In today’s episode, I chat with Nishika de Rosairo, a serial entrepreneur and business leader who has spent the last 18 years focused on two key things – people and impact, supporting organizations like Deloitte, Apple, and Salesforce. 

She’s on a mission to unlock the human potential of the world, and founded HumanQ to address the pain points felt by both individuals and organizations in having access to the right development opportunities. HumanQ is a technology-driven, intimate Group Coaching platform, designed to unlock human potential. Our Group Coaching Tracks are pre-designed for transformation to align with the organization's strategic goals. It’s really innovative thinking.

She’s also an artist, has lived on 4 continents and travelled to 65+ countries. We covered a lot together: her path to HumanQ. How it’s presence in 55 countries has shaped how she views coaching. And how she overcomes in-person bias in making this world a better place. 

It was such a pleasure connecting with Nishika. And I hope you enjoy it. 

Nishika de Rosairo

Nishika is a serial entrepreneur and leader who has spent the last 18 years focused on two key things – people and impact in organizations ranging from Deloitte Consulting to Apple, Cisco, Salesforce, Levi, and others, to the start-ups of Silicon Valley. On a mission to unlock the human potential of the world, she founded HumanQ to address the pain points felt by both individuals and organizations in having access to the right development opportunities.

Nishika is also an artist, having extensively lived on 4 continents and travelled to 65+ countries, she approaches solutions with a unique perspective that focuses on the trifecta of how individuals, organizations, and societies can all win when workforces are developed with the future in mind. 

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Thinking Inside the Box

Constraints drive innovation. We tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture. And if you enjoy the work we’re doing here, consider giving us a 5-star rating, leaving a comment & subscribing. It ensures you get updated whenever we release new content & really helps amplify our message.

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Matt Burns

Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.

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In today’s episode, I chat with Navjeet Chhina, the Vancouver-based Founder & CEO of Genius Ventures Inc, an international leader in the Metaverse / XR business solutions industry. He was also one of my partners in the 2020 Global HR Summit conference - the largest ever business enterprise conference presented entirely in virtual reality. 

We of course, get into that, alongside Nav’s other great work for major brands such as Adidas, Live Nation, Acura, Walmart, Snapchat, Warner Media, and the NFL. We really dig into the enterprise use cases for immersive technologies - whether its marketing, or HR. 

And we discuss how to solve the challenges of reaching a wide audience in an innovative sector,  showcasing how forward-thinking entities can connect with their customers on a deeper level, and create real business impact.

It was such a pleasure connecting with Nav. And I hope you enjoy it. 

Navjeet Chhina

Navjeet Chhina is the Founder of Genius Ventures Inc, an international leader in the 5G / XR business solutions industry. He has been involved in the 3D/XR space for the last 7 years and has led enterprise partnerships with Microsoft, Meta and Verizon's 5G Labs

Navjeet has over a decade of executive and product management experience in emerging technologies and establishing XR use cases for various industries and major brands such as Adidas, UPS, Honda, Acura, Live Nation, Media Monks, Walmart, Yahoo, Warner Media, the NFL and Phoenix Suns.

He is currently focusing on helping XR, 5G and Edge Computing reach mass adoption by showcasing how forward thinking innovative technologies can create business impact and help brands connect with their customers on a deeper emotional level.

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Thinking Inside the Box

Constraints drive innovation. We tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture. And if you enjoy the work we’re doing here, consider giving us a 5-star rating, leaving a comment & subscribing. It ensures you get updated whenever we release new content & really helps amplify our message.

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Matt Burns

Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.

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In today’s episode, I chat with Nada Lena, the Las Vegas-based Founder & CEO of Rise Up For You. Nada is also a #1 Best Selling Author, Leadership and Career Confidence Coach, and 2x TEDx Motivational Speaker.

With over 10 years’ experience as a college professor and former top executive for an education corporation, Nada understands the importance of fusing education, empowerment, and leadership together as she works with her clients and speaks to audiences worldwide. She has toured the world as a singer, has a Master’s degree in Executive Leadership, and has coached and mentored over 50,000 individuals around the world on self-empowerment, career strategy, and soft skills. 

She’s been featured in hundreds of podcasts and radio shows, and is a featured motivational and educational speaker who’s spoken alongside greats such as Tony Robbins, Les Brown and Marie Forleo. Most recently, she can be seen and heard on Radio Canada, Amazon Prime TV, and Bloomberg as a co-host of The Office Hours, a talk show that interviews celebrities, athletes, and world-renowned entrepreneurs. 

We covered a lot in a very short period of time, including Nada’s origin story, the inspiration behind her organization, Rise Up for You, and the importance of emotional intelligence in the workplace.

It was such a pleasure connecting with Nada. And I hope you enjoy it.

