Leman Tech Leadership Podcast

▶︎ #176 | From PhD to Director: What Academia Never Teaches You About Leading People w/ Quentin Reul (Director of AI Strategy @Expeto AI) In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Alex welcomes Quentin Reul: Director of AI Strategy and Solutions at Expeto AI, a Belgian-born computer scientist whose one-year English adventure in the UK quietly turned into a decade - a PhD in symbolic AI...

▶︎ #175 | Tech Leadership Q&A: Why Does the Same Feedback Land for One Person and Wreck Another? In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, host Aleksandra Lemańska continues her Q&A series by tackling two questions that go hand in hand: "Why does the same piece of feedback land fine with one person and wreck another?" and "Is it normal to dread one-on-ones with certain peo...

▶︎ #174 | A-Players, Task Monkeys, and the AI Reckoning w/ Francis Brero (VP AI Strategy @HG Insights) In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Alex welcomes Francis Brero: VP of AI Strategy at HG Insights and Co-Founder of MadKudu, a French-born engineer who swapped the grandes ecoles of Paris for Silicon Valley and has spent 15 years building AI-powered systems for some of the world...

▶︎ #173 | Tech Leadership Q&A: How Do I Get My Team to Just Do Their Job Without Checking on Them Constantly? In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, host Aleksandra Lemańska continues her Q&A series with one of the most common struggles tech leaders bring to her: "How do I get this person to do their job without checking on them constantly - and how do I trust that it w...

▶︎ #172 | What Silicon Valley Taught a Tech Analyst About Marketing, Authority, and Never Burning Bridges w/ Mark Vena, @ex-Dell Technologies,  @SmartTech Research In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra sits down with Mark Vena, CEO and Principal Analyst at SmartTech Research, a boutique technology research firm he founded after 25 years of senior marketing and leadership...

▶︎ #171 | Tech Leadership Q&A: Am I Actually Good at This… or Did I Just Get Lucky? In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, host Aleksandra Lemańska kicks off a new Q&A series, where she answers the questions tech leaders keep asking her in workshops, keynotes, and one-on-one conversations - the questions that often go unspoken. Today she tackles two that show up constan...

▶︎ #170 | From Startup Garage to Microsoft MVP: How Continuous Learning Builds Unbreakable Tech Leaders w/ Amit Chandak, @ex-Oracle, @Kinerika In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra sits down with Amit Chandak, CTO and Data & AI Lead at Kinerika, a Microsoft Fabric Featured Partner operating at the forefront of cloud data engineering. Amit's career spans three distinc...

▶︎ #169 | I Wrote a Book: "From Code to People"! In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemanska makes an official announcement she has been building toward for over a decade: her first book, "From Code to People: The CQ Leadership Method That Transforms Technical Experts into Leaders Teams Actually Want to Work For", is done. The premiere is July 30th, 2026 - and th...

▶︎ #168 | From Chaos to Clarity: Change Management, Strategic Simplicity, and the Networking Muscle You Never Built w/ Iryna Lambrianides @ClarityPoint Consulting In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Alex welcomes Iryna Lambrianides: fractional strategic advisor, COO, and Chief of Staff, and Founder of ClarityPoint Consulting. Iryna's career story is one of radical reinvention: ar...

▶︎ #167 | Your Best Engineer Is Your Biggest Leadership Problem - Now What? In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemanska addresses one of the most uncomfortable dilemmas tech leaders face over and over again: what to do when your technically brilliant engineer is also destroying the team around them. The problem is painfully familiar. Their output looks great on p...

▶︎ #166 | Staff Engineering in the Age of AI: How Engineering Teams, Roles, and Expectations Are Being Redefined w/ Jordan Cutler @Pinterest In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Alex welcomes Jordan Cutler: Staff Engineer at Pinterest, where he leads web platform initiatives supporting over 200 engineers. Jordan's career moved from junior to senior in just two years at Gusto, then...

#165 | The Promotion Nobody Prepared Them For In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemanska takes on a transition that happens constantly in tech - and almost always without the support it actually requires: promoting your best engineer to team lead, tech lead, or principal engineer. The pattern is familiar. Six months after the promotion, the engineer is frustrate...

