Pablo S. Quesada focuses his practice in the areas of corporate, real estate and international law, including mergers and acquisitions, private equity transactions, stock and debt issuances and offerings, financing and lending transactions, domestic and international commercial transactions, and other general transactional matters. Mr. Quesada has extensive experience in matters affecting corporations, limited liability companies and partnerships, and in manufacturing, distribution, licensing and technology-related transactions. In addition, given the litigation and trial experience gained by Mr. Quesada early in his career, he provides his expertise in the corporate arena to assist in the handling of complex commercial litigation matters involving corporate, stockholder and/or board governance issues. Mr. Quesada also serves as General Counsel and is a director for one of the largest U.S. military apparel manufacturers.

Episode transcription:

[00:00:00] Pablo Quesada: The trouble that use that you saw and you continue to see, and the big item you need to be careful with when you're dealing with contingent workers is, you know, when you're hiring somebody as independent contractor, it becomes the issue of misclassification. And you know, we've seen that now for many years, for over a decade. Misclassification issues, which means somebody who is effectively an employee of your company, but you're treating them as an independent contractor.

[00:00:40] I'm Pablo Quesada. I'm a partner at SMGQ mall in Miami, Florida.

[00:00:46] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:00:46] I will thank you so much for finding time to join us on the podcast today. A great way to start off the 2021 and just real quick, before we get a lot into the conversation that I wanted to have with you, share with us a little bit more about yourself, your backgrounds, where you come from and kind of career-wise, just share a kind of high-level timeline.

[00:01:10] Pablo Quesada: Absolutely. Well, I'm a local Miami person. I was raised in Miami. I went to the University of Miami for undergrad. Then I went to Florida state for law school. Soon after law school, I came back to Miami. I worked at one of the larger Miami firms or with some of the most probably locally prominent attorneys.

[00:01:28] And then I had an opportunity to go to a national firm and work out of their Miami office. And I've been practicing now for over 25 years, but that's where I got my start at the big national law firms and had opportunities to work on very interesting clients matters. And after I worked in the corporate securities department, so I did mostly corporate transactional with about 30% of my practice being public company work.

[00:01:54] So actual public filings, quarterly reports, annual reports. Interestingly I was able to work for about four years when I was at the firm. It was Kirkpatrick and Lockhart at the time KNL Gates, which is Bill Gates, his father, actually, he was a well of the Gates law firm. They merged at some point, but back then I had the opportunity to work with a Miami company called Brightstar, which was a telecommunication logistics company, basically cell phone distribution, and the CEO of that company was much of a settler cloud who is now with SoftBank and starting division funds. And he's been very active in the Miami community to fund startups and technology companies. I had an opportunity to work with him for about four years. That was a great opportunity because that was really his first company that he took it. I think when we were working together, he took that from like 300 million in sales to 5 billion in sales, over a span of like four years.

[00:02:49] So it was pretty incredible. It was a great experience. I did that. And then I always had the bug to go in-house to go on the corporate side. And I had an opportunity, a very good friend of mine who's still at Visa, the credit card company. He gave me a ring one day and he said, listen, they're looking fo

Ben Dickinson leads Talent Acquisition for the Americas at Citrix Systems in Fort Lauderdale, FL where he guides a team of recruiters and sourcers to fulfill the talent needs of an leader in the virtualization, cloud, security and networking space. A career spanning over 15 years in Talent Acquisition, Ben has led TA functions in enterprise organizations, high growth mid-sized companies and start up environments in enterprise technology, fintech and consumer services. He has a passion for talent acquisition technology and the role that it plays in the future of recruiting efficiency and candidate identification as well as evolving the recruiting function from a tactical process to a business partnership by leveraging data analysis and insights to engage his internal clients. 

A graduate of Florida Atlantic University and past Board Member and Chair of the National Alumni Association, Ben resides in Fort Lauderdale, FL with his family and enjoys running, golf and the opportunity to coach various youth sports teams through his son’s involvement.   

Episode transcription:

[00:00:00] Ben Dickinson: [00:00:00] Hi, I'm Ben Dickinson, director of talent, acquisition Americas at Citrix system in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

[00:00:50] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:00:50] Ben, thanks so much for finding time. Join us on the Ivy Podcast on this Friday afternoon. Glad to connect with you at the beginning of 2021, a lot going on. Great start, interesting start to the year. So thanks for finding time. Tell us a little bit more about your background professionally, where you come from career wise, and then I'll want to spend a couple of minutes talking about your current role.

