December 2, 2025 • 49 mins
In this episode of Clover, I sit down with the brilliant and wildly accomplished Tina Sharkey for a conversation that honestly feels like three masterclasses in one: community-building, career design, and the future of human connection in an AI-driven world.
Tina walks me through her very non-linear career path—from hanging out in her mom’s New York fashion office as a teen, to an unexpected pivot into tech and investing, to co-founding iVillage, bringing Sesame Street online, scaling BabyCenter globally at Johnson & Johnson, and launching community-first CPG brand Brandless. Through it all, she shares how she’s always brought the same “toolkit” with her: storytelling, community, curiosity, and a deep belief in creating products and experiences with people, not just for them.
We also dig into her current work at USC, where she’s teaching and backing Gen Z founders, experimenting with GenAI in the classroom, and thinking deeply about what makes us “divinely human” in a world of powerful machines. Tina is both optimistic and clear-eyed: AI can unlock a new kind of renaissance—but only if we protect literacy, critical thinking, and real human connection. And for women in leadership, she shares some tough-love truths about putting your hand up before you feel “ready,” finding hidden doors, and making your career a relay race—not a solo sprint.
Conversation highlights:
- From fashion floors to technology boardrooms
How growing up with a single, career-focused mom in New York’s fashion world gave Tina early exposure to women in leadership—and how one moment in an investor’s office completely rerouted her from fashion into tech, media, and investing. - Inventing “social media” before it had a name
Tina shares the early days of iVillage, why chat rooms and message boards were so revolutionary, and how she coined the term social media to explain this new kind of community-driven content to advertisers and partners. - Building iconic brands through community
We walk through her roles bringing Sesame Street onto the internet, scaling BabyCenter into a global platform (including the birth clubs so many of us relied on), and designing Brandless as a community-led, access-first CPG brand. - Serendipity, hidden doors, and saying yes
Tina talks about the role of serendipity—from chance meetings in offices and delis to unexpected board roles—and how being open, curious, and willing to ask respectful questions has shaped every major career inflection point. - Humanity as our moat around the machines
Tina shares her framework for thinking about AI: why she uses it as a collaborator, not a replacement, and why our empathy, soul, and lived experience are the “moat” that machines can’t cross. - Gen Z, consciousness, and going “punk” on attention
From her vantage point teaching at USC, she talks about how Gen Z is already pushing back on screen addiction, what excites her about their creativity, and why reclaiming our own consciousness is non-negotiable in an AI world. - Literacy, equity, and the stakes of this moment
Tina opens up about the crisis of literacy in the U.S., how reading levels are tied to incarceration rates, and why democratizing access to education and healthcare is a core part of her mission. - Real talk for women in leadership
We close with tactical guidance: stop waiting until you’ve “done the job” to go for it, bring your authentic self everywhere you go, surround yourself with people who are brilliant at what they do, and remember that careers are built in teams and relay races—not through hero moments.
Connect with Tina on LinkedIn (her most active platform), Instagram,
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Erin Geiger (00:10):
Thank you everybody for tuning in to the latest
episode of clover. All aboutwomen in leadership today, we
have I'm Tina Sharkey. I do notknow where to start with, Tina.
When I was reading yourbackground and everything that
you've been involved in, I'mlike, there's so much to talk
about. So welcome Tina to theshow. So ecstatic to have you
(00:31):
here.
Unknown (00:32):
I'm so thrilled to be here, and even though I'm not
physically in Austin, I loveAustin, so I feel like, you know
you got to go have some friedpickles for me today, just so I
can joy of Austin.
Erin Geiger (00:43):
It's so funny. When I first had someone offered me
fried pickles, and I was like,How is that a thing? And then I
have them, and I'm like,
Unknown (00:50):
Okay, it's a thing.
It's a thing. I used to be on aboard in Austin. It was the
board of HomeAway, which now isVRBO, and it was like I went
full Texan barbecue every time Iwent down there with my fellow
board members. And then I got sointo it that at the airport, one
of your famous barbecue outlets,I don't remember which one would
(01:12):
sell, like a vacuum packed, notpickles, but, you know, the
barbecue. And my boys used to beso stoked for those board
meetings. When's your next homeaway board meeting? I was like,
why are you sending mesomewhere? They're like, No, you
got to come back with thebarbecue. And then I told my
other board members, then we allwould like go to the airport
early to get the barbecue in ourfreezer packs or whatever they
(01:33):
were. And it became a ritual. Soso have some barbecue for me. I
Erin Geiger (01:37):
will. And it's so funny, you mentioned the airport
because I feel like they'retrying to make it like a
destination. You know, thatbecause they really do have good
food there, and they have a
Unknown (01:45):
they really do, I think such a clear memory of the
Austin airport food because ofthe barbecue.
Erin Geiger (01:51):
Yeah, that's so funny. Okay, cool. So I always
love to start the discussionwith kind of like your origin
story. Let's say, you know,like, how did you get to where
you are? Because it's just sofascinating to be and everybody
always thinks their own storyisn't fascinating, but it always
is to others. So I just kind oflike walk me through your, you
(02:12):
know, your career journey, and,you know, and I always like to
weave in, like personal stuff,like what was going on as well,
because we that just, we all canconnect with that. That kind of
led you to where you are today.
Unknown (02:23):
Yeah, so it's a long story, and I'll try and just
give you the highlight. I'll do,like the Candy Land version of
it, we'll go through, you know,over some bridges, under some
tunnels, you know, avoid, avoidany mudslides. But there were so
many of them. So the fun part ofthis story, I think, is the
origin part, which is that mymom, may she rest in peace, was
(02:45):
a dynamic single mom for my teenyears, and she was a career mom,
and she ran fashion companies inNew York City, and I went to
high school in New York City, sowe were like roommates, right?
Because she was single, mysister's already out of the
house, and so after high school,I would go to her office and do
my homework, and she used tosay, you can sit in any meeting
(03:07):
you want, just only speak whenspoken to, and make sure the
person running the meeting wasokay with that. So since it was
a fashion company, there was alot of women, a lot of women in
leadership roles. And so theyall were such, you know, great
aunties and mentors to me. And Igot to sit in a lot of meetings.
And occasionally, if they didn'thave, like, a house model in,
(03:30):
I'd have to put on the clothes.
And that was fun. It was likeplaying dress up and and I saw
so I really didn't know that,like, feminism was like a thing,
because I saw female leaders.
So, you know you see what youknow you know what you see. And
I only found out later that thatwas like a thing where I then
put my sights like you are inelevating women. But I graduated
(03:53):
college, I went to University ofPennsylvania, and I thought,
well, I want to be just like mymom. So I want to get a career
in fashion. And so I got myfirst job was like a showroom
girl, and I hated it, and sowhile I was doing that, I it
just wasn't intellectuallychallenging. It wasn't that
interesting. I didn't mindstarting at the bottom that I
(04:14):
had never had an issue with, butI wasn't intellectually engaged.
And my mom quite graciously, setup these, like 15 minute mentor
interviews with people infashion. And so I know that when
somebody asked me if I can, andI don't want to launch on this
podcast, and I'm open for all ofthat, because I only have so
much time, but I really do tryand help others, because people
(04:36):
have helped me. So she set up ameeting with the guy who was
like a Japanese Shogun who ownedAnne Klein, Donna, Karen, like
all these companies, and I waswaiting in his office, his
assistant. And these were thedays where people had these big
desks and two chairs in front oftheir desks. It's not like that
anymore, because we have laptopsand zooms and waiting for a
(04:57):
coffee, but it's just it wasmuch more of a formal time. Him,
and he was late, and so I wasjust sitting in his office,
staring, you know, at his wall,and behind his desk he had like
stacks and stacks and stacks ofwhat looks like scripts, and
they all had like names on thespines, but they weren't
scripts. They were businessplans. And so I'm staring at
them, and they're, you know,reading the spines, not touching
(05:19):
anything. You know, it's like Iwas in his office. I had to be
very careful, and one of themwas, or looked like, a business
plan that I co authored when Iwas at Penn in my
entrepreneurial managementclass. So when he came in and he
apologized, and, you know, I'msorry, I'm late. And then Donna
Karan came flying in, and I waslike, oh my god, Donna Karan, I
(05:39):
was just like, it was just likeone of those crazy New York
moments. And then she left, andthen I said, you know, I beg
your pardon, I don't mean to beintrusive, but I saw these
things. And I said, what isthat? And he said, Oh, that's I
have another business with apartner, and we look at
different businesses and weinvest, sort of like a sea he
(06:00):
was like an angel investorbefore we called it that. And I
said, well, that if that's thecompany in Philadelphia with the
vending machines, they havepatent issues. He's like, how do
you know that? And I was like,Well, I co authored that
business plan. He says, Oh,well, you've got to meet with my
partner. So the next day, I methis partner, and I never went
into fashion. I left my showroomjob. I started working for them,
(06:24):
working on their technologybusinesses, their investment
businesses, all kinds of otherthings. And so the moral of that
story is, you know, you got tofind the doors even when they're
not available. And you justnever know. You make the
advance. You don't know what'sthe worst thing that can happen,
as I tend to say to my kids allthe time, like shots on goal,
and I was very polite and veryrespectful. But had I not asked
(06:45):
that question, we could havebeen like, you know, sliding
doors, where I never it wouldhave been sitting there, and I
never would have known. So mycareer took a very sharp turn,
and they were also investors intechnology studio called Rebo,
which was the first studio tobring high definition television
to the United States, because itwas created in Japan. He was a
(07:08):
Japanese Shogun. He was veryfriendly with the Merida family
that owned Sony, and they werethe people that were
commercializing this technology.
So we were prototyping it here,and I went to work there as part
of their investment, almost likean embedded person. But then we
looked at other deals, etc. Cuta long story short, within two
years, I was on the AmericanElectronics Association HGTV
(07:30):
Task Force. I got reallyenamored. I was lobbying
Congress. I was involved intechnology standards. I was the
youngest woman to be on acongressional Task Force, and it
was really a fascinating time,and I found that I loved the
technology, but moreimportantly, I loved the
applications. And how can youdream up ways to make the
(07:51):
technology accessible,understandable and deployed, as
opposed to the creating of thetechnology? Because what is the
sound of a tree in a forest ifno one's there to hear it, you
know when it drops? And so thatwe started making short films.
We won a Palme Dora Khan, wepartnered with David Hockney on
(08:11):
the first HGTV frame store. Wemade award winning music video,
music music videos with worldrenowned cinematographers,
because the technology was sohigh resolution that you could
do all kinds of layering. Today,you could do this on Sora with
one prompt, but at the time, itwas revolutionary. And what was
(08:32):
interesting is that theJapanese, when they were
bringing it to trade shows, theywere putting this camera with
this amazing resolution on, likea bouquet of flowers, and it was
beautiful, like you would seethe details in the flowers, but
it wasn't showing the use cases.
