Breakthrough Builders

Gurdeep Pall is a monumental builder whose constant curiosity, occasional audacity, and lifelong penchant for asking “what if” and “why?” positioned him as one of the key creators of and contributors to the most foundational Internet and communications technologies of the Third Industrial Revolution. Now in his 32nd year at Microsoft, Gurdeep has turned his attention to the scalable and ethical development of high-utility Autonomous Systems.HIs conversation with Jesse touches on the sources of Gurdeep's fascination with technology, the inventive culture of Microsoft during the internet revolution, Gurdeep's role in inventing technologies central to today's digital economy like TCP/IP, VPN, and cloud-based communications, his personal reflections on working directly with Bill Gates, and a philosophy for moving from Comprehension to Creation that Gurdeep has applied in his stewardship of technologies and teams. The conversation closes on a discussion of the enormous potential of Gurdeep’s present-day work in AI.Throughout, you’ll learn how Gurdeep brought together a lifelong love for learning, a disciplined technical expertise, and a deep interpersonal empathy to not only invent practical technologies - but to reimagine and help advance our world in the process. Guest BioGurdeep Singh Pall is the Corporate Vice President for Business AI at Microsoft and member of Technology & Research Leadership Team. He is an intrepreneur, a product thinker, and foremost a passionate technologist.Gurdeep’s team of research scientists, engineers and business leaders is bringing digital transformation to business tasks through the power of AI, including a recent effort to train autonomous systems with reinforcement learning efficiently. Gurdeep is also responsible for Microsoft Garage and Hackathon, a hyper-scale, grassroots innovation program.Teammates had the following to say about Gurdeep:“A visionary builder of great products and businesses.” -Amey Parandekar“I was struck by his authenticity.” -Moz Thomas“He never let hierarchy get in the way of engaging with us personally.” -Kavita Kamani“Gurdeep reaffirms for me that the role of a leader is to inspire.” -Ross SmithHelpful LinksAutonomous Systems: Gurdeep’s current world at Microsoft: https://innovation.microsoft.com/en-us/autonomous-systemsGurdeep on the future of autonomy on the Microsoft Blog:https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai-for-business/autonomous-systems-vision/A perspective on Gurdeep’s life published by The Global Sikh Trail:https://theglobalsikhtrail.com/story-english/gurdeep-singh-pall/Gurdeep on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/gurdeep-pall-0aa639bb/

Kim Scott, bestselling author and CEO coach, talks with Jesse about her new book Just Work and her New York Times Bestselling book Radical Candor along with the experiences and lessons that moved her to write. She talks about her lifelong love of writing and the value of storytelling in helping change behaviors. Kim reflects on the connected nature of her writing and executive coaching and on her philosophies on being an engaged professional advisor. Kim shares specific and moving examples of how she learned to care personally for people while also challenging them directly, and how caring personally and challenging directly became the basis for her Radical Candor. She also discusses how leaders can foster the right mix of meaningful debate and clear decision making, Kim speaks openly about the discovery of some of her own biases, and how that exploration and her conversations with underrepresented-minority colleagues and their experiences became the motivation for writing Just Work. She even shares a secret she learned about identical twins early on in parenthood. How do I give critical feedback without damaging my relationships? What is radical candor? How can a leader be caring while also pushing for high achievement? How can we foster a culture of healthy, productive debate in order to drive better decision making? How can we achieve a more just and productive work environment? Guest Bio:Kim Scott is the author of Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity and co-founder of the company Radical Candor. Kim was a CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrics, Twitter, and other tech companies.She was a member of the faculty at Apple University and before that led AdSense, YouTube, and DoubleClick teams at Google. She’s also managed a pediatric clinic