Disruptive CEO Nation

At 24 years old, Jem Bourouh has spent the last four years launching and selling 7-8 figure eCommerce brands, with totals of more than $20 million in sales. After his massive success, he decided it was on to his next projects. He launched his marketing agency called Adcubator in 2018, which also acts as a VC and invests in smaller direct-to-consumer brands. Jem also has an education-focused entity...

Gillian O'Brien, Founder in Residence, Pilot, California, USA - Why companies can benefit from a Founder in Residence and why being loud about failure can lift up the startup community. At 27, Gillian has had more adventure in her career than others do in a lifetime.  Pilot serves over 1,000 customers who are founders and business leaders with their accounting, finance and accounting needs. Having...

Rabi is changing the way companies show their thoughtfulness in a way that captivates and engages customers and employees. His company, EvaBot, runs on AI-squared: The Artificial Intelligence to get deeply personal and he Actionable Intelligence to make better business decisions. In other words, it's the intelligence behind thoughtfulness. Rabi is a serial entrepreneur. Working alongside his curre...

Emily is an award-winning marketer and passionate entrepreneur who is empowering the next generation of work. She has reimagined the way projects are outsourced, creating the first agency marketplace for high-value, high-consideration transactions online. As Co-Founder of Breef, Emily uses innovative technology to empower brands and agencies to work better, together — improving productivity, busin...

Ziga is the co-founder of Flowout, an Unlimited Webflow design & development subscription service. From an early age, Ziga was always passionate about entrepreneurship. After discovering the power of coding, he joined one of the fastest-growing marketing agencies in Slovenia straight after college where his career kicked off. With acquired knowledge and network, he went ahead and started multiple...

Shriya Sekhsaria runs Lumhaa: The Memory Jar Company, which helps people create and save memories together in "memory jars" (online folders/albums). Lumhaa was founded based on her award-winning research from Princeton which showed that even 10 minutes with memory jars made people happy -- it's one of the first social media platforms (if not the only social media platform) that shows statistically...

Blima Ehrentreu is the Founder and CEO of The Designers Group, an interior design firm based in New York, Miami, and Toronto. As an MWBE (Minority/Women-Owned Business Enterprise) owner in the commercial real estate industry, she knew she had to build a brand that required acceptance and respect in such a male-dominated industry. Investing in the community and supporting women in the construction...

Vanessa Karel, is a second-time Founder, Serial Entrepreneur, Storyteller, and Creative Producer. She was recently named as one of the 100 rising Latinx Startup founders to watch through her work founding Greether; a travel startup that helps women travel safer. Vanessa is also currently leading Girls in Tech, San Francisco as their Manager Director. Born in the USA, raised in Mexico City. Growing...

Melissa Bauknight is a multi-passionate entrepreneur, adventurer, mother, wife, and a Business and Life Coach. As a collegiate athlete, she graduated magna cum laude with a BA in Finance and has since earned an applicable Ph. D. in Life. She garnered over 15 years of sales and business development experience in the corporate world working across 6 states and consistently performing in the top 10%...

Josh Fraser, the founder and CEO of Estated (based in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada). Estated’s open-source API provides easy and transparent access for clients from a wide range of industries to integrate and implement property data into their workflows to start generating insights into their customers within minutes of signing up to our intuitive platform. Each property record contains hundr...

Paulina Walkowiak is a co-founder & CEO of cux.io – the first-ever tool for UX Automation, a behavior, and user experience analysis application, currently operating in 102 countries. She's the only specialist training in behavior patterns analysis in CEE, who helps companies translate knowledge about users into specific business decisions. She supports enterprise-level organizations in data-driven...

Irete Hamdani is an entrepreneur and founder of askBelynda, a Google Chrome extension helping consumers reduce their carbon footprint by recommending sustainable products while they’re shopping online. She has a Computer Science MSc. with honors from Tel Aviv University and is an AWS Certified Associate Developer and Solution Architect. Irete uses her 25 years of tech experience to develop askBely...

When Christine Akselsen accepted her role as CEO of Kezzler, a leading product traceability technology provider, she set out to change the way that consumers and companies think about the global supply chain. It’s not just about getting an item to a buyer. It’s about ensuring that what they receive is safe, authentic, and produced sustainably. Fast forward to 2022: Amid a stagnant global supply ch...