And so part of my art that I wasdiscovering was my ability to
(08:53):
find ways to take products,services, experiences, and marry
them with people andapplications that brought things
to life, and the sort of thatthat narrative and storytelling
as deployed to product andexperience. And so from there,
one of the I also would doconvenings, where I would bring
(09:15):
people in the we were in NewYork. So the ad industry went to
Hollywood. We went to con likefilm people, the artisans who
were creating things, and havingthem put the technology in their
hands. And that then led me to avery bespoke and high end design
strategy and technology firmhere in there in New York,
(09:35):
because they would come to ourconvenings, and they asked me if
I wanted to head up theirtechnology practice, where they
were working with CEOs and otherleaders to help tell their
stories. At the time, it was forannual reports, it was for major
launches. It was forrebrandings. It was for identity
systems, but very like C suitestuff and I there met Barry
(09:59):
Diller. And because he was oneof our clients, and he was just
bought QVC, and he was a CEO, orthe big investors in QVC, he'd
come out of Fox, and it waslike, okay, at the time, people
thought home shopping was likepeople in trailer parks buying
cubic zirconian At one in themorning. But we were like, wait
(10:20):
a second, that's not what itdid, is all so we created a new
channel, and we brought in Nikeand Diane from Furstenberg,
which she wasn't his wife at thetime, but they were best
friends, and we were creatingthis experiences. And we created
a new channel called q2we brought a different he then
hired me to go start this newchannel with a group of co
(10:41):
founders. And I was like, Okay,I'm going to run programming,
run and run, bringing theseexperiences to life that are
live, but with brands that yourecognize or brands that you
discover. And it was there thatI discovered that in real time,
if you sat in the control roomof any kind of a live home
(11:02):
shopping experience, there'srobotic cameras, because they're
like, fixed on the set. But thenthere's the phone calls that are
coming in. And so there's like,literally, the director, who's
in the booth with all thedifferent screens he sees, or
she sees, the phone calls thatare on the line for this
product, and then they they cutto the phone call, or the phone
(11:24):
call comes over the air, andthen the host is interacting.
And I was like, and then you'dsee the sales go up in real
time, because people incommunity. And that's when I
really got lit up aboutcommunity, and community being
an accelerant. And communitywasn't about like an omni
channel relationship, it wasabout a relationship. And how do
relationships and people createexperiences for a reason? In
(11:49):
that case, it was a product aseason or like a lifetime. And
what did those tribes mean? Sowhen somebody we brought on air
that had a great following, evenbefore social media, people
would call in and want to be apart of it. So after I left
there, we a couple of our theteam from that company, we co
founded I village, which was thefirst community for women
(12:11):
online, and we partnered withAOL. They were our first
investors, and we sort ofclaimed victory. We're going to
be the largest community forwomen online and and we ended up
taking the company public. Ileft right before that, I was
the chief community officer, theco founder, and that was where I
coined social media, because Iwas trying to explain to people,
well, we have service media,transactional media, educational
(12:34):
media, financial media, but thenthere's this social media where
we're surrounding chat rooms ormessage boards, and the people
are creating the content andwe're creating the context. So
it's a new kind of media,because advertisers and partners
didn't understand what it was.
(12:54):
And after I village, I left togo to that my dream job, which
was I went to work for SesameStreet, and I put Sesame Street
on the internet with anextraordinary team. They weren't
on the internet yet, and the waythat happened was not dissimilar
to how the first business planstory. I was living in an
(13:16):
apartment building when I was atmy village, and on the bottom
half of the apartment buildingyou're a New Yorker was right
across from Lincoln Center, andso it was commercial offices,
and then above was a building,and there was a major fire. I
think it was Herbie Hancock'sapartment. Somebody had a major
fire in that building. And Iwent running home because my dog
was there, and I got notifiedthat there was this fire. The
(13:39):
dog ended up being fine, and wewere all holed up in this like
New York deli underneath thebuilding, waiting for the fire
department to let us back in.
And Sesame Street was on thefirst two floors of that
building, the offices, not thestreet itself that was shot in
Queens, anyways. And I ran intoa woman that I knew from q2 who
was the CFO of Sesame Street,and she's like, Oh my gosh, what
(14:02):
are you working on? Now, I saw Ivillage, we don't have a we
don't have an internet strategy.
Would you come talk to theboard? I was like, when I come
talk to like, Big Bird, like,Absolutely so so I came, and
they were like, Oh, would youwant to start this for us? And
that's how that happened, justby serendipity of being in this
deli with this woman, Annesardini. And so I did that for a
(14:23):
few years, and then I started tohave my children, and I on mat
leave. I got recruited by Tedleonsis, actually, to come back
to AOL and to help fix thenetworks and to create a network
role. And so I went down to AOL,and I really looked at, how do
(14:47):
we take this service? How do weso I was originally head of all
community, and then ahead ofmany of the channels on the AOL
network, like we called it lifemanagement, but it was recipes,
lifestyle, women's women. Uh,life management, personal
finance, education andresources, homework help, like
all the things on the servicethat people are using for what
(15:09):
we called life management. Thatwas like an internal name, and I
said, Well, we kind of have tomake every day easier for
everyone like that. How do wetake a network and an
experience, and how do weintegrate community into that,
but then also make sure thatcommunity is like about
facilitation, not aboutproducing. We don't need to
produce all this content. But atthe time AOL and Time Warner
(15:33):
were partners. They were ownedand merged as companies, a very
famous, failed corporatepartnership or merger. But I
worked a lot with the TimeWarner Time Inc people at Time
Warner to take we created recipedatabases and other things that
created utility so that peoplecould use all these things. So I
stayed at AOL for a few years.
Eventually, I was given thegreat privilege of taking AOL
(15:54):
from a private network out ontothe open web, and I led the
aol.com team. I led themessaging team, so that was aim
ICQ and other messagingplatforms, as well as all of our
communities. And then I gotrecruited to go to Johnson and
Johnson to turn around a companythey had bought called Baby
Center, and they didn't exactlyknow what to do with it. And so
(16:18):
my kids were young, and Ithought, Oh, well, that's an
adventure. So we moved toCalifornia, because the company
was based here j and J'sheadquarters is Princeton, New
Jersey, but they have companiesall over the world, and I found
this beautiful company that waslike a web one, oh, company
built on largely popsicle stickand glue, because in web one,
oh, there weren't SAS tools todo those things, and I had the
(16:39):
privilege to turn that companyaround. Scale it to the point
where, when I left Baby Center,six or seven years later, we
were in 22 countries, 14languages, and eight out of 10
babies in the US were BabyCenter babies, and we had a
thriving social network that Ibought, a startup social network
for moms, integrated it, then weplatformed it and rolled it out
(17:03):
around around the world. We evendid a great nonprofit, almost
like an NGO, that we started,called mama, which was the
mobile alliance for maternalaction, where we took our
technology, deployed it tomobile phones for healthcare
workers in the developing world,and that has still thriving
(17:25):
around the world. And I got Jand J, our corporation, to write
a founding check. We launched atthe White House with then at the
time, Secretary Clinton. And itwas kind of a remarkable time,
because I got to have thatstartup experience with my baby
Center team and replatformingand rebuilding, but then I got
to be part of the larger J and Jexperience. And I guess my day
(17:47):
job was running Baby Center, butmy other job was being a sort of
a disruptive innovation personacross oncology Task Force,
diabetes Task Force, otherthings. And so my grandfather
used to always tell me, youknow, you should pay them for
the experience. And I felt thatway there, because sitting on a
consumer board of such a largeglobal CPG, but then also having
(18:08):
adjacencies to the largesthealthcare company in the world,
and being able to interact withour pharmaceutical teams, our
medical device teams are andpeople who really shared a
common mission, no matter whatdivision you were, very credo
based extraordinary culture thatwas, that was wonderful. And
then I left Baby Center, butdecided to stay in the bay area
(18:31):
because I fell in love withMarin County and Mount
Tamalpais. And I was going backeast all the time anyway. So I
felt like, wow, raising my kidsout here is really
extraordinary. And I went andwas cross training. One of the
things that j&j was, I couldn'tsay yes to any boards. And so,
because when you're part of thatbig corporation, every time I
(18:53):
raise my hand, they're like,Good, go work with the oncology
team. Good. Go work. You havetime. We have 327, operating
companies. So, so I wanted to goon boards, and that's when I
joined the Home Away board outof Austin. And I started sort of
doing venture and kind of bridgebuilding between corporations
and startups, because I was botha startup entrepreneur and an
(19:15):
intrapreneur, having worked atbig companies, and that was
really fun. And when I was theredoing that, we had the idea to
incubate my next companycalled brandless. And so along
with my co founder, we incubatedthat company, we funded that
company, and then I rolled out,replaced myself in that role,
and we had a go at brandless,which was just an extraordinary
(19:39):
startup experience. So that,then was my third. Eye village
was my first. The Foundryexperience my second. And the
brandless was my third. And thenturnarounds and Baby Center and
that early venture stuff withthe Japanese Tomio taki and just
there was a throughput. It,which was, what does it mean to
(20:00):
be in community with the peopleyou exist to serve. Who are your
stakeholders? How do you thinkabout that and so brandless,
even though it was a disruptiveCPG, I built it as a community
brand. How do we co createalongside our community? What
does our community want? How canwe serve their needs? And most
importantly, how do wedemocratize access to wonderful
quality things at great prices,starting with the things you use
(20:25):
every day. And so we built thatup. We were on $100 million run
rate. We ended up selling thecompany covid happened. My co
founder relocated back toAustralia and and then we were
home. And you know, you and Italked about your podcast being
at home, and my two at thattime, you know, early 20s, late
teens, sons kind of ricochetedback home. And one was just
(20:48):
graduating high school, and theygraduated in a car in 2020, and
the other one was at USC at thetime, and they came home. And so
here I was home. Sold thecompany, everyone that's in
lockdown. I was focused on myfamily. Again, I'm a mother
first, always, and I alwaysloved to do guest lectures. And
(21:11):
Harvard had written a case aboutbrandless and a lot of I'd
always loved going to schoolsand helping. And USC called and
said, Would you give a guestlecture? And I was doing it from
this same chair where I'm whereI'm sitting now, and I said,
Sure. And then after that guestlecture, because I had built the
construct of a lecture aroundthis idea of community
playbooks, and what would thatmean if I took it away from
(21:33):
brandless, or I village, or anyof those things, and said, How
or Baby Center? How would I dothat, just as a framework for
any entrepreneur. And they said,Wow, can you come back next
week? The students would like toshow you the projects they
changed as a result of yourlecture. I was like, well, I'll
be in this chair, so why not?