in Kosovo and started a diamond-cutting factory in Moscow. She lives with her family in Silicon Valley.Building Blocks:What skill or activity or habit is essentially you? Write about what it is and why it's essentially *you*. Maybe you're a surfer and surfing is not just your way of staying in shape and in balance, but of completely escaping the terra firma that anchors you to the day-to-day and inspires you to think of each day anew. Maybe, like Kim, you're a writer - and you have your own ways of using the written word to relax, reflect or reason with yourself. Or it could be art, music, building and repair … or really anything at all. Just take 10 minutes and write out what it is about this skill or activity or habit that's absolutely essential to you and give yourself gratitude for having discovered it and for living it. If you can't put your finger on anything specific, talk to two or three people who know you well and see if they can help you discover something hidden in plain sight or find a passion that you can make your own.Helpful Links:In addition to Radical Candor, she is the author of three novels and the forthcoming leadership book Just Work: Get Sh*t Done, Fast & Fair, available March 16, 2021, from St. Martin’s Press.The Radical Candor organization: https://www.radicalcandor.com/Kim’s website: https://kimmalonescott.com/Kim on Twitter: @kimballscottKim’s 2017 interview with Kara Swisher: https://www.vox.com/2017/4/13/15295070/transcript-kim-scott-book-radical-candor-live-onstage-recode-decodeKim at Hubspot’s Inbound Conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj9GLeNCgm4

Bill Carr - entrepreneur, executive coach, author, and former Vice President of Digital Media at Amazon - discusses practical, proven methodologies that Amazon invented to bring products and business to market successfully (including the Narrative-based approach to communication, the PR/FAQ document to guide product development, and the Bar Raiser program for hiring). In this conversation, Bill shares insights and perspectives gleaned from both successes and failures during his 15 years at Amazon. He talks about his reasons for writing Working Backwards (with co-author and former Amazon executive Colin Bryar), the creation of the digital media business at Amazon, the role that Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos played as the “Chief Slowdown Officer,” Amazon’s use of time as a competitive advantage, the way the company puts into practice its 14 Leadership Principles, and the exemplar organizations Amazon itself looks to in order to improve its own processes and operations. Bill punctuates the narrative with candid and honest stories of his own intrapreneurial experiences as a leader who played key roles in developing Amazon Music, Prime Video, and Amazon Studios. How do you make decisions as an executive? What does it really mean to start with the customer and work backwards? What can you learn about the applicability to your organization of Amazon’s successes across so many different categories of GDP? How do you design products and services to ensure success?Guest Bio:Bill Carr joined Amazon in 1999, where he spent more than 15 years. As Vice President of Digital Media, Bill launched and managed the company's global digital music and video businesses, including Amazon Music, Prime Video, and Amazon Studios. After Amazon, Bill was an Executive In Residence with Maveron, LLC, an early-stage, consumer-only venture capital firm. Bill later served as the Chief Operating Officer of OfferUp, the largest mobile marketplace for local buyers and sellers in the U.S. Today Bill is co-founder of Working Backwards LLC where he coaches executives at both large and early-stage companies on how to implement the management practices developed at Amazon.  Building Blocks:Think about what kind of mechanism your organization could employ to slow down now to move fast later. Maybe it is the written narrative or the PR/FAQ. Maybe there's a piece around how you evaluate talent, which Bill hit on today in which he talks about in his book. But maybe those things inspire you to think of something different that you want to go build. It could be a tool or a process or a way to help your teams get more of a competitive advantage out of their time, like we talked about with Bill today.Helpful Links:Colin Bryar & Bill Carr’s book, Working Backwards: https://www.amazon.com/Working-Backwards-Insights-Stories-Secrets/dp/1250267595/Working Backwards LLC: