Politely Pushy with Eric Chemi

Today our host is excited to welcome a fellow New Jersey resident to the podcast. Kelly Ford is a tech industry veteran turned growth equity investor who serves as a general partner at Edison Partners. Kelly discusses what it is like to switch from operator to investor and how these different careers compare to one another. She explains how she landed in her current position entirely by accident, having initially worked “on the inside” for a former Edison portfolio company. Knowing the inner workings of a company Edison backed, she subsequently found herself in the ideal position to help evolve Edison Partner’s strategy from venture to growth equity. Kelly enjoys building and growing companies, but she never imagined years ago that someday she’d be an investor. She explains how she adapted and rose the ranks to leading significant investments and raising capital. She also lets our host know about companies and unexpected industries in underserved markets that investors should be evaluating and in remote pockets of the U.S. not typically recognized by those looking to invest. Kelly is the expert with a keen eye on profiles to examine how to spot great investments in unusual industries and discover opportunities in the most unlikely locales. You’ll want to hear her strategic way of thinking and how it elevated her to where she is today.

Today’s guest is world renowned attorney Jay Edelson, Esq., once referred to by The New York Times as “the class action lawyer who may be tech’s least friended man.” Among Jay’s many cases, he has gained international attention for suing tech companies that have violated individual privacy, and most recently, for his firm's pro bono work on behalf of the families of  Lion Air crash victims. But Jay offers something unique and non-traditional as the founder of the successful Chicago law firm Edelson PC, through a creative division of his company that brings attention to legal matters in music and acting videos. Hear how this widely respected and successful attorney makes his field more fun through innovative marketing and how the creative arm of his law firm, Edelson Creative, breaks down ideas into more digestible concepts for law students. Jay, who hosts his own podcast, Non-Compliant, dispels the notion of lawyers as stiff corporate honchos in suits and discusses how bringing their creativity to the marketing process makes for a delightful work culture. He may be a formidable opponent in the courtroom, but Jay explains why he is scarier on the volleyball court, why he’s passionate about bringing levity to law and the impact it has on a firm in 2022. 

Today we are joined by Ken Jacobs, the principal of Jacobs Consulting & Executive Coaching. In this position, he helps to empower public relations and communications leaders at agencies and corporations through leadership coaching. Since 2007, Ken has seen and guided leaders through different types of challenges that impacted the public relations industry at large. He began his career in management at some of the nation’s leading PR firms and later branched out to lend his insights about leadership to the industry as a consultant. Through his work, he helps PR managers achieve and surpass their organizational, career and personal goals by becoming more inspiring and effective leaders. Ken discusses how the pandemic and uncertain economic times impacted his advice to leaders, his understanding of what clients expect from professionals and the positive opportunities that challenging times introduced to these leaders. Hear from Ken about how he inspires people to be better at their jobs and the impact that that has on living a fulfilled life.

Today’s guest is Zack Butcher, the first engineer to work at Tetrate, a cybersecurity solutions company that employs service mesh to guarantee layered security solutions for every user in a network, ensuring they are individually authenticated and authorized for all activities within that network. With his Alabam roots making him the most friendly person to describe cybersecurity, you can’t help but get captivated as his tech talk is combined with Southern congeniality. Zack hails from Google and prior to that was an intern at Colonial Pipeline – yes, that one! He never envisioned back then that one day he would be working closely with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop the language and protocols around “Zero Trust” - that the Colonial Pipeline attack necessitated. He talks about how Tetrate works with customers in defense, financial tech and healthcare, all highly regulated industries where Zero Trust cybersecurity is paramount. What does Zero Trust mean? Zack explains that it is not about “not trusting.” Rather, it’s about elevating trust, and he goes into detail about what that entails. Companies like VISA and Freddie Mac trust Tetrate and the people behind it – like Zack - who are working with NIST to standardize a framework of cybersecurity practices. Find out more about what Tetrate does in today’s episode. 

Today’s guest is George W.. - no, not that one, but a man with his own mission to shape this country and make it safer across many industries. George Waller may have more luck than the former president because he - and his company Zerify (formerly Strikeforce Technologies) - have focused on cybersecurity for 21 years and invented two methods of securing video conferencing to protect private data - keystroke encryption and out-of-band authentication. Covid changed the way we do business and conduct meetings and the most proprietary and classified information is discussed through collaborative communications. George initially approached the popular video conferencing platforms (the names we all know and platforms we’ve all used!) to offer security solutions, but was unable to make headway. For some, refusing his company’s help was due to a lack of manpower and others just failed to foresee the increase in breaches that a switch to remote work models would bring - or how long we would all be working remotely. Hackers follow the money and they know that video conferencing is hot now. When it comes to protecting conversations about mergers and acquisitions, disaster relief plans or government initiatives (among countless other examples), “zero trust” cybersecurity is a must. George explains what that means and discusses how Zerify ensures that every single user is verified before entering a conference. He also talks about the importance of classifying conferences according to priority levels for security so the proper controls are in place. From this cybersecurity visionary you will learn why we are in danger if we (and the government!) don’t make cybersecurity in video conferencing a priority!