Like, you know, no one's leavingtheir houses. And then the
(21:55):
professor called me afterwards.
He said, Would you be interestedin creating a course? Because,
like, there's a there, there.
And I was like, You meanmidterms and finals? And he
said, Yeah, that's kind of whatwe do here. But I had been a
professor before. Guestlecturing is not the same thing.
So So I said, Well, let me havea go at it. And so I built out
(22:17):
this course. It was wildlysuccessful. People were passing
around my lectures. It was onZoom because of that. And then
when the covid abated, the Deaninvited me down, and he said,
Look, I want you to really thinkabout in this academy, because
it was at the Iovine and YoungAcademy, which is Jimmy Iovine
and Dr Dre, when they sold beatsto Apple, they had a great exit,
(22:41):
and they went to USC and said,We want to build a school. We
sold it to Apple. We keptlooking around for Steve Jobs,
and we couldn't find any exceptfor him. We want to build a
school that actually sits atthat intersection of product
design, entrepreneurship,culture, technology. So the Dean
came to me and said, along withsome of our colleagues here,
would you want to build likebusiness of Innovation Pathway I
(23:03):
was like, put me in. And sothat's when I not only became
faculty and a lecturer, but Ialso created a program called
the innovation quest. And theinnovation quest is a like, in
my vision, a 21st CenturyEducation is not just anchored
in curriculum, because you canget those facts online, but it's
experience driven. And so how dowe create an experience for our
(23:26):
students where they have accessto each other, access to
community, access to resources,and building their toolkits with
practical applications? How dowe give them prizes? How do we
accelerate their MVPs? How do wefind them lawyers like, how do
we kind of create a foundertoolkit and an innovator's
toolkit that complements thecurriculum. And so the
innovation Quest was born, andthen I got my first gen AI
(23:49):
grant, so I'm a principalinvestigator, which is like a
term I had to look up for Gen AIand society to accelerate
student ventures as part of thisinnovation quest, working with
extraordinary colleagues at USC,and that's what I'm doing now,
in addition to corporateadvisory and board work, and I
(24:10):
give I do a lot of moderationand a lot of keynotes on
innovation or moderating reallyinteresting conversations or
convenings. And that's where Iam now. The end. Wow. The
beginning.
Erin Geiger (24:22):
That's so incredible. There's so much to
talk about in there, and I haveso many questions to ask you.
And as you were talking, I waslike, This is so interesting,
because I feel like you and I,you know, were in similar spots,
in similar times, like thingsthat you were mentioning. I was
like, Oh my gosh, I rememberthat, you know, like when you
(24:45):
mentioned your you shifted yourcareer, like you thought you
were going in one direction, andthen you're like, the business
plan and all that. It was like atrend I saw as you were speaking
of like, I feel like you werejust open, you know, to what
might be. Because, you know,correct me if I'm wrong. But it
seems like a lot of themovements you took were not pre
(25:06):
planned, like you were justlike, oh, you know, like, this
opportunity came to you. And Ifeel like opportunities come to
a lot of us, but where we don'tsee them, you know, we're so
we're kind of closed off,because we're like, this is the
direction I'm going in, and youhave these blinders on. But I
feel like that wasn't the casefor you, where you thought you
were going, but, oh, this ishere. Cool. Let me try that. You
know, would you say that's thecase of, like, where you were
(25:28):
kind of very open to otheropportunities and what might
come your way?
Unknown (25:34):
Yes, I did not reverse engineer my career. I would say
that. But what is a slight tweakon that would be I brought my
toolkit wherever I went likeI've always been uniquely me and
so I'm not there is no playbookfor my career other than me
(26:00):
always bringing my authenticself to everything that I've
done. And so if I felt like Icould learn something,
to a team, an entrepreneur, acompany, a board or even
building something myself with aco founder, or what have you, an
(26:21):
investor, etc. Those are thingsthat I would lean into. So it
wasn't I've never beencollecting trophies or
collecting things. That's not myjam. I want to have meaning and
input and purpose in everythingthat I do. I'm a very purpose
driven entrepreneur. I'm a verypurpose driven professor. I'm a
very purpose driven in, youknow, human and so I believe
(26:43):
very much in using that rubricaway in a way to think about
what, what is my contributionthat's unique? What can I learn?
What can I share? And how do Igive this situation, whatever it
is an unfair advantage. So forme to start a boot camp at USC,
(27:04):
or for me to stage a ventureshowcase, like I've been doing
that my whole career, in variousways, shapes and forms, so it
was natural for me to want todeploy it there with a new with
Gen Z, and now what I love isthat I have Gen Z in the
classroom and I'm in theboardroom and I'm advising
entrepreneurs, but I'm advisingcorporate leaders as well to
(27:26):
understand, like, how do youhave empathy for this
generation? Don't just read thestats and the demographies of
where they spend their time.
Like, how do you walk theirwalk? How do you understand? And
then vice versa, if you're anentrepreneur and you're pitching
to a VC, or you're pitching to acorporate or you're trying to
get this new job. How do youthink about it's not the golden
rule of treating everyone asthey as you want to be treated,
(27:49):
treat them as they want to betreated. And it's upside down,
like our new mass culture issubculture as opposed to, like,
top down. And so I'm a, I'm a,I'm always a curious learner.
And I see opportunities wheremaybe others don't see it.
Erin Geiger (28:10):
Yeah, I would. I do see that in you, for sure. And I
feel you were at the advent ofso many things, like, you know,
when you were talking about thestorytelling aspect of, like,
wow, you're ahead of your time,you know, back then. So I
remember that shift of whenpeople started to weave
storytelling into theirproducts, into their advertising
(28:30):
and everything in a largerscale, and when you mentioned
community, I helped run tv.comwhen it was a part of CNET and
then part of CBS interactive andtv.com, whatever that really,
yeah, okay, so there was usergenerated and so, you know,
like, we just curated thecontent. These super fans were
the ones who, like, right?
Unknown (28:51):
They're the facilitators. They were the
content makers. And that's avery different role than
producing Exactly.
Erin Geiger (28:57):
And so that was a shift, right, especially in the
entertainment land, you know,it's like, okay, wait, we're not
producing the content. We'rejust curating. You know, what
these what these fans want. AndI do have to say, when you
mentioned Baby Center, I waslike, Oh my gosh. When I was
pregnant with my kids, like, solong ago, that was my go to,
like, I was on babies that arelike, you're Yay. I love eating
babies that are moms. It's like,your baby is the size of a
(29:20):
walnut, yes, yes, yes, Iremember that. So I was like, Oh
my gosh, it's amazing. It'slike, seeing my life flash
before my eyes. I am so curious.
Like, we were talking about howyou coined the term social media
before was even a category. Nowit's like, you know, everybody
knows, but like, what did yousee that right? That there's
(29:41):
like, that human connection, andI feel like you saw it before
the rest of us might have, youknow, of online, of like, you
know. So it's like, how, whatdid you see that others didn't
when you think about socialmedia and, you know? And what do
you see about the next wave ofhuman, human connection? Online,
especially with AI andeverything kind of going in that
(30:02):
direction. What are yourthoughts there?
Unknown (30:05):
Yeah, I think a lot about that stuff. So I remember
we toiled for, you know, I don'tthink I slept for months when we
were launching, I village, wewere building it. We were, you
know, getting all this contentonline, and we were licensing
content, and we were uploadingcontent and editing content, and
(30:25):
that was not so much my team,that was more the editorial team
and my team, although I wasresponsible for kind of all of
it, was really about like thefacilitation model, because we
were AOL was our partner, and wewere launching on AOL and on the
open web, and aol's unique moatreally was their chat rooms and
(30:47):
their messaging and their andtheir community boards. And so I
remember one night we justlaunched parent soup, which was
the first i village property,and our moderators, because we
wanted our chat rooms to belike, well lit, and someone was
home, and people weren't, like,spamming them whatever. So they
(31:09):
were PS, like, so I was PS,Tina, and you would have been
PS, Erin, and people knew thatyou were the moderator, and it
was like, 11 o'clock at nighthere in California. No, I was in
New York. It was 11 o'clock atnight in New York, so that meant
it was like eight o'clock atnight in California, and the
(31:29):
chat rooms were going mad. And Iwas like, hi, you know, so
excited, like, we've beenbuilding this thing, and people
were finally in it. And I waslike, Hi, what's your favorite
thing about parent soup? Youknow, I write, and then the
first answer was us, and thenext answer was us, and the next
answer was us. And I'm like, soweird. Like, why do they like
(31:52):
it? Because it's in America. Andthen I realized that wasn't us,
it was us. And I thought, Oh mygosh. I can't believe that we
built something that basicallysaid the lights are on someone's
(32:12):
home. Come on in. This is a safeplace to connect. And people
were connecting for a reason.
They needed help with, you know,lactation a season. They were
all new parents, and they werestruggling with, you know, work,
life balance, or what have you,or a lifetime. And it turned out
that in we saw this, a BabyCenter, 1020, years later, Baby
Center moms are still bestiesfrom their birth clubs. They go
(32:34):
to Vegas together. They haveannual meetups, all kinds of
things. So I had this momentwhere I realized we were in the
art of facilitation, and I wasreading, and I knew Sherry
Turkle at the time, and like itwas all about connection. And
that loneliness at the timewasn't a full epidemic of which
it is today, but I definitelyfelt this sense of people were
(32:57):
looking for their people, andhow could you know we be a
facilitator of that? And thenwhen you look at now, and I told
you earlier about like, tryingto explain what this media was,
so that's where social mediacame up, because I was trying to
explain to advertisers that wehad service media, news media,
transactional media for recipe,that's service media. DIY, that
(33:19):
service media, this was like anew form of media, and
advertisers need to getcomfortable not knowing what the
content was going to be. Andthat's why we said, look, we're
a well lit place where, youknow, someone's always home, so
you can trust us, you know. Butthen now in the world of AI, I
think very deeply about this,and I think that humanity is our
(33:39):
moat around the machines, andthat as we begin to collaborate
with machines, which I think areawesome, and I use AI every day,
but I use it as a collaborationpartner, as a thought partner,
but the empathy that Iunderstand for the human
(34:01):
experience is uniquely mine, andwhat makes me uniquely human,
and so this conversation thatwe're having right now, I don't
think I could have with a bot,not that the bot couldn't ask me
the same questions, but itwouldn't prompt a reflection
from you, it wouldn't prompt amemory from you. It wouldn't
(34:21):
create a longing or a referencepoint or a sentiment. And so
that's where our souls lie. Andyou know, we have five senses
that are documented, and as momsor people, we always check them
with our kids. You know, how aretheir eyes? How are their ears?
