To cultivate a world where every woman thrives, shattering glass ceilings and redefining success on her own terms.
Pat Wadors, CHRO at Intuitive and former HR visionary at LinkedIn, ServiceNow, and Yahoo - known for her transformative leadership and coining the concept of DIBs (Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging) - Pat "stumbled" into HR and became one of the most influential voices in the field.
Highlights:
Overcoming Labels
Goldilocks Framework
Leading with Humanity & Authenticity
Power of Storytelling: “Unlock Your Leadership Story”
Career Pivots
Building Healthy Organizations
Karen Catlin, former Adobe VP of Engineering, shares her evolution from the tech industry to one of the most influential voices in workplace inclusion as an acclaimed author of Better Allies.
Highlights:
"Golden Age" of Women in Tech
Birth of an Anonymous Movement
7 Archetypes of an Ally
"Archery" Analogy
Practical Tools for Inclusion
Karen wraps by "paying it forward" and reminding us that being a "better ally" is a modern leadership skill.
Margaret Abe-Koga (Santa Clara County Supervisor) pulls back the curtain on a life dedicated to public service. An immigrant daughter who became the voice for the voiceless, she discusses the grit required to navigate a career in politics.
Key themes:
💥 Immigrant Experience
💥 Beating the Stigma of Illness
💥 “Sandwich Generation” Struggle
💥 What a Supervisor Actually Does
💥 Fighting for the Vulnerable
💥 Redefining Leadership
In this episode, we get to celebrate a massive IPO milestone with Jody Mettler, COO and President of Trust at BitGo.
Jody shares about her 20-year career at Citi to leading the "backbone" of the digital asset industry. This is a masterclass in crypto infrastructure and how traditional banking expertise is shaping the future of decentralized finance.
Inside the Episode:
Ultimate Career Pivot
Bitcoin 101
"Backbone" of Crypto
Reality of Going Public
Pioneering Regulation
Power of Sponsorship
In this episode of the HumanizeHer Podcast, we sit down with Mauria Finley - a powerhouse entrepreneur, Stanford lecturer, and current Vice President at Google.
Mauria shares a deeply personal and strategic look at a career that has oscillated between massive corporate scale and the high-stakes "grit and resilience" of the startup world. Mauria offers a masterclass in living a life driven by purpose, joy, and connection.
Deb Liu (Former CEO of Ancestry and Former Product Exec at Facebook, PayPal, eBay) joins us for a deeply vulnerable and strategic conversation about power, transitions, and the one thing that matters more than a resume: your health.
Inside the Episode:
The "Other" in South Carolina
The 7-Year Pitch for Facebook Marketplace
The U-Shape Analogy
The "Blank Name Tag Club”
A Life-Saving Birthday Request
Strategic Leadership
From the elite IIT, Delhi to Uber, Aarathi Vidyasagar (VP of Eng & Science at Uber) defines what it means to lead with both technical craft and deep empathy. She shares her career journey, that is as much about "grit and spunk" as it is about high-level strategy.
Inside the Episode:
Tanya Staples and Vida Forrest y Salazar, the co-owners and managing partners of Ace Camps Travel! This duo, who first met working together at Lynda.com and navigated the acquisition by LinkedIn, share their incredible journey from corporate executives to entrepreneurs.
Join us for the inspiring and deeply personal story of Xitlali Curincita, a first-generation college graduate, current UC Irvine graduate student, and former 2022 Youth of the Year award winner from the Boys & Girls Club of the Peninsula. Raised in North Fair Oaks, she shares what it felt like growing up between cultures and often navigating spaces where she didn’t fully feel she belonged.
Anu Muralidharan, Expensify COO, shares her battle with debilitating stress and "scarcity thinking." Despite engineering credentials from BITS Pilani and Cornell, she felt unmotivated until she risked it all by quitting for an unstructured role. She found her "true north" by focusing on quality of work input, not the end result. This shift fueled her to build Expensify's core infrastructure, lead the IPO, and drive AI-led growth, showing how to find soulful fulfillment in tech.
Cynthia Teniente-Matson, President of San José State University (SJSU), shares her journey being a first-generation graduate and CFO to leading the oldest public university on the West Coast, now ranked #4 Public University in the Nation by The Wall Street Journal.
SJSU, often called "Silicon Valley's Public University," is at the forefront of the AI revolution with groundbreaking partnerships with tech giants like Nvidia and Adobe.
Join us for a deeply informative conversation with Joanna Strober, Founder and CEO of Midi Health, the pioneering telehealth platform transforming women's midlife health.
Joanna clarifies the hormonal chaos of perimenopause (which often starts in your 30s) and the shocking truth behind the decades of fear surrounding Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). She reveals data showing estrogen alone may actually reduce breast cancer risk and improve bone/brain health.
Cherie Brooke Luo & Jean Luo pull back the curtain on building their brand and business, hitting #1 Business Podcast and Top 3 U.S. Podcasts overall on Spotify!
