PreVetted Podcast

Ali Wing is the CEO of Oobli, a biotech-powered food company using sweet proteins found in nature to deliver sweetness with far less sugar. In this conversation, Ali explains how certain plant proteins—discovered by scientists and traditionally eaten in regions near the equator—can briefly bind to our sweet taste receptors, telling the brain “we got sugar,” even though they’re proteins, not carboh...

Joe Sanchez is the CEO and founder of 1826, a tour and event production company born in London and now based in Los Angeles. In this conversation, Joe shares the unlikely, very human story of how a music fan became one of the most trusted operators in global touring and experiential events. Joe traces it back to his first concert: Queen at Wembley in 1986. A few years later, at 19, a lucky run-in...

Dr. Sophora Acheson joins to explain her mission as a therapist and nonprofit executive leading Restorative Pathways / Ruby’s Place. She describes her work as “the business of connection,” running a continuum of care across multiple facilities—supporting people in crisis from domestic violence, trafficking, homelessness, and long-term trauma recovery. Sophora shares her personal story as a survivo...

Matthew Fornaro shares how he became a business law attorney, starting with childhood curiosity sparked by The People’s Court, and why the real practice of law was a major learning curve after law school. Matthew explains why business law often lives in the “gray,” how juries and human judgment can create unexpected outcomes, and why appeals exist to help the system correct itself over time. He wa...

Dan Perera explains what JX does in simple terms: they help organizations—from small businesses to large enterprises—solve real operational problems using technology, including workflow automation, dashboards, custom software (ERP/CRM/SaaS), AI integrations, and even blockchain solutions when it fits. Dan emphasizes that every system and process ultimately comes back to people, so JX starts by und...

Ninh Tran joins the PreVetted Podcast to share his journey from Vietnam to the Czech Republic, and later to the United States—each move opening new doors and reshaping how he thinks about opportunity, work, and impact. He talks honestly about growing up as one of the only Asian kids in his class, facing discrimination, and eventually building deep friendships that still last today. Ninh explains h...

Manisha Sahni joins to unpack the real challenges of managing global engineering teams—beyond time zones and into the “hidden work” of leadership. Manisha explains why distributed teams don’t run on autopilot: leaders must intentionally build unity, ownership, and belonging across cultures. She shares how trust is created through consistent connection—not only through work meetings, but also throu...

Charlene Li joins Federico Ramallo for a special 100th-episode conversation on disruptive leadership, business transformation, and her upcoming book Winning with AI. Charlene shares how she “fell into” being an analyst and author—starting at Forrester in 1999 after stepping back from running businesses to focus on family—then building a career at the front edge of major tech disruptions: the inter...

John Klymshyn & Isaac Naor join Federico Ramallo for a special episode: three voices, three lessons, and three stories inspired by Open the Valve, the third installment in the “Intersections That Illuminate” series. They unpack how creativity shows up at key intersections—like rest and risk, language and music, and brain and mind—and why this book is meant as encouragement for creative practit...

Michael Green explains why he co-founded Athena Security and how a real, heartbreaking incident in 2023 reinforced the urgency of their mission: saving lives by detecting and denying weapons—and sometimes dangerous people—before they enter facilities. He shares how targeted violence can slip through gaps in coverage and how that reality pushed his team to deploy faster and more widely. Federico an...

John Karsant shares the unexpected path that took him from college tennis and coaching to sales, remote work, and ultimately founding LevelUp Leads in 2021. John explains how a bold life move—quitting coaching and moving to Argentina to learn Spanish—pushed him to find one of the rare remote roles available in 2015, where he became the first SDR at a small startup and learned sales by wearing mult...

Swati Swoboda traces her path from an eighth-grade research project on a library computer to leading development for Vault in Shopify’s Office of the CEO—work she calls “metaprogramming the company.” In this conversation, Swati and Federico dive into the arc of modern engineering: from Classic ASP and hand-editing production files to Rails’ elegant conventions, from code reviews to reading far mor...

Shreya Hegde: Senior Product Manager–Technical at Amazon, traces her path from software engineering in India to healthcare startups and finally Big Tech—showing how her craft evolved from “shipping more features” to designing resilient systems that deliver real outcomes. She explains the spark that drew her to product: realizing that technology quietly shapes how people live and work. Early on, sh...

