The Tech Glow Up - Fabulous conversations with innovative minds.
Get an unprecedented front row seat to vulnerable founder conversations with innovation leaders from Blockbuster, Meta, Sony, Cisco, Nokia, and more. Join Nathan C, founder of Awesome Future, for authentic discussions with product leaders, CEOs, and startup founders who share the real challenges of bringing breakthrough ideas to market. Because having a good idea is only the first, easiest part of the entrepreneurial journey. Each episode delivers relatable stories and actionable strategies from people who've navigated the startup trenches. Discover the soft skills and mental resilience that separate successful launches from failed attempts—without getting bogged down in tech jargon. Perfect for founders, product leaders, and entrepreneurs seeking genuine advice on innovation, scaling, and surviving the long haul. These aren't polished product pitches, they're honest conversations about staying in the game until your idea hits. Subscribe to The Tech Glow Up and transform your approach to building successful companies. What is a glow up - you might ask? A "glow up" is defined as "a positive transformation, often involving significant changes in appearance, confidence, or lifestyle. We use "Glow up" to refer to the process of becoming a better version of oneself, more attractive, and more successful. If you're a founder or a product leader who's looking to have a glow up of your own - or if you're a seasoned entrepreneur who's stories can support others, we'd love to hear from you. Please add you name to the guest list with the link in the show notes. Each episode will also feature a community spotlight for innovative NGOs, nonprofits, and other organizations that are driving innovation and change in their communities. There's another link in our bio for community groups and sponsors to learn more!
Episodes
Caitlin Lacey was supposed to teach Shakespeare to high school sophomores. Instead, she started at Facebook in 2010 answering ad review tickets; a move that turned into a decade shaping how billions of people connect online.
Now as Director of Global Product Marketing at Cisco, Webex, she oversees the WebEx collaboration suite and the hardware business that powers conference rooms, airports, and enterprise spaces around the world.
H...
Innovation is just a creative response to a challenge. For Amy Hedrick, CEO of Cleanbox Technology, that challenge was the "ick factor" of sharing virtual reality headsets. She saw the future of learning, but she also saw that nobody would adopt it if it meant putting on a sweaty device used by a stranger.
Amy Hedrick is the founder and CEO of CleanBox Technology. Her journey started at Mobile World Congress in 2015 when s...
Death by a thousand clicks. That is the problem facing clinicians who spend hours navigating scattered tools for documentation, billing, guidelines, and decision-making. One doctor-turned-founder accidentally built 50 apps trying to solve it before realizing he was an entrepreneur.
PJ Park is co-founder, chairman, and chief product AI officer at Avo MD. He came to the United States from Korea about ten years ago and joined a residen...
Turning Wearable Data Into Personal Care; Medical Language AI at Scale – Oren Nissim & Tim O'Connell
Wearables track thousands of data points daily, but most becomes noise instead of signal. Clinical notes document critical patient information, yet we cannot extract meaning at scale. Two founders solving how we turn data into trusted care.
Oren Nissim is the co-founder and CEO of Brook Health. He has type two diabetes himself, which drove him to build remote care for people with chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension, CHF, ...
From testing hundreds of cancer drugs in 10 days to unlocking healthcare stories through audio—conversations with two innovators solving how we personalize treatment and tell those stories live from HLTH 2025.
Jim Foote is the founder of First Ascent Biomedical. He built the company after losing his 17-year-old son to cancer. First Ascent takes a biopsy, enriches cancer cells rapidly, and then tests hundreds of FDA-approved drugs to...
Turning Healthcare Data Into Usable Intelligence & Patient Advocacy - Jennifer Johnson & Brent Dover
From a bootstrap founder using spreadsheets to track her own cancer treatment to a data infrastructure veteran start-up leader uncovering $10-15 billion in hidden healthcare value—this episode of The Tech Glow Up features conversations with two entrepreneurial CEO’s solving what happens when you center patient empowerment and unlock trapped data live from HLTH 2025.
Jennifer Johnson, CEO and founder of JennJ Health and Fitness, has ...
More of Nathan C's conversations with 2 healthcare leaders solving what happens when medical devices talk to each other, and what happens when patients have real choice.
Bilal Muhsin, EVP Connected Care at BD, is building infrastructure that moves healthcare beyond disconnected devices. With expertise from his first company where he scaled embedded device providers into solution platforms, Muhsin now oversees pharmacy automatio...
From translating medical jargon into human language to using AI to keep healthcare human—conversations with two founders solving opposite sides of the same problem live from HLTH 2025.
Aaron Patzer, CEO of Vital.io, is the founder of Mint.com and former head of product at Intuit. Seven years ago, he started Vital with his brother-in-law Dr. Justin Schrager to guide 7 million patients through urgent care, emergency room, and hospital...