[00:01:13] Ben Dickinson: [00:01:13] Cool. Yeah, absolutely. And thanks very much for having me. I appreciate it. So, as I mentioned, I'm Ben Dickinson. I'm currently the director of talent acquisition Americans @ Citrix, but I had spent my whole career recruiting human resources. I went to Florida Atlantic university here down in South Florida and initially joined a boutique staffing firm based in Boca right after graduation. I wasn't like many people, I think I fell into recruiting, had a little bit of experience of it for some college days actually. But found that it was something that suited my sales skills. Bye. Enjoyment of just connecting with people and finding out about people. And it's something that I think all workers do from the beginning of their career, right? If you enjoy making connections and understanding how you can fit someone's skillset to a job or introduce them to somebody now making a successful recruiter. So after a few years focusing primarily in HR search at that firm, I ended up getting hired by one of my clients at first and worked for one of their large regional facilities down here in South Florida. And grew my career in corporate recruiting at first data, got a lot of exposure. I was really fortunate to get to go work for a global company like that, you find through my career. Anyway, I found, I went from large organizations to small organizations to sized high growth organizations. And I found that to be a really fun journey because you get things like in the big companies, tons of resources, great systems, great tools. And then I flip it over to a mid-sized company that was in a really high growth mode and help establish a TA function at that organization. We have slightly different experiences, from an employment standpoint, not as many tools and systems and not as much budget but the ability to influence and change things if you want. And that's also really fun. And then I went back for a short stint in the agency world and opened up a division for a company down here in South Florida really leveraging my network of folks that you've done here at South Florida. And then that a year ago joined Citrix to run talent acquisition for the Americans.

[00:03:25] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:03:25] Oh, that's exciting. Quite a jo

Ben Dickinson leads Talent Acquisition for the Americas at Citrix Systems in Fort Lauderdale, FL where he guides a team of recruiters and sourcers to fulfill the talent needs of an leader in the virtualization, cloud, security and networking space. A career spanning over 15 years in Talent Acquisition, Ben has led TA functions in enterprise organizations, high growth mid-sized companies and start up environments in enterprise technology, fintech and consumer services. He has a passion for talent acquisition technology and the role that it plays in the future of recruiting efficiency and candidate identification as well as evolving the recruiting function from a tactical process to a business partnership by leveraging data analysis and insights to engage his internal clients. 

A graduate of Florida Atlantic University and past Board Member and Chair of the National Alumni Association, Ben resides in Fort Lauderdale, FL with his family and enjoys running, golf and the opportunity to coach various youth sports teams through his son’s involvement.

Dr. John Wensveen is Chief Innovation Officer at Nova Southeastern University and Executive Director of the Alan B. Levan NSU Broward Center of Innovation responsible for overseeing a multimillion-dollar public-private partnership to support the growing entrepreneurial ecosystem by attracting and retaining industry-leading entrepreneurs, technology, sources of investment capital, and supporting resources to create a premier innovation center and technology hub.

Prior to this role, John served as the Vice Provost of Academic Schools at Miami Dade College providing direct leadership and direction for the College’s professional education programs. He was responsible for creating corporate relationships with local, regional, national, and international boards and organizations and with leaders of foreign governments, businesses, and non-governmental organizations.

John has extensive academic leadership experience including Professor and Head of the School of Aviation & Transportation Technology at Purdue University, Dean of the School of Aviation at Dowling College, and Professor of Airline Management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Welcome to Ivy Podcast! On this Executive Leadership Podcast we interview top executives from Fortune 500 with a focus on strategy, innovation, negotiation and everything about leadership.Our Podcast for Executives features Thought Leaders who share practical insights for effective leadership, continuous innovation and strategy execution.Ivy Podcast is a rapidly growing Executive Podcast, which covers topics like Hiring and Retention Strategies, Talent Acquisition, Innovation, Digital Transformation and much more.On this Leadership Podcast, you will find conversations with the most accomplished executives from Fortune 100 companies. We aim to cover a broad range of industries and create a learning platform for the most ambitious and high potential professionals who are looking to learn from the most accomplished Executives on this Business Leadership Podcast.

