Revealing Li

I am beyond excited to tell you about my guest on this episode because she is someone who has had a profound impact on how I think about technology, its place in the world and my moral obligation to act in a way that ensures technology innovation is sustainable, ethical and inclusive. Her name is Dr. Genevieve Bell. Dr. Bell holds a PhD in cultural anthropology from Stanford University and spent more than two decades in Silicon Valley helping guide Intel's product development and social science and design research capabilities. She is best known for her work at the intersection of cultural practice and technology development and she is an important voice in the global debates around artificial intelligence and human society. In 2017, Genevieve returned to beloved Australia and established the 3A Institute at Australian National University, in collaboration with CSIRO's Data61, with the mission of building a new branch of engineering to take AI-enabled cyber-physical systems safely, sustainably and responsibly to scale. In 2021, she helped found and became the inaugural Director of the Australian National University’s School of Cybernetics, which builds on the foundational work of the 3A Institute and seeks to establish cybernetics as an important tool for navigating major societal transformations, through capability building, policy development and safe, sustainable and responsible approaches to new systems. In January of 2024, Dr. Bell became the Vice-Chancellor and President of Australian National University where she provides executive leadership to the University, is responsible for delivering the ANU Strategy and is the primary representative to government and wider society, and to national and international organizations. In addition to her role at the ANU, Dr. Bell is currently a Member of the Prime Minister's National Science and Technology Council, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE), Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (AAH), Florence Violet McKenzie Chair, SRI International Engelbart Distinguished Fellow, a member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) AI Council and an Officer of the Order of Australia. I have to pinch myself! Let’s go talk to renowned anthropologist, technologist, futurist and my friend and colleague, Dr. Genevieve Bell.

What is quantum mechanics and how is it applicable to our current digital infrastructure? The answer to that question is what I have in store for you in this episode. I’m speaking to Dr. Sristy Agrawal, the pioneering inventor, co-founder and CEO of Mesa Quantum, a company that is breaking ground in the area of #quantumsensing at chip scale, essentially miniaturizing and securing the capabilities of global positioning satellites (GPS) to the size of a chip for use in portable electronics, infrastructure monitoring, off-shore wind construction, military and many other applications. We dig deep in this out of the world conversation – think H.G. Wells and Dr. Who! We talk about the current state of the quantum ecosystem, the value of quantum sensing, particularly in the area of GPS vulnerability, and the promising future of quantum sensing at chip scale. She also shares her journey as a female founder and CEO, and the lessons she’s learned along the way. I hope you’ll join me for a fun and fascinating conversation with a woman leader who is breaking ground in the realm of quantum sensing.

This week I am speaking with a rock star in the technology industry. Alexis Black Bjorlin is Vice President and General Manager for DGX Cloud at Nvidia. Prior to Nvidia, Alexis was vice president for Infrastructure at Meta where her team was responsible for Infrastructure hardware and software co-designed systems, including AI Systems, compute and storage platforms, and custom silicon. Prior to Meta, she served as senior vice president and general manager of the Optical Systems Division at Broadcom, and as Corporate Vice President of the Data Center Group and General Manager of the Connectivity Group at Intel where she oversaw three business units: Ethernet and Networking, High Performance Computing fabrics, and Silicon Photonics. Prior to Intel, she spent eight years as President of Source Photonics, where she also served on the board of directors. She currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Global Semiconductor Alliance.0 She earned a B.S. in materials science and engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in materials science from the University of California at Santa Barbara. We talk about her professional journey, her leadership philosophy, her thoughts on the future of AI innovation, her experience as a working mom and her advice to women navigating their careers in the technology industry. I hope you enjoy this far-reaching conversation with a great woman leader.

This is the first Revealing Li roundtable conversation on a timely topic. The opportunities and challenges of AI adoption in the healthcare industry. Joining me for this conversation is Marcus Grindstaff, Principal at Bridge HLS, Laney Preheim, operations strategy consultant at Anonymous Health, and Kathleen Perley, Professor of AI at @Rice University’s Jones School of Business.