How is their smell, sound,touch. But I believe our soul is
(34:42):
our sixth sense, and I believethat that needs to get nurtured
from the minute we arrive andand I believe that our souls and
our humanity really are whatmakes us divinely human. And so
in a world of AI, we could headtowards the. Apocalypse, or we
could head towards a renaissancein what productivity, in
(35:05):
reimagination, in new cities,urban development, world hunger,
like there's so many diseases,healthcare, things that can be
solved in collaboration withaugmented intelligence and and
speed and data processing thatwe couldn't do before, and
(35:28):
that's exciting. And so if wekeep that moat and preserve that
mode, and we nurture our soulsand we understand what makes us
divinely human, then I thinkthis could be a path to a
utopian world, although I don'tbelieve there is such a thing,
but then an apocalyptic world.
(35:49):
And so we have choices, and wecan choose love over fear. And
so I choose love, I choose soul.
I choose optimism. I choosepossibilities. I choose problem
solving, and I chooseconnection. And so I think that
in this epidemic of loneliness,we need to move towards a screen
(36:10):
free world. We need to move tomake sure that there's literacy
from the very early days. I'm onthe National Board of PBS. I
care deeply about literacy. Theliteracy numbers in this country
are abysmal and getting worse,and if we outsource our own
intellectual development, butmore importantly, our children's
intellectual development andtheir early reading skills,
(36:32):
cognition skills, criticalthinking skills, to machines,
that is a path to a dystopianworld, and that is a path to the
end of modern civilization. AndI don't believe that that's
where we're going to go, but wehave to be intentional about it.
We can't see this to somebodyelse. We all have to be very
(36:55):
engaged and very focused on whatdoes it mean to use these tools
to enhance our own curiosity,our own intellectual journeys,
and to teach us things thatweren't maybe accessible before,
right? The whole world gets atutor now. How awesome.
Erin Geiger (37:15):
Yeah, and I feel like you're at the epicenter of
this all, like with the workthat you're doing at, you know,
USC, you're the principal andsuch a great title investigator,
Unknown (37:27):
private investigator, like, when you like a raincoat,
they were like, No, that'sactually not what
Erin Geiger (37:34):
it is. You should maybe Google that, yeah. But,
you know, you're kind of, like,focused on Gen, AI and
everything. What? So, whatexcites you the most about that
So, and also, what kind ofscares you? Is it that
intersection of like, whatdirection are we going to take?
Ai, you know, is it like, okay,we can use it for good, and
that's what excites you themost. And like, what is that?
(37:55):
What kind of like spooks you abit? It's like, okay, if we
don't do it for that. And we go
Unknown (38:01):
a lot of things. I think that, you know, there's a
lot of ideas, and I think thatideas are worth nothing. It's
all about the execution. And oneof the challenges in execution
in the past was you needed,often a technologist to be
running alongside you. And now Ithink the possibilities for
(38:23):
getting farther along, todevelop your ideas, to test your
ideas, to look for productmarket fit that AI can enable a
lot of that. And so I think itreally liberates a lot of people
who didn't think they couldhave, you know, a piece of that
opportunity, unless they couldbe a physical builder, and I
(38:43):
don't think you need that asmuch today. I would say also I
want to see I believe in thisgeneration, I believe that
you're already starting to seemovements towards screen free,
towards flip phones, towardsaudio devices, things that can
reclaim their consciousness. AndI believe we have to go fully
(39:04):
punk on consciousness and say,like I own this. Somebody else
cannot take this from me. Iwon't be here in 100 years. I
won't even be here in 50 years,but my kids will, and my
grandchildren will if I'mblessed enough to have them, and
their children will, and so wehave to enable that generation
(39:29):
to solve problems. We got a lotof problems, but they can do it,
and I want to help. And I'm veryenergized. I'm working with an
entrepreneur right now who isworking on solving, you know,
literacy challenges for childrenstruggling with literacy. I
mean, do you know the stat thatmany cities plan their prison
(39:50):
beds based on the reading levelin that town? And if you can't
read about fourth grade readinglevel, the likelihood that
you're going to end up in jailis pretty high. That's not okay.
Hey, we need to fix that. Wehave to give access to people,
to education. We need todemocratize that. And that's
what public media does, that'swhat PBS does, that's what
Sesame Street does. And sodemocratizing access is a big
(40:13):
theme for me to healthcare aswell. And I think AI has
tremendous potential andhealthcare, it already is
disrupting it that way, and itdoes democratize a lot of
things, and doctors play a veryunique role. And so we need to
work with the agents to havemore output, have more access,
(40:34):
have more capacity, because wedon't have enough people that
are skilled in these areas. SoI'm very optimistic.
Erin Geiger (40:40):
Yeah, yeah, I am too. And so I'm glad to hear it
from somebody who's like in thetrenches every day with it, you
know, having this, thisoptimistic outlook on it, I have
so many more questions for you,but I know I'm taking up so much
of your time. So I'm going toask like, one or two more and
let you go. But kind of speakingof, like, AI and new innovations
(41:02):
like you. You have been one ofthe few women that have been in
the room where, like, entireindustries were being created,
right? And so it's like, I'mcurious from your perch, when we
think about women andleadership, what have you see?
What have you seen change alongyour career, as far as women's
(41:24):
impact, women in leadership andtheir impact, and what hasn't
changed and what needs to bythis point,
Unknown (41:33):
a lot has changed. A lot stayed the same, and some
things are rolling back. Solet's talk about the positive
for me, and one thing I coachpeople on is, oftentimes women
feel like they need to have donethe job in order to get the job
right. Generally speaking, menaren't like that, you know. And
(41:54):
I think that in many ways, whenyou look at little kids in the
playground, you know, the boys,when somebody's recruiting for a
pop up kickball game or a popup, you know, baseball game
during recess. The boys justsay, put me in, you know,
whereas the girls feel like, Oh,I'm not sure. I don't know. I
this. So I think those thattranslates to real life, and so
(42:15):
you don't have to have done thejob to be good at the job and to
have the skills for the job. Soput your hat in the ring. That's
number one. Always put your hatin the ring. Number two, show up
as you don't show up as somebodyelse, because being you,
authenticity, it's the onlything that scales. And honestly,
(42:36):
that's all I can remember now.
Like, you know, so I, but I'vealways felt that way, like, I've
always just been Tina, like, Ihave a point of view. I have
something to add. There areplaces where I can make really
unique and extraordinarycontributions, and there are
places where I'm not the personwho has that perspective. So I
yield. You. Don't have to putyourself in every conversation.
(42:56):
You don't have to, like, findyour lane, but also stay
curious. Surround yourself withreally interesting and
complimentary people. Alwayswork with people who are quote,
unquote smarter than you aboutthe thing that they're smart
about. But don't subjugateyourself like be a curious
learner if you want to learnsomething, teach it. I've
(43:17):
learned that at school becausethe discipline of going through
the curricular development, themilestones, the workshops, the
assignments, I think I've alwaysbeen like that in the work world
too, which is, let's co createtogether. There's not, you know,
I'm not a hero worshiper, and Idon't believe that one person
(43:38):
can win any one race, life,work, boards, teams are relay
races, and you have to reallyfigure out, like, What team are
you on, and how do you make thatthe best team, and what role do
you have to play to make thatthe best team? And maybe you're
not the Excel jockey, but maybeyou bring something else to the
(43:58):
team. And so just don't justlook at like the job spec. Think
about where the value can beadded, and raise your hand and
volunteer for that next thing.
Go the extra distance, becausethat's how you meet people.
That's how serendipity andalchemy happens. And you just
don't know, find the hiddendoors. You know, I'm a Harry
(44:21):
Potter fan. And for those of youout there who know Harry Potter,
you know, find the Room ofRequirement. You know that door
is there, and behind it are allkinds of things that you need,
but if you don't look for it,you don't make the advance, you
won't know.
Erin Geiger (44:36):
Yeah, I love that.
And anytime somebody can drop ina Harry Potter reference, I'm
all about it. That's beautiful.
No, I agree at all, at all thosepoints. If people want to
connect with you online, what isthe best way for them to do so?
Unknown (44:51):
So follow me on LinkedIn. That's the best place.
Erin Geiger (44:55):
Okay, we will have that link in the show notes, and
I'm only you know
Unknown (44:58):
to to anyone. Doesn't hear back from me. It's not
because I don't want to connect.
It's just because I only have somuch capacity. So hopefully this
podcast will be able to tellsome of those stories, and
hopefully and your work and theother guests that you have, the
extraordinary curation thatyou're doing is such a gift to
people, and so thank you fortaking the time to elevate and
spotlight those stories, becausepeople can learn so much from
(45:21):
you and from the stories thatyou're curating and elevating.
So I'm really grateful to youfor that, not for this
conversation, although Thankyou, but for all of the sum of
your parts is really remarkable,and you've dedicated so much
time and energy to it. I reallyappreciate
Erin Geiger (45:36):
it. Thank you so much for saying that. That
really means a lot. You know,it's a super passion of mine,
and I think it's, it's work thatyou and I are doing, and it
needs to be done. It'snecessary. So I appreciate that.
I also, I get to meet you. Iknow, I'm like, we just get to
chit chat. And I'm like, you'refrom New York, I'm from New
York. Let's talk about it. And Ialways, I end with a fun
(45:58):
question, which is because welove music over here. So I
always ask if you could onlylisten to one music artist for
the rest of your life. Who wouldit be?
Unknown (46:10):
I as of today, well as of last week, I have a new
answer to that question, becauseI am currently in a obsessive
learn everything I possibly can,listen to everything I possibly
can with a musician that you mayknow or you may not know, and
his name is Jacob Collier. Doyou know Jacob Collier? Don't
(46:31):
think so. Oh my gosh, after thispodcast, I'm going to send you
stuff. But number one, followhim on YouTube. Number two, he
is a talent for the generationI've never seen or experienced
any human being with the talentthat this young man has. And so
(46:54):
he never went to no he went tohigh school. He didn't go to
college. His mother was raisedby a single mother with three
kids. His mother is a concertviolinist and a conductor, and
he plays every instrument,including the audience. So I
just, he just came here. He's ontour right now, so let's look up
(47:16):
and see if he's coming toAustin, and then, like, whatever
it takes mortgage your house,you've got to go see he
recruited a 50 person orchestrawith every instrument who they'd
never met each other. It washere in San Francisco, sold
outstanding room only, and thenhe wrote live with the orchestra
(47:38):
who he'd never met, a new piece.