Nada Lena

Nada Lena is the Founder & CEO of Rise Up For You, #1 Best Selling Author, Leadership and a career confidence coach, and 2x TEDx Motivational Speaker.

With over 10 years’ experience as a college professor and former top executive for an education corporation, Nada understands the importance of fusing education, empowerment, and leadership together as she works with her clients and speaks to audiences worldwide.

Rise Up For You is proudly Certified as a Women ' s Owned Small Business and Certified by the Society of Human Resources Management. Nada has been awarded 40 under 40 professionals in Orange County, California Women of Influence for Entrepreneurship in 2021, the Keynote Speaker Award from the Lebanese Collegiate Network, and the OC Sheriffs Award for her philanthropic work with at-risk youth.

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Thinking Inside the Box

Constraints drive innovation. We tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture. And if you enjoy the work we’re doing here, consider giving us a 5-star rating, leaving a comment & subscribing. It ensures you get updated whenever we release new content & really helps amplify our message. 

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Matt Burns

Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.

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In today’s episode, I chat with Massimo Backus, a Seattle, Washington-based Executive Coach. Massimo helps Leaders lead authentically, navigate their career intentionally, and grow high performing teams successfully. 

His philosophy is that of leadership without judgment. To not judge oneself, others, or the process (the context of any situation.) It is from this judgment-free place that Massimo believes leaders truly seek to understand, lead with compassion, and learn and grow beyond the old beliefs, stories, and patterns.

In the discussion, Massimo & I cover a lot of interesting topics. From his background & experiences. How he helps leaders deploy kindness, and self-compassion. We chat about one of my favourite books, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, and the importance of gratitude and resilience, particularly in these trying times.

It was such a pleasure connecting with Massimo. And I hope you enjoy it.


Massimo Backus

As a certified professional coach, Massimo Backus offers his clients an invitation onto a lifelong path of personal evolution and creating environments where everyone can thrive. By combining a deep curiosity and expertise in organizational behaviour psychology and team dynamics, Massimo cultivates increased emotional intelligence and agility. His coaching combines assessment, skill development, deliberate practice, accountability, an organizational systems thinking to create behaviour change that sticks.

Outside of coaching, he is a dynamic and powerful speaker at corporate events for high-growth organizations to ignite culture and drive behaviour change. He blends the latest leadership and behavioural science, and talent development strategies to help his clients achieve lasting business outcomes.

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Thinking Inside the Box

Constraints drive innovation. We tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture. And if you enjoy the work we’re doing here, consider giving us a 5-star rating, leaving a comment & subscribing. It ensures you get updated whenever we release new content & really helps amplify our message. 

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Matt Burns

Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.

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In today’s episode, I chat with Lona Alia, the venture backed Y Combinator Founder @StyleLend, Head of Revenue @SafetyWing & an advisor to the EU for innovation. 

Lona is a Miami-based remote work advocate, an expert at building remote teams, and a digital nomad who has herself visited 80+ countries. 

That makes her uniquely qualified to discuss a range of topics, from conscious life design, to team culture, and innovation. 

We began by discussing her path through entrepreneurship, the lessons she learned along the way, and their relative weight informing her conscious life design and professional journey. 

We also discussed remote work, best practices for dispersed teams, and the changing views around what’s necessary for a successful organizational culture. 

It was such a pleasure connecting with Lona. And I hope you enjoy it.

Lona Alia

Lona Alia is a venture backed Y Combinator founder. She’s also the Head of Revenue at SafetyWing and an Advisor to the EU for Innovation. 

Lona is an expert at building revenue channels & fully remote teams from Zero to One. And she’s a digital nomad who has worked and travelled to 80+ countries.

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Thinking Inside the Box

Constraints drive innovation. We tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture. And if you enjoy the work we’re doing here, consider giving us a 5-star rating, leaving a comment & subscribing. It ensures you get updated whenever we release new content & really helps amplify our message. 

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Matt Burns

Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.

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In today’s episode, I chat with Mark Romig, the Senior Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer of New Orleans & Company, the New Orleans tourism industry’s destination marketing and sales organization. 

Mark’s public relations career has spanned more than four decades. From teaching in college classrooms, to the 1984 Louisiana World’s Fair. From working as a Staff Assistant to U.S. Dept. of Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole and on the 1987-88 presidential campaign of U.S. Senator Bob Dole.

In 2013 Mark became the Stadium Announcer for the NFL’s New Orleans Saints in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, succeeding his father, Jerry, who served in the same role for 446 consecutive Saints home games over 44 years. Mark is also a member of the Board of Directors of Fidelity Bank, headquartered in New Orleans.

In the discussion, Mark & I cover a lot of ground. From his professional journey - complete with some really compelling twists & turns, to how he took up the challenge of cementing his father’s legacy, while forging his own path.

