The Digital Executive

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with David Cash, founder of CASH Labs, to explore the rapid evolution of Web3, NFTs, the metaverse, and emerging technology. David shares how the pandemic led him from entertainment and media into the world of NFTs, where his viral master’s thesis became the foundation for a career helping brands understand and apply eme...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Max Anderson, owner and CEO of OnlyFinder, to pull back the curtain on the surprisingly sophisticated data and search infrastructure powering creator discovery in one of the internet's fastest-growing economies. Max opens with an origin story rooted in SEO mastery — years of spending venture capital money at Porch f...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Vikul Gupta, CTO of Quality AI, to explore how AI is transforming quality engineering and why trust will be critical to moving AI from pilot projects into production. Vikul shares his journey from DevOps and engineering into AI-powered quality, explaining how AI can prevent defects, identify root causes, and uncover...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Jesse Tayler, the Silicon Valley pioneer who invented the world's first App Store and personally demoed it to Steve Jobs in 1993, to explore why the man who helped build the modern internet is now dedicating the final chapter of his career to fighting the dangers it created. Jesse opens with the remarkable story of...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Daniel Ishag, Chief Commercial Officer at Bakkt, to explore why the financial infrastructure the world runs on was never designed for the speed, availability, or autonomy that the agentic AI era demands — and what it takes to build the layer that bridges the two. Daniel opens with a career defined by solving old pro...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, Brian Thomas sits down with Mike Lucas, co-founder of North Performance, to explore the growing world of performance longevity. Mike shares how decades of surfing, snowboarding, injuries, and recovery led him to build a science-backed wellness brand designed to help active people perform at their best for longer. He discusses simplifying daily supp...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Mike Link, Chief Operating Officer at KamiVision, to explore how computer vision and AI are quietly transforming the way seniors are protected — not just in care facilities, but at home. Mike opens with a career path that wound through real estate, preventative health work in India, and go-to-market consulting befor...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Jason Hishmeh, co-founder of Variance and Aequit, to explore what it actually looks like to deploy AI inside a business responsibly — with security and compliance built in from the start rather than added as an afterthought. Jason opens with an origin story that begins in a corporate accounting department where nobo...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Luis Derechin, founder and CEO of Nir-Yu and author of The Offshore Team Death Trap, to break down why international hiring fails so consistently — and what it actually takes to get it right. Luis opens with the origin story: a young entrepreneur who raised venture capital for Mexico's first US-funded tech startup,...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Vanessa Slowey, President and CEO of TelyRx, to explore what happens when a lifetime of lessons about access, infrastructure, and trust finally converge in one mission. Vanessa opens with a story that begins above a small-town pharmacy in Sligo, Ireland, where her father's philosophy was simple: if someone needs med...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Justin and Travis Maderia, fourth-generation lobstermen and co-founders of Lobster Boys, for a conversation about resilience, integrity, and what it actually takes to fight a broken food system from the bottom up. Justin opens with a story that is equal parts loss and determination — watching his family's fishery co...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Tatiana Aleksandrova, co-founder and CEO of Subsense, to explore one of the most ambitious bets in deep tech — a non-surgical brain-computer interface that could eventually allow humans to communicate directly with AI, each other, and the digital world using nothing but thought. Tatiana opens by explaining why she f...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Jerry Zhang, co-founder of Lemma, to explore one of the most underappreciated problems in enterprise AI deployment — agents that appear to work but silently degrade the moment they hit real-world production. Jerry opens with the founding story: two college friends who met as freshmen at USC's startup incubator, went...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Shenbo Xu, MIT PhD and co-founder of Kapnova, to make a distinction that most business leaders have heard but rarely internalized — and that costs companies millions when they get it wrong. Shenbo opens by tracing his path from MIT's AI lab through quantitative research at Point72 and foundational model training at...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Katrina Purcell, growth operations consultant and former chief of staff, to explore the messy, often overlooked work that actually makes scaling companies succeed. Katrina opens with a career that wound through media, project management, and an executive MBA before landing her in the chief of staff role at IAS — whe...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Adam J. Schwartz, founder and CEO of DocumentReview.law, to explore what happens when a practicing attorney gets frustrated enough with existing tools to teach himself JavaScript and build a better one. Adam opens with the breaking point that sparked everything: a case with a few hundred documents where every existi...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Aidan McCarty, co-founder and co-CEO of Verified, to make the case that the way we prove who we are on the internet is about to look as dated as the fax machine — and that a phone number is the identity primitive that survives what comes next. Aidan opens with the Stripe analogy at the heart of Verified's thesis: St...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Jen Grogono, founder and CEO of uStudio, to explore why the future of enterprise training and internal communications looks a lot more like Spotify than a company intranet. Jen opens with the founding story of ON Networks in 2006, where the challenge of syndicating original content across a hundred different endpoin...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Kevin Pickhardt, Executive Chairman of Pharos Systems International, to make the case that one of the most overlooked vulnerabilities in enterprise IT is sitting right there in the corner of every office floor — the printer. Kevin opens with a career that began at Xerox forty years ago and traces the surprisingly co...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Shannon Flanagan, founder and CEO of Retail Women in Tech, to make a case that the most important thing missing from most AI transformation efforts isn't better technology — it's the right people in the room. Shannon opens with a career that started at 18 folding jeans and evolved through merchandising, consulting a...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Allen Dine, Chief Business Officer at Care2You, to explore what it actually takes to deliver emergency and hospital-level care inside someone's home — and how AI is making that possible at scale across one of the most complex urban environments in the world. Allen opens by tracing a career defined by a refusal to wa...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Furkat Kasimov, London-based entrepreneur, angel investor, and author, to explore what it takes to build and invest wisely in the AI era — before the crowd figures it out. Furkat opens with a origin story that predates the current AI boom by a decade, tracing his first investment to an InsureTech conference where he...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Edwin Miranda, founder of Konsultora, to explore what it actually means to build an organization for the AI era — not just one with more tools, but one with less distance between a signal, a decision, and an action. Edwin opens by tracing the common thread across his career in advertising, political strategy, and cu...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Antonio Mallia, founder and CEO of Seltz.ai, to explore one of the most overlooked infrastructure questions in the AI era: what happens to web search when the user is no longer a human? Antonio opens with a career that runs from the University of Pisa's information retrieval tradition through a PhD at NYU to researc...

In this episode of The Digital Executive Podcast, host Brian Thomas sits down with Harvey Liu, CEO of LevX Exchange, to explore what happens when traders stop using exchanges and start building their own. Harvey opens with his origin story — one of the first Bitcoin investors in China in 2013, conducting due diligence on early exchanges like Huobi and OKCoin from a VC firm at a time when blockchai...