The BreakLine Arena

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for a conversation with Brett Granberg, Co-founder and CEO of Vannevar Labs, a defense tech startup delivering state-of-the-art technology to people on the front lines of national security. Brett shares his perspectives on the opportunities for how to fundraise for and build a defense technology company, how their team ensures excellent product-market fit, why a miss...

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for a conversation with Ethan Schmertzler, Co-founder and CEO of Dispel, a computer and network security company revolutionizing the Zero Trust and network security space. Dispel started in Ethan Schmertzler’s New York City apartment nine years ago and today the company is well on its way to becoming the gold standard in industrial scale moving target defense technol...

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for another conversation within our “How do I tell you…” series. These discussions aim to foster healthy work relationships and collaborative professional environments by leveraging data-driven insights from our community, best practices that we role model here at BreakLine, and a few personal experiences and stories as well.  In this episode of the BreakLine Arena,...

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for the first conversation within our “How do I tell you…” series. These discussions aim to foster healthy work relationships and collaborative professional environments by leveraging data-driven insights from our community, best practices that we role model here at BreakLine, and a few personal experiences and stories as well.  BreakLine Senior Customer Success Mana...

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for a conversation with Aishatu Fatima Dozie, Founder and CEO of Bossy Cosmetics, a mission-driven women’s empowerment company operating through the beauty industry.  In this episode, Aisha explains what it means for women to have economic power and her approach to changing the power structure through cosmetics. She shares insights from her interdisciplinary and mult...

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for a conversation with Andy Rachleff, Executive Chairman of Wealthfront, Co-Founder of Benchmark Capital, and faculty member at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Andy shares his perspective on why Silicon Valley Bank collapsed (including the 'monstrous mistake' that led to a bank run), the actions that regulators took, and how these circumstances might a...

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for a conversation with Anilu Vazquez-Ubarri, Partner and CHRO at TPG, a leading global alternative asset management firm investing across five multi-product platforms: Capital, Growth, Impact, Real Estate, and Market Solutions. Diversity is synonymous with performance, especially when aligned with business outcomes. Anilu joins the BreakLine Arena to talk about her...

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for a conversation with Wyc Grousbeck, Lead Owner of the Boston Celtics! Wyc Grousbeck shares stories of determination, humility, kindness, insight, and respect. He recounts finding purpose through rowing - a lifelong pursuit that became a key driver of his success with the Boston Celtics. He also dives into the long-term plan he implemented together with Team Celtic...

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for a conversation with John Taylor, the Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics at Stanford University, and the George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Professor Taylor, developed the Taylor Rule, and is widely known for his expertise in fiscal and monetary policy, and international economics. According to...

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for a conversation with Roxanne Petraeus, CEO and Co-founder of Ethena, a compliance training platform with intuitive and powerful admin tools, built to make training easy, engaging, and effective In today’s episode, Roxanne shares how Ethena is providing a new and improved take on compliance training, emphasizing the importance of action-oriented goals across the co...

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for a conversation with Special Operations Veteran, musician, and BreakLine participant, Chris Bickel. Chris shares his life story, opening up about how the diagnosis of a rare autoimmune disease recalibrated and ultimately improved his life. He discusses the complexity of living with and healing from invisible disabilities and the reluctance some people have, especi...

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for a conversation with Dan Berschinski, BreakLine Alum, founder of Two Six Industries, and senior consultant at IBM.  Dan is an Army veteran. During a combat deployment to Afghanistan, he stepped on a hidden IED. He lost both of his legs. After an intensive recovery, Dan went on to graduate from Stanford Graduate School of Business, and pursue his career in the priv...

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for a conversation with Jack Hidary, CEO of Sandbox AQ, an enterprise SaaS company combining AI + Quantum to solve the hardest problems facing society. Opportunities in quantum are vast, as are the revolutionary applications of quantum tech in solving the world’s greatest challenges.  In today’s episode, Jack joins the BreakLine Arena to discuss the third quantum rev...

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for a conversation with Chris McNamara, Chief Revenue Officer at Remote, a rapidly growing company on a mission to simplify how companies employ global talent. The world has changed significantly and remote work has become an increasingly familiar concept. Remote leans into this global shift and works to connect talent with opportunity, regardless of location.  In th...

  Join us in the BreakLine Arena for a conversation with Carole Robin, Author of Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships, and Co-founder of Leaders in Tech. Carole Robin is the maven behind ‘Touchy Feely,’ Stanford’'s celebrated Interpersonal Dynamics course, designed to help students develop the ability to forge strong relationships. Carole distilled the course information into book form,...

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for a conversation with Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, Global Head of Product at Grammarly, an AI-powered writing assistance tool used by millions to help people communicate with confidence and precision. Rahul joined Grammarly with 15 years of product management experience at Google. He believes that now, more than ever, effective communication is vital.  In this episode, Rah...

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for a conversation with Larry Liu, Founder and CEO of Weee!, the Largest Asian and Hispanic Grocery Store in North America. The goal of Weee! is to empower customers to share their culture by making finding traditional ingredients easy and affordable.   Food is fundamental to cultures across the globe, and many of us formed our most precious memories with family and...

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for a conversation with Damien Atkins, Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel at Aura, a mission-driven technology company dedicated to creating a safer internet.  Damien, an award-winning business and legal executive, joins the BreakLine Arena to share insightful perspectives on life and business. He discussed how to expand your ‘surface area of luck,' shared f...

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for a conversation with Saydeah Howard, Chief Talent Officer at IVP, a premier venture capital and growth equity firm investing in rapidly-growing technology companies and partnering closely with exceptional management teams.  In this episode, Saydeah discussed some of the common recruiting and leadership pitfalls for founding teams, how remote work has expanded acce...

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for a conversation with Tammy Nam, COO at Picsart, the world’s largest creative platform of free-to-use content, powerful tools, and inspiration from other creators. Tammy believes that changing your perspective can change everything in your life. This outlook allowed her to pivot from journalism to tech early in her career. She also shared that if you have never gra...

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for a conversation with Dan Brillman, Founder and CEO of Unite Us, a tech company that builds coordinated care networks that connect health and social service providers in order to improve person-centered care. Dan Brillman, a military veteran and entrepreneur disrupting the status quo in the health services sector, joins the BreakLine Arena to share insights on why...

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for a conversation with David Lu, Co-founder and President at Expo, a software integration platform that centralizes and optimizes data and resources as well as Founder and Managing Partner at Hyphen Capital, a venture capital firm investing in the next generation of Asian American Entrepreneurs.    Dave, a seasoned technology industry thought leader, shares his jour...

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for a conversation with Henry Schuck, CEO and Founder at ZoomInfo, a platform that empowers business-to-business sales, marketing, and recruiting professionals to hit their number by pairing best-in-class technology with unrivaled data coverage, accuracy, and depth of contacts. The company’s large and diversified customer base consists of over 20,000 customers from g...

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for a conversation with Steve Kalush and Javaria Braden, Solutions Engineers at Blend. Blend is a FinTech company that is re-architecting the banking sector by making essential banking services more secure and accessible. Steve and Javaria share insight about the impact of the customer-centric approach to the Blend business model, setting up a framework for diverse a...

Join us in the BreakLine Arena for a conversation with Jennifer Tejada, CEO, and Joe Militello, CPO of PagerDuty, the Saas incident response platform. Both Jennifer and Joe walked unconventional paths toward Pagerduty. Jennifer, a woman of color and a member of a military family, grew up in CPG selling "peanut butter and diapers" before transitioning into the tech sector. Joe served in the...