My guest on this episode is an amazing woman entrepreneur. Her name is Dr. Kalen Hall and she is the the co-founder and CEO of Informuta. During her PhD work on mutagenesis and antibiotic resistance at Tulane University School of Medicine, she was the first to pioneer the use of machine learning to forecasts future resistance acquisition in bacterial infections. While completing her PhD, she co-founded Informuta in 2023 with her doctorial colleague and now Informuta’s CTO, Leo Williams. In our conversation, we talk about her vision for Informuta and the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence in medical applications, her experience as an entrepreneur and female founder and her thoughts on the future of the intersection of AI and medicine. Let’s go talk to my friend Kalen Hall.

Dr. Hall recommends the program from Equalize Startups for women academic inventors. You can learn more at: https://equalizestartups.org/

My guest for this episode is Kathleen Perley, Professor of AI at Rice University's Jones School of Business and a thought leader in the nascent field of the intersection of artificial intelligence with business strategy, marketing and advertising. Prior to joining Rice, she was the founder and CEO of DECODE, a healthcare-focused digital agency that was recognized as a company building the future on the Inc. 5000 list four years in a row. As CEO, she drove DECODE to impressive heights, achieving over $17 million in annual revenue and negotiating a high-profile exit via acquisition by private equity.

Prior to founding DECODE, Kathleen served as Vice President of Business Development at Local Search Group where she boosted revenue by more than 300+%. Post acquisition of DECODE, she served on the executive staff of the newly formed Unlock Health and implemented cutting edge AI solutions that resulted in increased efficiency and bottom line growth.

Kathleen was recently recognized by Medical Marketing & Media as one of the Women to Watch in 2024. She is an active member of the Agency Management Institute where she focuses on helping advertising executives integrate advanced technology into their operations. She also serves on MD Anderson's advisory committee and supports Ncourage, an investment fund aiding women-owned businesses. Her commitment to innovation spans her professional endeavors and community contributions, making her a dynamic force in the industry and in her community.

In our conversation, we talk about her professional journey, her thoughts on the future of AI and the intersectionality of AI with the healthcare and she shares her advice on navigating career and life. Let’s go talk to my friend Kathleen Perley.

My guest this week is a woman who is breaking new ground at the intersection of healthcare, marketing and technology. Her name is Shannon Hooper and she is the President of Unlock Health, a company she helped form through a targeted acquisition strategy that she financed with support from Amulet Capital and Athyrium Capital. Today, Unlock Health is the largest provider-focused marketing, technology, and managed care company in the United States. From designing global go-to-market strategies for telehealth in the 2000’s, to growing one of the most recognized and awarded marketing agencies in history in the 2010’s, to building and launching scalable digital therapeutic products in the 2020’s, to now acquiring and integrating best of breed companies into Unlock Health — Shannon has worked closely with some of the industry’s most visionary leaders within technology, provider, and payer organizations. Shannon and I talk about how she made her way into the healthcare and technology industries, her leadership philosophy and the challenges and opportunities that new technologies such as AI mean for the healthcare industry. Let’s go talk to my friend, Shannon Hooper.

Shannon recommends the following great reads based on our conversation:

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius adapted for the contemporary reader by James Harris available on Amazon

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain available on Amazon and Audible

This episode features part 2 of Michelle's conversation with Diane Bryant. Listen to part 1 of the conversation in Ep15 A Winning Combination of Empathy, Confidence & Grit with Diane Bryant.

This episode features a powerhouse of a story from a global technology leader with more than three decades of executive leadership in the global semiconductor, cloud computing services, artificial intelligence and technology-based health care solutions industries. Her name is Diane Bryant and her story will blow you away! Diane most recently served as the Chairman and CEO of NovaSignal, a medical technology and data company focused on applying robotics, artificial intelligence and cloud computing to the diagnosis of stroke and other brain illnesses. In her role as CEO, she raised three rounds of VC funding and exited with a sale of the company in 2023. Prior to NovaSignal, she served as the Chief Operating Officer of Google Cloud, where she focused on accelerating the scale and reach of Google Cloud’s business and was also responsible for Alphabet’s information technology organization. Prior to Google, Bryant spent 32 years at Intel where she held increasingly senior positions including her last two roles as the Group President of Intel’s Data Center Group, which grew to a $19 billion in revenue business in 2017 under her leadership, and as Intel’s Corporate Vice President and Chief Information Officer, responsible for the corporate-wide information technology solutions and services that enable Intel’s business.

