Piloting your Life

Who is Lynn-Ann Gries?  

 

Lynn-Ann Gries has spent her career in the financial arena. From investment banking to venture capital she has experience working with a wide range of companies, from start-ups to those in the Fortune 1000. 

 

She began her career in the mid-80s working for two investment banking firms in New York, Smith Barney and Morgan Stanley. When marriage brought her to the Midwest she began working for the regional firm McDonald and Company, now part of KeyBank. At McDonald she was primarily responsible for helping companies access capital through the public equity markets, but also assisted 

companies in the processes of raising growth capital or transitioning ownership through sales or mergers. 

 

In 2001 she began working in venture capital, managing a small venture development fund with a mission to invest in tech-based start-ups. Over the course of 12 years she and her team invested $30M in 80 companies, all located in Northeast Ohio, including CoverMyMeds (sold to McKesson for $1.1 billion), CardioInsight (sold to Medtronic for $90 million), Wireless Environment (recently sold to Ring for an undisclosed amount) and OnShift, one of the Northeast Ohio region’s premier software companies.  

 

As of July 2018, she is the newly hired Managing Partner of the First Check Fund, the newest in a family of 15+ funds managed by Alumni Ventures Group. She also runs her own consulting firm providing a variety of business services including management of a women’s angel network, financial analysis, market research, and advisory services to entrepreneurs seeking capital. She currently serves on the boards of the Smith College Club of Cleveland, Summer on the Cuyahoga 

and In Counsel with Women.  

 

Lynn-Ann received her MBA from New York University (Stern School of Business) and holds a Bachelor of Arts from Smith College where she majored in Economics. She is mom to two grown children and resides in Shaker Heights with her husband, a sixth generation Clevelander, high school lacrosse coach and devoted Cleveland sports fan who has successfully managed to turn a Jersey into a Cleveland Indians superfan.  

 

Show Highlights 

Contact 

Lynn-Ann can be reached through LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynn-ann-gries-44440/ 

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.  

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com. 

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife. 

Who is Cécile Villette?  

 

Cécile Villette is the CEO of Altaroad. A telecommunication engineer by degree, she spent 10 years as a Digital Strategy consultant deploying connected devices and new services globally for large Telco and Energy companies, before joining up forces with Bérengère Lebental in 2015 during her MBA in HEC to launch the connected road project that would become Altaroad.  

 

Show Highlights 

Cécile can be reached through LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/cécile-villette/ 

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.  

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com. 

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife. 

Who is Gabrielle Katsnelson?  

 

Gabrielle Katsnelson is co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of SMBX. She has a decade of financial accounting, strategy, and operations experience; including: managing the loan portfolio of the Artists Community Federal Credit Union; the restricted royalty funds of TuneCore, a digital distributor of music; and architecting financial infrastructure for countless startups and SMBs.   

  
Dedicated to creating a surplus ecosystem, Gabrielle believes that giving SMBs access to capital while creating an engaging and empowering investing experience for people is the means. 

 

 

 

Contact 

Gabrielle can be reached via email gabrielle@thesmbx.com; Twitter: @gabykatsnelson and through LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrielle-katsnelson-6a73958/. 

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.  

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com. 

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife. 

Terri talks to Laura Fleet about how a personal experience gave her the idea and inspiration to start SendaRide and that she is both loving the roller coaster ride of entrepreneurship and challenged every day.   

 

• Laura talks about her company, SendaRide, and why she started the company.   

• Laura continues to talk about being a smaller player in a bigger market, her go to market strategy and differentiating factors.  
• Laura has become very comfortable with the word ‘pivot’ and being uncomfortable.   SendaRide started as a B2C LLC and is now a B2B Delaware Corp.  
• Laura has become comfortable with being the face and brand of SendaRide.   
• Laura’s favorite founder resource is her network of female founders who have gone before her, and investor resources who are willing to make introductions and be available to answer questions and bounce around ideas.   
• Laura was accepted into Springboard and shared what she is looking to get out of the time with her advisory group.   

• Laura has been surprised by how much she is enjoying being a founder of a startup and the variety of skillsets she has developed over her time as CEO.   
•  If Laura had a magic wand, she would make chocolate and champagne have no calories and carbs.  She would also have people stop in their tracks and not make judgments and not look at stereotypes when they make decisions.   

