A Seat at the Table

From interning at NASA and SpaceX while still a teenager to graduating early from high school and starting her company instead of going to college, Valkyrie Holmes knows what it means to take bold leaps. Now the CEO and co-founder of Faura, an insurtech startup that helps insurance companies and homeowners reduce their natural disaster risk, Valkyrie brings a rare mix of ambition, clarity, and hea...

Dr. Ewelina Kurtys is a Strategic Advisor at FinalSpark, a deeptech startup on a mission to build computers from living neurons . Yes, you read that right! Instead of silicon chips, they’re using living neurons and programming them in vitro (in the dish). And as science fiction as it sounds, they estimate this future is no more than 10 years away . With a PhD in Neuroscience and experience in busi...

In this episode, we sit down with Angelina Bintoudi, an electrical engineer and the co-founder of Optimems, a company helping scale microgrids. During this episode Angelina shares: ⚡ The importance of Microgrids (and how they can be used in space)  🌐 Why decentralization is a vital step towards decarbonization  🚀 What’s it’s like building and scaling a startup in Europe, from securing first sal...

In this episode we have the pleasure of being joined by Josefine Quack, an engineer at the Amsterdam-based Monumental, a company building brick-laying robots. It's exactly what it sounds like, and the robots are honestly futuristic to see in action. In this episode, Josefine shares her thoughts on building projects: pick the ones you don't feel ready for, and fun can be a valid reason! We...

Mona Ismail is the co-founder and CEO of Arca, a VC-backed startup helping people curate the internet to tailor it to their interests. In this episode, Mona shares how growing up as a Somali in Finland shaped her personality and perspective - specifically how the Finnish honesty combined with the Somali fearlessness helped her as a founder. 💪She also shares how Acra (very creatively) got their fi...

Kasia is the Founder of Mindquest Global and an experienced executive coach. Kasia has a background in digital innovation, having led various projects across global organizations. She transitioned into executive coaching and has since worked with leaders across Asia Pacific and North America. In this episode, we discuss strategies for leading a team and bringing out the best in people. Kasia share...

In this episode, we chatted with Iza Ding, an associate professor of Political Science at Northwestern University. Her research is focused on areas such as bureaucracy, the environment, climate change, and nationalism. She holds a Ph. D. in Government from Harvard University and a B.A. in Political Science and Russian and Eastern European Studies from the University of Michigan. She has conducted...

Jaiya is the cofounder of Tydra Labs, which is making the textile industry more sustainable by creating organic stretchy fibers as an alternative to petrol-containing Spandex. In this episode, Jaiya talks about her journey to founding Tydra Labs, and how she’s scaling it - including conducting customer interviews and crushing pitch competitions.  We also discuss why petrol-containing Spandex poses...

Thaleia Dimitra Doudali is an assistant research professor at the IMDEA Software Institute, where she researches computers and machine learning, focusing on resource management. She is also an executive member of Greek Women in STEM, where she’s helping create inclusion in academia. Thaleia’s notable distinctions include winning the Cesar Nombela grant and the Juan de la Cierva fellowship and bein...

Jill Pestana is a battery scientist, YouTuber, and consultant. She was previously the lead of the North American Battery team at Accenture, where she consulted on projects all across the battery supply chain - from raw materials, to recycling, to manufacturing. Jill has a YouTube channel, Across the Nanoverse, where she explains technical battery topics in a super easy-to-understand and engaging w...

In this episode we chat with Marisa Murray: an author, TedX speaker, and founder of the executive coaching company Leaderley. Leaderley is a company that advises companies and individuals to help them achieve their leadership development goals. Prior to starting Leaderley, Marisa worked at both Bell and Accenture, among other companies in the chemical engineering space! In this episode, Marisa des...

Aneta Londa is the founder and Chief Buzz-Creator of Moonshot Pirates, an organization which helps young people build solutions for the world’s biggest problems. They are empowering youth in over 150 countries to create a sustainable future! In this episode, we discuss how Aneta built Moonshot Pirates, and she shares stories of the people who went through the program. Aneta shares her view on impo...