Diane serves on several boards including the board of directors of Broadcom Inc., Haemonetics Corporation, and Celestial AI and she also serves as the chair of the UC Davis Chancellor’s Board of Advisors.

Diane was named among Fortune’s 50 Most Powerful Women in Business in 2015 and 2016 and is a tireless advocate for women and underrepresented minorities in the fields of engineering and technology. She established the Diane Bryant Engineering Student Center at the University of California-Davis, and the Diane Bryant STEM Innovation Center at the American River Community College. In 2016, World Affairs and its Global Philanthropy Forum honored Diane with its Global Citizen Award. Business Insider ranked Diane #6 among the Most Powerful Female Engineers in 2018. In 2020, Becker’s Heathcare named Diane one of 7 “shaker and mover” leaders affecting health IT.

Diane received her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from U.C. Davis in 1985. She attended Stanford Graduate School of Business, completing the Executive Program in 2011. Diane is also an electrical engineer who holds four U.S. patents in mobile computing.

We talked about all of this and our conversation was so wide ranging and compelling, I am bringing it to you in two parts. In this episode, we talk about Diane’s early life and her journey to college, her career at Intel, the challenges she’s faced as a woman in a male dominated industry and her advocacy for DEI initiatives.

Hello everyone. I’m Michelle Leyden Li and this is Revealing Li. My guest this week is Kim Ziesemer Principal and Founding Partner at ZM Communications, a strategic communications and PR firm with deep expertise across strategic planning, media and influencer engagement, thought leadership, content development and media training. Prior to founding ZM Communications with her partner Heath Meyer, Kim oversaw PR programs for tech titan Qualcomm after transitioning from a high-profile PR career in Hollywood that included work with big studios such as DreamWorks and Warner Brothers Pictures.

In addition to running her own communications firm, Kim is a Venture Partner and Board Member at Okeanos and a member of the Board of Advisors at RentBase. In our conversation today, we are going to talk about her career journey including how she navigated three career transitions, her bold entrepreneurial ventures and her current work at Okeanos to get more women into investing and supporting female entrepreneurs. This is a great conversation for anyone thinking about getting involved in investing and for any female founders out there who are looking for opportunities for funding. I’m excited to introduce you to my friend, Kim Ziesemer.

Hello Revealing Li fans. I hope you enjoy our first topic focused minisode. This week, I talk to Kiva Allgood about the future of AI. Stay tuned for my next full episode which will be available on Sunday August 11th. As always, I hope you enjoy the show.

This episode features my conversation with Kiva Allgood, a technology industry veteran who currently serves as a member of the Executive Committee at the World Economic Forum and is the Head of the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Supply Chain at the World Economic Forum. Kiva describes herself as multi-tasking her way through life as a mom, wife, sister, executive, and tech-lover, with a passion for helping teams and businesses transform.

Before joining the Forum, Kiva held various C-level roles at both large and small technology companies including Sarcos, Ericsson, GE Ventures, Qualcomm, and Motorola. Kiva holds a Bachelor of Science from Northwestern University and an MBA from Kellogg and is a former Six Sigma Master Black Belt. She continues to be dedicated to helping inspire young women to fall in love with science and technology as a mentor and coach. Recent awards include 2023 CEO of the Year, Utah Business, 2022 Silver Stevie Awards for Women in Business Executive of the Year, 2022 Women In Technology: Leadership Award, CR Wireless’s Top 50 Industrial Innovators, and Connected World’s Women of M2M.

We talk about Kiva's incredible journey from overcoming a learning disability to rising to the top of the technology industry and the lessons she has learned along the way.