• SendaRide: https://sendaride.com/ 
• Women’s Startup Lab:  https://womenstartuplab.com/ 
• Springboard:  https://sb.co/ 

 

Contact 

Laura can be reached through LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-brookins-fleet-49aa9a54/ and via email at Laura.Fleet@SendaRide.com.   

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.  

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com. 

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife. 

 

Nancy Hayes is an active angel investor focused on women-led companies. She has invested in 22 companies and serves as advisor to entrepreneurs and as a management consultant and coach to executives in for-profit and nonprofit corporations.

Nancy left the IBM Corporation, where she was a senior executive, to become CEO of the STARBRIGHT Foundation, an innovative nonprofit organization that used technology and media to help seriously ill children and subsequently was President and CEO of WISE Senior Services, a social services agency which served frail elderly and disabled adults.

Nancy was named Dean of the College of Business at San Francisco State University in 2005 and after six years in that role, was CFO and Chief Administrative Officer of the university for 2 years.

In 2013, Nancy cofounded MoolaHoop, a rewards-based crowdfunding site for women with small businesses.

She was Managing Director of the Silicon Valley chapter of Golden Seeds, a national angel group that invests in women-led companies, for over 3 years.

Nancy has an MBA with a concentration in Finance from the University of Chicago and resides in San Francisco.

 

 

As women, we think we need to take one more class or get one more degree but with angel investing, we just need to get started.

 

 

Nancy can be reached by email at nancy@nkhgroup.com, via Twitter at @nancyhayes and through LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/nancyhayes2.

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead. 

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com.

Who is Imène Maharzi?  

Imène Maharzi is a French based professional, who started working in the French Private Equity space 18 years ago. She started out her career as an auditor with Arthur Andersen, and then became an investment professional with Butler Capital Partners where she had the opportunity to explore several sectors, geographies, investment sizes and targets.  

In 2013, she created Butterfly Partners, a company which invests time and money in start-ups and subject matter experts which demonstrate a social or environmental positive impact. In 2014-2015, she took over a majority stake in a school transportation company dedicated to exceptional children with autism, Down syndrome, etc.. As the CEO, she transformed a 15-year family business into a social business, with a resolution to trigger a positive social impact on both employees and beneficiaries, through a strong user-centric, quality-driven approach.  

As she moved through her professional career, she noticed that there was a problem in getting access to capital for female founders that she saw resulted in a massive waste of both economic and social value. This led her to create OwnYourCash this year. OwnYourCash is an educational platform, both online and IRL, to train women (and men) to become Business Angels. By opening a conversation on biases, gender-lens investing and impact investing, OwnYourCash will contribute to smoother access to capital for projects co-founded by women.

With OwnYourCash, she is committed to training 2000 new female business angels by the year 2020.  The mission of OwnYourCash is to foster economic independence for women leading to true male/female equality

 

Show Highlights

Imène shared her professional journey into private equity and ultimately starting her new company OwnYourCash to educate and train 2000 new female business angels by 2020.   
Imène talks about social entrepreneurship in France…creating a social return and a financial return.   
Imène shares the details on OwnYourCash and how the time is right to educate new business angels and create a new business angle network and how the change in the tax laws in France this year will be a positive thing for new business angels.
If Imène had a magic wand, she would make the ‘plain vanilla’ investing be impact investing with everyone going after economic return along with a social or environmental return.   


Terri’s Key Takeaway

Investing is an information business.  



References in the Podcast

Techstars Paris:  https://www.techstars.com/programs/paris-program/
OwnYourCash: http://site-1317096-1533-8422.strikingly.com/
Arlan Hamilton: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arlanhamilton/
Backstage Capital:  https://backstagecapital.com/
Shannon Grant:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannon-grant-6164139/
Serendipity:  https://www.guildserendipity.com/
Sephora Stands Accelerate:  https://www.sephorastands.com/accelerate/
Nancy Hayes:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancyhayes2/
Maxie Koven:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxine-kozler-koven-7573633/
Shira Ronen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shira-ronen-590297/
Odile Roujol:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/odileroujol/
Suzanne Andrews:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzannemandrews/
Linnea Roberts:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/linnea-roberts-10078570/
Kezia Wright: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kezia-wright-bb3755127/
Amaranthine Partners: https://amaranthine.vc/


Contact

Imène can be reached via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/im%C3%A8ne-maharzi-439294/.

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead. 

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com.

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife.