Adam Smiley Poswolsky is a millennial workplace expert, internationally renowned keynote speaker, and author of three books: The Quarter-Life Breakthrough, The Breakthrough Speaker, and Friendship in the Age of Loneliness.

Smiley helps companies attract, retain, and empower the next generation, and he has inspired thousands of professionals to be more connected at work, through speaking at companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, Unilever, Deloitte, and Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Smiley’s TED talk on “the quarter-life crisis” has been viewed over 1.5 million times, and he has spoken in front of 50,000 people in 20 countries. Smiley has advised heads of state and foreign leaders about millennial talent, multigenerational engagement, and fostering belonging in the digital age.

Smiley’s work has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fast Company, CNN, and the World Economic Forum, among many other outlets. Smiley is a 13-time camp counselor at Camp Grounded: Summer Camp for Adults and advisory board member for Digital Detox.

In 2017, Smiley launched The Women, BIPOC and Inclusivity Speaker Initiative, a community that aims to increase the number of women and people of color speaking at conferences and companies, as well as ensure that women and other underrepresented speakers are paid competitively as compared to their colleagues. The group now has over 4,000 members.

Smiley is a proud graduate of Wesleyan University, and can usually be found dancing in San Francisco, California.

Topics:

Smiley’s journey to becoming a millennial workplace expert. How pursuing things you care about can open up opportunities aligned with your values.What companies get wrong about building an engaged workforce. The challenges of building meaningful relationships at work. The reason we are more disconnected than ever despite technological advances.What leaders can do to reduce loneliness and increase belonging in a remote workplace.Common misconceptions people have about loneliness. 

Resources: 

Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope by Johann Hari

Welcome to Ivy Podcast! On this Executive Leadership Podcast we interview top executives from Fortune 500 with a focus on strategy, innovation, negotiation and everything about leadership.Our Podcast for Executives features Thought Leaders who share practical insights for effective leadership, continuous innovation and strategy execution.Ivy Podcast is a rapidly growing Executive Podcast, which covers topics like Hiring and Retention Strategies, Talent Acquisition, Innovation, Digital Transformation and much more.On this Leadership Podcast, you will find conversations with the most accomplished executives from Fortune 100 companies. We aim to cover a broad range of industries and create a learning platform for the most ambitious and high potential professionals who are looking to learn from the most accomplished Executives on this Business Leadership Podcast.

Johnny Quach is the CPTO at Hostelworld Group where he leads 120 people over a variety of functional areas. Previously, he was at Airhelp, a Y Combinator startup from 2014, where he helped scale the company from 400 to 800 people while creating over 400% growth over his 3 years there. He is passionate about making big impact — fast.After only six months at Rocket Internet, he launched three companies from scratch, operating across Germany, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Brazil, Malaysia, and the UK.Fun Facts: He was a professional poker player for 2 years, his dance team won America’s Best Dance Crew Season 2, and he was a Master ranked Starcraft 2 player”.

Topics:

The evolving role of product managementStrategic recommendations on building a robust product visionCollaboration of Project Management and Product Management teams

Episode transcription:

Thank you for listening to Ivy podcast, where we feature weekly leadership conversations with thought leaders and industry experts. Now here's your host bread, OB arrow.

[00:00:55]Fred Obiero: [00:00:55] Hello and welcome to the Ivy podcast. My guest today is Johnny Quach, he is the chief product officer at hussle world. Hey Johnny. Good to have you on

[00:01:07] Johnny Quach: [00:01:07] Glad to be on, happy to be here.

[00:01:09] Fred Obiero: [00:01:09] Johnny is sitting in Lisbon, Portugal. What's the time difference, Johnny? I'm on the East coast of Florida

[00:01:16] Johnny Quach: [00:01:16] Right about now it's probably 2:30 PM. So I'm on the UK time zone.

[00:01:22] Fred Obiero: [00:01:22] Oh, great. For all listeners that may be unfamiliar with Johnny, he has speaking events that he's had posted out on YouTube. So if you've got an opportunity, feel free to go and take a listen to him. I personally listen to a few of them and they are very interesting. I liked the one you talked about AI in the travel industry. So maybe that's a topic for a future podcast.

