That Tech Pod

This week on That Tech Pod, Laura and Kevin sit down with Cindy Cohn, Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to talk about the power structures hiding in plain sight across the internet, money, surveillance, and AI. Cindy breaks down what EFF actually does and why access to the internet is not just an infrastructure problem, but a civil liberties issue that shapes who gets heard, who gets tracked, and who gets le...

Today Kevin and Laura chat with Bala Muthiah, Director of Engineering at Lyft, to talk about what leadership looks like when your product moves real people through the real world. Bala shares his path from immigrating to the U.S. to leading teams responsible for systems that make time-sensitive decisions at massive scale, and how those experiences shaped his views on power, responsibility, and trust in technology.

We talk ...

This week, we sit down with Al Pascual, CEO and founder of Scamnetic, to talk about fraud from the inside out. Al didn’t come up through product or engineering. He started his career chasing real fraud cases, shaped early on by parents who were cops and a first job in a bank fraud department. That hands-on experience is what pushed him from treating fraud as “just a job” to seeing it as his lane.

We get into the scam patterns that w...

This week on That Tech Pod, Laura and Kevin chat with Richa Kaul, founder and CEO of Complyance, for a blunt conversation about what governance, risk, and compliance actually are, and why so many companies pretend it’s something else.

Richa walks us through how she really landed in GRC, including the moment she realized compliance isn’t about forms or frameworks. It’s about power, incentives, and who takes the fall when sy...

As we announced last week, this month on That Tech Pod, we’re changing things up a bit. Instead of our usual deep dives into eDiscovery, data privacy, and cyber security, this December, we're spotlighting people and organizations using technology to close real gaps in opportunity. 

In this episode, we sit down with Savita Raj, the CEO of Techbridge Girls, to talk about what it really takes to help girls from underrepresented co...

This December, That Tech Pod is shifting gears a bit. Instead of our usual deep dives into eDiscovery, privacy, and security, we’re using the next few pods to spotlight leaders and organizations using technology to close real gaps in opportunity. These episodes are about mission, access, and impact, and what it looks like to build pathways into tech from the ground up.

In this episode, Laura and Kevin talk with Danny Rojas...

In this episode, Laura and Kevin chat with Walter Haydock, whose path from Marine intelligence to Capitol Hill to AI governance gives him a rare view of what “security” actually means in the age of AI and generative models. Walter talks about why he thinks governance is becoming the next real defense layer, and how to sort actual AI risks from the odd glitches everyone loves to talk about. He breaks down common myths he hears from ...

This week’s post-Thanksgiving episode is a full smorgasbord of random stories, internet rabbit holes, and tech-adjacent tangents. Laura and Kevin skip the usual guest and run through a pile of listener-requested topics. They start with the viral Tinder profile of a man who openly admitted to abusing women yet pulled in more than 800 matches, which leads them into the strange world of dating-while-incarcerated sites. From there, the...

This week on the pod, Laura and Kevin sit down with Janna Scott, founder of DeFi Tax, to unpack one of crypto’s most confusing and controversial topics: taxes. Janna shares how she went from frustrated accountant to tech founder after realizing how broken the crypto tax ecosystem was. She explains why the IRS treats digital assets differently than stocks, how compliance rules can border on entrapment, and what it will take for fair...

In this episode, Dr. Ashwin Mehta joins us to talk about how AI is quietly changing the way we think, learn, and make decisions. Drawing from his global career in pharma, government, and consulting, from building digital learning systems in West Africa to leading AI strategy at Bayer — Ashwin shares why he’s dedicated his work to keeping the “human” at the center of technology.

We explore how trust in AI can evolve from co...

In this episode of That Tech Pod, we get into the next industrial revolution,  Industry 5.0, where technology and people work together instead of competing for the same space. Shay Howe, Chief Strategy Officer at ActiveCampaign, joins us to unpack how automation is evolving from efficiency-driven systems to human-centered collaboration.

We explore how the relationship between humans and machines is shifting from replacemen...

In this episode of That Tech Pod, Laura and Kevin talk with Kevin's brother, Dr. Ross Albert, Medical Director of Hartford HealthCare at Home Hospice and Palliative Care, about one of the most unsettling trends in the digital age: health misinformation driven by AI. The conversation kicks off with a real case of a man hospitalized after following ChatGPT’s bad advice and spirals into the broader question of why people are so q...

This week we sit down with Ben Wilcox, a tech leader who straddles two high-stakes worlds as both Chief Technology Officer and Chief Information Security Officer at ProArch. Ben shares how a teenage interest in “link lists” and web hosting turned into a 25-year career at the intersection of innovation and cybersecurity. We talk about what it really means to balance the drive to move fast with the need to stay secure, and whether th...

Two Kevins are better than one on this week’s That Tech Pod, as Kevin Albert and Laura sit down with Silicon Valley legend Kevin Surace, the inventor and entrepreneur, who helped shape everything from the first smartphone to the first digital assistant, decades before Siri or Alexa.

Kevin S. shares stories from his time at General Magic, where he helped build Mary, the original voice-based AI assistant that could schedule ...

Today on the pod, Laura and Kevin talk with Jamie Bernard, Vice President of Solutions Strategy and Head of Global Solutions at Valiantys, about what it really takes to turn technical capabilities into business results. Jamie has spent her career at the crossroads of product strategy, innovation, and AI enablement, helping companies move beyond buzzwords to create solutions people actually buy.

Jamie shares her approach to...

On this week's episode, Laura and Kevin talk with James Terry, Head of US Revenue at Indeed Flex, about how AI is reshaping the staffing industry. 

James breaks down how Flex fits into the larger Indeed ecosystem and how technology is changing the way companies find, match, and retain talent. We get into the opportunities and risks that come with AI-driven recruiting, from reducing bias to making sure workers aren’t treated lik...

This week on That Tech Pod, Laura and Kevin are joined by Gilad Shoham, VP of Engineering at Bit, to talk about the future of AI-driven development, composable architecture, and the cyber risks that come with them. Gilad has spent his career at the intersection of startups, enterprise engineering, and open-source communities, and he brings a clear, practical perspective on how technology is evolving.

We start with what com...

This week Kevin and Laura sit down with Uma Subramanian, Founder and CEO of Limitless Leaders, Inc. Uma shares her journey from leading initiatives at Microsoft to building a global platform dedicated to helping tech professionals unlock their leadership potential.

We explore what “limitless” leadership really means, the behaviors that often hold people back, and why she set out to build a program that looks different from...

This week, Laura and Kevin are joined by Mike Maynard, CEO and Managing Director of Napier, a B2B PR and marketing agency helping tech companies turn awareness into opportunities. Mike started his career as an electronics design engineer before moving into marketing, and that technical background still shapes how he builds and measures campaigns today.

We talk about what real success looks like beyond clicks and leads, how...