 Terri talks to Fran Dunaway of TomboyX about how she and her partner and wife Naomi Gonzalez started TomboyX in 2014 to create a better shirt and ended up launching an underwear company.  Fran and Naomi recently raised a Series A and Fran shares their journey to this point and where she sees TomboyX going in the next few years.  

Who is Fran Dunaway?  

• Fran shares the story behind TomboyX and the evolution of the TomboyX brand 

• Fran continues to talk about how difficult it has been to raise funds to fund the business and what it’s like to run out of inventory as an apparel brand.  
• Terri and Fran about the shifting landscape for female founders and the economic opportunity in investing in these founders.  
• Fran explains how she went from a job in corporate to being a founder and focusing on TomboyX 100% 
• Fran talks about how she and Naomi have evolved as founders and leaders and the evolution of their team as the company as grown and matured 
• Terri asks Fran about how she sees the company evolve over the next few years 

• If Fran could wave a magic wand, she would change the lens with which we see each other; to be less judgmental of each other and to have greater clarity as to who we are as individuals.   
• Fran’s favorite founder resources are Loose Threads (podcast), Leap Frog (the book) and founders stories in general. 

• TomboyX: https://tomboyx.com/ 
• CPB Group: http://www.cpbgroup.com/ 
• MergeLane: https://www.mergelane.com/ 

• Katica Roy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katicaroy/ 
• Rain Dove: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_Dove 
• DapperQ Fashion Show: https://www.dapperq.com/ 
• TomboyX ad with Rain Dove: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKnbum7v1aw 
• Loose Threads (podcast): https://loosethreads.com/podcast/ 

• Leap Frog:  The New Revolution of Women Entrepreneurs: http://leapfroghacks.com/ 

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.  

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com. 

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife. 

Who is Shannon Grant?  

 

Shannon Grant is an investor, community builder and startup advisor. She leads knowledge programs for the best and brightest minds in tech to facilitate high-level knowledge transfer and create powerful experiences for time-strapped leaders.  
 
In 2014 she developed the Salon Series events at MKThink focusing on the future of education, and she helped build a membership organization of over 80 mission-driven CEOs with The Tugboat Group. She has coached founders to create original talks for CEO summits, hosted Jeffersonian dinners for awesome engineers and connected tech founders with the people or information they need to grow.  
 
To support this vision, she started Deus Capital to invest in companies with billion-dollar market opportunities that have at least one female founder.  
 
Her social impact work includes converting a liquor store into a children's writing center in the heart of San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood with 826 Valencia and building a new model for charity with Mama Hope. 

 

 

• Shannon shares her journey through venture capital into angel investing.  
• We talk about our shared interest in getting more women to invest and invest in female founders including the statistics around this.  
• We discuss the importance of getting girls to see what is possible by exposing them to investing, startups, entrepreneurship, and technology.   
• We talk about this being an economic opportunity and the importance of encouraging men to join us in investing in women and encouraging more exemplar men in this awakening.  

• If Shannon could wave a magic wand and change something in this world, she would encourage people to speak; your voice is needed.   

• MKThink:  http://www.mkthink.com/ 
• Tugboat:  http://www.thetugboatgroup.com/ 
• Robyn Fisher:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/robynsuegoldman/ 
• Smitten Ice Cream: https://www.smittenicecream.com/ 

• StitchFix: https://www.stitchfix.com/ 
• Katrina Lake:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmlake/ 
• Learn Capital:  http://learncapital.com/ 
• Accenture Ventures: https://www.accenture.com/us-en/innovation-architecture-accenture-ventures 
• First Round Capital Study: http://10years.firstround.com/ 

• Darya Shaked: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darya-henig-shaked-361539a9/ 
• Wonder Ventures: https://www.wonderventures.com/ 
• Dear Madam President:  https://www.dearmadampresidentbook.com/ 
• Brazen Global: https: https://brazenglobal.com/ 
• Jennifer Ehlen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferehlen/ 

 

 

Contact 

Shannon can be reached via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannon-grant-6164139/.   

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.  

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com. 

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife. 

Who is Jennifer Ehlen?  

Jennifer Ehlen is the founder of Brazen and Prosper Women Entrepreneurs (PWE), two organizations aimed at advancing women-led companies. She is the CEO of Brazen Global and a Managing Partner of the PWE Startup Accelerator.  Before making the entrepreneurial leap to focus on Brazen and Prosper full-time, Jennifer was a Director at Thompson Street Capital Partners, where Jennifer worked with senior management to help source and evaluate investment opportunities for the St. Louis based $1.5B+ private equity firm.  Prior to joining Thompson Street, Jennifer was the Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at Saint Louis University.   

