20MinuteLeaders

Fernando Dominguez Pinuaga shares his journey from energy systems to Google X, where he learned to think in true moonshot scale before joining SandboxAQ. At the crossroads of AI and quantum physics, he leads initiatives that are redefining cybersecurity and scientific computing. He explains how adversaries are already stealing encrypted information today through store-now, decrypt-later attacks —...

Lauren Freund has spent the last few years inside her dream company, leading social media and influencer marketing at Canva. She describes why traditional influencer playbooks—optimizing for follower counts and reach—are increasingly outdated, and why she now screens creators for deep engagement, relevance, and the ability to truly carry Canva’s message. For her, the messenger is as important as t...

Coming from years of manual social monitoring in marketing roles, Anya Law saw how expensive and ineffective traditional social listening was for startups. Meeting her co-founder at Atlanta Tech Village, she joined PitchGhost to transform a simple Twitter scraper into a full prompt-based, actionable social listening platform. The team discovered their ICP through trial and error—moving from solo f...

Growing up in Wisconsin’s drinking culture, Daniel Adix launched LiQure to help people “feel good the next day.” After discovering DHM and developing a gummy-based recovery supplement, he navigated taste issues, manufacturing resets, FDA compliance, and the realities of CPG distribution. Rather than chasing ads, he built LiQure through festivals, bars, and targeted retail—landing Foxtrot Chicago a...

Matan Kadim’s path into fitness began with a personal struggle and grew into a career of coaching and international learning. He argues that real change comes not from short-term resolutions but from identity-level shifts: who you see yourself as . Training, he explains, is not just against comfort zones but against evolutionary programming for ease and safety. By reframing workouts as daily battl...

Neta Bresler’s journey began with a childhood magic kit and evolved into a 1,500-student academy and global recognition as a top mentalist. Today, he reframes mentalism as “mind art”—a discipline that maps human blind spots and leverages them to teach, not just entertain. With stories like the “magic wand” blind spot and his red-to-purple team analogy, Neta explains how illusions translate into en...

By Michael Matias, CEO of Clarity and Forbes 30 Under 30 alumCybersecurity has entered a new domain—literally. As Eyal Balicer put it in our recent conversation: “Cyberspace is now the fifth domain of warfare.” But in this domain, the battleground isn’t just code. It’s control. Eyal brings a rare vantage point to the AI-cyber nexus—he’s held senior cybersecurity roles in the Israeli government, Fo...

By Michael Matias, CEO of Clarity and Forbes 30 Under 30 alum The intersection of Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) and artificial intelligence (AI) marks one of today’s most significant business transformations. In my recent conversation with Yair Kuznitsov, an expert in AI and GRC, it became clear that GRC’s role within enterprises has fundamentally shifted, driven by rapid AI adoption. Kuz...

By Michael Matias, CEO of Clarity and Forbes 30 Under 30 alumWe’re not easing into the AI era—we’ve been thrown into it. That’s how Ron Peled, founder of Sola and former CISO at LivePerson, described the current moment: “The Big Bang already happened. Now we’re just trying to contain the blast.”Ron’s clarity around AI’s impact on cybersecurity is jarring—and refreshing. He doesn’t talk about threa...

In the age of AI agents, cybersecurity is shifting from focusing on identity to addressing agency . Autonomous agents, which act and reason like humans but operate at machine speed, are being created on the fly. Traditional identity management tools—like user directories and group policies—are ill-equipped to handle these ephemeral, unpredictable entities that can take action and disappear before...

By Michael Matias, CEO of Clarity and Forbes 30 Under 30 alum For decades, cybersecurity vendors have armed defenders with dashboards filled with red alerts. But they rarely delivered solutions. As Tsion (TJ) Gonen put it in our recent conversation: “97% of tools just showed you a red screen that said, basically, ‘you suck.’” No remediation. No action. Just fatigue. That paradigm is ending—and AI...

Shirin Anlen traces her path from interactive storytelling to safeguarding human‑rights evidence at WITNESS. She explains how today’s scale, personalization, and ease of manipulation fuel “reality apathy,” empowering leaders to dismiss inconvenient truths as “AI.” Beyond any single tool, she argues for equitable standards, privacy‑aware provenance, usable detection, and media literacy that fits re...