[00:01:45] Johnny Quach: [00:01:45] Absolutely. I think in general technology is really changing the world. That's an obvious statement, but I think people don't realize how much of the world has already kind of run. And machine learning is really just one aspect, but there are so many other kinds of big innovations happening. And I think the thing with technology is when it innovates faster than its predecessors. So that rapid pace of changes it's just creating all kinds of opportunities in the world that some people are taking advantage of and others, and there's still many pockets of things to do, I think.

[00:02:16] Fred Obiero: [00:02:16] Great. So Johnny, tell us about yourself and a little bit about your role at hustle world.

[00:02:22] Johnny Quach: [00:02:22] Yeah. So I actually started my career as a videogame designer. I went to school for graphic design and concept art. So I mainly focused on actually producing drawings and illustrations and monsters and cars for video games.That was my kind of passion when I was a kid. So I worked in video games as an assistant kind of concept artist for about a year. So I didn't really find it to be super fitting to what I wanted to do. Long-term so I ended up actually starting a t-shirt company for about a year with a good friend. After about a year, we ended up hitting each other. And from there I actually took, which is very common for your first startup of any type, and after that I took the kind of designs that I had and I made a portfolio out of it. And I started working in fashion for about eight or nine years. And in fashion I worked for a bunch of skate surf companies Quicksilver, Roxy, rip, curl icon, all kinds of stuff. And just right at the end of 2007 or something like that I decided I wanted to do something a bit more independent. So then I started playing poker professionally because I thought that would give me the most financial freedom as well as freedom to live, where I am. But the funny thing about starting your own busines

Adam is an author, sales leader, and entrepreneur. In addition to leading Enterprise Sales for Automattic (one of the largest remote workforces in the world), Adam writes about how to create the best version of ourselves. His work has been featured on Men’s Journal, INC.com, The Huffington Post, Men’s Fitness, Lifehack, and Entrepreneur On Fire. He is the founder of The Vitruvian Project, Better Than Yesterday Publishing and former founder of Bodeefit, a fitness community of over 500,000 people worldwide. 

Topics:

How to create your best self? Challenges with building and scaling a global sales teamSkills and strengths of best sales professionalsLeveraging the power of content marketing and partnerships to build a startupWhy is the act of writing a vulnerable act?Most important leadership traitsBiggest lessons from failures

Episode transcription:

[00:00:00] Adam Griffin: [00:00:00] Almost without fail, the highest performers I've ever been around are always seeking out coaching. They want the hard feedback. They don't want to be patted on the back. They don't want to be told you did X, Y, and Z great. I mean, our egos loved that, but they want to also get beyond that and think, okay, but where are the holes? Where am I missing? Where can I get better?

[00:00:39] Cesar Romero: Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Ivy Podcast. If you are someone that is looking to be a better leader, then this episode is for you. My guest today is Adam Griffin. He's an author, sales leader and entrepreneur, and he is currently leading the enterprise sales for Automaticc, which has one of the largest remote workforces in the world.

Additionally, he's also the former founder of BodyFit, which is a fitness community of over 500,000 people worldwide. And if that wasn't enough, he's also the founder of the Vitruvian Project and Better than Yesterday publishing, where he writes about becoming the best version of ourselves. Adam, I'm so excited for today's episode, and thank you so much for being on the show.

[00:01:39] Adam Griffin: Yeah, super excited to be here. Thank you, Cesar. It's going to be fun to chat, looking forward to it.

[00:01:44] Cesar Romero: [00:01:44] Absolutely. So before we dive a little bit deeper into your background, let's start with what does becoming the best version of yourself mean to you in your own words?

[00:02:01] [00:02:00] Adam Griffin: [00:02:01] That's a good question, and that's an answer that I think has changed quite a bit over time, because I have really used that idea of better than yesterday or kind of creating the best version of yourself for a long time, probably over a decade, just personally, as a kind of guiding light. But I think what I mean by that has changed a lot over the years. Even though I've held on to that as a true North, I think if I went back to my mid-twenties, let's say, I think that probably equated a lot more to ambition, dreaming big, you know, setting high bars, high goals, working towards those reverse engineering, your goals. It's just something I talked about in one of my books, and I think if you, if I look at my life the past few years, I think that definition has evolved quite a bit too much, much less about doing and much more about removing, meaning removing, cloudiness of judgment, trying to make sure ego's not making decisions and trying to operate more from just kind of a really authentic place. That's like something more central to you. So I think today, my definition around creating the best version of yourself being better than yesterday is much more about like the inner work, looking at yourself internally, doing a really good accounting of where you are at personally, where your head's at, what is holding you up? What is keeping you from being that better version of yourself? I think that the easiest way to think of it, as we all know when we're our best version of ourselves, like we feel it, our energy is high.