Jennifer is an angel investor and invests in early stage ventures. She is also a member of Golden Seeds (NYC chapter).  Jennifer serves as a coach, mentor and advisory board member for companies ranging in size from pre-revenue to $200M+.   

Jennifer’s favorite and most important venture is raising her four children with her partner Craig.   

• Jennifer shares her path from a small town in mid-Missouri in a socio-economically challenged family that provides a unique perspective where she has worked in and with the top 2% in private equity.  
• Jennifer has been fascinated by intersectional feminism in entrepreneurship.  She worked at the St. Louis University, has been an investor, raised a fund, worked in private equity and saw the differences between men and women in entrepreneurialism.  
• Jennifer saw some research in 2012 about the state of women-owned businesses and saw that St. Louis came in dead last, tied with San Francisco.  She and her colleagues had worked very hard at getting women a seat at the table and they were very frustrated by the reality and the study results. 

• Jennifer, through Prosper, raised a $3M fund to invest in women and they built an accelerator. 
• Realizing that the power is in the peer advisory groups, they decided to create Brazen to build the tools to create better peer groups and allow for global scaling.   
• Brazen operates in 7 cities including St. Louis, Chicago, Dallas, Fort Worth, Denver, Detroit, and Philly.  Their goal is to expand into more cities this year.   
• Brazen’s flagship program is the peer advisory groups (growth groups).  7-9 women are in each group and meet every month.  They use Brazen’s proprietary software that provides a rigorous structure that allows the participants to feel like they are fully understood before their peers start to provide guidance and support.   
• Brazen is a for-profit organization and they license to franchisees.  They have 50 cities that could foreseeably be a new Brazen market, but it comes down to the director and who is delivering the program.   

• At Brazen, they feel strongly about making sure that the directors understand startups/entrepreneurship/growth process at a deep level.  They need to be able to speak about gender parity in an articulate, evidence-based way.  The directors need to have a good network in the market already.   
• Brazen has found that the software for the peer groups is applicable across sectors…not just for entrepreneurs.  
• Jennifer shares what has been most surprising about her journey over the last year.   
• Jennifer talks about how quite a few of their investors are men as they see the financial opportunity in this space.   
• Terri asks Jennifer about what she is doing to temper the founder roller coaster.  Her response is a lot of self-care and she is no longer following her competitors in order to be focused on what she is trying to accomplish.  Her team follows them for her.     

• Terri talks about how when she was going through a tough spot her executive coach reminded her that regardless of what ‘failures’ occurred or ‘down times’ existed in the past, I was able to recover, and this is so important to remember when we encounter tough times.  
• Terri shared what she discussed with her executive coach about the comparison game and how easy it is to lose sight of your own goals. It is important to focus on your own journey and not someone else’s.   
• If Jennifer could wave a magic wand to change something in this world, she would create true, total equity in the early stage capital space and have more women investing.  
• Jennifer’s favorite founder resource is Brazen Global (of course) and recommends becoming a Brazen member.   

• AmericanExpress article on women owned businesses: https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/openforum/articles/2012-american-express-open-state-of-women-owned-businesses-report/ 

• Paul Heirendt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulheirendt/ 
• Prosper Women Entrepreneurs:  http://www.prosperstl.com/ 
• Brazen Global: https://brazenglobal.com/ 
• Brazen Vault (resources);  https://brazenglobal.com/category/blog/ 
• Golden Seeds: https://goldenseeds.com/ 

• Pipeline Angels: http://pipelineangels.com/ 
• Portfolia:  https://www.portfolia.co/ 
• Astia: http://astia.org/ 

Jennifer can be reached via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferehlen/ or through the Brazen Global website https://brazenglobal.com/. 

 

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.  

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com. 

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife. 

Who is Lesley Jane Seymour?  

 

Lesley Jane Seymour.  Lesley is a media entrepreneur and founder of CoveyClub, a new club for lifelong learners that she launched in February of this year.  The CoveyClub is for women over the age of 40 and has virtual salons, a monthly magazine, a daily blog, and a weekly podcast for women to bond over issues of interest and concern.  

