Neelima Parasker started coding at a young age.  Inspired by her entrepreneur mother, she studied Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering before eventually starting SnapIT Solutions. Neelima's passion for investing in unproven talent has guided her as a leader. She's an active entrepreneur coach and is involved in many civic organizations in and around the Kansas City area.Listen and learn...The single most important lesson for parents looking to cultivate a love of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math in their kids.How Neelima has built a culture around her belief that we should "use technology to grow people, not the other way around."How glass ceilings for women and under-represented minorities can be shattered.How governments should take responsibility for improving access to STEM education.Why Neelima isn't afraid of bots taking jobs because "our faults make us human."References in today's episode...SnapIT SolutionsJoe Rehmann from Victory Farms on AI and the Future of WorkFilip Dousek on AI and the Future of Work

Rachel Chalmers aspired to be an English professor before being inspired by a technology journal to relocate from Ireland to San Francisco. She has since covered over 1,000 startups as an industry analyst and invested in many more as an investor. Rachel is passionate about representing the under-represented and encouraging all those who have been told they can't  live their dreams. This is a must-listen for entrepreneurs who have ever felt disadvantaged by circumstances out of their control. It's also the episode in which I volunteer to chair the Chalmers 2024 campaign.Listen and learn...The burn rate rule of thumb for startupsWhy "venture capital wants to perpetuate itself"The origins of the Silicon Valley myth that "all talent is concentrated in white males"How to eliminate institutional biases that constrain women and under-represented minorities when raising money and building companiesHow Rachel is defining the future workplace where humans and machines collaborateReferences in this episode:Ravi Belani and the Alchemist AcceleratorThe Innovators Inside podcast by AlchemistXCharity Majors and HoneycombEdith Harbaugh and LaunchDarklyCiro and Jacopo from Tooso on AI and the Future of WorkFilip Dousek from Workday on AI and the Future of WorkProject IncludeArlan HamiltonKate Crawford's Atlas of AISeeing Like a State by James C. Scott

Dr. Cataltepe is an accomplished scientist and entrepreneur... with a social conscience. She has published more than 100 academic papers and is a three-time recipient of the "Women Entrepreneur of the Year" award. Dr. Cataltepe and her team believe building and managing AI models should be something anyone can do... even her 70 year old mother who is a farmer in Turkey :). Tazi's vision is to make AI explainable, accessible, and configurable for "mere mortals".Listen and learn...What's required to deploy AI that is easy to understand, monitor, and update by business people without data science or computer science backgroundsHow to apply micro-segmentation to detect and eliminate bias in data and modelsWhy "bring your own model" may solve critical issues related to data privacy and data biasHow reducing the complexity of AI also will limit its environmental footprintHow insurance companies are using AI trained with telematic data to determine driver risk and premiumsWhy the Turkish saying "even the snake eats the earth one bite at a time" represents Dr. Cataltepe's vision for the future of AIThanks to the Alchemist Accelerator team for the introduction to Dr. Cataltepe!

Ken Gonzalez has spent the better part of 35 years as an IT practitioner, CIO advisor, and industry analyst. He has fielded more than 2,500 inquiry calls and contributed to some of the most impactful IT trends. Ken's advisory work focuses on IT metrics and organizational change.  Hear Ken share the one workplace technology shift that all organizations must make to remain competitive in the next decade.Listen and learn... What it means for IT to adopt a "product management mindset"How Ken helped a client save $750,000Why most enterprise IT teams "overestimate their process maturity"The role AI will play in defining IT strategy (hint: it's not what you think)Jargon alert: "KTLO" = "keep the lights on"References in this episode...Ken's virtual home on the internetColin Fletcher on AI and the Future of WorkDion Hinchcliffe on AI and the Future of Work

Dan O'Connell, former founder and CEO of TalkIQ which was acquired by Dialpad, discusses the future of cloud communications. Dan's vision for helping teams sell more with less churn led to Dialpad becoming a unicorn last year having raised $100M at a $1.2B pre-money valuation.  Exceptional investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures are betting on Dialpad's ability to convert legacy telephony infrastructure into cloud-native, SaaS systems using AI to analyze voice transcripts.Listen and learn...Dan's entrepreneurial journey from incubator to launch to fundraising to acquisition.Why TalkIQ was really three startups in one... and how Dan navigated his team through the process of finding one big customer problem to fix.Why voice will soon be the primary computing interface.The challenges of developing NLP technology for voice transcription and AI-based analytics.What Dan learned from nearly a decade at Google... and, more important, what he learned not to do.References in the episode...AI and the Future of Work with Rory O'DriscollDialpad raises $100M at a $1.2B valuationWesley Chan from Felicis Ventures

