She Leads Carly Malatskey

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This episode was first recorded and released in September, 2020.

Angie Bastian, the visionary co-founder of Angie's BOOMCHICKAPOP, ignited a global popcorn revolution from the confines of her Minnesota garage in 2001. She crafted a beloved brand of gluten-free, non-GMO popcorn that has taken the world by storm. In 2017, Conagra Brands recognized the exceptional appeal of Angie's BOOMCHICKAPOP and acquired the company, propelling it to new heights of success.
Angie's outstanding achievements have garnered her well-deserved recognition. She has been honored as a Pioneer in Food and proudly inducted into the esteemed MN Women's Business Hall of Fame. Beyond her role at Angie's BOOMCHICKAPOP, Angie actively contributes to various ventures, serving on the boards of Prospera Foods and Opportunity International Nicaragua. A former Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner, she made the bold decision to retire from her nursing career in 2011, fully dedicating herself to the world of entrepreneurship.
With an enduring partnership spanning 28 years, Angie and her husband have built a legacy that extends beyond business success. Together, they have raised two remarkable children and remain an inspiration to aspiring entrepreneurs everywhere. Angie Bastian's extraordinary journey exemplifies the power of determination, innovation, and unwavering commitment to creating something truly extraordinary.
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Past guests include Margaret Wishingrad, Kara Goldin, Brandi Chastain, Julie Foudy, Ann Miura Ko, Linda Avey, Sarah Leary, Becky Sauerbrunn, Miriam Haart and many more.
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Aisha is the founder of Bossy Cosmetics, a hyper-growth independent beauty company that inspires, empowers, and champions ambitious working women. Under her leadership, the company has grown from a purely digitally native footprint to retailing in over 600 retail doors across the country, including JCPenney and Nordstrom, as well as on Amazon.com. The brand was selected (numerous times) as one of the coveted “Oprah’s Favorite Things”, and has won honorable mentions and awards from Fast Company in Innovation by Design and various product awards from Self and Ebony Magazines. In the 5 years since its founding, Aisha has redefined the way beauty companies “see” professional women and has been featured in NPR’s How I Built Resilience,, Forbes, W Magazine, InStyle, Refinery29, amongst others.
Prior to founding Bossy Cosmetics, Aisha led a different life - as a 20-year global finance executive having worked over the course of her career at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Standard Chartered Bank, World Bank, and Rand Merchant Bank. Aishe has worked on over $130 billion in M&A, private equity financings, IPOs, and public capital market transactions. 
She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University, an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and was a Fellow in the Distinguished Careers Institute at Stanford University. 

Perhaps even more impressive than all of this, Aisha is a wife and the mother of three sons! 
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Past guests include Margaret Wishingrad, Kara Goldin, Brandi Chastain, Julie Foudy, Ann Miura Ko, Linda Avey, Sarah Leary, Becky Sauerbrunn, Miriam Haart and many more.
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Show Notes:
1. Welcome to She Leads
2. Aisha's Childhood and Values
3. Emphasis and Importance of Education 
4. Grappling with her Dual Identity as a Nigerian Growing Up in America
5. The Value and Optimizing for Money and Finding Financial Security Growing Up
6. Navigating Career Paths – Tackling Job Security Vs. Passion
7. Optimizing for Wealth as a Woman
8. Rising Up the Investment Banking and Finance Career Path Ladder 
9. Choosing to go to Harvard Business School 
10. Aisha's Mental Health During  the Pinnacle of Her Banking Career
11. Quitting her Banking Job (and the Health Scare that Led to this)
12. Balancing Work and Family 
13. Taking off to Palo Alto and the Distinguished Careers Institute Fellowship at Stanford 
14. Founding Bossy Cosmetics + Early Days 
15. Venture Capital Responses + Rejections of Bossy Cosmetics
16. Aisha Defining Success - Then and N

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My guest today is Wendy Weston.