Lesley was named Editor-in-Chief of More Magazine in 2008 and was Editor-in Chief and Social Media Director of More.com.  Before More, she served as Editor-in-Chief of Marie Claire and Redbook magazines, and teen book YM.  She was Beauty Director of Glamour and Senior Editor at Vogue.  She is author of two books, On the Edge, 100 Years of Vogue, and I Wish My Parents Understood.  In 2013 she was named Chair of the Editorial Advisory Board for Duke Magazine and a Global Ambassador for Vital Voices.  She is a trustee at Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Massachusetts.   

 

• Lesley shares what CoveyClub is and why she created it.  She expands on how women over the age of 40 are disenfranchised and being left out of the conversations.   
• Terri comments that technology has increased the sense of loneliness and how ironic it is that Lesley is using technology to reduce the loneliness and bring women together.  
• Terri talks about the importance of getting together in person to fill her soul.   
• Lesley observes that there are no longer places for people to come together like offices, town squares, religious institutions, and community centers.   

• Lesley named the company CoveyClub after a small group of birds.  She wants the groups to be small and provide ways for women to get to know who is in the room.  
• Lesley talks about having a significant career and an amazing life and wants to be able to help women connect and help their dreams come true.   
• Lesley knows that if you want better content, you’ll have to pay for it and she believes that others are looking for this.   
• Lesley comments that right now our politicians in Washington DC don’t stay in town to eat together, to get to know each other, to see the humanity in each other, to be able to reach across the aisle to work together.   
• Terri comments that we need to be intentional about coming together in person to connect as humans.  Terri loves how her city, Redwood City, makes a lot of effort to bring people together at various events around town.   

• Terri talks about how quickly women over the age of 40 are overlooked and easily dismissed.  Lesley talks about how when we were in our 20s, we were seen as T&A and now she would like us to be seen for our $19T in assets that have control over.   
• If Lesley had a magic wand, she would make Donald Trump go ‘poof’ and disappear.  Terri talks about the fear from the patriarchy who are trying to keep things as they were, and she hopes that we take this as an opportunity to slingshot forward. We need to drag everyone we know to the polls to make a difference in November.  
• Lesley’s favorite founder resources are Hello Alice and the group that she is created to provide her with support (the red cup club). 

• CoveyClub:  https://www.coveyclub.com/ 
• Hello Alice:  https://helloalice.com/ 

• CoveyClub podcast on reinvention:  https://www.coveyclub.com/podcast/ 

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.  

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com. 

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife. 

Who is May Samali?  

 

May Samali is an investor at the Urban Innovation Fund, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm. May has had extensive experiences advising both early-stage startups and large companies across the U.S. and Australia. Prior to her current role, she was a Director at Tumml, an urban ventures accelerator in San Francisco. She also served as a Strategy Consultant at a boutique venture firm and as an attorney at Herbert Smith Freehills in Sydney.  

 
May earned her MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School and her economics and law degrees from the University of Sydney. She is also an Australian John Monash Scholar, a Gleitsman Leadership Fellow at the Harvard Center for Public Leadership, and an Australian American Young Leadership Dialogue delegate.  

 

• Terri shares how she met May on the Connected Homes pitch panel at Launch Festival in 2017 which was an all-women panel.   
• May shares her journey from Australia to the Silicon Valley. 
• May started in law but fell in love with the idea of using social entrepreneurship to solve the world’s problems.  
• May answers Terri’s question about how the tall poppy syndrome has influenced May in her life.   

• May is working on bringing the best parts of the Silicon Valley to Australia.  
• My comments on how helpful people have been to her in getting into investing.  May has taken the opportunity to reach out to people in a very intentional way and follow up after meeting at events.  
• Terri discusses the importance of saying ‘why not me?’ instead of ‘why me?’ especially for women.  
• Terri observes that May’s natural authenticity is very attractive and charming and hard to resist.   
• May talks about how being of the Baha’i Faith influenced her view of the world from day one and later started to live them as a result of her personal choosing when she was in her twenties. 

• Terri talks about the importance of taking the leap without having it all figured out.  
• May shares what she started to do when she was overanalyzing a situation.  She said that she would sit across from herself at the table and provide herself with her own advice.   
• If May had a magic wand, she would make all of us more human and compassionate and living life in the moment.   
• May’s favorite investor resources are Venture Deals and Information.  