https://www.workingbackwards.com/Additional advice on applying Amazon’s Working Backwards PR FAQ process: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/applying-amazons-working-backwards-process-leaders-ian-mcallisterForbes article about how Amazon encourages intrapreneurship: https://www.forbes.com/sites/innovatorsdna/2017/08/08/how-does-amazon-stay-at-day-one/?sh=44e97d0b7e4dA16Z’s podcast featuring Colin Bryar and Bill Carr: https://a16z.simplecast.com/episodes/working-backwards-amazon-bezos-memos-releases-narratives-innovationTomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Harvard Business Review, on the value of being an intrapreneur: https://hbr.org/2020/03/why-you-should-become-an-intrapreneurAmazon Leadership Principles: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principlesAbout the Andon Cord: https://kanbanzone.com/resources/lean/toyota-production-system/andon/

Bill Carr joined Amazon in 1999 and spent more than 15 years with the company.  As Vice President of Digital Media, Bill launched and managed the company's global digital music and video businesses, including Amazon Music, Prime Video, and Amazon Studios. After Amazon, Bill was an Executive In Residence with Maveron, LLC, an early-stage, consumer-only venture capital firm. Bill later served as the Chief Operating Officer of OfferUp, the largest mobile marketplace for local buyers and sellers in the U.S. Today Bill is co-founder of Working Backwards LLC where he coaches executives at both large and early-stage companies on how to implement the management practices developed at Amazon.Kim Scott is the author of Just Work: Get Sh*t Done Fast and Fair and Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity and co-founder of the company Radical Candor. Kim was a CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrics, Twitter, and other tech companies. She was a member of the faculty at Apple University and before that led AdSense, YouTube, and DoubleClick teams at Google. Kim managed a pediatric clinic in Kosovo and started a diamond-cutting factory in Moscow. She lives with her family in Silicon Valley.Gurdeep Pall leads the Business AI Group at Microsoft, a team comprising Research Scientists, Engineers and Business Leaders bringing digital transformation to business tasks through the power of AI, including a recent effort to train Autonomous Systems with Reinforcement Learning efficiently. He is also responsible for Microsoft Garage and Hackathon, a hyperscale grass-roots innovation program. Prior to this, Gurdeep was responsible for Skype, Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams efforts, including starting Lync (now Skype for Business) and developing it into a multi-billion-dollar business. Gurdeep’s favorite technology moment was demonstrating the world’s first live real-time spoken language translation within a Skype call at the Code Conference in 2014. Gurdeep joined Microsoft in January 1990 as a software design engineer after graduate school at University of Oregon. He has worked on many breakthrough products in his tenure. Pall was part of the Windows NT development team, working on the first version of Windows NT 3.1 in 1993 as a software design engineer, all the way through Windows XP in 2001 as general manager of Windows Networking. During his work on Windows, he led design and implementation of core networking technologies such as PPP, TCP/IP, VPNs, Internet Routing, and Wi-Fi, and parts of the operating system. Pall co-authored the first VPN protocol in the industry - Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) - which received the prestigious Innovation of the Year award from PC Magazine in 1996. He also authored several documents and standards in the networking area in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards body in the mid-1990s. Since then, amongst other things, Gurdeep has led Conversation-as-a-Platform, Microsoft Speech, Tellme, and Bing Maps initiatives. Gurdeep Pall has been a keynote speaker at many industry conferences over the years. He was named one of the "15 Innovators & Influencers Who Will Make A Difference" in 2008 by Information Week. He co-authored "Institutional Memory Goes Digital," which was published by Harvard Business Review as part of "Breakthrough Ideas for 2009" and subsequently presented at the World Economic Forum 2009 in Davos. Pall holds 25+ patents in networking, VoIP and collaboration areas. He has served on the board of trustees of Ashesi University, Ghana.