Jess Takimoto is the founder of Shine Fit, a dance-based fitness studio in Toronto. Previously, she majored in Business at Queen’s University and taught fitness classes. There, she evolved her teaching style, and that eventually led to the founding of Shine! Jess is also a content creator and has a YouTube channel with an impressive 199 videos - discussing confidence, university, and of course, fi...

Nancy Dalakoura is a physics enthusiast, having participated and excelled in various national and international physics competitions. In 2022 her team placed first in the International Young Naturalists’ Tournament (IYNT), a competition of scientific debates and experiments. From there she went on to represent her country in the International Young Physicists' Tournament (IYPT), a prestigious...

Isabella Grandić is a 20-year-old innovator, researcher, traveler and so many more things that can't be put into words. She is passionate about using technology to scale standards of living and has worked on projects in maternal mortality, cellular agriculture, women’s health taboos, secondary education in a technological world, early childhood development, urban loneliness, and climate action...

65% of companies fail because of co-founder issues. This inspired Annie to found Confidante, which is a company that works with founding teams to prevent this. Even if you aren’t thinking about finding a co-founder right now, Annie’s principles can be applied to team formation in general. Having a good team dynamic can not only make the work way more enjoyable but can increase your probability of...

Christine Lerios  is a startup veteran with over two decades of experience running operations and marketing efforts for small businesses in the technology, finance, healthcare, and non-profit sectors. Her early career was centered around marketing, but since then, Christine has become a consultant, and mentor and embarked on many entrepreneurial adventures alongside her husband,  Toli Lerios  - in...

In our 10th episode, we spoke with Miranda Nover, a cell product developer at Tesla. What this means is that she’s working on product development on the 4680 cells, which are the ones that are in the Tesla EVs! Previously, Miranda studied Mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon, and was a research assistant working on generative AI. In this episode, we discussed first principles thinking: why it...

For the 9th episode of A Seat at the Table, we spoke with Mia Rath , the CTO and cofounder of Lumindt, an energy storage startup based in the heart of San Francisco . They are currently in their Seed stage, and they’re using hydrogen to help balance out the intermittency of renewables to empower the clean energy transition. In this conversation, we dove into the technicalities behind hydrogen as a...

In this episode, we sat down with Kristina Arriaga, a human rights advocator particularly interested in free speech, freedom of religion or belief, and international human rights for girls and women. The U.S. Congress appointed her to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in 2016, and during her 3-year tenure, she met with high ranking government officials to advocate for human ri...

Join us as we sit down with Danielle Strachman, a VC and founder! Danielle is on the founding team of the Thiel Fellowship, which is a two-year program that gives one hundred thousand dollar grants to young people wanting to skip or stop school to build new things. She is also the co-founder of the 1517 fund, a venture capitalist firm that backs dropouts, renegade students & sci-fi scientists...

Join us as we talk to Chandhana, a TKS alumnus who has explored a variety of fields ranging from bioplastics to BCIs. Chandhana is currently working on scaling her bioplastic (that costs less than one dollar!) but is also following her curiosity through university. Chandhana sheds light on how to decide what projects to work on, and the benefits of trying different things. She explains how the poi...

Noel is a Las Vegas based intrapreneur who worked at Zappos, and scaled a company they acquired,  6pm.com , to 1 billion dollars in revenue per year. Crazy, right?! She is also a past TKS director (just keeps getting better 🤩). Noel is now working on a software company called CodingScape. In this episode we discuss scaling , building brands by creating emotion, being an intrapreneur , and being o...

Helen is the head of school at Holy Trinity School (HTS), which is a K-12 independent school based in the Toronto area. As the head of school, Helen is focused on creating innovation in the school system , transforming it from the industrialized system that we see into a place that will empower young people to tackle the problems in our future world. In this episode, we talk about Helen’s view on...

Dr. Shini is a podcaster, youtuber, author, tedX speaker, and much more. She is sharing her knowledge and passion in STEM through various forms of media to make it accessible to others. Previously, she worked in Computational Fluid Dynamics during her doctorate in mechanical engineering. All her life, she has been working towards becoming an engineer, overcoming challenges such as stereotypes, mat...