Wealthing Podcast

In this episode, Alicia Castillo Holley sits down with Janet C. Salazar (JC), author of Alpha Whisperers™: Power Behind the Power . JC shares her journey from growing up in a family of entrepreneurs in the Philippines to fulfilling her childhood dream of working with the United Nations, when she was appointed Permanent Representative of the Foundation for the Support of the United Nations at just...

In this episode of the Wealthing Podcast, Alicia Castillo Holley sits down with JaQ, founder of Alexander Legacy and Queen Mother of a village in Ghana's Akuapim Kingdom. Her work focuses on talent development, economic literacy, and preparing the workforce for the new economy. At 16, while working as a bank receptionist, JaQ came across trust paperwork that revealed her late grandmother's home wa...

In this episode of the Wealthing Podcast, host Alicia Castillo Holley sits down with Henryk Dabrowski, entrepreneur and investor, to discuss the hard-won lessons from building multiple companies — from learning to be more analytical than intuitive, to continuing his formal education, to the ongoing challenge of prioritizing family over business. The conversation explores the pressure facing today'...

In this episode of the Wealthing Podcast, host Alicia Castillo Holley sits down with Eric Dawson, founder of RIVET, to discuss his journey to becoming a lifelong advocate for young people — as a youth organizer at 14, the founder of Peace First (which reached young people in 166 countries over 30 years), and now the builder of the world's first microfinancing platform for young changemakers.    Th...

This week on the Wealthing Podcast, host Alicia Castillo-Holley is joined by Lawrence "Chip" Dawson. Together, they explore his evolution from his early days as a volunteer firefighter in Lakewood, New York, and his training in fire protection at Oklahoma State University, to his distinguished 22-year career at Kodak. The conversation covers the leadership and tactical lessons Dawson applied as he...

In this episode of the Wealthing Podcast, host Alicia Castillo Holley sits down with Marco Funk, founder of Enerlink, to discuss his unconventional path into clean energy — from Nielsen, to private banking in Dubai, to building the "Uber of home services" in Singapore, picking up nearly a dozen languages along the way before finding his true calling in solving one of the world's biggest infrastruc...

In this episode of the Wealthing Podcast, host Alicia Castillo Holley sits down with Mitra Miller, Managing Director at Mill River Capital and President of the Houston Angel Network, to discuss her journey from a multicultural upbringing in Texas to becoming a driving force in early-stage investing. Raised by a Brazilian father and an American mother, Mitra shares how her multicultural upbringing...

In this episode of the Wealthing Podcast, host Alicia Castillo Holley sits down with founder, tech developer, and women's rights activist Samah Damanhoori to discuss her journey from Saudi Arabia to Silicon Valley. After losing support from her family and country due to her activism, Samah channeled her personal struggles and love of knowledge into creating BlendBound Inc. BlendBound's debut title...

This week on the Wealthing Podcast, host Alicia Castillo Holley is joined by Adrian and Senofer Mendoza for an extended episode on the Mendoza's decade-long journey co-founding and scaling Mendoza Ventures into a multi-fund venture capital firm. Drawing from their early experiences as tech founders navigating a notoriously difficult pre-seed market in 2014, Adrian and Senofer offer an authentic, o...

La Keisha Landrum Pierre joins host Alicia Castillo Holley on this episode of The Wealthing Podcast to trace her journey from an aspiring childhood storyteller to her role as Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Emmeline Ventures. Focusing on early-stage, women-led businesses—particularly across women's health, wealth, and well-being—La Keisha breaks down what it takes to challenge systemic funding...

This week on the Wealthing Podcast, host Alicia Castillo-Holley is joined by Oleg Demidov, who details his evolution from a PhD in space technologies and two-time founder to his current role as a General Partner at Beyond Earth Ventures. Focusing on the frontier sectors of energy, space, robotics, and compute, Oleg reflects on the massive paradigm shifts currently reshaping global infrastructure....

This week on the Wealthing Podcast, host Alicia Castillo-Holley is joined by one of her former students, Sebastien Staub, who details his fascinating career in digital real estate and AI-driven visibility. As the founder of salesandmarketing.ai—a cutting-edge platform designed to audit digital footprints and online visibility across 17 distinct Large Language Models (LLMs)—Sebastien reflects on th...