Dr. Kellie McElhaney, Distinguished Teaching Fellow and Founding Director of the Center for Equity, Gender and Leadership (EGAL) at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, talks to Jesse about how she blends inspiration and agitation to help students and business leaders discover how to grow and change, and about the times she’s needed to muster up the courage of her conviction to make real change in her own professional and personal life. She shares her view on the importance of corporate social responsibility as good business strategy, the role of our lived experiences in helping inform our ability to grow, and how Equity-Fluent Leadership is a key to building more diverse, inclusive organizations. How can I use my position or business to do good in the world? How can my values and core competencies inform my corporate social responsibility strategy? How can equity fluency help me build a more impactful and profitable business? How can I develop more personal courage, and enable my business to make more courageous moves? Guest Bio:Dr. McElhaney is the Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Equity, Gender and Leadership (EGAL) and is on the faculty at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. She also runs her own Equity Fluent Leadership consultancy and advisory services for businesses, boards, and nonprofits. Kellie also founded the Center for Responsible Business (CRB). Kellie is a passionate believer in the potential and power of business to make positive change. She authored the book Just Good Business: The Strategic Guide to Aligning Corporate Responsibility and Brand. She also writes numerous case studies of companies who are investing in diversity and inclusion, and conducts research in the areas of equal pay, conscious inclusion, equity fluent leadership, and value-creating strategies of diversity and inclusion. As such, Kellie is a much sought-after global keynote speaker, corporate / c-suite advisor, strategy consultant, mentor, and professor.Kellie holds degrees. from the University of North Carolina (B.A.), Ohio University (M.A.), and the University of Michigan (PhD). She lives in Oakland, California with her two college-aged daughters. Linkedin: /kelliemcelhaneyBuilding Blocks:Think about your own lived experience and write down a few things: What do you think have been the top 2-3 influences in your life? How did you get to have access to those influences, those people or those experiences of those environments? How have those influences, experiences, or environments affect the outcomes to this point in your life? Helpful Links:Kellie’s publications, research, and accomplishments: https://expertfile.com/experts/kellie.mcelhaneyKellie’s book, Just Good Business, about the strategic value of corporate social responsibility: https://www.amazon.com/Just-Good-Business-Strategic-Responsibility/dp/1576754413Kellie speaking at TEDxPresido: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpNoEs1TH58Berkeley Haas Center for Equality, Gender, and Leadership:  https://haas.berkeley.edu/equity/Berkeley Haas Center for Responsible Business: https://haas.berkeley.edu/responsible-business/ 

Andrea Robb is a talent advisor, designer, and leadership coach. In her conversation with Jesse, she draws on her experiences as a talent executive and consultant to lay out a vision for the future of the workplace experience and of talent management. Andrea shares her views on post-COVID working realities and how forward-thinking teams might improve the employee experience and promote greater empathy and inclusivity. She shares deep insights from her time at Airbnb, including how they turned the company’s external purpose around Belonging into a distinctive employee culture. Andrea discusses the relationship between company purpose, belonging, diversity, and inclusion, talks about lessons learned early in her career at Lucasfilm, and reflects on the importance of discovering and acting on clues that one finds during their career and life. How will COVID shape the workplace moving forward? How do you help creative talent develop their skills? How do companies create an inclusive culture where employees feel belonging? How can belonging be incorporated into diversity and inclusion programs? How can you start discovering your purpose?Guest Bio:Andrea is a former HR leader at Lucasfilm, Airbnb, and Autodesk--with a focus on Organization Development and Learning. She is now an entrepreneur and advisor to organizations on the future of work and education, as founder of Andrea Robb Consulting. Current and former clients include Dive Studios, Lucasfilm, Airbnb, Stanford University, CompassPoint, and Weebly.com. She is also a founding partner at HumanCentric Labs, which seeks to redefine and design how organizations work, using agile, self-management, and human centered design research. She works with organizations in the public and private sectors that seek modern ideas for work - including organization design, talent strategy, recruiting, learning + development, people analytics, and diversity + belonging. Andrea also holds a board position on The Alumni Association of the University of Michigan.She holds a Bachelor’s in