Today’s guest has had quite the whirlwind of a year! That entails the birth of a new baby, a marriage, a major location move and becoming a CEO after graduating Stanford’s MBA program only four years ago. But for Christina Martinez, who majored in microbiology at Princeton as an undergraduate, only motherhood seems to be the biggest challenge. She quickly acclimated as CEO of Traject, a company that handles digital marketing needs for SMBs. She credits the people she works with for her ability to learn fast and manage tasks well. Christina says that by saying “yes” to new roles and challenges, rather than following a specific strict trajectory from one’s college days, she accomplished things she had never envisioned and now greatly enjoys. Hear more about how this microbiology major and former Teach For America educator ended up as a leader in the tech space, helping companies with social media, reputation management, SEO visibility and giving them an underlying data product to tie all those marketing assets together. She and Traject are intent on helping small to mid-sized businesses manage their marketing needs so they can focus on their day to day business and operations.

Move over Rami Malek as Mr. Robot. There’s a new ethical hacker in town, bucking stereotypes about women in STEM – and did we mention that aside from her work protecting systems from dangerous hackers, she has also been an actor? Today’s guest is Gabrielle Botbol, an offensive security consultant at Desjardins. Growing up in France, she was encouraged to pursue her interests in literature and acting but gravitated to technology and designing websites. As is a common theme among women we’ve interviewed, girls are often discouraged from pursuing their passion for STEM and encouraged to work in more traditionally female-dominated industries. Luckily, that is now starting to change. Gabrielle discusses how she left the world of acting to become a cybersecurity pen (penetration) tester hired to hack systems for organizations to make those systems hack-proof against those with malicious intentions. As she explains to our host, she is nice and one of the good guys…but don’t mistake her kindness for weakness! She will quickly discover how, when and where you plan to attack if you’re an unethical hacker. That’s why companies and government agencies turn to her for her expertise. In addition to being a cybersecurity pen tester, Gabrielle is a blogger and podcast host (of CS by BG) with close to a decade of experience in cybersecurity. She serves as an advisory board member for the Canadian Cybersecurity Community, the first and most active Canadian cybersecurity network in Canada, as well as the Cyber School. She also recently became a mentor for CyberGirls, a 1-year fellowship equipping young women with globally sought-after cybersecurity skills. Hear from our very own Ms. Robot about the important work she does and why it’s so in demand in this exciting new episode. 

When you think of cybersecurity, you immediately flash to personal PCs and IoT devices, an organization’s critical assets - and yes, those are all essential components to consider, but today’s guest Francis Cianfrocca, CEO at InsightCyber discusses how his company looks out for and services even bigger corporations that experience a trickle down attack from an organization’s breaches. InsightCyber not only keeps an eye out to stop breaches before they happen using the most highly refined AI, but they focus on large facilities like  power plants and manufacturing centers due to the surprising and incredibly sneaky ways these large facilities are compromised. He details how InsightCyber is the future of “physical cyber security” and talks about the need to shore up actual machines (cybersecurity goes beyond personal PCs, personal devices and IoT devices!) and protect them. With InsightCyber’s proprietary AI designed to weed out any false positive alerts, the company quickly spots rogue devices in physical networks and preempts cyber attacks by detecting any potential trouble before it can strike. What Francis explains is that essentially, cybersecurity is everywhere! And hackers are all over any opportunity they can seize. You'll be fascinated by our guest who was concerned with the subject of cybersecurity before the Internet browser was even invented! Tune in to find out more and prepare to be fascinated. 

Today’s guest is Sebastian Grady, president of Rimini Street, a company of seasoned engineers that deliver exceptional third-party enterprise software support. Rimini Street tackles customers’ challenges with products from companies like Oracle, SAP, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft and Siebel, saving clients up to 90% of their total enterprise software support costs. Sebastian discusses why clients prefer outsourcing to going back to the big companies for constant upgrades, how his company saves clients money and exhaustive efforts, and what makes an exceptional support team. He also discusses how the impending recession affects a company like Rimini Street which tends to do well despite adverse economic changes that instill fear in the rest of the world. And wait, did we hear that correctly? Did Sebastian just mention JLo?! Tune in to find out why. 

Today’s guest is Colin Banas, MD, an internal medicine doctor and chief medical officer of DrFirst, which started as an e-prescribing company before becoming an innovative health IT technology company with strength in medication management. What is the “Healthiverse?” Banas explains and details how DrFirst unites healthcare stakeholders who align to improve patient outcomes, connecting people to information by making inroads to clean and complete data. He talks about the healthcare challenges that his company’s technology addresses and the role of big data and analytics on patient outcomes. He also discusses how the Health IT space is known to overuse jargon and why it’s so important to keep conversations clear so buzzwords don’t convey apathy or cause patients to tune out.  What does AI really mean when it comes to HealthTech? Banas shares his simplified approach to understanding it so that the “tech” in HealthTech isn’t taking over for doctors connecting with patients. This is something that’s particularly valuable in an age when so much has become remote!