He's like, violins, I'd like youto give me an F flat. And then,
and then, as the orchestra isnow all playing, he then turned
to the audience and made ussing, oh my gosh. And all of a
sudden, you're like, in themiddle of the belly of joy. He's
absolutely mind blowing. And sohe just on Adam Grant last
(48:00):
night, I listened to somethinghe did with Simon Sinek last
year. I've watched thedocumentary on him. He's he does
a collab with Chris Martin thatfills stadiums and will make
your you'll ball for an hour.
He's remarkable. Do you think
Erin Geiger (48:17):
I like him? I know exactly. I can't tell. I mean,
it's questionable, honestly.
Like,
Unknown (48:21):
I can't even, like, if you ever wonder if machines are
going to replace just listen toJacob Collier,
Erin Geiger (48:29):
wow. Okay, yeah, send me all the things, but I'm
gonna look him up. I'm gonnacheck him out. That's, he sounds
incredible. And I love that. Ilove it whenever musicians bring
in, like a symphony, and, yeah,it's, just adds another like,
he's he's a Wow, amazing. Okay,I'm so excited. Awesome. Thank
you, Tina, for taking the time.
Once again, people are going toget so much from this
discussion, even just likelearning about your career. And,
(48:51):
you know, all the subjects andtopics that we do have a little
bit deeper into, you know, ouraudience, you know, runs the
gamut from those are startingout in their leadership journey
and those that are seasoned andlooking for their next the next
way they can make an impact. Sothis has been huge. So thank you
again for taking the time. Ireally appreciate it my pleasure
Unknown (49:13):
to be continued, my friend. Yes. Thank.
Thank you everybody for tuning in to the latest
episode of clover. All aboutwomen in leadership today, we
have I'm Tina Sharkey. I do notknow where to start with, Tina.
When I was reading yourbackground and everything that
you've been involved in, I'mlike, there's so much to talk
about. So welcome Tina to theshow. So ecstatic to have you
(00:31):
here.
Unknown (00:32):
I'm so thrilled to be here, and even though I'm not
physically in Austin, I loveAustin, so I feel like, you know
you got to go have some friedpickles for me today, just so I
can joy of Austin.
Erin Geiger (00:43):
It's so funny. When I first had someone offered me
fried pickles, and I was like,How is that a thing? And then I
have them, and I'm like,
Unknown (00:50):
Okay, it's a thing.
It's a thing. I used to be on aboard in Austin. It was the
board of HomeAway, which now isVRBO, and it was like I went
full Texan barbecue every time Iwent down there with my fellow
board members. And then I got sointo it that at the airport, one
of your famous barbecue outlets,I don't remember which one would
(01:12):
sell, like a vacuum packed, notpickles, but, you know, the
barbecue. And my boys used to beso stoked for those board
meetings. When's your next homeaway board meeting? I was like,
why are you sending mesomewhere? They're like, No, you
got to come back with thebarbecue. And then I told my
other board members, then we allwould like go to the airport
early to get the barbecue in ourfreezer packs or whatever they
(01:33):
were. And it became a ritual. Soso have some barbecue for me. I
Erin Geiger (01:37):
will. And it's so funny, you mentioned the airport
because I feel like they'retrying to make it like a
destination. You know, thatbecause they really do have good
food there, and they have a
Unknown (01:45):
they really do, I think such a clear memory of the
Austin airport food because ofthe barbecue.
Erin Geiger (01:51):
Yeah, that's so funny. Okay, cool. So I always
love to start the discussionwith kind of like your origin
story. Let's say, you know,like, how did you get to where
you are? Because it's just sofascinating to be and everybody
always thinks their own storyisn't fascinating, but it always
is to others. So I just kind oflike walk me through your, you
(02:12):
know, your career journey, and,you know, and I always like to
weave in, like personal stuff,like what was going on as well,
because we that just, we all canconnect with that. That kind of
led you to where you are today.
Unknown (02:23):
Yeah, so it's a long story, and I'll try and just
give you the highlight. I'll do,like the Candy Land version of
it, we'll go through, you know,over some bridges, under some
tunnels, you know, avoid, avoidany mudslides. But there were so
many of them. So the fun part ofthis story, I think, is the
origin part, which is that mymom, may she rest in peace, was
(02:45):
a dynamic single mom for my teenyears, and she was a career mom,
and she ran fashion companies inNew York City, and I went to
high school in New York City, sowe were like roommates, right?
Because she was single, mysister's already out of the
house, and so after high school,I would go to her office and do
my homework, and she used tosay, you can sit in any meeting
(03:07):
you want, just only speak whenspoken to, and make sure the
person running the meeting wasokay with that. So since it was
a fashion company, there was alot of women, a lot of women in
leadership roles. And so theyall were such, you know, great
aunties and mentors to me. And Igot to sit in a lot of meetings.
And occasionally, if they didn'thave, like, a house model in,
(03:30):
I'd have to put on the clothes.
And that was fun. It was likeplaying dress up and and I saw
so I really didn't know that,like, feminism was like a thing,
because I saw female leaders.
So, you know you see what youknow you know what you see. And
I only found out later that thatwas like a thing where I then
put my sights like you are inelevating women. But I graduated
(03:53):
college, I went to University ofPennsylvania, and I thought,
well, I want to be just like mymom. So I want to get a career
in fashion. And so I got myfirst job was like a showroom
girl, and I hated it, and sowhile I was doing that, I it
just wasn't intellectuallychallenging. It wasn't that
interesting. I didn't mindstarting at the bottom that I
(04:14):
had never had an issue with, butI wasn't intellectually engaged.
And my mom quite graciously, setup these, like 15 minute mentor
interviews with people infashion. And so I know that when
somebody asked me if I can, andI don't want to launch on this
podcast, and I'm open for all ofthat, because I only have so
much time, but I really do tryand help others, because people
(04:36):
have helped me. So she set up ameeting with the guy who was
like a Japanese Shogun who ownedAnne Klein, Donna, Karen, like
all these companies, and I waswaiting in his office, his
assistant. And these were thedays where people had these big
desks and two chairs in front oftheir desks. It's not like that
anymore, because we have laptopsand zooms and waiting for a
(04:57):
coffee, but it's just it wasmuch more of a formal time. Him,
and he was late, and so I wasjust sitting in his office,
staring, you know, at his wall,and behind his desk he had like
stacks and stacks and stacks ofwhat looks like scripts, and
they all had like names on thespines, but they weren't
scripts. They were businessplans. And so I'm staring at
them, and they're, you know,reading the spines, not touching
(05:19):
anything. You know, it's like Iwas in his office. I had to be
very careful, and one of themwas, or looked like, a business
plan that I co authored when Iwas at Penn in my
entrepreneurial managementclass. So when he came in and he
apologized, and, you know, I'msorry, I'm late. And then Donna
Karan came flying in, and I waslike, oh my god, Donna Karan, I
(05:39):
was just like, it was just likeone of those crazy New York
moments. And then she left, andthen I said, you know, I beg
your pardon, I don't mean to beintrusive, but I saw these
things. And I said, what isthat? And he said, Oh, that's I
have another business with apartner, and we look at
different businesses and weinvest, sort of like a sea he
(06:00):
was like an angel investorbefore we called it that. And I
said, well, that if that's thecompany in Philadelphia with the
vending machines, they havepatent issues. He's like, how do
you know that? And I was like,Well, I co authored that
business plan. He says, Oh,well, you've got to meet with my
partner. So the next day, I methis partner, and I never went
into fashion. I left my showroomjob. I started working for them,
(06:24):
working on their technologybusinesses, their investment
businesses, all kinds of otherthings. And so the moral of that
story is, you know, you got tofind the doors even when they're
not available. And you justnever know. You make the
advance. You don't know what'sthe worst thing that can happen,
as I tend to say to my kids allthe time, like shots on goal,
and I was very polite and veryrespectful. But had I not asked
(06:45):
that question, we could havebeen like, you know, sliding
doors, where I never it wouldhave been sitting there, and I
never would have known. So mycareer took a very sharp turn,
and they were also investors intechnology studio called Rebo,
which was the first studio tobring high definition television
to the United States, because itwas created in Japan. He was a
(07:08):
Japanese Shogun. He was veryfriendly with the Merida family
that owned Sony, and they werethe people that were
commercializing this technology.
So we were prototyping it here,and I went to work there as part
of their investment, almost likean embedded person. But then we
looked at other deals, etc. Cuta long story short, within two
years, I was on the AmericanElectronics Association HGTV
(07:30):
Task Force. I got reallyenamored. I was lobbying
Congress. I was involved intechnology standards. I was the
youngest woman to be on acongressional Task Force, and it
was really a fascinating time,and I found that I loved the
technology, but moreimportantly, I loved the
applications. And how can youdream up ways to make the
(07:51):
technology accessible,understandable and deployed, as
opposed to the creating of thetechnology? Because what is the
sound of a tree in a forest ifno one's there to hear it, you
know when it drops? And so thatwe started making short films.
We won a Palme Dora Khan, wepartnered with David Hockney on
(08:11):
the first HGTV frame store. Wemade award winning music video,
music music videos with worldrenowned cinematographers,
because the technology was sohigh resolution that you could
do all kinds of layering. Today,you could do this on Sora with
one prompt, but at the time, itwas revolutionary. And what was
(08:32):
interesting is that theJapanese, when they were
bringing it to trade shows, theywere putting this camera with
this amazing resolution on, likea bouquet of flowers, and it was
beautiful, like you would seethe details in the flowers, but
it wasn't showing the use cases.
And so part of my art that I wasdiscovering was my ability to
(08:53):
find ways to take products,services, experiences, and marry
them with people andapplications that brought things
to life, and the sort of thatthat narrative and storytelling
as deployed to product andexperience. And so from there,
one of the I also would doconvenings, where I would bring
(09:15):
people in the we were in NewYork. So the ad industry went to
Hollywood. We went to con likefilm people, the artisans who
were creating things, and havingthem put the technology in their
hands. And that then led me to avery bespoke and high end design
strategy and technology firmhere in there in New York,
(09:35):
because they would come to ourconvenings, and they asked me if
I wanted to head up theirtechnology practice, where they
were working with CEOs and otherleaders to help tell their
stories. At the time, it was forannual reports, it was for major
launches. It was forrebrandings. It was for identity
systems, but very like C suitestuff and I there met Barry
(09:59):
Diller. And because he was oneof our clients, and he was just
bought QVC, and he was a CEO, orthe big investors in QVC, he'd
come out of Fox, and it waslike, okay, at the time, people
thought home shopping was likepeople in trailer parks buying
cubic zirconian At one in themorning. But we were like, wait
(10:20):
a second, that's not what itdid, is all so we created a new
channel, and we brought in Nikeand Diane from Furstenberg,
which she wasn't his wife at thetime, but they were best
friends, and we were creatingthis experiences. And we created
a new channel called q2we brought a different he then
hired me to go start this newchannel with a group of co
(10:41):
founders. And I was like, Okay,I'm going to run programming,
run and run, bringing theseexperiences to life that are
live, but with brands that yourecognize or brands that you
discover. And it was there thatI discovered that in real time,
if you sat in the control roomof any kind of a live home
(11:02):
shopping experience, there'srobotic cameras, because they're
like, fixed on the set. But thenthere's the phone calls that are
coming in. And so there's like,literally, the director, who's
in the booth with all thedifferent screens he sees, or
she sees, the phone calls thatare on the line for this
product, and then they they cutto the phone call, or the phone
(11:24):
call comes over the air, andthen the host is interacting.