Psychology from the University of Michigan and a Masters in Education and Public Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and two children.Building Blocks:Think about your life right now and also to take a trip back in time.What clues there are in your personal, educational, and professional background that might hint at what you could go build or how you could build. Are you somebody who really enjoyed being a camp counselor as a teenager? A swim coach and you've loved nature your whole life? Maybe that implies something about a career move related to improving our planet, climate, or great outdoors. Maybe you're a person who finds Zen in reading or writing, but so far you've only taken on blogs and papers. What would it look like for you to consider writing your first book? Take an honest and complete look back, and maybe do it over the course of two or three settings and see what clues you come up with and write about some of the possibilities those clues might portend for you.Helpful Links:Andrea’s website: https://andrearobb.com/Qualtrics’ latest research on the importance of belonging in the workplaceAirbnb co-founder Brian Chesky on Airbnb’s identity of “Belong Anywhere”Dr. Lauren Aguilar, leader of the Inclusion, Diversity, and Belonging Practice at Forshay Consulting, who helped develop the Airbnb Belonging Index and Sally Thornton as Founder/CEOBelonging Researcher, Dr. Greg Walton at Stanford UniversityResearch on Belonging and Diversity for women, with highly practical applications, at VMware Women's Leadership Innovation Lab. In particular, Shelley J. Correll, the Faculty Director and Principal Investigator has developed a "Small Wins Strategy" to quickly improve diversity and belonging.Harvard Business Review article on the benefits of building on employee engagement to achieve greater outcomes

Dr. Michael Stern, CEO of the Climate Corporation and Head of Digital Farming for Bayer Crop Science, shares how he blended a deep scientific knowledge with a distinctive leadership approach to build products, teams, and businesses in agriculture. Mike shares early education experiences that helped him choose a career in chemistry, his introduction to and fascination with agricultural science, some of his biggest career successes, and the way his research skills opened opportunities to develop and grow as a manager and leader. Mike shares his secrets to success and the way he’s used the tools of science to be a successful leader at the intersection of science, technology, and agriculture. How does scientific research work together with business and environmental needs to create a better world? How do you make innovative decisions in a changing industry? How do you take advantage of disruption to strengthen your business? What role can science play in developing industry-defining technologies? How are traditionally low-tech industries being redefined by science and technology? Guest Bio: Dr. Michael Stern serves as a member of the Executive Leadership Team and as Head of Climate Corporation and Digital Farming for the Crop Science division of Bayer. Based in St. Louis, Stern leads a diverse team that develops digital tools to help the world’s farmers understand their fields in ways that have never been possible before.Before joining Bayer, Stern was the CEO of The Climate Corporation and a member of Monsanto’s Executive Team. Prior to his role at The Climate Corporation, Stern led Monsanto’s Row Crop Business in the Americas with responsibility for its corn, soy, cotton, specialty crops, licensing and crop protection businesses across the regions. During his tenure at Monsanto, which began in 1988, Stern has served in leadership roles for a variety of its businesses, including: Vice President, U.S. Seeds and Traits; President, American Seeds; CEO of Renessen LLC, a biotechnology joint venture with Cargill; and Director of Technology, Agricultural Productivity.Stern is an active member of the St. Louis community, where he serves on the board of the Missouri Botanical Garden. He is married with three children.Building Blocks:Think about your version of applying a skill set from one context into another context. Maybe you're really good at playing an instrument and you're just starting a programing job. How could your musical acumen help you as you build, refine and ship software code? Maybe you're somebody who's traveled a lot or you speak several languages fluently. How can your ability to think in a different language open you up to new opinions and perspectives among your colleagues? Think of something you're good at or specially trained in and ask yourself, how can that thing help me in some other area of my life?  Helpful Links:US Department of Agriculture perspective on Big Data and IoT in agricultureBusiness Insider: Big Data and FarmingN. Venkat Venkatraman: Monsanto's “Data + Analytics” FrontierMore on what The Climate Corporation does: https://climate.com/