It was such a pleasure connecting with Mark. And I hope you enjoy it.

Mark Romig

A native New Orleans, Mark is the Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of New Orleans & Company, the New Orleans tourism industry’s destination marketing and sales organization.  

Mark is a former member of the Xavier University Board of Trustees, former Chairman of Project Lazarus, former member of the Board of  Commissioners of New Orleans City Park, former member of the Board of Directors of the Audubon Nature Institute, past International President of Tau Kappa Epsilon Fraternity and former President and Chairman of the Board of the Allstate Sugar Bowl Committee.

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Thinking Inside the Box

Constraints drive innovation. We tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture. And if you enjoy the work we’re doing here, consider giving us a 5-star rating, leaving a comment & subscribing. It ensures you get updated whenever we release new content & really helps amplify our message. 

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Matt Burns

Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.

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In today’s episode, I chat with Giselle Mota, Futurist, Thought Leader, TEDx & Global Speaker & Inclusion Advocate. Giselle brings humanity, empathy and a strong sense of purpose to this abstract world of ours. 

Her specific focus is on emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, spatial computing & blockchain, and how they relate to topics such as diversity, equity and inclusion and many other relevant trends of the ever-evolving future of work.

With a Master’s in Business with a focus on Organizational Design and Change Management, and Bachelor's in Business Management & Marketing, Giselle enjoys researching and contributing to individual and organizational success, as well as serving underserved communities, along the way, finding compelling use cases for tech and strategies for the good of all people. 

As always, we kicked things off with Giselle sharing the story of her own evolution. As a neurodivergent woman of colour, Giselle has, at times, found herself on the outside looking in. Though as you’ll discover, with obvious passion, talents, and persistence, she’s wedged her way into important discussions with impacts to us all. And we’re better for it. 

We discussed a host of other topics, from digital transformation, immersive technologies, and how to ensure underrepresented voices are heard. 

It was such a pleasure connecting with Giselle. And I hope you enjoy it.

Giselle Mota

Giselle Mota is the creator of NFTY Collective, a project with a mission to bring disability into inclusion web3 and metaverse. She’s also the founder of Versd, an inclusive and strategic ventures group, visiting Inclusive People Analytics and AI instructor for UFM, and Head of Product Inclusion at ADP. She is a futurist, strategist, and dynamic speaker. Named a Top 100 Future of Work Thought Leader.

As an industry leader, she assists executives and HR practitioners with innovative human capital management strategies amidst digital disruption. Giselle is a global speaker and has been featured on TED Talks, Yahoo News, Forbes, Cheddar News, Chief Learning Officer Magazine to name a few. She serves across boards and leadership councils related to Web3 and the metaverse, artificial intelligence, people analytics, the future of work, disability Inclusion, and is active among start-up and entrepreneurial spaces all in hopes of creating an inclusive future of work and opportunities for all.

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Nick Vujicic

Nick Vujicic (“voo-yi-chich”) is an Australian-American born without arms or legs who has become a world-renowned speaker, New York Times best-selling author, coach and entrepreneur.

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Constraints drive innovation. We tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture. And if you enjoy the work we’re doing here, consider giving us a 5-star rating, leaving a comment & subscribing. It ensures you get updated whenever we release new content & really helps amplify our message. 

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In today’s episode, I chat with Siim Sikkut, the former CIO of the Ministry of Economic Affairs & Communications for the government of Estonia, one of the architects of that country’s truly innovative e-Residency Program, and most recently, a Managing Director at Digital Nation. 

In 2007, a series of cyberattacks targeted websites of Estonian organizations, including Estonian parliament, banks, ministries, newspapers and broadcasters. While ultimately these attempts were unsuccessful, it was a call-to-action for nation states to take more seriously their digital infrastructure and security. 

It undoubtedly influenced his later work. In 2014, along with two collaborators, he presented the first real concrete proposal for e-Residency at the Estonian Development Foundation. And a program specific to foreign investors was born. Over time it was expanded to create a bureaucracy-free safe haven for entrepreneurs, digital nomads, and freelancers. And it’s become a model for other nation states considering a similar value proposition. 

His latest venture, Digital Nation, leans heavily on those experiences; launching ‘future-ready digital societies’ that overcome traditional barriers; informing digital strategy, policy and application for clients around the globe.  

This was a particularly fascinating discussion; an intersection of Siim’s experiences in government organizations, and mine from the private enterprise. We talked at length about his professional journey, accomplishments, and how they ultimately informed his latest venture. 

It was such a pleasure connecting with Siim. And I hope you enjoy it. 

Siim Sikkut

Siim Sikkut led the digital government and digital policy area in the Government of Estonia for 10 years, most recently as the Government CIO from 2017 to 2022. Siim has been recognized as one of the world’s TOP20 most influential people in digital government.