David Esposito traces how West Point, the 101st Airborne, and leading soldiers in high-stakes environments shaped his approach to listening first, setting clear principles, and acting with calm resolve as a healthcare CEO. He and Federico dive into his work at ONL Therapeutics, a biotech company developing therapies to protect retinal cells in diseases like age-related macular degeneration, glauco...

Dan Kurdys joins the PreVetted Podcast to explore how AI, CRISPR, and modern plant science can help crops – and the people who depend on them – keep up with a changing climate. As Executive Vice President of Business Development at Pairwise and former Global Business Lead for GenAI at Bayer Crop Science, he works where agriculture and deep tech meet, focused on turning science into real products f...

Beth Flory is the CEO of Safe House in Henderson, Nevada, a comprehensive domestic violence agency supporting survivors and their children. Beth explains how Safe House provides a 62-bed emergency shelter in a confidential location, a 24/7 crisis hotline, victim advocacy through the legal process, licensed counseling, and community outreach. Always free of charge. Beth shares why this work matters...

John Hooker: In this episode, John Hooker, Director of Engineering at Statistics & Control, shares how his lifelong fascination with gas turbines led him from aerospace engineering at Iowa State into turbomachinery control and, eventually, advanced process control and large-scale simulation. He explains how controlling a turbine in an airplane isn’t that different from controlling one on the g...

Bill Canady joins Federico Ramallo to share simple, hard-earned leadership lessons from running and transforming billion-dollar businesses. Bill explains his “four commandments” for leading any organization: be data-driven (decide with 20–80% of the data), no surprises (share bad news fast), be on pace (avoid leaving people behind or becoming the bottleneck), and results matter (no “best efforts”...

Liz Ortenburger, CEO of SafeNest in Las Vegas, explains how Nevada’s largest domestic and sexual violence nonprofit works across three “buckets”: prevention, protection, and empowerment. She shares why SafeNest is different—because prevention includes working not only with survivors, but also with abusive partners and youth at risk of repeating the cycle. Liz and Federico explore the science behin...

Damon Lembi is the CEO of Learnit, a 3x bestselling author, former Division 1 baseball player at Arizona State, and host of The Learn-It-All Podcast. In this conversation with Federico Ramallo, Damon shares how his “all-in” mindset helped him reach 200+ podcast episodes in under two years—because for him, podcasting feels like getting a personalized MBA through deep conversations with great people...

Ryan Eisenberg: unifying care so more kids thrive. As CEO of Children’s Health Council (CHC), Ryan outlines a human-centered system that helps kids, teens, and young adults with ADHD, learning differences, anxiety/depression, and autism. His north star is twofold: deliver excellent direct services and strengthen the systems around each student—families, teachers, districts, communities—so young pe...

Joseph Argiro shares how he accidentally found his way into product, finance, and go-to-market by building an “Uber/Airbnb for college tours” startup in college—an early trial-by-fire that taught him failure, distribution, and the realities of customer acquisition. He explains Iron Key Capital’s core approach as a venture studio: start with a clear thesis, validate it through customer discovery, i...

Dr. Priyadarshi Panda is the founder and CEO of International Battery Company (IBC), a lithium-ion product company that works “from molecule to working product.” In this episode, he and Federico explore how his journey from small molecules and particle materials to 22 nm chip problems at Intel led him to building batteries that power the energy transition. Dr. Panda explains why chemical engineeri...

Zach Mabe, Senior Product Manager at Amazon, shares insights on creating intuitive products that delight customers. He emphasizes the 'hammer' analogy—building simple, self-explanatory tools that solve problems effortlessly. Drawing from his experience, Zach discusses how product managers act as professional decision-makers, constantly grounding decisions in customer needs and expectations...

Dominique Roddier is a naval architect, ocean adventurer, and CEO of Ocergy, a company developing sustainable offshore solutions for clean energy. In this episode, recorded dockside in a Northern California marina on a strangely warm November day, Dominique and Federico use the ocean as a lens to explore global warming, human humility, and the future of renewable energy. Dominique shares how he fe...