Curiosity

After receiving an executive MBA at Harvard, Priyanca Ford became the Founder and executive board member at Kronos Fusion Energy, a startup building a roadmap to the full commercialization and monetization of fusion energy generators by 2032. In this episode we discuss the technology and infrastructure behind the Kronos Fusion Energy Generator, Priyanca’s insights from COP28, and the future applic...

In this episode we interview Kashmera Self, an industry recognized, forward looking fintech leader with 20+ years of experience in corporate strategy, innovation, and product commercialization. As VP, Strategy & Innovation at Interac, she leads a team in pursuing emerging topics including open banking, artificial intelligence (AI), value exchange, and blockchain to establish the long-term corp...

Rachel Wong is the co-founder of Monday Girl, which connects Gen-Z and Millennial women with new job, career, and networking opportunities. Previously she worked at Uber to help launch the service in key Canadian markets, and has led multiple teams in strategy and operations. Rachel has also been named a Bay Street Bull 30 Under 30 recipient. In this episode, we discuss how Rachel balanced working...

Today we are joined by Dave Rouse, the CEO of CarbonClick. CarbonClick connects individuals and firms with carbon offset projects at the point of sale. All offsets are certified, and it is the only platform in the world that provides full transparency and "track and trace" to the source of the offset. Carbon Click has helped 1300 businesses and 230,000 individuals take climate action. In...

In this episode we sit down with Léonard Boussioux who is an incoming professor at the University of Washington in the Information Systems and Operations Management department. He was a Ph. D. candidate in Operations Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has developed and deployed machine learning and deep learning models to address high-stake challenges, including healthcare...

Obaid Ahmed is an expert in building technology, UX/product design, large-scale software design, and business models. He created UmmahHub as a project to bring crowd-funding to Muslim communities around the world. He was the recipient of the Youth Business Entrepreneur in 2012 and was involved in the YoungMaker project which introduces the concept of technology to young members of our community vi...

Tune in to our conversation with Thusha Agampodi, who is the Director of Engineering at Aurora Solar, a cloud-based solar platform that uses data, automation, and AI to make solar projects simple and predictable. After studying computer systems engineering at Carleton, she worked in various engineering roles at Tread, Magnet Forensics, and Blackberry.  In this episode we discuss what goes int...

Jennifer Francis is a technology mentor, advisor, and angel investor. She is a former executive in the information technology and services industry, with experience in Enterprise Software, SaaS, Go-to-market Strategy, and Strategic Partnerships. She is the co-founder of SheBoot and is a Board Member of Invest Ottawa and is on the Board of Directors of the Capital Angel Network. Previously she was...

Brian Adams is the CTO at Salient Energy, a startup developing zinc metal batteries based on aqueous electrolytes for large scale energy storage applications. Previously he was a postdoctoral research associate at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory where he studied the electrodeposition and stripping of lithium metal. In this episode we discuss the chemistry behind zinc metal batteries and...

In this episode we chat with Isabella Grandic, the founder of BOOB BLURB, a conversation starter for taboo topics. She’s building BOOB BLURB to break the stigmas with women’s sexual and mental health. Isabella is a Morehead Cain Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was the previous director of EMM, a project to reduce maternal mortality via misoprostol distribution to tr...

In this episode we chat with Rembrandt Niessen, who is managing partner at Oxford Energy where he advises investors and developers in the renewable energy generation and storage space. Oxford Energy also works on developing utility scale solar projects in emerging markets. His previous roles include MD Project Development for General Electric and Chief Commercial Officer of Energy Dome. We discuss...

Matthew Espinoza is a full-stack developer building projects in web3. He previously built the crypto infrastructure—using blockchain API, for web3 creators to reward and engage their tokenized communities— for Agora Labs, a crypto software company that had a market cap of $500K USD. Recently he finalized the acquisition of Agora Labs by Talent Protocol ($50M crypto company).  Action items:&nb...

In this episode we chat with Amir Feizpour, the co-founder and CEO of Aggregate Intellect, a company building a "smart knowledge management" platform to bring the benefits of research in emerging technologies to industry teams. In the past Amir was a data scientist, senior manager, and NLP product lead at RBC, as well as a postdoctoral research assistant at Oxford University. Aggregate Intellect,...