And I was like, and then you'dsee the sales go up in real
time, because people incommunity. And that's when I
really got lit up aboutcommunity, and community being
an accelerant. And communitywasn't about like an omni
channel relationship, it wasabout a relationship. And how do
relationships and people createexperiences for a reason? In
(11:49):
that case, it was a product aseason or like a lifetime. And
what did those tribes mean? Sowhen somebody we brought on air
that had a great following, evenbefore social media, people
would call in and want to be apart of it. So after I left
there, we a couple of our theteam from that company, we co
founded I village, which was thefirst community for women
(12:11):
online, and we partnered withAOL. They were our first
investors, and we sort ofclaimed victory. We're going to
be the largest community forwomen online and and we ended up
taking the company public. Ileft right before that, I was
the chief community officer, theco founder, and that was where I
coined social media, because Iwas trying to explain to people,
well, we have service media,transactional media, educational
(12:34):
media, financial media, but thenthere's this social media where
we're surrounding chat rooms ormessage boards, and the people
are creating the content andwe're creating the context. So
it's a new kind of media,because advertisers and partners
didn't understand what it was.
(12:54):
And after I village, I left togo to that my dream job, which
was I went to work for SesameStreet, and I put Sesame Street
on the internet with anextraordinary team. They weren't
on the internet yet, and the waythat happened was not dissimilar
to how the first business planstory. I was living in an
(13:16):
apartment building when I was atmy village, and on the bottom
half of the apartment buildingyou're a New Yorker was right
across from Lincoln Center, andso it was commercial offices,
and then above was a building,and there was a major fire. I
think it was Herbie Hancock'sapartment. Somebody had a major
fire in that building. And Iwent running home because my dog
was there, and I got notifiedthat there was this fire. The
(13:39):
dog ended up being fine, and wewere all holed up in this like
New York deli underneath thebuilding, waiting for the fire
department to let us back in.
And Sesame Street was on thefirst two floors of that
building, the offices, not thestreet itself that was shot in
Queens, anyways. And I ran intoa woman that I knew from q2 who
was the CFO of Sesame Street,and she's like, Oh my gosh, what
(14:02):
are you working on? Now, I saw Ivillage, we don't have a we
don't have an internet strategy.
Would you come talk to theboard? I was like, when I come
talk to like, Big Bird, like,Absolutely so so I came, and
they were like, Oh, would youwant to start this for us? And
that's how that happened, justby serendipity of being in this
deli with this woman, Annesardini. And so I did that for a
(14:23):
few years, and then I started tohave my children, and I on mat
leave. I got recruited by Tedleonsis, actually, to come back
to AOL and to help fix thenetworks and to create a network
role. And so I went down to AOL,and I really looked at, how do
(14:47):
we take this service? How do weso I was originally head of all
community, and then ahead ofmany of the channels on the AOL
network, like we called it lifemanagement, but it was recipes,
lifestyle, women's women. Uh,life management, personal
finance, education andresources, homework help, like
all the things on the servicethat people are using for what
(15:09):
we called life management. Thatwas like an internal name, and I
said, Well, we kind of have tomake every day easier for
everyone like that. How do wetake a network and an
experience, and how do weintegrate community into that,
but then also make sure thatcommunity is like about
facilitation, not aboutproducing. We don't need to
produce all this content. But atthe time AOL and Time Warner
(15:33):
were partners. They were ownedand merged as companies, a very
famous, failed corporatepartnership or merger. But I
worked a lot with the TimeWarner Time Inc people at Time
Warner to take we created recipedatabases and other things that
created utility so that peoplecould use all these things. So I
stayed at AOL for a few years.
Eventually, I was given thegreat privilege of taking AOL
(15:54):
from a private network out ontothe open web, and I led the
aol.com team. I led themessaging team, so that was aim
ICQ and other messagingplatforms, as well as all of our
communities. And then I gotrecruited to go to Johnson and
Johnson to turn around a companythey had bought called Baby
Center, and they didn't exactlyknow what to do with it. And so
(16:18):
my kids were young, and Ithought, Oh, well, that's an
adventure. So we moved toCalifornia, because the company
was based here j and J'sheadquarters is Princeton, New
Jersey, but they have companiesall over the world, and I found
this beautiful company that waslike a web one, oh, company
built on largely popsicle stickand glue, because in web one,
oh, there weren't SAS tools todo those things, and I had the
(16:39):
privilege to turn that companyaround. Scale it to the point
where, when I left Baby Center,six or seven years later, we
were in 22 countries, 14languages, and eight out of 10
babies in the US were BabyCenter babies, and we had a
thriving social network that Ibought, a startup social network
for moms, integrated it, then weplatformed it and rolled it out
(17:03):
around around the world. We evendid a great nonprofit, almost
like an NGO, that we started,called mama, which was the
mobile alliance for maternalaction, where we took our
technology, deployed it tomobile phones for healthcare
workers in the developing world,and that has still thriving
(17:25):
around the world. And I got Jand J, our corporation, to write
a founding check. We launched atthe White House with then at the
time, Secretary Clinton. And itwas kind of a remarkable time,
because I got to have thatstartup experience with my baby
Center team and replatformingand rebuilding, but then I got
to be part of the larger J and Jexperience. And I guess my day
(17:47):
job was running Baby Center, butmy other job was being a sort of
a disruptive innovation personacross oncology Task Force,
diabetes Task Force, otherthings. And so my grandfather
used to always tell me, youknow, you should pay them for
the experience. And I felt thatway there, because sitting on a
consumer board of such a largeglobal CPG, but then also having
(18:08):
adjacencies to the largesthealthcare company in the world,
and being able to interact withour pharmaceutical teams, our
medical device teams are andpeople who really shared a
common mission, no matter whatdivision you were, very credo
based extraordinary culture thatwas, that was wonderful. And
then I left Baby Center, butdecided to stay in the bay area
(18:31):
because I fell in love withMarin County and Mount
Tamalpais. And I was going backeast all the time anyway. So I
felt like, wow, raising my kidsout here is really
extraordinary. And I went andwas cross training. One of the
things that j&j was, I couldn'tsay yes to any boards. And so,
because when you're part of thatbig corporation, every time I
(18:53):
raise my hand, they're like,Good, go work with the oncology
team. Good. Go work. You havetime. We have 327, operating
companies. So, so I wanted to goon boards, and that's when I
joined the Home Away board outof Austin. And I started sort of
doing venture and kind of bridgebuilding between corporations
and startups, because I was botha startup entrepreneur and an
(19:15):
intrapreneur, having worked atbig companies, and that was
really fun. And when I was theredoing that, we had the idea to
incubate my next companycalled brandless. And so along
with my co founder, we incubatedthat company, we funded that
company, and then I rolled out,replaced myself in that role,
and we had a go at brandless,which was just an extraordinary
(19:39):
startup experience. So that,then was my third. Eye village
was my first. The Foundryexperience my second. And the
brandless was my third. And thenturnarounds and Baby Center and
that early venture stuff withthe Japanese Tomio taki and just
there was a throughput. It,which was, what does it mean to
(20:00):
be in community with the peopleyou exist to serve. Who are your
stakeholders? How do you thinkabout that and so brandless,
even though it was a disruptiveCPG, I built it as a community
brand. How do we co createalongside our community? What
does our community want? How canwe serve their needs? And most
importantly, how do wedemocratize access to wonderful
quality things at great prices,starting with the things you use
(20:25):
every day. And so we built thatup. We were on $100 million run
rate. We ended up selling thecompany covid happened. My co
founder relocated back toAustralia and and then we were
home. And you know, you and Italked about your podcast being
at home, and my two at thattime, you know, early 20s, late
teens, sons kind of ricochetedback home. And one was just
(20:48):
graduating high school, and theygraduated in a car in 2020, and
the other one was at USC at thetime, and they came home. And so
here I was home. Sold thecompany, everyone that's in
lockdown. I was focused on myfamily. Again, I'm a mother
first, always, and I alwaysloved to do guest lectures. And
(21:11):
Harvard had written a case aboutbrandless and a lot of I'd
always loved going to schoolsand helping. And USC called and
said, Would you give a guestlecture? And I was doing it from
this same chair where I'm whereI'm sitting now, and I said,
Sure. And then after that guestlecture, because I had built the
construct of a lecture aroundthis idea of community
playbooks, and what would thatmean if I took it away from
(21:33):
brandless, or I village, or anyof those things, and said, How
or Baby Center? How would I dothat, just as a framework for
any entrepreneur. And they said,Wow, can you come back next
week? The students would like toshow you the projects they
changed as a result of yourlecture. I was like, well, I'll
be in this chair, so why not?
Like, you know, no one's leavingtheir houses. And then the
(21:55):
professor called me afterwards.
He said, Would you be interestedin creating a course? Because,
like, there's a there, there.
And I was like, You meanmidterms and finals? And he
said, Yeah, that's kind of whatwe do here. But I had been a
professor before. Guestlecturing is not the same thing.
So So I said, Well, let me havea go at it. And so I built out
(22:17):
this course. It was wildlysuccessful. People were passing
around my lectures. It was onZoom because of that. And then
when the covid abated, the Deaninvited me down, and he said,
Look, I want you to really thinkabout in this academy, because
it was at the Iovine and YoungAcademy, which is Jimmy Iovine
and Dr Dre, when they sold beatsto Apple, they had a great exit,
(22:41):
and they went to USC and said,We want to build a school. We
sold it to Apple. We keptlooking around for Steve Jobs,
and we couldn't find any exceptfor him. We want to build a
school that actually sits atthat intersection of product
design, entrepreneurship,culture, technology. So the Dean
came to me and said, along withsome of our colleagues here,
would you want to build likebusiness of Innovation Pathway I
(23:03):
was like, put me in. And sothat's when I not only became
faculty and a lecturer, but Ialso created a program called
the innovation quest. And theinnovation quest is a like, in
my vision, a 21st CenturyEducation is not just anchored
in curriculum, because you canget those facts online, but it's
experience driven. And so how dowe create an experience for our
(23:26):
students where they have accessto each other, access to
community, access to resources,and building their toolkits with
practical applications? How dowe give them prizes? How do we
accelerate their MVPs? How do wefind them lawyers like, how do
we kind of create a foundertoolkit and an innovator's
toolkit that complements thecurriculum. And so the
innovation Quest was born, andthen I got my first gen AI
(23:49):
grant, so I'm a principalinvestigator, which is like a
term I had to look up for Gen AIand society to accelerate
student ventures as part of thisinnovation quest, working with
extraordinary colleagues at USC,and that's what I'm doing now,
in addition to corporateadvisory and board work, and I
(24:10):
give I do a lot of moderationand a lot of keynotes on
innovation or moderating reallyinteresting conversations or
convenings. And that's where Iam now. The end. Wow. The
beginning.
