On this episode of WoVen, Nina Kjellson from Canaan talks to Sue Siegel, who, over 30+ years, has worked as an operator, leading innovator, VC investor, thought leader, and board member of industry-changing companies. Sue has repeatedly been recognized for her leadership skills, and in 2020 she was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by Global Corporate Venture.

Today Sue shares how learning of her mother’s struggle and success encouraged her to fight for her own progress and achievements, and equally to celebrate others’ accomplishments. She imparts wisdom on building and sustaining top-class teams in order to produce the best possible work, and how her five ‘Ways of Working’ principles guide and strengthen the workforce.

Together, Nina and Sue discuss how business has progressed over the course of Sue’s expansive career, as well as a number of silver linings we can glean from the pandemic. These include reaffirming the importance of family time, technological acceleration, and positive, deliberate changes in recruitment, diversity, equity, inclusion, and retention.

Links:

Canaan

Nina Kjellson

Sue on LinkedIn

On this episode of WoVen, Canaan’s Nina Kjellson speaks with Chief Strategy & Scientific Officer at Headspace, Dr. Megan Jones Bell. Megan oversees medical and clinical affairs, behavioral science and clinical research, design research, and the company’s digital health subsidiary: Headspace Health.

Megan shares how her own mental health journey led her to study psychology and wanting to turn her negative experiences into a source of strength for herself and a source of positive impact for others.

The two explore how the company reacted with agility and speed to adjust its offerings at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, listening to, and acting on, feedback from within its workforce and its members. From free access for healthcare workers and the unemployed, to reshaping the working week, they also discuss how to put the mental health and needs of ourselves and our employees first.

Content Warning: this episode contains conversations about disordered eating and suicide.

Links:

Canaan

Nina Kjellson

Dr. Megan Jones Bell

Headspace

Headspace Health

Our host Laura Chau explores risky ideas and unexpected paths. Whether it’s switching up an entire career or launching a first business, many of today’s industry leaders and entrepreneurs have found their success by taking daring leaps. We learn how to open ourselves up to new ways of thinking and capitalize on the resulting ideas.

Our host Laura Chau looks at how people around us shape our lives. From mentors to parents, teachers to peers, the people we surround ourselves with can lift us up, provide opportunities and connections, and inspire us to do better. We learn how to lean on a support network, and when to cut negative forces that start to drain rather than sustain.

Domestic responsibilities have always fallen more heavily on women than on men, and that remains true even when both partners work outside the home. Juggling domestic and professional life has always been hard, but COVID-19 has made that balance impossible. Our host Nina Kjellson finds that even in pre-COVID interviews, our guests provide much inspiration and guidance in their individual perspectives and experiences as working moms. These women prove that, even in the best of times, there really is no ‘one’ or ‘right’ way to manage family life. And, with a global pandemic raging, sometimes the best one can do is just get through the day.

Host Laura Chau explores past guests’ experience with prejudice. These women share the unique set of challenges that being a woman, or a woman of color presents in overwhelmingly white and male spaces. From their stories, we learn how to cope with the demand of continuously having to prove yourself to others, and the empowerment that can come from pushing back.

Our host, Laura Chau from Canaan, explores how past guests approach self-care. These women share how they prevent or recuperate from burnout, how they’ve honed ways to decompress, find calm, and look after both their bodies and minds. We learn how even the busiest of us can carve out time to look after ourselves.

Our Co-host Nina Kjellson takes a look at past guests' reflections on resilience. These women share some of the toughest challenges they've faced and offer advice on how to bounce back even stronger than before.

Gloria Harris - a.k.a. Glo - is an executive and leadership coach who has worked with many Fortune 100 companies, and in her work, she trades in concepts such as self-confidence, self-awareness, mission and vision, truth-speaking, team alignment, legacy and succession. Glo gets really deep into the mud of it, looking at what it is to aspire and to achieve, and also how all of us wrestle with personal and institutional demons along the way.

Glo has a master's in social work from Washington University in St. Louis, and she's trained as a psychotherapist with a specialization in Gestalt, a theory that emphasizes that the whole of anything is much greater than its parts. She spent years as a therapist to individuals, couples and families, and also taught at universities.

These days, Glo travels the globe to coach, teach, train and inspire her clientele, which includes executives from Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Lyft, Twitch, McKinsey, State Street Bank, Carnival Cruise Lines and Albertsons Grocery. In short, her impact spans every industry, market, tenure, type of workforce and culture.

Glo is originally from upstate New York, and has lived in the hills of Oakland, California for around 20 years. She's married, has three children, two stepchildren and seven grandchildren.

In this special episode, three trailblazers take the stage at the annual WoVen gathering during the J.P.Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco: Pam Kostka, Roxanne Christophe and Diana Kapp.

Moderator Pam Kostka is the founding CEO of All Raise, a nonprofit on a mission to accelerate the success of women in the tech ecosystem. Roxanne Christophe is the founder and executive director of Girls Crushing It, an organization that is empowering girls between the ages of 8 to 18 to flex their leadership muscles. And Diana Kapp is the author of a recent book called Girls Who Run the World: 31 CEOs Who Mean Business, which chronicles the stories of 31 CEOs and their achievements. 

They take the stage to discuss the progress women have made in business, the chasms that are left to cross, and how to support young girls entrepreneurial instincts. Increasing diversity in our industry - whether that's investing, innovating or executing - takes all sorts of efforts, and these three women who venture are committed to expanding the pipeline and to celebrating women's achievements.