The Jennifer Kamara Podcast

I talk with Kathryn Zealand, General Manager at X (Google's moonshot factory). Learn how the team at X approaches big problems, how they celebrate failures, and build culture for breakthrough innovation. Kathryn tells me her journey as well as gives advice on how to get a job at X. Enjoy! Connect with Kathryn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathryn-zealand/ Mentioned in this episode: * X, the moonsho...

Fatima Dicko is the founder and CEO at Sugar. Sugar is a proptech app that turns strangers into neighbors, and neighbors into friends. In our conversation, Fatima shared with me how she fundraised $2.5M, and how her entrepreneurial journey shaped her sense of self. Connect with Fatima: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fatimadicko/ Mentioned in this episode: Sugar: https://www.sugarliving.com/ Subscribe...

Lisa Curtis is the Founder and CEO of Kuli Kuli, a multimillion dollar social enterprise. Kuli Kuli sources moringa, a natural superfood, from farmers across Africa and brings it to the American consumers. Lisa tells me how she came across moringa, what were the beginnings of Kuli Kuli, and how she grew it into a multimillion dollar social enterprise. Connect with Lisa: https://www.linkedin.com/in...

Lauren Dunford is the formidable CEO and cofounder of Guidewheel , a leading factory operations platform that is on a mission to empower the world’s factories to reach sustainable peak performance. Guidewheel improves factory productivity by 30% across 7+ countries today and is just getting started.  Lauren and I talk about how to learn what your customer really thinks about your product, how pivo...

An exceptionally relatable session with my dear friend, Jeff Levere , an executive coach with pattern recognition over thousands of coaching sessions with clients across industries who are billionaires, CEOs, founders, and investors. We talk about the most common challenges Jeff sees people struggling with and how they boil down to navigating fear and trust. Jeff and I discuss three prominent huma...

Sanchali Pal is the founder and CEO of Joro , an app that helps us understand our carbon footprint and make meaningful changes to our carbon use. Sanchali shares her take on our progress toward net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and describes which households and populations have the greatest opportunity to minimize climate change. We talk about the levers available to each of us to live more susta...

Thought-provoking chat with Jordan - a dear friend, marine, author of Union: A Democrat, A Republican and a Search for Common Ground , and the founder and president of America’s Frontier Fund (AFF) which is a non-profit raising and deploying $500M toward securing America’s competitiveness in global development. Jordan tells me about his work with AFF, building America's capabilities in a non-escal...

What an important episode for everyone. If you listen to one thing today, listen to this! Nina is unique in that her deep understanding of mental health comes from both her lived experience with depression and anxiety while studying at Harvard Medical School, and her practice as a Stanford psychiatrist , researcher, leader in mental health innovation, and CMO at Real . Nina describes what her expe...

So much in-depth knowledge about AVs from Petch Jirapinyo , Chief Commercial Officer at Nuro - a leader in the autonomous vehicle space that is revolutionizing how we transport goods. Petch confesses he’s a sci-fi fan and we discuss what the future holds in store for us with technologies like autonomous vehicles. He helps me understand the difference between L2,3,4,5 vehicles, what sustainability...

I check in with my older brother David Kamara - founder of Cape Sierra Capital , a multifamily real estate investment company. David describes what multifamily investing is, why it is relatively unknown as an asset class, and how it is different from venture capital or private equity. We talk about financing, what deals and returns look like, and how one can work their way up into this asset class...

As always, I learn something new with one of the Kamara-Pogroszewski family’s favorite humans, Rish Gupta - Cofounder of hard tech company, Spot AI .  Rish shares with me how he got interested in and immersed in entrepreneurship, his impressions of what the cruxes of the most successful startups are, and what going through of an IPO is like. Rish shares his impressions of what Silicon Valley compa...

I have a cozy chat about what seems like everything with Jenny Xia Spradling , the co-founder and co-CEO of FreeWill - a social good enterprise that has raised $5Bn for charity since being formed in 2017. Jenny and I catch up on what it’s like being the daughters of foreign/immigrant parents, what values we hold dear, and our approaches to nurturing and repairing relationships. We discuss the diff...

Beautiful black boy magic with Jeremy Brown ! A partner at Creator Fund and an MBA, Ph. D. holder, Jeremy tells me about his unusual path into Venture Capital. He reveals thoughtful insights into how to break into and stand out in VC and pursue one’s dream career. We talk about breaking barriers and giving opportunities to underrepresented groups as well as about building culture and relationships...

Ben Rowe is the founder and CEO of Ben’s Fast Food (BFF) a healthy restaurant on a mission to make convenient food healthy and affordable. Ben gives me an overview of the history of fast food, what factors influenced the way we eat today, and some tips on eating healthily. Ben and I bond over our love of frozen treats and we come up with a new word: supplifeeder. I apply some friendly pressure for...