• Terri’s Due Diligence Event with Spero Ventures on 8/1/18:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/due-diligence-digging-in-with-investors-tickets-47146445287 

• Women Get Funded:  http://www.womengetfunded.com/ 
• Urban Innovation Fund:  http://www.urbaninnovationfund.com/ 
• The Jolly Swagman podcast with May’s interview: https://thejollyswagmen.com/new-blog/maysamali 
• Tall poppy syndrome:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome 
• Ada:  https://www.ada-accelerator.com/ 

• Feminist Fight Club:  https://www.feministfightclub.com/ 
• Silicon Allee:  http://www.siliconallee.com/ 
• Venture Deals:  https://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capitalist/dp/1119259754/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1532047043&sr=8-1&keywords=venture+deals 
• The Information:  https://www.theinformation.com/reporters/jessica-e-lessin 

Contact 

You can follow May on Twitter @maysamali or reach her via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/msamali/ 

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.  

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com. 

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife

Who is Darryl Grant?  

 

Darryl Grant is a New York native, born in Harlem. He has 20 siblings and is uncle to over 50 nieces and nephews. He has been a Bay Area resident for the last 4.5 years and enjoys family time with his wife and 2.5 year old son, supporting his clients’ needs, sports (former Div-I Greco-Roman wrestler), reading, traveling, cooking, and supporting diversity and inclusion. 

 

Darryl is Managing Director of Merrill Corporation and Founder of Inspiring Connectivity.  He  has over 19 years of financial communication experience with the top three financial printers. Darryl began as a Customer Service Project Coordinator in Manhattan and later assumed various managerial roles and engineered XBRL operations for two Manhattan offices. Before assuming his role as Managing Director of Sales where he co-leads Merrill’s Bay Area Capital Markets team, Darryl spent 6 years as a Capital Markets Account Manager leading teams and working directly with C-level execs, law firms, corporate finance and legal departments to manage IPOs, mergers, spin-offs along with all routine SEC filing requirements. He has also managed three of the largest mergers in stock market history and over 20 prominent IPO’s in industries ranging from Tech, e-commerce, transportation, motion pictures, Biotech, retail and broker exchange services.  

• Darryl starts off by talking about the event he puts on with his team called Inspiring Connectivity and why he, as a man, is putting on an event for women. 
• Darryl talks about growing up in New York and about his mom who noticed a trend where children were being left behind.  This led her to adopting 18 children and raising a total of 21 of which Darryl was one of those adopted by her.   

• Darryl shares how he worked with a coach who taught him that because he was having trouble with who he was, he was having trouble coming across authentically.  
• Darryl was inspired to create an event for women because of the 2016 elections, the issues women were facing that were coming to light, and a conversation with a friend who fully supported him creating the event.  He was inspired by what his mother created around community.   
• Terri comments on how important it is for Darryl to set the example for other men to create these kinds of events to support the change for women in society.  This is a human issue; not a women’s issue.  
• Darryl observes that solving problems begins with community.   
• Terri talks about her experience at Inspired Connectivity with Barbara Tien and how Barbara introduced her to the other women at the event.  This made Terri realize that she is having an impact even though she doesn’t always see it.   

• Terri commented that a lot of founders don’t take the time to get to know her and how important it is to be seen as a person and not just as a checkbook.  
• Terri asked Darryl about tribalism in a global community and he responds with the importance of connecting and community.   
• Darryl talks about the importance of getting out of your own head when designing an event and thinking about what the guests are going to want.  
• Terri asks Darryl if people give him a hard time for not focusing on women of color or people of color and he says that for the most part, no.  
• Darryl talks about breaking down the platform, the panel, the awards and focus on the people at events.   

• If Darryl could wave a magic wand, he would use it to genuinely connect people without bias.   

• Inspiring Connectivity:  https://inspiringconnectivity.splashthat.com/ 
• Merrill Corporation:  https://www.merrillcorp.com/en/ 
• Barbara Tien (Ponga): https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbaratien/ 

• Vanessa Grant: Instagram:  @beautysecretary 

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.  

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com. 

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife. 

 

• Terri talks about having to complete her professional education hours for her PMP (project management professional) certification.  She talks about writing some blog posts and putting on a webinar on planning a technology project which is covered in this episode.  
• The presentation Terri provided covers the following areas (link in references): 

• Project charter 
• Project document 

• Project plan 
• Agreements 
• Preparing for kick off 

• Terri talks about how she is assuming that the lead candidate has been identified and the system is either business critical, a major enterprise project, or needs to be validated to meet 21 CFR Part 11 requirements.   
• Terri shares that she is a believer in right-sizing the planning of a project.  

