Mission Possible Podcast

Season two of Mission Possible closes with Priya Dalwadi, B/CORE's CFO and a finance leader who refuses to be the calculator. Priya grew up watching her father build a CPA practice now in its forty-fourth year, with clients still flying across the country to see him. The inheritance shaped her belief in finance as a human discipline. She brought it with her to GW, into Lockheed Martin's...

Senior technologist Jake Huffman grew up in a North Carolina county with one stoplight, got rejected from architecture school, and fell into engineering because someone told him he wasn't an artist. A sophomore materials science class changed his direction. A steel plant nearly scared him out of metallurgy. A Coast Guard repair center gave him helicopter parts to build with no experience. And...

Troy Scoran is a technologist at B/CORE who built his career by raising his hand before anyone asked. He grew up in a western Pennsylvania town of two thousand people and three stoplights, got recruited off LinkedIn, and moved to Tysons Corner to join a fifteen-person startup with one condition: don't box me in. Chad and Zil brought Troy on to talk about what it looks like to build a career t...

Sarika Lamont is the Chief People Officer at a B2B technology company and a former GovCon talent leader. She built an integrated talent management framework from scratch, pitched it to two different CEOs, and now leads AI transformation from the people side of the house. Chad and Zil brought Sarika on to talk about what happens when organizations refuse to change how they develop people. The conve...

Courtney Kelly is the Chief Strategy Officer at C Speed. She grew up in a small Massachusetts town, trained in ballet for 15 years, studied history, and planned on law school. When that path closed, she landed in aerospace and defense consulting doing competitive intelligence and price-to-win work. From there she moved into Raytheon's strategy group and later KPMG, where she built a core phil...

Adam Chin is a cloud and software engineer who calls himself a "chaos domino pusher" and a "safe extrovert," someone energized in trusted spaces but drained when masking. He traces how moving often as a kid built his ability to connect quickly, read rooms, and use shared context to build relationships. That same approach led to meeting his wife at a concert. Adam credits early...

Sue Gordon served as Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence and spent a long career at the CIA, rising to senior positions across all four Agency directorates. In this conversation, Sue shares the framework that guided her through an unconventional career path. She started as a zoology major doing Soviet missile analysis. She was moved off prestigious assignments she loved. Each setbac...

In this episode, Chad Kim and Zil Vyas kick off the second season of their podcast with a discussion on the importance of human connections, staying curious, and learning from each other in a rapidly changing tech landscape. They reflect on the challenges and growth from their first season and share their personal goals for 2026. Topics include the importance of humility, the balance between work...

Episode Description In this season one finale, I sit down with Lee Garber , our General Partner at NewSpring Capital , to get under the hood of calculated bets and strategic decision-making. Lee takes us through his fascinating journey from being "the guy behind the guy" - starting as a newspaper-selling kid who became his fraternity treasurer - to becoming a seasoned private equity prof...

In this powerful episode, I sit down with Rebekah Lovorn , Executive Director of No Greater Sacrifice , to explore what it truly means to lead with purpose beyond self. Rebekah's journey is remarkable—from serving in the White House during 9/11 to volunteering for a dangerous deployment to Iraq in 2006, where she discovered her calling to serve Gold Star and wounded warrior families. For 15 y...

Episode Description What happens when someone decides to pursue medicine, engineering, and business simultaneously while raising three kids? Joseph Stefano is living proof that with the right mindset and systems, you can excel across multiple demanding fields without burning out. In this episode of Mission Possible, Joseph breaks down his approach to managing 16-18 hour workdays while maintaining...

Episode Description In this episode of the Mission Possible Podcast, I sit down with Bob Sharp , former Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency , to explore his unconventional path from aspiring lawyer to admiral. Bob's candid storytelling reveals how he navigated massive organizational complexity—from leading 15,000+ person organizations through crisis to building coalition s...

Episode Description In this deeply personal episode of Mission Possible, I sit down with John Quick , a team member who demonstrates that true leadership emerges in life's most challenging moments. John courageously shares his cancer journey—from an unexpected diagnosis during COVID lockdown to navigating complex treatment decisions and ultimately discovering what matters most. This isn'...

Episode Description I sit down with Tyler Laverick to explore the entrepreneurial mindset that drives real business success. Tyler takes us back to his childhood - from selling trading cards and homemade necklaces door-to-door to watching his grandfather run a Ford dealership in small-town America. These early experiences shaped his understanding that business is fundamentally about trust, loyalty...

Episode Description In this episode of the Mission Possible Podcast, I sit down with Vinita Fordham , a technology leader who's mastered the art of driving transformational change from within some of the most complex organizations in the intelligence community. Vinita takes us through her fascinating journey from a childhood fascination with silicon chips and radio building to becoming a staf...

Episode Description: What separates software engineers who merely code from those who drive transformational mission outcomes? Chad sits down with veteran engineers Zil Vyas and Jason Herschcopf to explore the leadership principles that elevate technical teams from functional to exceptional. This conversation goes beyond typical tech talk to examine the human side of software engineering. Zil and...