After receiving an executive MBA at Harvard, Priyanca Ford became the Founder and executive board member at Kronos Fusion Energy, a startup building a roadmap to the full commercialization and monetization of fusion energy generators by 2032.
In this episode we discuss the technology and infrastructure behind the Kronos Fusion Energy Generator, Priyanca’s insights from COP28, and the future applications of fusion energy designs. We also discuss funding and how to be product-centric.
Here are Priyanca's action items!
In this episode we interview Kashmera Self, an industry recognized, forward looking fintech leader with 20+ years of experience in corporate strategy, innovation, and product commercialization. As VP, Strategy & Innovation at Interac, she leads a team in pursuing emerging topics including open banking, artificial intelligence (AI), value exchange, and blockchain to establish the long-term corporate strategy that helps steer the future of financial services here in Canada.
We discuss how Kashmera evaluates opportunities on emerging trends, works on strategy development for a large scale company, stays up to date with ever-evolving technologies, and builds meaningful partnerships. She also shares more about her role in launching and expanding Interac Debit mobile payments.
Action items:
Rachel Wong is the co-founder of Monday Girl, which connects Gen-Z and Millennial women with new job, career, and networking opportunities. Previously she worked at Uber to help launch the service in key Canadian markets, and has led multiple teams in strategy and operations. Rachel has also been named a Bay Street Bull 30 Under 30 recipient.
In this episode, we discuss how Rachel balanced working at Uber and Monday girl, the process of networking with global brands, and how she keeps her startup platform relevant amidst the changing career landscape.
Here are her takeaways:
Today we are joined by Dave Rouse, the CEO of CarbonClick. CarbonClick connects individuals and firms with carbon offset projects at the point of sale. All offsets are certified, and it is the only platform in the world that provides full transparency and "track and trace" to the source of the offset. Carbon Click has helped 1300 businesses and 230,000 individuals take climate action.
In this episode we discuss Dave's founder story, why he switched from medicine to engineering, and how Carbon Click calculates the amount a purchase impacts one's Carbon Footprint. We also go over developing meaningful partnerships and Dave's mentorship work with Climate-X.
Action items:
In this episode we sit down with Léonard Boussioux who is an incoming professor at the University of Washington in the Information Systems and Operations Management department. He was a Ph.D. candidate in Operations Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has developed and deployed machine learning and deep learning models to address high-stake challenges, including healthcare operations, pollution management, hurricane forecasting, and ecosystem preservation.
We discuss how Léonard decided to pursue advanced mathematics and physics in university, his new focus of developing predictive and prescriptive methods to enhance decision-making in sectors such as healthcare, agriculture, and climate, and the data he deals with across these sectors. We also go over the significance of multimodality in order to maximize potential from data sources.
Here are his 3 action items:
1. Try to have a positive outlook on life.
2. Surround yourself with positive people, and be part of different teams.
3. Be curious and have gratitude for what you receive.
Obaid Ahmed is an expert in building technology, UX/product design, large-scale software design, and business models. He created UmmahHub as a project to bring crowd-funding to Muslim communities around the world. He was the recipient of the Youth Business Entrepreneur in 2012 and was involved in the YoungMaker project which introduces the concept of technology to young members of our community via a 3D printer. Obaid was recently working on building the future of conversational apps using Voice, text, and AI working @Walmart Global Tech as the director of engineering.
We discuss his day to day tasks working at Walmart Global Tech as the director of engineering as well as his thoughts on the future of conversational experiences and advances in natural language processing like Chat GPT.
Action items:
Network as much as you can.
Learn to communicate your ideas.
Be curious.
Tune in to our conversation with Thusha Agampodi, who is the Director of Engineering at Aurora Solar, a cloud-based solar platform that uses data, automation, and AI to make solar projects simple and predictable. After studying computer systems engineering at Carleton, she worked in various engineering roles at Tread, Magnet Forensics, and Blackberry.
In this episode we discuss what goes into building an engineering team, how to manage personalization and simplicity when building systems, and approaches to allocating resources in terms of talent, budget, and time in tech projects. We also discuss what it's like being the only woman in the room in male dominated fields like engineering.