Erin Geiger (24:22):
That's so incredible. There's so much to
talk about in there, and I haveso many questions to ask you.
And as you were talking, I waslike, This is so interesting,
because I feel like you and I,you know, were in similar spots,
in similar times, like thingsthat you were mentioning. I was
like, Oh my gosh, I rememberthat, you know, like when you
(24:45):
mentioned your you shifted yourcareer, like you thought you
were going in one direction, andthen you're like, the business
plan and all that. It was like atrend I saw as you were speaking
of like, I feel like you werejust open, you know, to what
might be. Because, you know,correct me if I'm wrong. But it
seems like a lot of themovements you took were not pre
(25:06):
planned, like you were justlike, oh, you know, like, this
opportunity came to you. And Ifeel like opportunities come to
a lot of us, but where we don'tsee them, you know, we're so
we're kind of closed off,because we're like, this is the
direction I'm going in, and youhave these blinders on. But I
feel like that wasn't the casefor you, where you thought you
were going, but, oh, this ishere. Cool. Let me try that. You
know, would you say that's thecase of, like, where you were
(25:28):
kind of very open to otheropportunities and what might
come your way?
Unknown (25:34):
Yes, I did not reverse engineer my career. I would say
that. But what is a slight tweakon that would be I brought my
toolkit wherever I went likeI've always been uniquely me and
so I'm not there is no playbookfor my career other than me
(26:00):
always bringing my authenticself to everything that I've
done. And so if I felt like Icould learn something,
to a team, an entrepreneur, acompany, a board or even
building something myself with aco founder, or what have you, an
(26:21):
investor, etc. Those are thingsthat I would lean into. So it
wasn't I've never beencollecting trophies or
collecting things. That's not myjam. I want to have meaning and
input and purpose in everythingthat I do. I'm a very purpose
driven entrepreneur. I'm a verypurpose driven professor. I'm a
very purpose driven in, youknow, human and so I believe
(26:43):
very much in using that rubricaway in a way to think about
what, what is my contributionthat's unique? What can I learn?
What can I share? And how do Igive this situation, whatever it
is an unfair advantage. So forme to start a boot camp at USC,
(27:04):
or for me to stage a ventureshowcase, like I've been doing
that my whole career, in variousways, shapes and forms, so it
was natural for me to want todeploy it there with a new with
Gen Z, and now what I love isthat I have Gen Z in the
classroom and I'm in theboardroom and I'm advising
entrepreneurs, but I'm advisingcorporate leaders as well to
(27:26):
understand, like, how do youhave empathy for this
generation? Don't just read thestats and the demographies of
where they spend their time.
Like, how do you walk theirwalk? How do you understand? And
then vice versa, if you're anentrepreneur and you're pitching
to a VC, or you're pitching to acorporate or you're trying to
get this new job. How do youthink about it's not the golden
rule of treating everyone asthey as you want to be treated,
(27:49):
treat them as they want to betreated. And it's upside down,
like our new mass culture issubculture as opposed to, like,
top down. And so I'm a, I'm a,I'm always a curious learner.
And I see opportunities wheremaybe others don't see it.
Erin Geiger (28:10):
Yeah, I would. I do see that in you, for sure. And I
feel you were at the advent ofso many things, like, you know,
when you were talking about thestorytelling aspect of, like,
wow, you're ahead of your time,you know, back then. So I
remember that shift of whenpeople started to weave
storytelling into theirproducts, into their advertising
(28:30):
and everything in a largerscale, and when you mentioned
community, I helped run tv.comwhen it was a part of CNET and
then part of CBS interactive andtv.com, whatever that really,
yeah, okay, so there was usergenerated and so, you know,
like, we just curated thecontent. These super fans were
the ones who, like, right?
Unknown (28:51):
They're the facilitators. They were the
content makers. And that's avery different role than
producing Exactly.
Erin Geiger (28:57):
And so that was a shift, right, especially in the
entertainment land, you know,it's like, okay, wait, we're not
producing the content. We'rejust curating. You know, what
these what these fans want. AndI do have to say, when you
mentioned Baby Center, I waslike, Oh my gosh. When I was
pregnant with my kids, like, solong ago, that was my go to,
like, I was on babies that arelike, you're Yay. I love eating
babies that are moms. It's like,your baby is the size of a
(29:20):
walnut, yes, yes, yes, Iremember that. So I was like, Oh
my gosh, it's amazing. It'slike, seeing my life flash
before my eyes. I am so curious.
Like, we were talking about howyou coined the term social media
before was even a category. Nowit's like, you know, everybody
knows, but like, what did yousee that right? That there's
(29:41):
like, that human connection, andI feel like you saw it before
the rest of us might have, youknow, of online, of like, you
know. So it's like, how, whatdid you see that others didn't
when you think about socialmedia and, you know? And what do
you see about the next wave ofhuman, human connection? Online,
especially with AI andeverything kind of going in that
(30:02):
direction. What are yourthoughts there?
Unknown (30:05):
Yeah, I think a lot about that stuff. So I remember
we toiled for, you know, I don'tthink I slept for months when we
were launching, I village, wewere building it. We were, you
know, getting all this contentonline, and we were licensing
content, and we were uploadingcontent and editing content, and
(30:25):
that was not so much my team,that was more the editorial team
and my team, although I wasresponsible for kind of all of
it, was really about like thefacilitation model, because we
were AOL was our partner, and wewere launching on AOL and on the
open web, and aol's unique moatreally was their chat rooms and
(30:47):
their messaging and their andtheir community boards. And so I
remember one night we justlaunched parent soup, which was
the first i village property,and our moderators, because we
wanted our chat rooms to belike, well lit, and someone was
home, and people weren't, like,spamming them whatever. So they
(31:09):
were PS, like, so I was PS,Tina, and you would have been
PS, Erin, and people knew thatyou were the moderator, and it
was like, 11 o'clock at nighthere in California. No, I was in
New York. It was 11 o'clock atnight in New York, so that meant
it was like eight o'clock atnight in California, and the
(31:29):
chat rooms were going mad. And Iwas like, hi, you know, so
excited, like, we've beenbuilding this thing, and people
were finally in it. And I waslike, Hi, what's your favorite
thing about parent soup? Youknow, I write, and then the
first answer was us, and thenext answer was us, and the next
answer was us. And I'm like, soweird. Like, why do they like
(31:52):
it? Because it's in America. Andthen I realized that wasn't us,
it was us. And I thought, Oh mygosh. I can't believe that we
built something that basicallysaid the lights are on someone's
(32:12):
home. Come on in. This is a safeplace to connect. And people
were connecting for a reason.
They needed help with, you know,lactation a season. They were
all new parents, and they werestruggling with, you know, work,
life balance, or what have you,or a lifetime. And it turned out
that in we saw this, a BabyCenter, 1020, years later, Baby
Center moms are still bestiesfrom their birth clubs. They go
(32:34):
to Vegas together. They haveannual meetups, all kinds of
things. So I had this momentwhere I realized we were in the
art of facilitation, and I wasreading, and I knew Sherry
Turkle at the time, and like itwas all about connection. And
that loneliness at the timewasn't a full epidemic of which
it is today, but I definitelyfelt this sense of people were
(32:57):
looking for their people, andhow could you know we be a
facilitator of that? And thenwhen you look at now, and I told
you earlier about like, tryingto explain what this media was,
so that's where social mediacame up, because I was trying to
explain to advertisers that wehad service media, news media,
transactional media for recipe,that's service media. DIY, that
(33:19):
service media, this was like anew form of media, and
advertisers need to getcomfortable not knowing what the
content was going to be. Andthat's why we said, look, we're
a well lit place where, youknow, someone's always home, so
you can trust us, you know. Butthen now in the world of AI, I
think very deeply about this,and I think that humanity is our
(33:39):
moat around the machines, andthat as we begin to collaborate
with machines, which I think areawesome, and I use AI every day,
but I use it as a collaborationpartner, as a thought partner,
but the empathy that Iunderstand for the human
(34:01):
experience is uniquely mine, andwhat makes me uniquely human,
and so this conversation thatwe're having right now, I don't
think I could have with a bot,not that the bot couldn't ask me
the same questions, but itwouldn't prompt a reflection
from you, it wouldn't prompt amemory from you. It wouldn't
(34:21):
create a longing or a referencepoint or a sentiment. And so
that's where our souls lie. Andyou know, we have five senses
that are documented, and as momsor people, we always check them
with our kids. You know, how aretheir eyes? How are their ears?
How is their smell, sound,touch. But I believe our soul is
(34:42):
our sixth sense, and I believethat that needs to get nurtured
from the minute we arrive andand I believe that our souls and
our humanity really are whatmakes us divinely human. And so
in a world of AI, we could headtowards the. Apocalypse, or we
could head towards a renaissancein what productivity, in
(35:05):
reimagination, in new cities,urban development, world hunger,
like there's so many diseases,healthcare, things that can be
solved in collaboration withaugmented intelligence and and
speed and data processing thatwe couldn't do before, and
(35:28):
that's exciting. And so if wekeep that moat and preserve that
mode, and we nurture our soulsand we understand what makes us
divinely human, then I thinkthis could be a path to a
utopian world, although I don'tbelieve there is such a thing,
but then an apocalyptic world.
(35:49):
And so we have choices, and wecan choose love over fear. And
so I choose love, I choose soul.
I choose optimism. I choosepossibilities. I choose problem
solving, and I chooseconnection. And so I think that
in this epidemic of loneliness,we need to move towards a screen
(36:10):
free world. We need to move tomake sure that there's literacy
from the very early days. I'm onthe National Board of PBS. I
care deeply about literacy. Theliteracy numbers in this country
are abysmal and getting worse,and if we outsource our own
intellectual development, butmore importantly, our children's
intellectual development andtheir early reading skills,
(36:32):
cognition skills, criticalthinking skills, to machines,
that is a path to a dystopianworld, and that is a path to the
end of modern civilization. AndI don't believe that that's
where we're going to go, but wehave to be intentional about it.