This week on the Wealthing Podcast, host Alicia Castillo Holley sits down with keynote speaker and workshop facilitator Stefan Wetterholm to unpack his transformative framework, "From Noise to Clarity." Stefan shares how a simple story about a Japanese consultant—who optimized a factory floor by placing a single mark on the ground—inspired him to champion extreme simplicity in overwhelming, comple...

This week on the Wealthing Podcast, Alicia is joined by Raphael Roettgen, the founding partner of space venture fund E2MC, to detail his fascinating career evolution from investment banking and hedge fund management into the frontier sector of space investment. As a space investment specialist and the founder of E2MC, a venture capital fund dedicated to early-stage space startups, Raphael reflects...

This week on The Wealthing Podcast, Alicia is joined by Jason Bock, CEO of CTMC, for an inspiring look inside the front lines of cancer treatment innovation at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Jason details the revolutionary shift toward personalized, single-dose cell therapies that engineer a patient's own T-cells to target and eliminate cancer. This cutting-edge approach represents a fundamental pivot...

This week on the Wealthing Podcast, host Alicia Castillo Holley is joined by Nancy Hayes, who shares her remarkable transition from a high-level corporate executive at IBM into a leading angel investor and advocate for women entrepreneurs. Throughout her non-linear career, Nancy has successfully navigated multiple sectors, pivoting from corporate leadership to impactful nonprofit work, and later s...

In this episode, Alicia sits down with Sage Wohns, the CEO and Co-Founder of Jericho Security, a company that uses generative AI to create hyper-realistic attack simulations. Sage dives into how Jericho builds deepfake voice and text attacks to test corporate defenses and train organizations before real-world adversaries strike. He details the company's strategic trajectory: how they spent three y...

In this episode, host Alicia Castillo Holley sits down with Kethees Ketheesan, the CEO of Puloli, a cutting-edge methane monitoring company providing independent, third-party emissions verification. Kethees shares his personal arc, from being born in Sri Lanka during a civil war to becoming a Silicon-Valley-backed entrepreneur tackling global warming. He opens up about Puloli's strategic shift fro...

In this episode, host Alicia Castillo Holley sits down with Prerna Prasad, the founder of Ecoplore, a sustainable tourism company partnering with 1,500 eco-friendly hotels across India. Prerna details her transition from journalism and politics into environmental entrepreneurship in 2016. Driven by a philosophy that prioritizes environmental impact over commercial gain, she shares a raw, honest lo...

In this episode, host Alicia Castillo Holley sits down with J ustin Woodward, the founder of Interabang Entertainment and the The Media Indie Exchange (The MIX). Justin's path is a masterclass in skill-transfer, beginning as an autism specialist before leveraging his background in psychology to eventually navigate the complex social and technical landscape of the video game industry. Justin shares...

In this episode, Alicia interviews Vera Futorjanski, the visionary behind Veritas Ventures and Beyond Global. Vera shares her fascinating, nonlinear trajectory, which began on the professional Argentine Tango stage. A life-altering accident forced her to find a new path, leading her to the London School of Economics, a career in the European Union, and eventually to the entrepreneurial landscape o...

In this episode, host Alicia Castillo Holley interviews Kartik Sathappan, the Founder and General Partner of Families Fund. Kartik shares his evolution from a small-town Ohio upbringing to becoming a patent-holding engineer at Apple. He recounts his "accidental" entry into venture capital, sparked by a curiosity for the business behind the tech he was building. The heart of the conversation focuse...

In this episode, host Alicia Castillo Holley sits down with Sandra Velasquez, the founder and CEO of Nopalera, a high-end beauty brand inspired by the Nopal cactus. Sandra reflects on her non-linear path, starting with her 15-year career as a professional musician. When the music industry's economics shifted, Sandra didn't retreat. Instead, she channeled her creative energy into the beauty space,...

In this episode of the Wealthing Podcast, Alicia Castillo Holley talks with Scott Wharton, CEO of Tandem PV, about his journey through the evolving landscapes of technology. From his early roles in internet infrastructure and video conferencing to his current leadership in perovskite-based solar panels, Scott shares the lessons learned from decades of high-stakes entrepreneurship. The conversation...

This week on the Wealthing Podcast, host Alicia Castillo Holley is joined by Lise Birikundavyi, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of BKR Capital, Canada's first institutional VC fund focused on Black founders. Lise shares her professional evolution from the hedge fund world to the forefront of impact investing, sparked by the inequities she witnessed in how capital is distributed globally. Lise prov...