We're attracting thing

Adam is an author, sales leader, and entrepreneur. In addition to leading Enterprise Sales for Automattic (one of the largest remote workforces in the world), Adam writes about how to create the best version of ourselves. His work has been featured on Men’s Journal, INC.com, The Huffington Post, Men’s Fitness, Lifehack, and Entrepreneur On Fire. He is the founder of The Vitruvian Project, Better Than Yesterday Publishing and former founder of Bodeefit, a fitness community of over 500,000 people worldwide. 

Topics:

How to create your best self? 

Challenges with building and scaling a global sales team

Skills and strengths of best sales professionals

Leveraging the power of content marketing and partnerships to build a startup

Why is the act of writing a vulnerable act?

Most important leadership traits

Biggest lessons from failures

Rob Casas serves as the Senior Vice President, e-Commerce of Norwegian Cruise Line. Rob started at Norwegian Cruise Line in January of 2018. Rob currently resides in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale Area.

Rob Casas serves as the Senior Vice President, e-Commerce of Norwegian Cruise Line. Rob started at Norwegian Cruise Line in January of 2018. Rob currently resides in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale Area.

Episode transcription:

[00:00:00] Rob Casas: [00:00:00] My name is Rob Casas. I've been in the travel industry for over 30 years, leading the efforts of great travel brands in the e-commerce space.

[00:00:36] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:00:36] Awesome, Rob, thanks so much for finding time to join us on the podcast today. We're very excited. I know we've been playing this for quite some time. Tell us a little bit about your backgrounds, career wise, where you come from. And then one, spend a few minutes talking about some of the latest trends.

[00:00:52] Rob Casas: [00:00:52] Absolutely. Thanks, Jahn. Good to be here. My career started back in 1988, and I went to work for Delta Airlines right after I graduated from school college. And my first few years were field operational roles working at airports call centers and so forth. So my involvement in digital started Peck in the mid nineties when I was given responsibility for overseeing the Delta shuttle. ATNS Delta shuttle, as you may know, is the shuttle service that Delta has between New York, Boston, New York, and Washington, very much a high transaction and speed is of Avastin. Back then it was one of the first platforms that enabled instantaneous point of sale reservation transactions as passengers board their flights. So that went on to other projects. Like the introduction of boarding pass readers in the mid to late nineties, and really sort of set me up for then going to work in the companies on the company's fledgling website, which at the time was known as sky links. And of course would eventually become delta.com and where I spent the remaining years at Delta until I left at the end of 2001, in 2002. I took a year off to backpack around the world. And then, in 2003, I went back to work for a tour operator that operated Delta vacations. And at the time continental airlines vacations, and I was the head of e-commerce there. So I joined Norwegian cruise line in the fall of 2006. And along with my predecessor, we created the e-commerce organization at Norwegian with oversight overall strategy, operations, site development, and the director. Online channel sales were there for 13 years. I formally left the company in March of last year and with the pandemic starting to take root and along the way, decided that it was a good time for me to take time off and spend time at home with family along the way, truly where my travel and hospitality roots. I made some investments in a Lake Resort area that my wife and I started and now run in South central Michigan. And it's also the place where we spend our summers. Beyond that, I'm also an advisory board member for uplift a financial tech company that is exclusively focused in the travel industry. So those things get me busy at home. And I look forward in 2021 to continuing to interact and network and, as opportunities come up, see if they make sense.

[00:03:32] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:03:32] That's excellent. Thanks for sharing that background. So you have pretty extensive backgrounds, in the travel and e-commerce industry in general. And tell us a little bit more about what are the different trends and ideas that you're very passionate about that you think will be the next big thing. What are you looking to invest in? What are you researching? Any insights you can share with us or would be, I would love to hear that.

[00:03:56] Rob Casas: [00:03:56] Yeah, absolutely. What comes to mind at the moment is as horrible as this pandemic has been for the world and particularly for our nation, I think one of the outcomes obviously has been the accelerated boom in e-commerce as folks have opted. For online transactions, right. Instead of going to the store. So this is a surge demand for companies really to invest heavily in their e-commerce ope