Thusha's action items are:
Jennifer Francis is a technology mentor, advisor, and angel investor. She is a former executive in the information technology and services industry, with experience in Enterprise Software, SaaS, Go-to-market Strategy, and Strategic Partnerships. She is the co-founder of SheBoot and is a Board Member of Invest Ottawa and is on the Board of Directors of the Capital Angel Network. Previously she was the Vice President of Financial Analytics Business at IBM.
In this episode, we discuss Jennifer's journey of becoming the co-founder of SheBoot and an Invest Ottawa and Capital Angel Network board member. We also talk about what factors most determine a company's success, how startup ecosystems are created, and more!
Action items:
1. Don't spend too much time planning out your entire life—focus on what your next step is.
2. Look at opportunities to open up your options rather than narrow them down.
Brian Adams is the CTO at Salient Energy, a startup developing zinc metal batteries based on aqueous electrolytes for large scale energy storage applications. Previously he was a postdoctoral research associate at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory where he studied the electrodeposition and stripping of lithium metal.
In this episode we discuss the chemistry behind zinc metal batteries and how they differ from lithium ion batteries, how Salient chooses where to execute pilot projects, and the process of creating 3 year roadmaps for future pilot plants and factories. Brian's action item is to start working on projects that might not fit into the curriculum of high school or even university, as developing projects can build an abundance of important skills!
In this episode we chat with Isabella Grandic, the founder of BOOB BLURB, a conversation starter for taboo topics. She’s building BOOB BLURB to break the stigmas with women’s sexual and mental health. Isabella is a Morehead Cain Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was the previous director of EMM, a project to reduce maternal mortality via misoprostol distribution to treat postpartum hemorrhaging in Nigeria. She was also the program success manager at The Knowledge Society as it expanded from a Toronto-based program to a global one.
Tune in to learn about femtech, how BOOB BLURB got early adopters, and Izzy's process of turning her idea into a tangible card game.
Here are Izzy's action items!
In this episode we chat with Rembrandt Niessen, who is managing partner at Oxford Energy where he advises investors and developers in the renewable energy generation and storage space. Oxford Energy also works on developing utility scale solar projects in emerging markets. His previous roles include MD Project Development for General Electric and Chief Commercial Officer of Energy Dome.
We discuss how Rembrandt built a career in renewable energy including stints as an independent developer and leading a global development team for GE Energy, before joining a disruptive energy storage technology start-up. We talk about how he built a project pipeline facilitating rapid product roll-out in the world's leading storage markets, how he created a go-to-market strategy around emerging wave energy technology, and the process of implementing power project developments across different markets, including Latin America, Middle East, North Africa, Turkey, Kazakhstan, and Pakistan.
Here are his 3 action items:
Matthew Espinoza is a full-stack developer building projects in web3. He previously built the crypto infrastructure—using blockchain API, for web3 creators to reward and engage their tokenized communities— for Agora Labs, a crypto software company that had a market cap of $500K USD. Recently he finalized the acquisition of Agora Labs by Talent Protocol ($50M crypto company).
Action items:
In this episode we chat with Amir Feizpour, the co-founder and CEO of Aggregate Intellect, a company building a "smart knowledge management" platform to bring the benefits of research in emerging technologies to industry teams. In the past Amir was a data scientist, senior manager, and NLP product lead at RBC, as well as a postdoctoral research assistant at Oxford University. Aggregate Intellect, founded in 2019, has grown a community of 10k+ practitioners and researchers.
Amir talks to us about his process building up Aggregate Intellect's consumer base over the past 3 years, how he came up with the idea for machine learning paper reading groups, and the tools he uses for building and maintaining engagement and growth of this community.
Here are his 3 action items:
As mentioned in our episode, here is a link to invest in Aggregate Intellect: https://www.frontfundr.com/aisc
Garry Golden is a professionally trained Futurist who speaks and consults on issues shaping business and society in the 21st century. He is the founder of Into the Future, designed to empower young people to solve problems in a global context. He works with both the private and non profit sector with clients including Boston Scientific, Dell, Disney, Microsoft, California Association of Museums, Harvard University, and many more! Garry received his Masters degree from the University of Houston Futures Studies program, and is a past member on the Board of Directors of the Association of Professional Futurists.