From product managers in tech, to earning MBAs, to full-time content creators. This episode is a masterclass in modern entrepreneurship and personal reinvention, covering:
🔀 The Power of the Pivot
📸 Startup Mentality in Media
👩💼 Flow State of Entrepreneurship
💰 Building Community & Commerce
👯♀️ Sister Dynamics in Business
💡 “I play in the spaces where tech, storytelling, and entertainment intersect.” Author–filmmaker Abigail Hing Wen joins us to talk about her newest universe, The Vale. Abigail also opens up about the decade before her “yes,” the four “buried” novels that taught her craft, and how that persistence led to the breakout book-to-film journey from Loveboat, Taipei to the Netflix movie Love in Taipei.
Kirthiga Reddy, a trailblazing leader and first female Investment Partner at SoftBank Vision Fund, shares her incredible journey from growing up in India to becoming an influential figure in tech. She details her time as a Director of Engineering at Silicon Graphics and the first employee to launch and lead Facebook (now Meta) in India. This episode is packed with invaluable insights, including:
Join us for a powerful and candid conversation with Nidhi Gupta, a trailblazing leader who rose to become a Chief Technology & Product Officer - then a Co-Founder and CEO! Nidhi shares her journey from growing up in India, where she was one of few women in her engineering class, to navigating pervasive biases and microaggressions in the tech industry. She reveals how these experiences fueled her passion to create SheTO.org, a non-profit accelerating women's leadership in engineering.
LinkedIn’s Career Expert, Catherine Fisher, shares her journey in communications, from Netflix to eBay to LinkedIn, revealing how she became a go-to voice for career navigation.
This episode dives into crucial topics:
- evolving job market
- impact of AI on careers
- the "squiggly line"
- asking for what you want
* NOTE *
An audio mishap impacted our sound quality, but we worked with Swell Sound to repair it so you don't miss a moment of the great conversation!
Sabrina Ellis, former CPO at Pinterest and VP at Google and Yahoo, shares her remarkable journey navigating top executive tech roles. Sabrina reveals unfiltered insights on:
The power of career breaks
Defining a CPO
Adversity in the C-suite
"Sabrina's Rule of Three"
The future of work
Hear Sabrina's transparent take on self-doubt and identity beyond big brands.
In this empowering episode of the HumanizeHer Podcast, we welcome Leela Srinivasan, CEO of Parity, for a compelling conversation that spans her dynamic career journey and her impactful work in women's sports. Leela, who transitioned from a successful CMO background at companies like LinkedIn and SurveyMonkey to leading Parity, shares authentic insights into career pivots, the value of an MBA, and navigating the challenges of leadership, including the elusive "work-life balance" as a new mother.
What if success didn’t mean choosing one path, but embracing many? In this episode of The HumanizeHer Podcast, We sat down with the incomparable Jory Des Jardins —co-founder of BlogHer and, more recently, the co-founder of Optionality, a platform dedicated to reimagining how we work, lead, and live.
Florina Grosskurth and Vicky Fang delve into their remarkable career journeys, sharing personal stories of navigating the tech industry to embracing entrepreneurship for their love of books.
Florina Grosskurth, from program management to event planning, shares her inspiring transition to owning Linden Tree Books, a beloved local bookstore.
Vicky Fang, author and former Google product designer, reveals her journey from aspiring actress to STEM advocate through her children's books.
In this inspiring episode of HumanizeHer, we sit down with Telle Whitney—a pioneering computer scientist, co-founder of the Grace Hopper Celebration, former CEO of AnitaB.org, and now, author of the book Rebooting Tech Culture: How to Ignite Innovation and Build Organizations Where Everyone Can Thrive.
🎙️ EPISODE: From Corporate Grit to Cannabis Grit – Erin Gore’s Journey with Garden Society
In this bold and deeply human episode of HumanizeHer, we sit down with Erin Gore, the powerhouse founder and CEO of Garden Society. From a chemical engineering background and climbing the ranks in a male-dominated corporate world to pioneering in the cannabis industry, Erin shares how pain, perseverance, and purpose led her to build one of the most innovative and woman-led cannabis brands in the country.
Adrienne Bankert, who is an Emmy-award winning journalist who has worked as a broadcast journalist for NewsNation, ABC News, Good Morning America with a mission to deliver unbiased news.. From covering major events like the 2011 tsunami to interviewing Lady Gaga and The Rock, Bankert's reporting shaped her empathetic style. Now, she embarks on the fearless endeavor to discuss faith at work, including in her special series "One Nation Under God," and hernew YouTube podcast series
In this special HumanizeHer live episode from SXSW, we dive deep into the lived experiences and bold voices of two remarkable women reshaping the landscape of sport, identity, and advocacy: Lizzi Smith, Paralympic swimmer and 3x medalist, and Erin Crownover, PhD candidate and Voice In Sport Foundation researcher.