Wes Selke, Managing Director and Founder of Better Ventures, shares the story of a kid with a fondness for math and languages who goes on to blend a deep financial acumen with a strong sense of purpose to help pioneer and advance the category of social venture capital. Wes shares powerful, relatable anecdotes including his “need” to learn Spanish, his experiences on church-based volunteer trips, and his soul-searching late nights in Chicago that would later prove to be defining steps in determining his career path.Wes talks about the conflict between a sense of fulfilment from his mission trips and his early career success in finance. He shares how he thought through, and searched for, a more meaningful application of his finance skills, how he found opportunities through friends and through graduate school, and how he got started in social venture capital. Wes concludes by discussing what he’s learned as an investor in social ventures, an advisor to purpose-led business builders, and a social entrepreneur based in the San Francisco Bay Area.How do you connect technical skills into a sense of purpose? How can you make a career that is both profitable and impactful? How do you find opportunities for your unique set of skills? What is the best way to position yourself to build something meaningful?Guest Bio:Wes has 20 years of venture capital and investment experience with Better Ventures, Good Capital, William Blair, and Ernst & Young's Mergers & Acquisitions group. He earned an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and a BBA from the University of Michigan. Wes has volunteered with organizations around the globe, which has fueled his passion for applying his business skills to build a better world.Wes enjoys rolling up his sleeves to help mission-driven entrepreneurs realize their vision for building high-growth world-changing companies. He lives in Oakland, CA with his wife and three young kids and enjoys road cycling in the East Bay hills and Sunday trips to the farmers market.LinkedInBuilding Blocks:Write down one thing about your hopes, goals or dreams, that if people knew it, they could help you become a better builder. Maybe like Wes, there's a career pivot you want to make, or maybe you're in search of the perfect business partner or co-founder or colleague. Maybe there's a learning journey around that people around you could help out with. Undoubtedly, there's a ton of people in your network who could help. Wes talked about how doors will open if you follow your passions, but sometimes those doors have to be opened for you. And the more people who know about who you are and what you believe and what you want to do, the more doors will open.Helpful Links:Better VenturesPaulo Coelho’s book, The AlchemistPresentation on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theological views on vocationKevin Jones, “Two Pocket Thinking”Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus’s book, Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty

Julie talks about her first career aspiration to become a waitress to pay for college and how the lessons she learned at waiting tables taught her career-defining skills of empathy and creating a positive customer experience. Julie talks about her first job in tech--as a customer service rep--and learning to code so she could resolve user experience problems at the source and the product impact she had in that role. Julie the female mentors who helped her define herself as a woman in tech. Julie shares her career path from customer service at Aldus to managing UX for Office and running XBox at Microsoft and her eventual Chief Experience Officer roles at Microsoft and Qualtrics.Julie shares her insights on how team culture and employee experience impact the user experience and how she works to develop the right kind of culture. She shares her perspective on working toward great outcomes in the face of distrust and how to build high-performing product and customer teams.How do you build a team culture which creates world-class products? How do you overcome organizational and engineering barriers to create an incredible product experience? How do you look at the end-to-end user experience and build products that compete based on a powerful, productive user experience? Julie shares her stories and experiences about how to build a creative culture centered around the user’s experience.Guest Bio:Julie is passionate about building technology that gets out of the way so users can focus on what matters most. Her mantra is “People first, technology second.” As a leader, she believes her door should always ber open to listen and embrace everyone’s individual personality, perspective, style, and abilities--making teams stronger and more creative. Julie believes great ideas can come from anyone and anywhere.She has over 30 years of customer and product management experience. Her career focus has been re-imagining platforms for intelligent work. She has lead product management for SharePoint, the Microsoft Office Suite, Windows, and XBox. She oversaw the successful launch of Windows 7 and Office 365. She currently serves as the Chief Experience Officer for Qualtrics.LinkedinTwitter: @Julie_LGreenBuilding Blocks:Put yourself into the role of the Customer Experience Officer for any organization you're a part of. It can be your company, your neighborhood association, your church group, your school board, anything. Pick one organization you're a part of - and you're the CXO.Identify two specific experiences you would Build.