Garry Golden is a professionally trained Futurist who speaks and consults on issues shaping business and society in the 21st century. He is the founder of Into the Future, designed to empower young people to solve problems in a global context. He works with both the private and non profit sector with clients including Boston Scientific, Dell, Disney, Microsoft, California Association of Museums, H...

In this episode we sit down with Jacinto Sá, a full professor at Uppsala University and the founder of Peafowl Plasmonics, a spin-out company developing transparent, direct plasmonic solar cells to power smart objects like IoT sensors.  We discuss how Jacinto started his project with the intent of pure research and why he decided to incorporate, how he made a breakthrough in plasmonics,...

Aleksa Gordić is a Research Engineer at DeepMind and has a background in electronics, mathematics, and algorithms. Aleksa self-taught himself ML and deep learning, which led him to create videos at The AI Epiphany, a YouTube channel that breaks down research papers, code, and everything AI-related. Previously he was a Software/ML Engineer at Microsoft where he directly worked with engineers and Mi...

At TD Miguel Navarro was previously the head of US Voice and Emerging Platforms including Alexa, Siri, and Google, where he strategized and implemented the future state of the Emerging Platforms of TD. In the past he was the Vice President and Product Manager for Mobile - USA, and acted as the Head of US Mobile Platforms at TD. Miguel recently transitioned to KeyBank where he builds and owns the t...

In this episode we chat with Michael Gibson, the Co-founder and a General Partner at 1517, an early stage venture capital fund that supports teams led by young founders. After studying Moral & Political Philosophy at Oxford, Michael was the vice president for grants at the Thiel Foundation and a principal at Thiel Capital.  We discuss why Michael left the Thiel Foundation to launch 1517,...

Matthew Mizzi is the CEO of Drinkable Water Solutions, a company that aims to empower water autonomy, by building a handheld device that detects harmful contaminants and communicates their risks. Drinkable’s device is smaller than a smartphone, costs $100 with testing cartridges selling for $10, and tests water for about a dozen common contaminants, such as lead, arsenic, and uranium. In this epis...

Kimberly Liang is a 17 year old cellular agriculture researcher going into the M&T program at UPenn next year. At The Cellular Agriculture Society, Kim is working with Founder Kristopher Gasteratos to publish the first cellular agriculture textbook in the world through Elsevier. At the University of Ottawa, she works at the Pelling Lab to find media alternatives to fetal bovine serum for maxim...

In this episode we sit down with Jo-Anne McArthur, an award-winning photographer and author. She documents our complex relationship with animals around the globe and her work has taken her to over sixty countries. In 2019 she founded We Animals Media and her books include We Animals, Captive, and HIDDEN: Animals in the Anthropocene. Jo-Anne's photography and writing have been published extensively...

In this episode we are joined by Zahra Hirji who talks about her experience working in the areas of Talent and Leadership Development for 20+ years with companies including Shopify, TD, Deloitte, KPMG and Oracle.  Zahra shares her most recent experience working on the Dev Degree Program at Shopify and her role in contributing to strategic planning, decision making, program evaluation and prog...

Carlos Garcia-Galan has over 25 years of experience in spaceflight operations. Carlos started his space operations career as an ISS flight controller participating in twelve ISS-Shuttle assembly missions and increment operations between missions. Before joining NASA, he transferred to Honeywell in 2001 as a Senior Systems Engineer in the Aerospace Electronics Systems business unit. Carlos has now...

Mark Papermaster is the Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice president of Technology and Engineering at AMD where he led the development of the award-winning Zen high-performance x86 CPU family, leadership GPUs and the company’s modular design approach, Infinity Fabric. In the past he has also worked on products spanning from IBM microprocessors and servers to Apple iPod and iPhone hardware...

In this episode we chat with Jennifer Wagner, the President of CarbonCure Technologies. CarbonCure chemically repurposes captured carbon dioxide during the concrete manufacturing process to make greener concrete .  The company has attracted domestic and international venture investment, and has received numerous awards, including the Cleantech Group’s 2020 Company of the Y...