Dion Hinchcliffe has been reporting on and prognosticating about the future of work for more than 20 years. He speaks with 100s of global CIOs annually about how to use technology to deliver great employee experiences. In this discussion, Dion shares mind-boggling stats about IT spending patterns and provocative thoughts about how to fix what's broken in the workplace.Listen and learn...The real definition of "digital transformation"Why CIOs have the shortest tenure in the C-suiteWho spends more on IT... than IT!What % of IT budgets go to innovation... and why that number is pathetically low. How the technology in your pocket will be very different in a decade.Resources mentioned in this episode:AI and the Future of Work with Mark SettleDion's perspective on the "New CIO Mindset" Dion's websiteDion on TwitterDion's Hierarchy of Digital Employee Experience NeedsAntWorks RPA

John Whaley has been programming since age five. He has been a lecturer at Stanford in Computer Science, a founding CTO, and a founding CEO. John raised a large series A in 2017 and has sold two companies. Oh, and he's out to save the world from passwords. UnifyID is a pioneer in the use of biometric data stored on mobile devices to authenticate users.Listen and learn...How John's personal journey led to the founding and successful acquisition of UnifyID by Prove.About the ethical implications of giving Big Tech access to your biometric data.Why "being yourself should provide enough information to uniquely identify you."What John means when he says "data isn't the new oil... it's the new kryptonite."John's bold prediction for when passwords will no longer be the predominant form of authentication (spoiler alert: it's sooner than you think).Thanks to Vinay Prabhu for the introduction to John.

Filip Dousek is a successful entrepreneur having sold his last company to Workday. He's also the author of Flock Without Birds, a two-part novel that challenges how the whole relates to its parts. Stories, Filip's company, is solving the problem of extracting insights about people from massive datasets to be able to answer questions about diversity, organizational behavior, and skills gaps. He also discusses the challenges of growing a startup in Prague.Listen and learn...Why enterprises don't use the data they generate to make better decisionsThe hard technical challenge of extracting insights about people and teams from large datasetsWhat it means to "look at data through the prism of graphs and relationships"Why founding Stories in Prague created an opportunity for talent arbitrageAbout our defensible advantages as humans vs. AIReferenced in this episode:Alchemist AcceleratorWorkdayFlock Without Birds

Jason Wojahn has been building companies and helping enterprises use technology for nearly 30 years. He learned a few things before launching Thirdera, the largest pure-play ServiceNow partner, earlier this year. Jason shares his perspectives on the right ways to introduce innovation to clients... and also the right way to reward innovation within his own team. Thirdera has created a brand that is fun and a culture that empowers everyone to do their best work.Listen and learn...Why there's still room to disrupt in the crowded ServiceNow partner ecosystemHow Thirdera works with clients to define their innovation agendaWhat Jason means by "being e-lingual is as important as being bilingual" Why "we’re in the early innings of cloud... and we haven’t even dressed for the field yet in AI." Oh, and listen to our discussion with Marc Talluto from 2019 for insight into the story behind Thirdera.

Tiernan Ray is an accomplished journalist who has written extensively for publications like ZDNet, the New York Times, Barron’s, CNN Money, Fortune, and Bloomberg. He famously launched coverage of machine learning for Barron’s back in 2015 with a cover story called “The Cloud Chip”.In this wide-ranging discussion, Tiernan shares how the principles of ethics should be applied to AI based on his thorough analysis of current research.Listen and learn...Why the field of AI ethics requires "those with authority to also have responsibility" for outcomes.How to instrument explainability into automated decisions made by algorithms and why explainability is like the paradox of Schrodinger's cat.How AI ethics is challenging because we're reducing topics like justice and fairness to algorithms whose behavior is dictated by objective functions.What Tiernan means when he says AI regulators can't be trusted to "grade their own homework".Why your personal data may soon be managed on a blockchain as a new layer of the traditional OSI stack.Resources referenced in this episode...Tiernan's treatise on ethical AI... and its companion pieceThe Technology LetterFiddler.ai