▶︎ #164 | From Five Failed Products to 100-Person Company: Delegation, Detachment, and the Real Root of Burnout in Tech w/ Prashanth Tondapu  (ex-@McAfee, @Innostax Tech LLC) In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Alex welcomes Prashanth Tondapu: CEO of InnoStacks Tech LLC, a 100-person software services company with active R&D in LLM products. Prashanth's story is one many tech...

#163 | “I Know I Should Say No. So Why Can't I?” In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemańska takes on one of the most persistent gaps between what tech leaders know and what they actually do: saying no. Almost every leader Alex works with already knows, intellectually, that they should say no more often. They've read about it. They've advised their own team to do...

▶︎ #162 | VP of Engineering on Leading Without Drowning: Neuroscience, Boundaries, and the Skills Tech Never Tells You to Build w/ Greg Jaworek (ex-Cisco, ex-ABB) In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Alex sits down with Grzegorz (Greg) Jaworek - VP of Engineering with nearly 20 years of experience spanning software development, agile transformation, corporate organisations, and st...

#161 | “Nobody Prepared Me for How Lonely This Job Would Be.” In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemańska opens with a sentence she heard in a mentoring session: one that the person saying it had never said out loud before. "Nobody prepared me for how lonely this job would be." And she gives it the space it deserves. Leadership loneliness in tech is not social is...

▶︎ #160 | A Serial Founder’s Story: What It Really Takes to Build, Fail, and Scale in the AI Era w/ Łukasz Łażewski @LLInformatics In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Alex sits down with Łukasz Łażewski,  CEO of LLInformatics and one of the most experienced serial Founders in the Polish and European tech ecosystem. Łukasz's career reads like a masterclass in reinvention: from a s...

▶︎ #159 | “I Feel Like a Fraud - And I'm the One Running the Team.” In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemańska names something that a significant number of tech leaders carry in silence: the feeling that they're making it up as they go, that their success belongs to luck or timing, and that sooner or later, someone in the room will figure it out. That feeling is...

▶︎ #158 | From Teenage Entrepreneur to the CTO: Building Teams That Win in the AI Era w/ Ben Wilcox @ProArch In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Alex welcomes Ben Wilcox: a CTO and CISO of ProArch, for a wide-ranging conversation about what it actually takes to lead technology teams in the age of AI. Ben's story is anything but conventional: he started monetising the internet as...

▶︎ #157 | Your Team Is Already Having the Hard Conversation. Just Without You. In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemańska addresses the conversation that most tech leaders know they need to have and keep finding reasons not to. Maybe it's about what AI means for certain roles. Maybe it's about team dynamics that quietly fractured in Q1. Maybe it's about the ambi...

▶︎ #156 | Lead by Example or Lose the Best: What A-Players Actually Need From Their Leaders w/ Svante Horn @Scandinavian Data Centers Join your host, Aleksandra Lemańska, for a refreshingly candid episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast as she sits down with Svante Horn, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Scandinavian Data Centers — a company on a mission to become the energy node, data node, and heat...

▶︎ #155 | The Burnout Nobody Talks About: What Happens When You, the Leader, Are Running on Empty In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemańska turns the burnout conversation inward: toward the person who is most often the last to receive support, the last to admit they're struggling, and the first to keep showing up with a plan. The leaders themselves. Alex opens...

▶︎ #154 | Focus Is a Superpower: What 30 Years of Building Teaches Us About Tech Leadership w/ Sarah Biller @FinTech Sandbox Join your host, Aleksandra Lemańska, for a powerful episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast as she sits down with Sarah Biller, Co-Founder of FinTech Sandbox — a global not-for-profit operating across five continents that provides free access to high-quality data for fi...

▶︎ #153 | Q2 Kickoff Done. So Why Isn't Anyone Moving? In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemańska tackles one of the most quietly frustrating moments in a tech leader's calendar: you've done the kickoff, shared the roadmap, set the goals, and the team still isn't moving. No one is refusing. But the energy is flat, some people are waiting for more clarity, others...

▶︎ #152 | Stop Fixing, Start Leveraging: A Leader's Guide to Neurodiversity at Work w/ Kari Goldyn @woopa pro Join your host, Aleksandra Lemańska, for an eye-opening episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast as she sits down with Kari Goldyn, neurodiversity in the workplace expert and Co-Founder of woopa — an organization dedicated to helping organizations unlock the full potential of neurodive...