In this episode we chat with Garry about what futurism really is, overlooked areas of innovation, and how he has helped educational organizations close the gap between the pace of change happening in the world versus changes happening inside the classroom.
Action items
In this episode we sit down with Jacinto Sá, a full professor at Uppsala University and the founder of Peafowl Plasmonics, a spin-out company developing transparent, direct plasmonic solar cells to power smart objects like IoT sensors.
We discuss how Jacinto started his project with the intent of pure research and why he decided to incorporate, how he made a breakthrough in plasmonics, and his journey optimizing his solar cells over the course of the past six years. We also chat about the technology behind Peafowl and different solar cell printing methods.
Here are Jacinto's action items:
Aleksa Gordić is a Research Engineer at DeepMind and has a background in electronics, mathematics, and algorithms. Aleksa self-taught himself ML and deep learning, which led him to create videos at The AI Epiphany, a YouTube channel that breaks down research papers, code, and everything AI-related. Previously he was a Software/ML Engineer at Microsoft where he directly worked with engineers and Microsoft Researchers from Cambridge and was primarily dealing with Computer Vision, Digital Image Processing, Deep Learning, and Video Encoding.
In this episode, we cover optimized learning strategies, the educational system, and how Aleksa self-taught himself ML.
Takeaways:
At TD Miguel Navarro was previously the head of US Voice and Emerging Platforms including Alexa, Siri, and Google, where he strategized and implemented the future state of the Emerging Platforms of TD. In the past he was the Vice President and Product Manager for Mobile - USA, and acted as the Head of US Mobile Platforms at TD. Miguel recently transitioned to KeyBank where he builds and owns the technology behind the external delivery of chatbots and Digital Assistants.
In this episode we talk about Miguel's transition to moving to US from the Philippines when he was 19, how he has become a patented inventor, and his tips and tricks on when/how to get projects patented.
Takeaways:
In this episode we chat with Michael Gibson, the Co-founder and a General Partner at 1517, an early stage venture capital fund that supports teams led by young founders. After studying Moral & Political Philosophy at Oxford, Michael was the vice president for grants at the Thiel Foundation and a principal at Thiel Capital.
We discuss why Michael left the Thiel Foundation to launch 1517, how 1517 raised over $30 million, and his thoughts on the future of entrepreneurship with regards to what he looks for in the people he invests in as well as emerging fields of tech.
Here are his 3 action items:
Check out Michael's book here: https://www.amazon.com/Paper-Belt-Fire-Fight-Progress/dp/164177245X
Matthew Mizzi is the CEO of Drinkable Water Solutions, a company that aims to empower water autonomy, by building a handheld device that detects harmful contaminants and communicates their risks. Drinkable’s device is smaller than a smartphone, costs $100 with testing cartridges selling for $10, and tests water for about a dozen common contaminants, such as lead, arsenic, and uranium.
In this episode, we talk about the technology behind Drinkable Water Solutions and Matthew's journey of working in the field of sustainability to eventually become the CEO of Drinkable Water Solutions.
Explore Drinkable's water test device by pre-ordering here: www.drinkable.tech/preorder/p/drinkable-device-pre-order
Action items:
Kimberly Liang is a 17 year old cellular agriculture researcher going into the M&T program at UPenn next year. At The Cellular Agriculture Society, Kim is working with Founder Kristopher Gasteratos to publish the first cellular agriculture textbook in the world through Elsevier. At the University of Ottawa, she works at the Pelling Lab to find media alternatives to fetal bovine serum for maximum growth of mice myocytes, fibroblasts, and adipocytes.
In this episode, we cover Kim's journey to working in cellular agriculture research while in high school by understanding how she got her first-ever job in the field, and how she transitioned to her current job. We also discuss how she managed her last few years of high school and applied to universities internationally.
Action items: