaborative, a CVE training firm, providing cultural competency training to law enforcement officials and providing CVE training to Muslim communities. She has worked closely with the US Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and several other prominent and internationally-recognized policy-driven institutions. In this episode, we discuss the power of media as it related to ajudication, and Rabia's passion projects from wrongful convictions to a new book called, "Fatty Fatty Boom Boom."

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Youtube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

Simi welcomes Hitha Palepu to the pod. Hitha is the definition of a multi-hypenate -- an entrepreneur, investor, writer, and speaker.

With a background in pharma, she currently serves as CEO of Rhoshan Pharmaceuticals. Rhoshan Pharma is an early stage life sciences company creating enhanced versions of existing drugs to provide essential early treatment to the acute leading causes of death. Hitha also doubles as a startup investor and advisor, having invested in primarily in female-founded  companies like MM.LaFleur and The Juggernaut. In addition, Hitha's runs a blog, Hitha On The Go, which has gained a significant following and paved the path to her first book.

In this episode, Hitha delves deep into why she believes in the future of pharma and what it's like to wear the hat of operator as an investor. She gets candid about "doing it all," and offers advice for young South Asians who aspire to do the same. 

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Youtube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.