Live from SXSW! 🎙️ We sat down with Oscar-nominated director Cindy Lee & actor Avumile Qongqo to chat about their powerful film, "The Last Ranger." by Kindred FilmsThis intimate conversation, held within the bustling energy of the SXSW Expo Hall, provided a unique opportunity to delve into the heart of the film's creation and its profound message.
Join us in this deeply insightful and vulnerable conversation with Erica Lockheimer, CEO and Founder of the HumanizeHer podcast and former VP of Engineering at Linkedin. Erica opens up about her remarkable career journey from being the first person in her family to graduate from college from San Jose State University to sharing the highs, lows, and pivotal moments that shaped her path.
Aishwarya Srinivasan currently heads Developer Relations and Growth at Fireworks AI. She was previously at Microsoft as a Senior AI Advisor to help Y Combinator startups build machine learning solutions leveraging Microsoft’s core OpenAI products. Prior to this, Aishwarya was working as a Data Scientist in Google Cloud. Trailblazer of the Year by Women in AIand a Woman of Influence by the Business Journal and LinkedIn Top Voice for Data Science and AI with 500K followers.
Linda Aiello is the Chief People Officer at DraftKings, where she leads all aspects of the employee experience for the online sports entertainment and gaming giant. She's responsible for finding and growing top talent, developing future leaders, and fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. Linda has held CPO roles at companies like Qurate Retail Group and Stitch Fix, Salesforce, Uber and Louis Vuitton.
Pam Kostka, a seasoned executive with nearly 30 years of experience driving growth at enterprise startups and building successful companies. Pam's career spans across various leadership roles, including CEO, CMO, and currently sits on multiple boards, is an advisor and executive in residence.
As an executive-in-Residence at Magnify Ventures, Pam is focused on the "care economy" – a sector that's revolutionizing how we support families, care for aging populations, and manage our households.
Amy Wong, founder of Always On Purpose is an executive leadership coach, author, and keynote speaker who has worked with some of the most influential organizations and individuals, including Salesforce, PWC, Berkshire Hathaway, LinkedIn, and universities like Stanford and Berkeley. Amy draws upon a diverse range of disciplines and practices, integrating them into a unique approach that focuses on three key lenses: Self, Relationships, and Results.
Wheels are a girl’s best friend, right? We’re sitting down with Adriana Boas, one of Bentley’s award-winning sales liaisons - but she didn’t start out in the sales industry. Adriana was born in Brazil with degrees in journalism and holistic medicine, and when she migrated to the US, she gets real about going from food stamps to a six-figure commission-based gig.
She’s earned multiple awards under Bentley's and Aston Martin’s prestigious banner.
Is the way we work working? In this episode, we’re sitting down with Stacey Gordon, MBA who is a leader in the diversity, equity, and inclusion space - or as she prefers to describe DEI: the Disrupt, Evolve, and Innovate space. She shares her first-hand experience of witnessing bias which led her to becoming the Founder and CEO of Rework Work.
What does it take to be on the Forbes “100 Most Powerful Women in the World” list? In this episode, we’re sitting down with Padmasree Warrior as she shares her experience of being an executive in technology holding roles in the C-suite at Cisco Systems, Motorola, and NIO USA to now taking her corporate experience following her passion - motivated to find a way to apply data and machine learning to focus on mental wellness. This led her to her current role as Founder and CEO of Fable.
Have you found your calling? We’re sitting down with Jenny Obiaya, CEO of The Boys & Girls Clubs of the Peninsula, as she shares her story of finding her calling - starting as a teacher through Teach for America, moving into the the role of Principal at a school in Hells Kitchen at the age of 26, and finally finding the perfect fit for her passion of closing the opportunity gap & empowering young people with access to opportunities through her work with BGCP.
In this episode, we're sitting down with Caroline Ghantous, a Middle Eastern watercolor artist who is creating a movement of her own through her art. Her paintings are a celebration of women who are activists, feminists, and who are making a difference in different societies and cultures - aiming to give a voice to the voiceless with her unique mixed media artistic style. Caroline is now a part of the HumanizeHer family and we are proud to showcase her work in the HumanizeHer podcast studio.
How do you live your life with purpose? We're sitting down with Jennifer Dulski, CEO & Founder of Rising Team and executive leader with experience at tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Yahoo. Jennifer shares the stories that led her to the formula of how to start a movement, build teams with connection, and do so in a purposeful way. She talks about her life hardships, her journey of being a start-up founder (multiple times!) and her successful current startup, Rising Team.
Let’s get bossy for a moment!! We’re sitting down with Merline Saintil, angel investor and co-founder of Black Women on Boards (among many other badass titles) and Aishetu Fatima Dozie, who joins our conversation talking all about her transition from being a Wall Street wonder woman to founding her own cosmetics company called Bossy Cosmetics.
In this timelapse, witness the exciting journey of building a home-grown podcast studio. With expert guidance from Alex Sallee and Becky Davis, Directors in film production and photography, we assembled a top-notch setup. From three Canon cameras and high-quality lenses to professional lighting and microphones, we spared no expense to create a truly immersive recording environment.