I’m so excited to introduce you my guest today. Her name is Laney Preheim and she is Vice President of Operations at ICON, a global provider of consulting and outsourced development and commercialization services to pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical devices and government and public health organizations. Laney came to Icon through its acquisition of Care Innovations where she served as Vice President of Operations. Care Innovations started as a joint venture between Intel and GE, and focused on innovation at the intersection of technology and healthcare, with products for remote patient monitoring, digital therapeutics, and telehealth and it was Laney who led the formation of the joint venture between Intel and G.E. in her role as the business development lead for Intel’s Digital Health Group. In our conversation, we talk about the gift of a great manager, how to manage your manager and your career trajectory, how to read the room and how to own your own employability. It’s a great discussion with a great lady. I hope you enjoy the episode.

Have you ever been offered a job opportunity and thought "I can't do that! I don't have the experience for that role" and passed it by? My guest today almost let a good one get by her but she changed her mind and the rest is history.

Lisa Cummins Dulchinos is a woman who knows her strengths, has great advice about leaning in to big opportunities, and has a lot to teach us about vulnerability in leadership. Lisa is the Chief Financial Officer for Ayar Labs, a company whose cutting-edge optical I/O solution is shattering data bottlenecks, paving the way for the next generation of AI breakthroughs.

Having over two decades of experience in executive level finance roles, Lisa has successfully led exits, acquisitions and raised capital in private and public markets as well as bank financings to allow companies to reach the next stage in their growth.

Prior to joining Ayar Labs, Lisa held CFO roles at Penguin Computing and Omron Adept Technologies. She is also an active board member, currently serving on the boards of Summit Wireless Technologies, a leading provider of immersive, wireless sound technology for intelligent devices, and the Street Dog Coalition, a nonprofit organization that provides free medical care and related services to pets of people experiencing or at risk of homelessness. Lisa holds a bachelor’s degree in business from U.C. Santa Barbara and a M.B.A. from St. Mary’s College of California.

I ask her about her experience as a woman in the male dominated technology industry and in finance, the lessons she’s learned along the way, and her view, influenced by Brene Brown, of vulnerability as an important leadership trait.

My guest this week is a technology industry pioneer. She was one of the first people to fully understand the potential of foundry services in the semiconductor industry and to recognize the need for a unified ecosystem approach to harness the fledgling fabless semiconductor sector’s growth opportunities. Her vision of a global alliance was, at first, dismissed by many in the industry, but her grit and determination never wavered. Her name is Jodi Shelton and she is the co-founder and CEO of the Global Semiconductor Alliance. Under her leadership, the GSA has grown its membership to include companies throughout the semiconductor supply chain from 45 countries across the globe. In her role as CEO, Jodi ensures that the Alliance remains focused on achieving its defined mission and goal to foster a more effective ecosystem through collaboration, integration and innovation. She is the key liaison between GSA and the business community at high-level financial and industry conferences, providing insight on key topics pertaining to the global fabless supply chain. Jodi earned her bachelor’s degree in political science from San Diego State University, her master’s degree in political science from the University of Houston, and a Corporate Governance Program Certification from Columbia Business School. She has a reputation in the industry of bringing people together and getting stuff done and boy, does she ever! This is a fascinating conversation with one of the most influential women in technology.

Have you ever encountered a "Mean Girl" at work? How should you handle Mean Girl behavior in the workplace?

My guest today is in some ways a departure from previous episodes but I think you’ll recognize why I wanted her to come on the show. Her name is Dr. Bess Rowen, she is an Assistant Professor of Drama at Villanova University. She is a professional actor,  a member of Actors’ Equity Association having studied acting at the Michael Howard Studios, and she also works in the theatre as an intimacy choreographer.

She is also a theatre theorist, historian and author. Her book, The Lines Between the Lines: How Stage Directions Affect Embodiment, was published by University of Michigan Press in October 2021 and focuses on what she terms "affective stage directions," which are stage directions written in ways that engage the physical and emotional responses of future theatre makers.

In this episode, we talk about her current book project which focuses on representations of mean teenage girls on stage in the American Theatre over the last century. We talk about how seeing and embodying those representations permeate young women’s psyche’s and how that may affect them when they get older, in particular, how they show up as business women and women leaders. I hope you'll join me for this fascinating and illuminating conversation.