Thanks for tuning in to these conversations with two founders changing the future of healthcare live from HLTH 2025.
Zachary Ziegler, co-founder of OpenEvidence, built a platform that reached 40% of practicing clinicians in just two years by centering a simple principle: every answer includes citations to peer-reviewed research. With access to 40 million papers updated daily with 10,000-20,000 new studies, doctors can verify every c...
Live from HLTH 2025, Nathan C sits down with six healthcare innovation leaders to discuss the technologies reshaping patient care, clinical operations, and prevention. This rapid-fire speed round captures emerging themes across the industry—from AI-driven diagnostics to workforce transformation and patient-centered design.
The Guests:
- 00:26 Dave Wessinger | PointClickCare – Care coordination
- 06:50 Dr. Patricia Hayes | Imagine Ped...
Julie Smithson, Karen Alexander, and Sophia Moshasha are the co-founders of XR Women, a groundbreaking organization celebrating five years of empowering women in extended reality. What started as a pandemic-era virtual meetup has evolved into a global movement spanning 60+ countries with 1,500 members and nearly 240 consecutive weekly immersive events in the metaverse.
Key Takeaways:
- Consistency Builds Community: XR Women has pro...
Please join me in celebrating the 44th, and final episode of Season 1, with a very, very special guest. We'll be back soon with more stories of innovation and entrepreneurship from founders, CEO's and Product Leaders of disruptive and innovative products. - Nathan C.
Leslie Shannon, Head of Trend and Innovation Scouting at Nokia, reveals how a 160-year-old company continues to lead by relentlessly adapting, trend-spotting...
With over a decade in XR and a career that began in marketing and product development, Thaisa Yamamura is dedicated to bridging the gap between complex engineering and creative user needs, bringing innovative 3D, XR, and spatial computing technologies from prototype to market.
Thaisa Yamamura is the Head of XR Products and Business Development at Sony Electronics, where she leads the creation and launch of XYN, Sony’s new end-to-end...
Aidan Wolf is the Co-Founder and CEO of DreamPark, a company reinventing the future of theme parks by bringing massive, multiplayer, mixed-reality experiences anywhere—malls, parks, or even your own backyard.
With a background spanning games, social apps, and AR, Aidan and his team are proving that immersive play can spark joy, community, and real-world revitalization.
Key Takeaways:
- Downloadable Theme Parks: DreamPark ...
Meet the humble leader who used AR to send women to the moon and saved millions along the way! (And that's just one of the impressive things she's done with XR and AI!) Shelley Peterson is the founder of Wizard Wells and a pioneering leader in applying augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), and AI to solve real-world enterprise problems.
Drawing from her deep experience in aerospace and immersive tech, Shelley focuse...
Dr. Diane Bowser is Senior Manager of Emerging Technologies at Lenovo and founder of CodeReal, bringing a rare blend of R&D leadership, arts background, and startup hustle to the world of XR (extended reality) and wearables.
Key Takeaways:
- Bridging Startup and Enterprise: Diane operates at the intersection of nimble startup energy (CodeReal) and scale-driven corporate innovation (Lenovo). She encourages founders to blend cre...
Christina Heller is an Senior Producer at Meta Reality Labs Entertainment and multimedia producer with over 11 years of experience in XR innovation.
From launching two startups—VR Playhouse and Meta Stage—to producing indie film "Unexpected Treasures," Christina embodies the creative spirit that drives breakthrough storytelling across emerging media platforms.
Key Takeaways:
- Technology as Enhancement, Not Escape: Christ...
Jim Keyes, bestselling author of “Education is Freedom” and former CEO of Blockbuster and 7-Eleven, is a living example of how access to knowledge can transform a life. Jim’s journey began in a tumultuous, disrupted household, where independence was forced on him at an early age.
Rather than letting these disadvantages define him, Jim embraced education—not to climb the professional ladder, but as the ultimate pathway to freedom: f...
Nils Pihl is the CEO and founder of Auki Labs, a deep-tech company redefining how augmented reality (AR) can power meaningful social and business experiences. What started in 2019 as a passion project to create AR overlays for tabletop games like Warhammer quickly evolved into a multimillion-dollar company at the forefront of spatial computing. Nils shares his conviction that new business models and decentralized technology will fu...
Cathy Hackl, renowned futurist and CE “Godmother of the Metaverse,” is at the forefront of exploring how AI and immersive technologies are transforming human relationships, intimacy, and connection. In this episode, Cathy shares her personal experiments dating AI “boyfriends,” her vision for the future of dating, and why she believes technology can enhance—not diminish—our capacity for meaningful relationships.
Key Takeaways:
- Int...
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