We can't see this to somebodyelse. We all have to be very
(36:55):
engaged and very focused on whatdoes it mean to use these tools
to enhance our own curiosity,our own intellectual journeys,
and to teach us things thatweren't maybe accessible before,
right? The whole world gets atutor now. How awesome.
Erin Geiger (37:15):
Yeah, and I feel like you're at the epicenter of
this all, like with the workthat you're doing at, you know,
USC, you're the principal andsuch a great title investigator,
Unknown (37:27):
private investigator, like, when you like a raincoat,
they were like, No, that'sactually not what
Erin Geiger (37:34):
it is. You should maybe Google that, yeah. But,
you know, you're kind of, like,focused on Gen, AI and
everything. What? So, whatexcites you the most about that
So, and also, what kind ofscares you? Is it that
intersection of like, whatdirection are we going to take?
Ai, you know, is it like, okay,we can use it for good, and
that's what excites you themost. And like, what is that?
(37:55):
What kind of like spooks you abit? It's like, okay, if we
don't do it for that. And we go
Unknown (38:01):
a lot of things. I think that, you know, there's a
lot of ideas, and I think thatideas are worth nothing. It's
all about the execution. And oneof the challenges in execution
in the past was you needed,often a technologist to be
running alongside you. And now Ithink the possibilities for
(38:23):
getting farther along, todevelop your ideas, to test your
ideas, to look for productmarket fit that AI can enable a
lot of that. And so I think itreally liberates a lot of people
who didn't think they couldhave, you know, a piece of that
opportunity, unless they couldbe a physical builder, and I
(38:43):
don't think you need that asmuch today. I would say also I
want to see I believe in thisgeneration, I believe that
you're already starting to seemovements towards screen free,
towards flip phones, towardsaudio devices, things that can
reclaim their consciousness. AndI believe we have to go fully
(39:04):
punk on consciousness and say,like I own this. Somebody else
cannot take this from me. Iwon't be here in 100 years. I
won't even be here in 50 years,but my kids will, and my
grandchildren will if I'mblessed enough to have them, and
their children will, and so wehave to enable that generation
(39:29):
to solve problems. We got a lotof problems, but they can do it,
and I want to help. And I'm veryenergized. I'm working with an
entrepreneur right now who isworking on solving, you know,
literacy challenges for childrenstruggling with literacy. I
mean, do you know the stat thatmany cities plan their prison
(39:50):
beds based on the reading levelin that town? And if you can't
read about fourth grade readinglevel, the likelihood that
you're going to end up in jailis pretty high. That's not okay.
Hey, we need to fix that. Wehave to give access to people,
to education. We need todemocratize that. And that's
what public media does, that'swhat PBS does, that's what
Sesame Street does. And sodemocratizing access is a big
(40:13):
theme for me to healthcare aswell. And I think AI has
tremendous potential andhealthcare, it already is
disrupting it that way, and itdoes democratize a lot of
things, and doctors play a veryunique role. And so we need to
work with the agents to havemore output, have more access,
(40:34):
have more capacity, because wedon't have enough people that
are skilled in these areas. SoI'm very optimistic.
Erin Geiger (40:40):
Yeah, yeah, I am too. And so I'm glad to hear it
from somebody who's like in thetrenches every day with it, you
know, having this, thisoptimistic outlook on it, I have
so many more questions for you,but I know I'm taking up so much
of your time. So I'm going toask like, one or two more and
let you go. But kind of speakingof, like, AI and new innovations
(41:02):
like you. You have been one ofthe few women that have been in
the room where, like, entireindustries were being created,
right? And so it's like, I'mcurious from your perch, when we
think about women andleadership, what have you see?
What have you seen change alongyour career, as far as women's
(41:24):
impact, women in leadership andtheir impact, and what hasn't
changed and what needs to bythis point,
Unknown (41:33):
a lot has changed. A lot stayed the same, and some
things are rolling back. Solet's talk about the positive
for me, and one thing I coachpeople on is, oftentimes women
feel like they need to have donethe job in order to get the job
right. Generally speaking, menaren't like that, you know. And
(41:54):
I think that in many ways, whenyou look at little kids in the
playground, you know, the boys,when somebody's recruiting for a
pop up kickball game or a popup, you know, baseball game
during recess. The boys justsay, put me in, you know,
whereas the girls feel like, Oh,I'm not sure. I don't know. I
this. So I think those thattranslates to real life, and so
(42:15):
you don't have to have done thejob to be good at the job and to
have the skills for the job. Soput your hat in the ring. That's
number one. Always put your hatin the ring. Number two, show up
as you don't show up as somebodyelse, because being you,
authenticity, it's the onlything that scales. And honestly,
(42:36):
that's all I can remember now.
Like, you know, so I, but I'vealways felt that way, like, I've
always just been Tina, like, Ihave a point of view. I have
something to add. There areplaces where I can make really
unique and extraordinarycontributions, and there are
places where I'm not the personwho has that perspective. So I
yield. You. Don't have to putyourself in every conversation.
(42:56):
You don't have to, like, findyour lane, but also stay
curious. Surround yourself withreally interesting and
complimentary people. Alwayswork with people who are quote,
unquote smarter than you aboutthe thing that they're smart
about. But don't subjugateyourself like be a curious
learner if you want to learnsomething, teach it. I've
(43:17):
learned that at school becausethe discipline of going through
the curricular development, themilestones, the workshops, the
assignments, I think I've alwaysbeen like that in the work world
too, which is, let's co createtogether. There's not, you know,
I'm not a hero worshiper, and Idon't believe that one person
(43:38):
can win any one race, life,work, boards, teams are relay
races, and you have to reallyfigure out, like, What team are
you on, and how do you make thatthe best team, and what role do
you have to play to make thatthe best team? And maybe you're
not the Excel jockey, but maybeyou bring something else to the
(43:58):
team. And so just don't justlook at like the job spec. Think
about where the value can beadded, and raise your hand and
volunteer for that next thing.
Go the extra distance, becausethat's how you meet people.
That's how serendipity andalchemy happens. And you just
don't know, find the hiddendoors. You know, I'm a Harry
(44:21):
Potter fan. And for those of youout there who know Harry Potter,
you know, find the Room ofRequirement. You know that door
is there, and behind it are allkinds of things that you need,
but if you don't look for it,you don't make the advance, you
won't know.
Erin Geiger (44:36):
Yeah, I love that.
And anytime somebody can drop ina Harry Potter reference, I'm
all about it. That's beautiful.
No, I agree at all, at all thosepoints. If people want to
connect with you online, what isthe best way for them to do so?
Unknown (44:51):
So follow me on LinkedIn. That's the best place.
Erin Geiger (44:55):
Okay, we will have that link in the show notes, and
I'm only you know
Unknown (44:58):
to to anyone. Doesn't hear back from me. It's not
because I don't want to connect.
It's just because I only have somuch capacity. So hopefully this
podcast will be able to tellsome of those stories, and
hopefully and your work and theother guests that you have, the
extraordinary curation thatyou're doing is such a gift to
people, and so thank you fortaking the time to elevate and
spotlight those stories, becausepeople can learn so much from
(45:21):
you and from the stories thatyou're curating and elevating.
So I'm really grateful to youfor that, not for this
conversation, although Thankyou, but for all of the sum of
your parts is really remarkable,and you've dedicated so much
time and energy to it. I reallyappreciate
Erin Geiger (45:36):
it. Thank you so much for saying that. That
really means a lot. You know,it's a super passion of mine,
and I think it's, it's work thatyou and I are doing, and it
needs to be done. It'snecessary. So I appreciate that.
I also, I get to meet you. Iknow, I'm like, we just get to
chit chat. And I'm like, you'refrom New York, I'm from New
York. Let's talk about it. And Ialways, I end with a fun
(45:58):
question, which is because welove music over here. So I
always ask if you could onlylisten to one music artist for
the rest of your life. Who wouldit be?
Unknown (46:10):
I as of today, well as of last week, I have a new
answer to that question, becauseI am currently in a obsessive
learn everything I possibly can,listen to everything I possibly
can with a musician that you mayknow or you may not know, and
his name is Jacob Collier. Doyou know Jacob Collier? Don't
(46:31):
think so. Oh my gosh, after thispodcast, I'm going to send you
stuff. But number one, followhim on YouTube. Number two, he
is a talent for the generationI've never seen or experienced
any human being with the talentthat this young man has. And so
(46:54):
he never went to no he went tohigh school. He didn't go to
college. His mother was raisedby a single mother with three
kids. His mother is a concertviolinist and a conductor, and
he plays every instrument,including the audience. So I
just, he just came here. He's ontour right now, so let's look up
(47:16):
and see if he's coming toAustin, and then, like, whatever
it takes mortgage your house,you've got to go see he
recruited a 50 person orchestrawith every instrument who they'd
never met each other. It washere in San Francisco, sold
outstanding room only, and thenhe wrote live with the orchestra
(47:38):
who he'd never met, a new piece.
He's like, violins, I'd like youto give me an F flat. And then,
and then, as the orchestra isnow all playing, he then turned
to the audience and made ussing, oh my gosh. And all of a
sudden, you're like, in themiddle of the belly of joy. He's
absolutely mind blowing. And sohe just on Adam Grant last
(48:00):
night, I listened to somethinghe did with Simon Sinek last
year. I've watched thedocumentary on him. He's he does
a collab with Chris Martin thatfills stadiums and will make
your you'll ball for an hour.
He's remarkable. Do you think
Erin Geiger (48:17):
I like him? I know exactly. I can't tell. I mean,
it's questionable, honestly.
Like,
Unknown (48:21):
I can't even, like, if you ever wonder if machines are
going to replace just listen toJacob Collier,
Erin Geiger (48:29):
wow. Okay, yeah, send me all the things, but I'm
gonna look him up. I'm gonnacheck him out. That's, he sounds
incredible. And I love that. Ilove it whenever musicians bring
in, like a symphony, and, yeah,it's, just adds another like,
he's he's a Wow, amazing. Okay,I'm so excited. Awesome. Thank
you, Tina, for taking the time.
Once again, people are going toget so much from this
discussion, even just likelearning about your career. And,
(48:51):
you know, all the subjects andtopics that we do have a little
bit deeper into, you know, ouraudience, you know, runs the
gamut from those are startingout in their leadership journey
and those that are seasoned andlooking for their next the next
way they can make an impact. Sothis has been huge. So thank you
again for taking the time. Ireally appreciate it my pleasure
Unknown (49:13):
to be continued, my friend. Yes. Thank.
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