#1, As the new CXO, what's the biggest “experience gap” you have to close? What's that part of the experience of the product your company sells, or the service your group provides, or the culture of the organization you're a part of, that just needs to be improved? And what specific steps, what specific actions, would you take, to improve it?#2, What's an experience your organization doesn’t provide today that could be an incredible Breakthrough? Where you're missing a huge opportunity to do something great for customers, for employees, or an even broader group of people? And what specific steps would it take to pull that off?I think you'll find if you work on this Building Block, you'll get to some really pragmatic and doable things. Stuff you and the people around you can go pull off. And do YOUR part to make the world just a little bit of a better place by serving up THAT much better of an experience to people.If you’d like to share, get it out there on social with the Hashtag #BreakthroughBuilders. Or, if you’d prefer to not share it publicly, go ahead and email it to me at producer@breakthrough-builders.com. I’d love hearing from you and learning from what you built.Helpful Links:Harvard Business Review on Why Every Company Needs a Chief Experience OfficerForbes reporting on the Chief Experience Officer role Qualtrics thought leadership on the state of the Chief Experience Officer in high tech here.FastCompany’s coverage of the reaction to Julie’s promotion to Head of XBox hereThe Atlantic’s perspective on Julie’s promotion at Microsoft hereFortune’s reporting on Julie’s move from Microsoft to Qualtrics here Christine Thach’s TED Talk on how businesses can learn how to build culture from refugee communitiesA deep dive into Tech Company Culture on Medium hereQualtrics’s The Global State of XM 2020Julie at the Dublin Tech SummitWired Magazine spread on Julie Larson-Green as the new head of XBox

Kim Malek, CEO and Co-Founder of Salt & Straw, shares her journey of quitting a successful corporate career to open an artisanal ice cream shop designed around community. Kim talks about early family experiences that left her wanting to be an entrepreneur, but feeling reluctant to chase her dream. She talks about starting her career as a barista at Starbucks when the company had just 30 stores, and how she went on to learn from roles at Yahoo!, Adidas, and Starbucks corporate. She shares what she learned from her career roles that helped her in starting her own business - and the pivotal moment that gave her the push to pursue her ice cream dream. Kim shares her philosophy of community-centered business and how partnering with her local community helped the business differentiate and succeed. She talks about Salt & Straw’s creative process for working with the community to create ice creams that tell a local story in respective communities. And she shares her perspectives on the superpowers of women as leaders and on the power of ignoring advice to forge one’s own path. Guest Bio:An industry leader and innovator, Kim Malek is the CEO and Co-Founder of the Portland-based Salt & Straw Ice Cream. Since its founding in 2011, Malek has built Salt & Straw from a humble ice cream cart into a fast-growing company with 21 locations along the West Coast while retaining its bones as a family-run company known for its culture of hospitality. Malek is a humble and passionate leader, engaged member of the community, and a champion for causes such as childhood hunger and equal rights. Prior to launching Salt & Straw, Malek held positions at Starbucks Coffee, Yahoo!, adidas and Gardenburger in marketing, community outreach, and product management and development. She also worked with Bono of U2 on an online music service (RED) and with Seattle’s Cupcake Royale, specializing in retail marketing and management and bringing new, epicurean trends to market.Malek founded Salt & Straw to create neighborhood gathering places. The Oregonian named Salt & Straw as one of Oregon’s Top Workplaces in both 2014 and 2015. Building Blocks:Write down one thing you'd love to be able to build or create one day. And then, as a second step, write down what you think you need to do before you start building or creating. Then, finally, take a look at that list and circle the 3 things you'll commit to doing next year, in 2021, to make progress toward putting your idea into the world.Yes, I may be the first person to have asked you for a new year's resolution. But hey, 2021 is literally one of the freshest starts to a calendar year that a lot of us have ever had in our lives, and I want you all to jump into it with energy and ambition. And to do your thing to make your part of the world a better place.Helpful Links:Check out and buy from the Salt & Straw websiteKim and her cousin and co-founder Tyler featured on the Williams Sonoma blogSalt & Straw feature on Forbes.comSpotlight on Kim’s perspective on inclusion and justice at Basic Rights OregonThe New York Times Magazine article announcing Humphrey Slocombe, as discussed by Kim in the show as the push to start Salt & Straw News about Danny Meyer’s investment in Salt & Straw at Eater (Portland)