Underserved

Komal Maliekal is our featured guest for Episode #097 of Underserved. Komal channeled her mother's fighting spirit to succeed in a difficult engineering school, job market, and technology landscape in her native India. We talk about the culture shift moving to the United States, what to do when your test devices get stolen, and giving back to women in the tech industry.    Komal's LinkedIn Profile...

In Episode #096 of Underserved, our guest is Chris Boutiette. Chris had to ask his high school to add computer courses, only to find them unexpectedly challenging. This didn't deter him from pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or working his way through college running a tech support firm. We talk about working your way up the organization from QA, wrangling rampant robots, and cleari...

Kim Sinclair joins me in our studio for Episode #095 of Underserved. Kim spent college in Friartown, leading the pep band on the road for fun and adventure supporting Providence College sports. After stints working for the Department of Revenue and consulting, Kim found herself moving into the healthcare payer and provider space at Boston Medical Center's health plan. By asking many questions she...

Taco Bell CTO Steve Plank is my guest for Episode #094 of Underserved. Steve rose quickly through the ranks in heavily regulated industries helping to manage document compliance. It took 4 trips to Taco Bell's headquarters to switch industries and get a job offer. Since then Steve has spearheaded Taco Bell's digital transformation, resulting in billions of e-commerce revenue and tighter relationsh...

Susan Kelly is our guest for Underserved episode #093. Susan fell in love with computers early on, being curious about technology and loving the time/aggravation saver of spell check. She leaned into product management early in her career, in telecom, education technology, and call center software. We also talk about how companies struggle to allow employees to grieve a loss, watching a technology...

Yan Robert joins us as our guest for Episode #092 of Underserved. Yan grew up in Quebec like JP Beaudry, one of our previous guests, and even attended the same university in this small world. Yan was ahead of his time with an Internet directory he founded in the late 1990s. We talk about his ongoing work with SAP and the new chapter in his career surrounding it.   Yan on LinkedIn: https://www.link...

Episode #091 features Sesh Tirumala, CIO of PagerDuty. Sesh is a podcast veteran, and shares with us his experiences implementing systems in 120-degree heat, being a technologist in Appalachia,  and managing incremental IT costs. Sesh has felt the pain of having to justify IT's existence, proving it is a revenue generator and not just a cost center. We also talk about implementing charitable givin...

Our guest for Episode 090 of Underserved is Joe Frascati. Joe moved several times as a teen, honing his skills in quickly sizing up new social situations and identifying the players and roles. This skill served him well in his career, from a retail startup to the legendary Silicon Graphics and beyond. We also talk about Stevedoring, electric buses and their charging demands, and VTOL as the flying...

The Underserved Podcast kicks off Season 8 with Rob Moore, recording from across the pond in the UK. Rob figured out there is no grad school application deadline if you apply overseas, and fell in love with England. Early in his professional career, his company developed a podcast marketing tool (of all things!), which we discuss in detail. Also covered - NBA data analysis for fun at Per Thirty Si...

We cap off Season Seven with our guest Jason Oberg, Ph. D. Jason grew up in Hawaii surfing and enjoying the outdoors, but computer gaming brought him inside and online. After moving to California and earning three degrees, he left UCSB and UCSD to start a company in the hardware security space. We discuss American chip production, following the letter of the law on grant money, and the hardware ro...

Texas transplant Joe Forrester is featured in Episode #087 of Underserved. Joe wanted to be a pilot after watching the original "Top Gun", but colorblindness trumped his enthusiasm and determination. Instead, he cut his teeth in cellular billing software, which was followed by learning how to manage marketing data in the automotive industry.  This skill treated him well for several years across ma...

David Rose walks the road less traveled. A serial entrepreneur for over 30 years, David has envisioned and built more products than most people can imagine. In Episode #086, we talk about his "oscillation lifestyle" - moving back and forth from learning to teaching, teaching to implementing, investing to being invested in, and many more aspects of life. By staying humble and open to learning, Davi...

