Drive Your Career

Christine Tao is the Founder & CEO of SoundingBoard, a scalable leadership platform. Previously, Christine was a sales & marketing executive at a high growth startup named Tapjoy that she grew to $100M+ in revennue. Christine holds an MBA from Wharton and lives in Silicon Valley with her husband and two kids.

In this episode, I chat with Christine about her story of starting her VC-backed company while pregnant with her second child, the right time to get an executive coach, rising through the ranks at a high growth company, tackling imposter syndrome and managing burn out.

You may follow Christine on Twitter at @christineptao.

Anna Escher was the Head of Audience Development at Techcrunch in Silicon Valley at the time of the interview, and currently leads Audience Development at DFINITY. Anna started her journalism career with a Masters degree from USC and played an instrumental role in growing Techcrunch over the last 6+ years.

In this episode, I talk to Anna about her 6-year career trajectory at Techcrunch, developing a growth mindset, growing at the same company vs switching companies, great tips on building self-confidence, frameworks for asking for feedback and a lot more!

You may follow Anna on Twitter at @annaescher.

Jessica English is the head of Brand at Oura, a health tech wearable company, and formerly led brand marketing at Dropbox, Sports campaigns at EA, and marketing campaigns at Madison Square Garden in New York City.  Jessica currently lives in San Francisco.

In this episode, I talk to Jess about her career in brand leadership, switching industries, leading with vulnerability, formulating her personal brand, embracing failure, financial literacy and more!

Naomi Davidson is the Founder & Chairman of Trybe.ai, a professional skill building company based in Silicon Valley. Naomi has a Masters in Mechanical Engineering from MIT where she built robots, but following her intellectual curiosity, she went to build an impressive career in management consulting at McKinsey, finance at Pixar, partnerships at Khan Academy, sales leadership at LinkedIn and most recently entrepreneurship. 

In this episode, I speak with Naomi about her grid for navigating career transitions, imposter syndrome, startup failure and risks, qualities of great leaders and more!

Aubrey Blanche is the Global Head of Equitable Design & Impact at CultureAmp and formerly led Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Atlassian. Aubrey is also an angel investor in Silicon Valley, and holds degrees in Journalism and Political Science from Northwestern University and Stanford University. 

In this episode, I chat with Aubrey about non-linear careers, creating her own roles within organizations, mental health, self-discovery, personal branding, sometimes rejecting feedback and much more!

You may follow Aubrey on Twitter at @adblanche. 

Sue Stephens is a sales leader at Facebook based in Singapore. She grew up training to be a professional dancer and after an injury, transitioned to roles in HR, Customer Success and Sales across Europe and Asia. Sue is also pursuing her Masters in Organizational Behavior at INSEAD.

In this episode, I chat with with Sue about self-talk, climbing the ladder even while making a career pivot, formulating values and letting them guide one's decisions, international careers, managing your energy and not just time, executive education, and a new take on how you can "have it all"!

Shripriya Mahesh is a Founding Partner at Silicon Valley-based Spero Ventures, ex product leader at eBay, a former filmmaker from NYU and an alum of Harvard Business School. 

In this episode, I chat with Shripriya about her career pivots, rediscovering oneself, risks and tradeoffs, the pros and cons of an MBA today, being a working mother and much more! 

You may follow Shripriya on Twitter at @Shripriya. 

Nora Denzel grew up on a farm in upper state New York and went on to become one of the youngest executives at IBM. She led tens of thousands of tech professionals at Intuit and HP, gave countless inspiring keynotes and graduation commencement speeches, and currently serves on the boards of AMD, Ericsson, NortonLifeLock and SUSE Linux. 

Join us as we chat with Nora about career frameworks, being your own PR agent at your workplace, imposter syndrome, women on boards, her upcoming book Killing Miss Congeniality and much more! 

You may follow Nora on Twitter at @NoraDenzel.