Wendy Weston started Perfect Picnic with a dream, a small blanket and endless drive and passion. She decided to hang up her figure skates, moving on from her career as a successful competitive skating coach. She has worked her way from the bottom literally - from the basements of Chinatown to her Perfect Picnic storefront across from Central Park. Wendy now delivers her vision of delicious food, and a luxury experience to New York City, The Hamptons and Cape Cod. 
Over the past 13 years Weston has transformed her vision into a successful business selling millions of dollars worth of picnics. 
She additionally has paved the way for others in the fast growing "Picnic Industry". The idea "if you can make it here you can make it anywhere" has kept her going as she balanced being a single mother determined to show her daughter what a strong woman could accomplish on her own. She has turned a quiet corner of the Upper West side to a destination for New Yorkers and travelers from around the world. She was recently awarded the Women in Business award from Chase Bank.
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Past guests include Margaret Wishingrad, Kara Goldin, Brandi Chastain, Julie Foudy, Ann Miura Ko, Linda Avey, Sarah Leary, Becky Sauerbrunn, Miriam Haart and many more.
Follow us on Instagram | LinkedIn | Youtube
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Show Notes:
1. Welcome to She Leads
2. Wendy's Childhood + Figure Skating 
3. The Impact and Challenges of Leaving Figure Skating on Her Identity
4. The Importance of Freedom and Independence
5. Lessons Learned Along the Way with Finding Independence
6. Evaluating Opportunities and Navigating Life
7. Dealing with Disappointment and Expectations 
8. Inspiration for Perfect Picnic 
9. Rewards and Challenges of Founding a Company
10. Work-Life Balance and Putting Yourself First 
11. Separating Success from Self-Worth 
12. Learning Curve of Founding Perfect Picnic
13. Passion for Women's Sexual Health 
14. Contrary Opinion of Birth and Death 
15. The Practice of Acceptanance 

Wendy's Passion? Women's Sexual Health and the Difference of Discourse 
Wendy's life-time craft she is honing? Acceptance

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Holly is the Co-Founder of Kabam – a mobile gaming company that sold for approximately $1B to NetMarble in 2017. They grew Kabam to over 1500 employees with 6 offices worldwide. 
Prior to Kabam, Holly graduated from UCLA with a degree in Communications and East Asian studies and received her Masters from Berkeley in Information Management and Systems. She started her professional career in consulting and working as a User Interface Designer at AOL. 

Throughout her 10-year tenure as the Co-Founder of Kabam, Holly led efforts in a variety of roles: including User Experience, HR, Development and People. Her work has contributed to record revenue growth for Kabam year over year from $0 to $400MM annually, that led Kabam into the unicorn club in 2014. She led the design for Kabam’s award-winning "Kingdoms of Camelot" franchise, which has grossed over $250 million in less than four years and the extension game, which was the top grossing app on iOS in 2012. 

After Kabam, Holly transitioned to the other side of the table as an investor. She spent 2 years as a Visiting Partner at Y Combinator - the leading startup accelerator for entrepreneurs. 

She is a consummate entrepreneur, executive, and startup mentor. Naturally, Holly has been a leading woman in gaming and entrepreneurship, named by Fortune as the “10 Most Powerful Women in Gaming”. 

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Past guests include Margaret Wishingrad, Kara Goldin, Brandi Chastain, Julie Foudy, Ann Miura Ko, Linda Avey, Sarah Leary, Becky Sauerbrunn, Miriam Haart and many more.
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Show Notes:
1. Welcome to She Leads
2. Holly's Early Life and Influences 
3. Navigating and Finding Peace with her Asian Identity 
4. Meeting Co-Founders and Initial Brainstorming Ideas 
5. Founding a Company Idea 1: Social Corporate Network
6. Challenges in Building a B2B Business
7. Pivoting to Community Apps on Facebook 
8. Entering the Gaming Industry 
9. Navigating the 2008 Recession 
10. Scaling Culture 
11. Balancing Diversity & Scaling in Hiring 
12. Experience as a Woman in Gaming 
13. Selling Kabam for Over $1 Billion Dollars 
14. Book Recs & Lifetime Craft 
 
Holly's book recommendation? The bible 
Holly's life-time craft she is honing? Being Open

