ExecuTalks

Lynne grew up in the bay area and accidentally learned what she loved to do when she was helping a friend become more physically independent by helping her up stairs, and taking her to the gym.  So after getting her undergraduate degree, she dove right back into school and used her savings along with student loans to pay for training to become a Physical Therapist.  After getting her certification, she worked for a terrible boss th...

Bracken began his career in accounting after college.  After working in accounting roles for an accounting firm and then PepsiCo he transitioned into brand management early in his career.  He first worked at Procter & Gamble, then moved into a General Manager position at General Electric.  There are other career moves we talk about in this episode, so make sure you tune in!

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Kara grew up in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona and naturally developed the skill of persistence growing up.  In her early years she worked many different jobs including working at a toy store, interning for a local senator, and waiting tables at a local Mexican restaurant.  After college she used unique approaches to reach people and get hired at a media company in New York.

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Wes was born in Canada, grew up in Columbia, and lived in Southern California .  He admits his dyslexia and ADHD growing up caused him to hate school and didn’t attend college after high school. After high school, Wes took the first job he was offered, which was a job making high-end cabinets in Los Angeles; a business that his neighbor owned.  Listen in to this episode to learn about how a kid that grew up with a learning disorder...

In this episode, we sit down with Jeff Roe, CEO of Premera Blue Cross.  Employing over 3,200 people, Premera Blue Cross is the largest health plan insurance provider in the Pacific Northwest, serving more than 2 million people.  

Jeff grew up in Bellevue, WA and had an early interest in politics growing up.  His curiosity and enjoyment of politics led him down a route of working in politics after graduating from the University of Wa...

Seattle's Former Police Chief Carmen Best published her book “Black in Blue” in October of 2021, and it was the #1 book in new releases when it came out. 

Carmen grew up in the Puget Sound area to a loving mother and a father who was in the military.  She had a close relationship with her siblings and seemed to always be driven from a young age.   Carmen served in the military for some time before working for an insur...

Howard Behar grew up in North Seattle, attended Roosevelt High School, and struggled to find his way early on in his life.  He took some courses at Everett community college but didn’t finish school because he was directing his energy towards his work.  At the time he was helping run his brother’s furniture store in Edmonds, WA.  He would spend the next couple of decades in the furniture business – eventually becoming president of ...

Mike Clayville is the Chief Revenue Officer of Stripe, a payment processing company that is building the economic infrastructure of the internet.  Their mission is increasing the GDP of the internet -- and Stripe is valued at almost $100 billion.  In our conversation, we talk about Mike’s career journey leading up to Stripe.  He was born and raised in Idaho, got a degree in geotechnical engineering and then went on to get his MBA a...

In this episode, you’ll get to hear from Howard Tiersky.  Howard began his career in theater and performing arts before starting his consulting career at Ernst & Young.  There, he would build E&Y’s first website and get exposed to a whole new world.  After 15 years of being in the consulting space, Howard started his own business; From Digital, a digital transformation agency that helps companies develop new digital product...

A fourth generation Puget Sound native and nascent New Yorker, Kurt has always felt passionately about authentic, full-flavored foods, free of artificial additives. Kurt is the owner and head chef of Sugar Mountain, a creative food company that is home to extraordinary food brands and restaurants, from the award-winning Beecher’s Handmade Cheese to The Butcher’s Table, a swanky steakhouse that features Mishima Reserve, Sugar Mounta...

In this special episode, we chat with Chris George, a serial entrepreneur who has successfully started and managed 7 businesses in his career (most recently Founder of Certified).  His first business that he started in college, was a debt collection agency that he worked in for almost a decade.  His most recent venture was a subscription-based men’s fashion company: Gentleman’s Box.  Today, he’s chairman of the subscription trade a...

In this episode, we cover the man behind the largest biotechnology IPO in history, Steve Harr.  Steve co-founded Sana biotechnology, a company that  went public earlier this year (2021) and raised almost $600 million dollars in its IPO.  Sana is changing the way diseases are cured.  Their approach is based on repairing and controlling genes within cells, essentially engineering cells so that they are better equipped to fight off di...

In this episode, we hear from Finimize CEO & Co-Founder, Maximillian Rofagha.  He grew up in Berlin, Germany, attended a very diverse, international high school, and went on to study economics and international relations in Scotland.  He did a year abroad in the U.S., and interned at eBay, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey and Company, and a German Stock Exchange.  After college, he worked in management consulting for a year and half bef...

Mary grew up on a very rural, cattle ranch in New Mexico just above the US-Mexico border, where she learned to drive when she was just seven years old and had no television in her home.   She attended Williams college, in Massachusetts town near the New York-New Hampshire border.  She first intended in going into politics, then fell in love with drama and theater, so she shifted her major.  After college, she decided to study law.

A...

Today’s guest is Scott Torrey, PayScale CEO.  Scott always knew he wanted to be in business, so he attended a commerce-focused college and worked in consulting after college.  After an 8-year career in consulting, Scott pivoted and joined Concur which was later acquired by SAP, and would remain there for 20 years of his career.  He took a very short break before a recruiter presented an opportunity to lead PayScale in 2019.   PaySc...

Today’s guest is Surabhi Gupta, Robinhood’s VP of Engineering.   Surabhi grew up in India and pursued an education in computer science.  She participated in an internship with Microsoft, and her research focused on artificial intelligence and natural language processing.  She worked on creating a system for producing scalable summaries of conversations extracted from video content.  Surabhi then took a job with Google as a software...

Today, we make history.  It’s the first time we’ve had an executive from the city on our show.  All of our guests before this show have been business executives. Today’s guest is Debra Smith, Seattle City Light’s CEO.  She graduated with a finance degree from Arizona State University, and kickstarted her career in the oil industry working for ConocoPhillips.  Shortly after, transitioned into commercial banking in Portland, then mov...

Today’s guest is Adena Hefets, CEO & Co-Founder of Divvy Homes.  She grew up in Long Island, New York to immigrant parents who lived paycheck to paycheck, and were not financially stable, and this drove her ambition to be financially independent at a very young age.  

She would go on to work in lots of finance roles like investment banking, private equity, venture capital, and also worked in product management, before ...

Today, you will hear from Ryan Hogan, CEO & Co-Founder of Hunt A Killer.  He joined the Navy out of high school, got admitted into a very competitive military program after 6 years of hard work, started multiple businesses that needed multiple pivots, until they ended up failing.  In 2016, a few years after Ryan’s last business had failed, he got together with his childhood friend Derrick and together, they began thinking of ho...