My guest this week is a force of nature. Over a three-decade career, she has established herself as a technology leader and product visionary. Her name is Rani Borkar. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Rani for many years. We were colleagues together at Intel where she led the microprocessor product development team. She’s also held executive positions at IBM and she is currently Corporate Vice President for Azure Hardware Systems and Infrastructure at Microsoft. In fact, her leadership has intersected the most seminal platform shifts in the evolution of modern computing: the rise of the PC, the introduction of consumer mobile, the arrival of multi-core processors, and the proliferation of digital transformation via cloud, AI, and quantum computing. In her current role, she owns the vision, strategy, and architecture of silicon and systems development, cloud supply chain and global capacity deployment for Microsoft’s cloud data center infrastructure. Under her leadership, Microsoft’s brightest engineering minds focus on developing technologies that empower the world to innovate and drive end-to-end business value for Azure’s products and solutions. In addition to her day job, she serves on the Board of Directors of Applied Materials and the Global Semiconductor Alliance. She holds both a Bachelor’s Degree and a Master of Science degree in Physics from the University of Mumbai and a second Master of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering from Oregon State University. We talk about her storied career, her role as a working mom, her leadership philosophy and more.

My guest this week is an engineer, an inventor, a business woman, an entrepreneur and one of my favorite people in the world. Her name is Liat Ben-Zur. She is the founder and CEO of LBZ Advisory, where she advises C-suite executives on AI strategy, product development and digital transformation. She is also a sought-after board member and currently serves as a member of the board of directors at Talkspace and Splashtop and as an Advisory Board Member at WestRiver Group and Syndio. Prior to starting her own company, Liat held executive positions at global powerhouses including Microsoft, Philips, Qualcomm and Intel. She has garnered numerous accolades, notably being named one of “7 Rising Stars of Wireless,” by Fierce Wireless, one of Inspiring Fifty’s “Most Inspirational Women in Technology,” and one of “The Female Mentors Making a Difference in Silicon Valley” by Mashable. Drawing from her own experiences as a top executive in Fortune 50 companies, Liat advocates for equity, diversity, and inclusion in the technology industry. She has served as the executive sponsor of Microsoft’s LGBTQIA Employee Resource Group and is passionate about driving cultural transformation and building more inclusive technology. We talk about her childhood, her college years, her career, and the lessons she's learned along the way.

Sherry Jiang is a rising star in Fintech and my guest on this episode of Revealing Li. After receiving her degree from the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley, Sherry worked for Amazon and Google before making the jump to start her own Fintech company, Peek. In this wide ranging conversation, she talks about growing up in a bicultural environment and how that motivated her career choices and impacted her leadership style. We also talk about the challenges she's faced and the lessons she's learned as a female founder and executive leader.

Christine Dunbar is Senior Vice President of Global Sales at IQE, a semiconductor industry power player and my guest for Episode 3 of the Revealing Li Podcast. We talk about how her childhood passion helped her learn discipline and focus, how she discovered she was not alone, there were other girls and women who liked and excelled at math and science, how she found her way into the semiconductor industry and how grit and determination helped her achieve her goals. I hope you enjoy the show.

Jen Whelan is the Global Chief Marketing Officer at Smart Media Technologies, one of the coolest ladies I know, and my guest for Episode 2 of the Revealing Li Podcast. We talk about her childhood growing up in the back woods of Alaska, her determination to be the first in her family to go to college and the challenges she faced in making that dream come true, her rise in the technology industry and her leadership philosophy. Jen is an inspiration to anyone who's ever been told they can't do something. I hope you enjoy the show.

Maryam Rofougaran is co-founder and CEO of Movandi and she is my guest for the premier episode of my new podcast Revealing Li. We talk about everything from her childhood, to her time at UCLA, co-founding her first start up Innovent, her life as a CEO and as a mom, and more. I hope you’ll join me for this frank, fascinating and fun conversation with a powerful woman leader.

Welcome to Revealing Li. A podcast for women leaders, about women leaders.