Ben Hodson came in to record with us at Syrinx Studios in October. The first half of our conversation is Season Seven's Episode #085. We had a lot of ground to cover, and this bonus episode takes us from when we met one another at Monster up to the present day. Topics covered include the struggle to automate and version control relational databases, the jarring freedom of Prague, and how fast you...

I have known Ben Hodson for over 20 years, and when he came in to record we went over most of those years and back a few more in Episode #085 of Underserved. The first part of our conversation is this regular episode entitled "Ancient History." We start with Ben's step-grandfather cultivating Ben's curiosity and love of experimentation/iteration to find solutions. This theme would follow Ben throu...

Our 84th episode features Madhu Rajagopalan, Head of Engineering at Wellframe. Madhu's eyes were opened early when he saw how much more malleable software was than hardware. He quickly moved from electrical engineering to software development. This career path led him to several interesting stints at Iron Mountain, HP, and DraftKings prior to his current job. Also discussed - distributed systems d...

Rachel Cossar grew up a nationally ranked rhythmic gymnast in Canada. In Episode #083 of Underserved, we discover her journey from those early competitions to the Boston ballet to working with artificial intelligence to improve body language. It turns out that non-verbal body communication matters a lot (think of your last Zoom call!) and Rachel nurtured that idea through proof of concept into fou...

Episode #082 of Underserved is our first one recorded 9.5 time zones apart. Naresh Pillai joined us from India, where he has returned to bootstrap a startup called OpineWorks. Prior to this, Naresh spent time developing software both in India and the United States. We worked together when he was in Texas, developing telematics software to power connected vehicles. We talk about being the trusted "...

Amanda Richardson grew up and started her career on the East Coast, but it took just one trip to California to fall in love with the state. In Episode 081, we talk about the siren song of Stanford, being the janitor on strategy presentations, and the gamification of coding interviews. Also covered are being the acquirer vs. the acquired, the trauma of winding up a company, and Phase RAIL. Now the...

Andrew Bauer is our guest for Underserved episode #080. Andrew is another guest who is a product of the Syracuse I-School. Combining business and technology skills, the I-School produces graduates with the rare skill set of being able to talk to both technical people and business folks (and living to tell about it!) Andrew has made a career of this, translating requirements into implementations wi...

Episode 079 of Underserved features Shani Gentry Cincotti. Our first Alabama native on the show (Roll Tide!), Shani shares about growing up pursuing journalism but realizing that the tech industry might be more welcoming/pay better. A stint in electronic photo asset management bridged the two fields, and a love of relational databases cemented the transition into tech. We discuss when adding hardw...

Adam Firestone is our featured guest for Episode 78 of Underserved. A recovering attorney and platoon leader, Adam believes as Robert Heinlein does: Humans are not meant for specialization. We should be capable in many realms. In Adam's professional life, this means understanding security holistically, architecture natively, and cryptography as a tool, not an end in and of itself. We discuss first...

Michael Gallagher is featured in Episode #077 of Underserved. Michael spent his youth painting cars, running a collision business, and even getting his Massachusetts appraiser's license. A friend suggested he check out Putnam Investments and so began a career in financial services technology. Mastery of the NSCC led to several opportunities, but the 2008 financial crisis led to some soul searching...

SEASON 7 of Underserved kicks off with our guest Paul Belt. In our 76th episode, we cover Paul graduating from running a BBS and the warez scene into software development. Paul realized quickly that many companies and hiring managers in the software industry insist that you have that "piece of paper", an undergraduate degree, before they will consider you. We also discuss the importance of the mis...

Episode #075's guest Jeff Taylor was generous with his time, spending over two hours with me in the studio. We captured so much good material that we needed a bonus episode to squeeze it all in. In this bonus episode we talk about life after Monster, why you should run the meetings you attend, and setting the world record for water skiing behind a blimp.    Links:   Blimp record: https://www.tampa...

Our guest for Episode #075 is Jeff Taylor, founder of Monster.com and 14 other companies including most recently RoverTrophy.com. Jeff has always been ahead of his time, with boundless amounts of energy. This led him to create the world's first job board in Monster, a revolutionary idea that spawned an entire industry. We discuss the resolve needed to champion your ideas, being the first URL on th...