Siim currently advises governments and leaders on digital strategy, the leadership and governance for its delivery, digital service reforms, and public sector innovation. He is a Managing Partner at Digital Nation, a digital advisory network helping to build future-ready digital societies globally.

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Thinking Inside the Box

Constraints drive innovation. We tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture. And if you enjoy the work we’re doing here, consider giving us a 5-star rating, leaving a comment & subscribing. It ensures you get updated whenever we release new content & really helps amplify our message. 

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Matt Burns

Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.

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In today’s episode, I chat with Kimberly Wiefling, the Redwood City, CA-based Founding Member & Global Consultant at Silicon Valley Alliances. She’s also the Founder & President of Wiefling Consulting, a firm launched on Feb. 1, 2001 to support healthy and productive organization cultures, providing practical business leadership and project management guidance ever since.

Kim is a Trusted Advisor, Valued Partner and Respected Colleague who, by her own admission, shocks companies into fixing the things that will Damage or Destroy them. With extensive experience in the R&D and manufacturing of complex systems of hardware, software, firmware, chemistry and physics, Kim has held leadership positions ranging from NPI Program Manager to VP of Program Management & Organizational Effectiveness for a Xerox Parc spinoff, and has helped companies from startups to Global 1000 successfully grow and – more importantly - SCALE. 

A physicist by education, she has found that many of these are “human” problems that don’t require “rocket science”. All that’s required to achieve significant positive impact in many cases is to make common sense into common PRACTICE.

In the discussion, Kim & I cover a lot of ground. From her professional background as a physicist, to how she transforms work environments for clients around the world. We close by discussing the strategic imperative of Mental health & wellbeing.

It was such a pleasure connecting with Kim. And I hope you enjoy it. 

Kimberly Wiefling

Kimberly Wiefling is the founder of Wiefling Consulting a Silicon Valley-based global consultancy. She has worked with people from over 50 different countries. Her book, Scrappy Project Management, has gotten her invited to speak to audiences globally.

She works globally with valued colleagues at Silicon Valley Alliances. Her keynotes and workSHOCKs enable people to make positive changes to overcome the predictable & avoidable leadership, team & organizational culture issues that damage or destroy organizations.

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Thinking Inside the Box

Constraints drive innovation. We tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture. And if you enjoy the work we’re doing here, consider giving us a 5-star rating, leaving a comment & subscribing. It ensures you get updated whenever we release new content & really helps amplify our message. 

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Matt Burns

Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.

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In today’s episode, I chat with Karim Lessard, Technology CEO, serial entrepreneur & my co-founder at BentoHR.

What can you say about someone who’s stood by you when times were tough? When the easiest thing, the most practical thing, to do is cut your losses & simply walk away. The pandemic was an inflection point for all of us. Personally & professionally. And for agency owners such as myself, at times it was pretty bleak.

I haven’t publicly shared a lot of what we discussed in today’s podcast. The ebbs & flows, the twists and turns. Though as we mark our 100th podcast episode, it seemed only fitting to have my business partner, and BentoHR co-founder, join us for a frank discussion on what the last 2+ years have been like. 

Karim Lessard is an accomplished leader in his own right. A serial entrepreneur with origins in financial services, then technology. Today Karim serves as the CEO of 7Simple Machines, a Seattle-based consultancy and incubator that untangles workplace digital complexities, delivering simple, elegant solutions.

Employee Lifetime Value is a concept borne of this difficult time. Fitting as it solves a particularly difficult challenge. Quantifying the return on internal organizational investments - think employee training, experience and technologies - is nearly impossible in most organizations. 

Employee Lifetime Value provides a framework to have these discussions. To quantify an organization’s current state, establish its desired future state, and for the first time, to begin productive, quantitative discussions that make the business case for digital transformations. 

Karim Lessard

Karim Lessard began his banking career with Seafirst Bank and ended it 17 years later shortly after the collapse of Washington Mutual. He moved into technology start-ups and now runs 7 Simple Machines, a technology firm and incubator that has spun off companies in HR (BentoHR) and health care (Contatto Medical). 

Karim is very involved in the Circular Economy and is the co-founder of Regenerated Textile Industries, a start-up that’s building machines to modernize the apparel supply chain by making apparel out of recycled textile waste. Karim serves on the Board of Trustees at The Bush School with an emphasis on DEI, Finance and alumni engagement. 

Karim drives old Land Cruisers, skis, and builds things like snow caves, and tree houses.

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Thinking Inside the Box

Constraints drive innovation. We tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture. And if you enjoy the work we’re doing here, consider giving us a 5-star rating, leaving a comment & subscribing. It ensures you get updated whenever we release new content & really helps amplify our message. 

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Matt Burns

Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.

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