With decades in cybersecurity, Benjamin Corll has seen threat landscapes evolve from simple antivirus battles to AI-driven social engineering. For Corll, every breach traces back to people—both as the strongest defense and the weakest link. In this conversation, he unpacks the persistence of ransomware and business email compromise, the rise of AI-assisted fraud, and why criminals increasingly “lo...

From disappearing people in videos in the late 1990s to shaping AI and vision systems at Intel, Tal Hassner, Chief Scientist for Computer Vision, has watched synthetic media evolve from lab curiosities to global challenges. In this conversation, he dismantles the idea that “is it fake?” is the central question for security. Instead, he lays out a three-pillar approach—provenance, attribution, and...

From phishing tests to AI-driven impersonation scams, Joshua Scarpino has seen firsthand how the human element remains the most critical factor in cybersecurity. Drawing on his experience across organizations from NIST to Trust Engine, he explains why technology alone can’t safeguard an enterprise. Instead, effective defense comes from a culture where security is personal—linked to daily habits an...

How do you protect an organization when every link in the chain can—and will—fail? Ira Winkler, NSA veteran and author of You Can Stop Stupid , unpacks why human error isn’t the root of security breaches—it’s the visible tip of deeper systemic gaps. From smashing the myth of awareness-as-strategy to advocating for consequence-driven behavior change, Ira brings sharp wit and decades of hands-on ins...

What happens when your “meatspace” identity can no longer keep up with your digital life? Daniel Flowe, Head of Digital Identity at the London Stock Exchange Group, takes us inside the tectonic shift reshaping how we verify who we are online. From the flaws of content-based systems to the promise—and risks—of government-issued e-IDs, he unpacks what equitable, secure, and scalable identity should...

Beni Beeri Issembert’s journey from aspiring philosopher to Head of AI Research and Ethics at Metaphysic is anything but linear. With a deep reverence for Nietzsche and an early curiosity about ethics in technology—long before it became a buzzword—Beni brings a rare perspective to synthetic media and AI. In this thought-provoking conversation, he explores how deepfakes challenge our sense of truth...

Years before deepfakes hit the mainstream, Akis Papadopoulos was already sounding the alarm. From early GAN breakthroughs to today’s ultra-realistic, low-res media threats, he’s led research at the intersection of AI, media forensics, and public trust. In this episode, he explores why detection alone isn’t enough—and how explainability, user experience, and civic responsibility must shape our resp...

Ilke Demir’s journey from computational geometry to combating deepfakes began with a question: what makes something truly human? At Intel’s Trusted Media team, she developed FakeCatcher, a tool that detects deepfakes using biological signals like heart rate. In this episode, she unpacks the technical, ethical, and social layers of media trust, explaining why provenance and human perception matter...

John shares his journey into deepfake detection, exploring the challenge of making AI explainable and trustworthy for users like journalists and law enforcement. He dives into the complexities of interpreting AI results, the limits of current tools, and why human insight remains vital. His work bridges cutting-edge technology with real-world understanding to help navigate evolving digital threats...

Shuky Peleg reflects on decades in cybersecurity, from mainframes to AI-driven threats. He explains why employees shouldn’t be the last defense line and explores evolving social engineering tactics. Shuky highlights the growing role of automation, risk scoring, and the need for continuous vigilance in a rapidly changing threat landscape.

Assi Ungar shares how a career that began with WordPerfect support evolved into leading global cybersecurity at scale. He reflects on why trusting nothing is now a safety measure, why process beats panic, and how empathy—not fear—is the CISO’s strongest tool. He also explores AI’s double-edged role in modern security and why protecting personal spaces is now just as vital as enterprise systems.

Fraud‑investigator‑turned‑entrepreneur Ori Eisen revives the 1990s “nobody knows you’re a dog” cartoon to show how today’s Gen‑AI deepfakes make that joke a board‑level risk. Tracing his path from inventing device‑fingerprinting to launching insured, passwordless logins, he argues identity—not credentials—is the internet’s final perimeter, urging enterprises to gauge every transaction by human‑lev...

MD‑turned‑neuroscientist Nima Schei shares how modeling the brain’s limbic system led him from crab‑neuron labs to Guacamole ID—lightweight, continuous desktop authentication—while devising guardrails against deepfakes and MFA fatigue. His bio‑inspired algorithms suggest emotional intelligence in machines can raise trust, cut compute, and free teams in fast‑moving enterprises.