The Knowledge Society

A conversation between TKS alum Isabella Grandić (2018) and Luke Piette (2017) about life, growth, education, and community. They dive into: The value (and challenges) of taking an unconventional path Luke's experience founding Edyfi , an alternative to university for exceptional young outliers that scaled to 5 locations, 100+ community members,~$400K in revenue What it means to have high stan...

A conversation between TKS alum Isabella Grandić (2018-2020) and Shagun Maheshwari (2017-2019) about solving the world's biggest problems, going to college, and being confident in your decisions. They dive into: Leaning in to being an outsider Shagun's experience founding Voltx (raised pre-seed of $1M), a machine learning platform to accelerate battery testing and materials discovery for E...

A special Season 1 finale edition of the Making It Real Podcast with TKS Founder, Nadeem Nathoo . Nadeem and Isabella sit down to chat about the value of early exposure to emerging technologies, life after TKS, identifying the world’s biggest problems, and frameworks for intentionally viewing the world and yourself. They dive into: Global inflection points, examining your continually evolving pers...

A conversation between TKS alum Isabella Grandić and ⁠ Sofia Sanchez ⁠⁠about doing things that scare you, building things you're proud of, and biological technology for human and planetary health They dive into: Sustainable textiles and Sofia’s experience developing better engineering tools for plants at Stanford’s Brophy lab The scary decision to leave college and take a gap year, joining the...

A conversation between TKS alum Isabella Grandić and Urszula (Ula) Solarz⁠ ⁠about identifying and leading from your core values, the problematic use of the term “girl boss”, creating valuable content, and getting comfortable taking things off your to-do list. They dive into: Ula’s experience as a writer studying Economics and Computer Science at Yale and interning at Accordion, a private equity-fo...

A conversation between TKS alum Isabella Grandić and Michael Trinh ⁠about questioning assumptions, biotechnology, and focusing on the journey. They dive into: Michael’s experience as a fourth-year student at the University of Toronto in Immunology and Genetics, plans to start a Ph. D. and work as a molecular engineer at MIT The importance of questioning assumptions in scientific fields and focusin...

A conversation between TKS alum Isabella Grandić and ⁠ Jesse Pound ⁠about community, travel, global impact, and root cause analysis. They dive into: Jesse’s experience as a mechanical engineering student at Queen’s and as a founder working on Vunatec , a transparent, inclusive and efficient ecosystem based in Kenya that works as a digitized value chain from farm to market to payment to eliminate p...

A conversation between TKS alum Isabella Grandić and  Cassia Attard about authenticity, sustainable impact, and life after TKS. They dive into: Cassia’s experience in studying sustainability at McGill University and her work at EFAD, a UN agency focused specifically on rural people lifting rural people out of poverty through agricultural interventions Long-term personal growth through consistency...

A conversation between TKS alum Isabella Grandić and ⁠ Jack Ceroni about mathematics, mindsets, and life after TKS. They dive into: Jack’s experiences working on projects at MIT, Xanadu, and U of T, and the behind-the-scenes experiences of both startup and academic settings Planting seeds by engaging mentors and industry experts from a place of genuine curiosity and a growth mindset when you’re yo...

A conversation between TKS alum Isabella Grandić and  Ayaan Esmail  about creating impact and value, mental health, and joyful fulfilment. They dive into: Working on International healthcare initiatives in Africa The impact your community has on your mental health and the importance of seeking out a kind, ambitious, and authentic friend group Ayaan’s work on building a wearable fall-prevention dev...

A conversation between TKS alum Isabella Grandić and Adam Majmudar about building habits, taking the unconventional path, and optimizing for purpose. They dive into: Taking the unconventional path, seeking out unique experiences, and gap years Adam's experience as a Founding Engineer at thirdweb, a venture-backed web3 company with a $160M valuation Having an abundance mindset and seeing multip...

A conversation between TKS alum Isabella Grandić and Alishba Imran about staying grounded, curious, grateful, and ambitious. They dive into: Identifying problems you’re excited to work on Alishba's experience interning at Tesla and seeking hands-on mentorship from industry experts Having a framework for why you do things and staying grounded by comparing yourself to your past self (vs other pe...

Ben Nashman is a TKS Alumni and the CEO of Synex Medical. Synex is a medical device company that is building a technology to measure blood metabolites, like glucose levels, non-invasively. Ben shares his journey starting Synex as a teenager, raising money, building a team, and much more. 

We don't hold back in this episode. Agosh opens up and talks about his story struggling with mental health during university. We discuss his learnings and he gives advice that he wish he had earlier. This is an incredibly important topic with lots of gems in this episode.  

Time in an interesting concept. In this episode Navid shares his thoughts on time, including how he spends his "currency of time" and how he thinks about the concepts of the past and future in relation to the present moment.  

In this episode, Soumiya Sivasathiyanathan (TKS Ottawa) interviews Gina Cody. Gina Cody, MEng 81, PhD 89, is the first woman ever to be awarded a PhD in building engineering at Concordia. On September 24, 2018, Cody made a $15 million gift to Concordia's Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science . In recognition of her generosity and tremendous professional accomplishments, the faculty was renam...

In this episode, Navid and Nadim Nasser (aka 2Nadiem) share their perspective on the Kibera slum. This podcast should help give you perspective for the Kidogo challenge, as well as understand the world better. 

Riya Mehta interviews Viola Melis in Barcelona, Spain. Viola uses machine learning and data science to help Typeform solve big data problems including pricing and marketing insights. She talks about qualities she values when hiring and more. 

Learn about Nadim's background building a billion-dollar university in Central Asia, and hear about why we call him 2Nadiem. This is a fun and real conversation about life, purpose, and nicknames... haha. 

Ian talks about TKS Ottawa and his view on fulfilment, potential, and his role as a TKS Director. 

People ask me all the time, "how can I be doing TKS better?" Instead of focusing on the little things you can do, I wanted to share 3 foundational traits that all high performing TKS students have. If you can master these traits, you will crush it in TKS and in life.  If you identified any weak traits you want to train, I highly recommend writing down action items after listening to this epis...

Erica and I met at a coffee shop and talked about her life growing up as a driven kid. She has such awesome things to say so we recorded some stuff for you all. Enjoy! 

In this episode, Navid sits down with Cate Rung, the founder of www.pngme.com. Cate talks about what she's working on and her experience as a female starting a company. 

Isabella and Alishba recorded this podcast to give you advice after being in your shoes just a year before. Since then, they have been invited to speak at conferences around the world and have worked with transformative companies working on amazing innovations in blockchain, cellular agriculture, and artificial intelligence. This conversation is very relatable since it comes from a student perspec...

If you follow the advice I give you in this episode, you will increase your productivity by 10x.