 Martin Luenendonk is a 3x serial entrepreneur who founded the Finance Club (community of 1.6m finance professionals), Cleverism.com, and Founderjar.com. He loves to share his learnings about business model generation, entrepreneurship, and digital marketing. A product of his generation, Martin thrives in the world of digital communication, which is why marketing is his natural calling. Always spr...

 Richard White is founder and CEO of Fathom. Video, a free app that records, transcribes & highlights your calls so you can focus on the conversation instead of taking notes.  Fathom was a part of the Y-Combinator W21 batch, is one of only 50 Zoom App Launch Partners, and is one of a small handful of companies Zoom has invested in directly via their Zoom Apps Fund. Prior to Fathom, Richard founded...

Ben is the CEO of Message Lab, award winning storyteller, he’s showing businesses and content entrepreneurs how to use data to tell stories and build audiences that produce business growth results. He’s sharing how to overcome the cultural and organizational obstacles to doing content marketing well. Message Lab combines journalism, data and design to create content that resonates with the people...

Andy has been in sales for over four decades. His first sales job was selling women’s shoes at JC Penney. In his professional career Andy has sold everything from computers to small businesses to complex communications systems that sold for tens of millions of dollars to some of the world’s largest enterprises. Andy closed hundreds of millions of dollars in products and services before starting hi...

An entrepreneur and thought leader in geospatial analytics and climate tech, Josh Gilbert is Co-Founder and CEO at Sust Global. He has spoken on these topics at events such as COP26 in Glasgow, and has helped Fortune 500 companies, NGOs and the UK Government to integrate cutting edge climate technologies. Sust Global’s mission is to democratize access to satellite-validated climate data, and Josh...

Show Notes Disruptive CEO Nation Podcast with Allison K. Summers Episode 145 Kate Westad, Founder, Palette by Pak Kate Westad is the inventor and founder of Palette by pak, a refillable, reusable, sustainable beauty system.  While packing for a trip after a long day at the office, she realized that there had to be a better way to bring, store, and reuse the many goops, glops & glam™️ she was takin...

Show Notes  Disruptive CEO Nation Podcast with Allison K. Summers Episode 144 Nicky Senyard, Founder/CEO, Fintel Connect, Vancouver, Canada Nicky Senyard’s two core beliefs are contribution and growth. Throughout Nicky’s career, these focuses have allowed her to achieve both commercial success and to create a business culture that fosters collaboration and personal achievement. Not only has she ha...

Show Notes  Disruptive CEO Nation Podcast with Allison K. Summers Episode 143 Ashif Mawji, Managing Director, Scale Good Fund, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Ashif Mawji is a serial entrepreneur, philanthropist, venture capitalist, mentor, and community builder. Ashif moved to Canada in 1987 and his parents instilled in him the idea that one can have anything they want in life, but to get there you mus...

Show Notes  Disruptive CEO Nation Podcast with Allison K. Summers Episode 142 Eddy Badrina, CEO, Eden Green Technology, Texas, USA Vertical farming is not a new idea. However, Eddy Badrina, CEO of Eden Green Technology is taking a novel approach that takes all the efficiencies of a greenhouse and adds the density of vertical farming that no other company does to provide produce that is affordable,...

Show Notes  Disruptive CEO Nation Podcast with Allison K. Summers Episode 141 Jason Ash, CEO, Young Planet, UK Jason Ash is the CEO of a circular-economy app called Young Planet. The app encourages families to adopt a circular method of the giving and receiving used items. The app is free at the point of use and allows parents to upcycle unwanted clothes, toys, and other items. The app is a tech t...

Show Notes  Disruptive CEO Nation Podcast with Allison K. Summers Episode 140 Bob Miles, Co-Founder, Salad Technologies, Salt Lake City, Utah Leaving his home in Australia, Bob Miles became the Co-Founder of Salad Technologies based in Salt Lake City, Utah. The company’s mission is to build the foundational layer of computational resources (PC power) for Web 3.0. To start the effort, Bob enlisted...

Show Notes  Disruptive CEO Nation Podcast with Allison K. Summers Episode 139 Ron Rudzin, President and CEO Saatva, Texas and New York Sometimes disruption can lead to a chaotic marketplace and the mattress industry has been one of those places. In 2010, the mattress industry had less than 1% of annual sales online. Today, online sales in the US make up 21% of all mattress sales. However, the numb...