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Fran is a serial entrepreneur and Super Founder with over 25 years of experience pioneering category-disrupting B2C and B2B internet businesses. Fran is widely recognized for her leadership as Co-Founder and first General Manager of the online dating service Match.com, Founder of the privacy compliance tech company TRUSTe (now known as TrustArc), and Founder and CEO of her current venture, BabyQuip, the #1 global baby gear rental brand.  BabyQuip currently serves over 2k markets and maintains a network of independent gig economy entrepreneurs in the thousands. 
 As an award-winning business icon, trailblazer for women in tech, and advocate for female entrepreneurship, Fran has been named to the “150 Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business” by the SF Business Times, “Top 25 Women in Tech to Watch in Silicon Valley” by AlwaysOn and she is the 2016 recipient of the prestigious Jerry I. Porras Latino Leadership Award from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she earned her Bachelors and MBA. Fran was also a featured expert on entrepreneurship in the acclaimed documentary film “She Started It” and appeared on ABC’s Shark Tank.
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Past guests include Margaret Wishingrad, Kara Goldin, Brandi Chastain, Julie Foudy, Ann Miura Ko, Linda Avey, Sarah Leary, Becky Sauerbrunn, Miriam Haart and many more.
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Show Notes:
1. Welcome to She Leads
2. Tanya's Early Life + Entrepreneurial Spirit
3. Her First Yogurt Shop at Stanford
4. Transition Post-Stanford into Consulting and Clorox Co.
5. The Rise of the Internet
6. Founding Story of Match.com
7. Reflections + the Impact of Match.com
8. Lessons Learned + Advice for Female Founders
9. Living in the Future and Identifying Opportunities
10. Career Trajectory: Transition to Women.com and Founding TrustArc
11. Gaining Confidence in each Career Pivot
12. Founding BabyQuip
13. Navigating Challenges and Adapting to the Gig Economy
14. Recognizing true PMF
15. The Importance of Timing in Entrepreneurship
16. Working with Family in Business
17. Ever-Changing Perspectives on Success
18. Addressing Gender Biases and Stereotypes
19. Challenging Misrepresentation and Advocating for Women
20. Changing Perspectives on Marriage
21. Honing Patience and Being Present

 
Fran's changed perspective in the last decade? Marriage
Fran's life-time craft she is honing? Patience + Being Present

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My guest today is Emily Harburg.  Emily is the Cofounder and CEO of PairUp, a B2B SaaS platform that boosts workplace knowledge-sharing, increases connectivity, and helps you solve problems more efficiently at work 
Emily’s background spans industry, startups, and academia. She has worked at Walt Disney Imagineering where she designed technology for the Disney theme parks, at Facebook (Meta) where she worked as a UX researcher, and at EF Education First where she led the Emerging Tech and Innovation team designing tech to support millions of students around the world. In 2015, Emily co-founded Brave Initiatives, an organization dedicated to helping women build tech skills and confidence in coding for social impact. 

Emily’s academic research lies at the intersection of technology and social behavior, and the role that technology can play in building self-efficacy and confidence. Her research has been published and shared in global conferences, academic journals, case studies, and news publications -- including the Harvard Business Review, TEDx, CNN, and more.
Emily graduated with a B.A. in Social Anthropology and Psychology from Harvard College, and with a Ph.D. in Technology and Social Behavior from Northwestern University. 
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Past guests include Margaret Wishingrad, Kara Goldin, Brandi Chastain, Julie Foudy, Ann Miura Ko, Linda Avey, Sarah Leary, Becky Sauerbrunn, Miriam Haart and many more.
Follow us on Instagram | LinkedIn | Youtube
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Show Notes:
1. Welcome to She Leads
2. Emily's Childhood and Early Interests
3. Navigating College and her Career Path
4. Designing Technology for Walt Disney
5. Imposter Syndrome and Confidence
6. Pursuing a PhD
7. Taking Risks, Following Passion, Quieting the Inner Voices
8. Overcoming Self-Doubt and Taking the Founder Leap
9. Founding Story of PairUp
10. Fundraising and Hiring Challenges
11. Building a Supportive Founder Community
12. Lessons Learned and Advice for Founders
13. Defining and Evolving Company Culture
14. Importance of Mentors and Champions
15. Passions + Book Recs + Lifetime Craft
 
Emily's Rare Obsession? DJ-ing
Emily's Book Recommendation? Viktor Frankl's 'Man Search for Meaning'
Emily's life-time craft she is honing? Bravery

▶️ Video interview available on Youtube.

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