• Terri talks about starting with a project charter to get the stakeholders on the same page regarding the project and shares details about what goes into the charter.   
• Terri talks about creating a project document for the larger projects she works on which is the guidebook / playbook for the project.   
• Terri shares why it is important to establish the acceptance criteria and success criteria for the project at the beginning of the project to be able to objectively assess the success of the project at the end of the project.  
• Terri explains to Jacqueline why a project plan is wrong as soon as it is generated but you need to start someplace when it is good enough.  
• Terri emphasizes the importance of NOT signing agreements with vendors until the project is planned.   

• Terri talks about the practical aspects of managing and planning the overall project and the importance of understanding the motivations of all of the stakeholders.  
• Terri shares her concerns about SaaS solutions and the assumption that they are plug-and-play without taking into account the integration within the business processes.  Terri is concerned about operationalizing the new system and associated processes.   

• Link to the Presentation:  https://bit.ly/2t7VeG4 

• PMP:  https://www.pmi.org/certifications/types/project-management-pmp 
• PMBOK: https://www.pmi.org/pmbok-guide-standards/framework 

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.  

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com. 

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife. 

• Terri, Jacqueline and Anne talk about Serendipity.  Serendipity is anything but the typical conference.  There will be more than 80 speakers sharing their skills and expertise. Attendees are limited to 500 women.   
• Terri talked about the salon she is hosting at Serendipity at Bolt VC for female accredited investors to learn more about investing in startups. This will be limited to 40 female accredited investors.   
• The houses include: 

• Starting Something 

• Leadership 
• Equality in the Workplace 
• Voice Sessions 
• Coaching 
• Story Powerhouse 

• Thought Leadership 
• Social Responsibility 
• Founders Meet Funders 
• Emerging Tech  
• Unplugging, Health and Wellness 

• Women’s Health 
• Investing 

• There are 40 different sessions and each attendee can choose 4 different sessions over the two days.  Everyone will have a different, tailored experience but will be able to have a shared experience and connect with other women.  
• There will be an opportunity to fill out your Guild profile, connect with women before the event, and then have a 15-minute call to help determine which sessions to attend.   
• There will be happy hour on night one and the second night, there will be dinners hosted by various community members including discussions. You must buy a dinner ticket and a session will be recommended based on your interests.   

• Anne is looking for volunteers to help with the conference who want to contribute to the event and participate on a very, special level.    

• The Guild: http://www.letsguild.com/ 
• Anne Cocquyt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annecocquyt/ 

• Serendipity:  https://www.guildserendipity.com/ 
• Bolt VC: https://bolt.io/ 
• Kate McAndrew:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/kateprestonmcandrew/ 
• Svetlana Saitsky:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/svetlanasaitsky/ 
• Denise Brosseau: https://www.linkedin.com/in/denisebrosseau/ 

 

Contact 

Anne can be reached through The Guild website www.letsguild.com or via email at anne@letsguild.com. Or through the Serendipity website:  www.guildserendipity.com.     

 

Jacqueline can be reached through her website at https://www.jacquelinesteenhuis.com/ or via Twitter at @andYoureaGirl.  

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.  

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com. 

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife. 

• Anne shares her journey from Stuttgart, Germany which was fairly conservative, and she knew she wanted to get out into the world. After she finished her MBA, she booked a trip to Australia which was on the other side of the world from where she was living.   

• While in Australia, she worked a number of odd jobs until she realized that she needed to get back into the real world.  She moved into IT transformation consulting out of Switzerland.   
• The work ultimately didn’t align with her values so she started a non-profit organization with a friend and put on large, high-end events for fundraising for organizations or projects they cared about.  
• Anne shared her grandparents’ story that influenced how she operates in the world in terms of the importance of building community.  Her grandmother was pushed out and she had to create a new home.  Anne decided to find her own home. 
• Anne shared her journey through South America and how traveling taught her that whenever she thought she was at the end, or that she was stuck, that there are ways out.  She learned to trust in herself and in serendipity.  
• Terri talked about the importance of traveling and putting herself in uncomfortable positions to build resilience, adaptability, and self-reliance.   

• Anne says new is scary, but this doesn’t seem to hold her back.  
• Anne believes that networks are so important. 
• When she was in South America, she got a call to do a consulting project in Europe.  She started a company in England and Switzerland to support the project.   
• Anne came to America and rented a red convertible to drive Route 66 to drive west which turned out to be her route to freedom.  She felt like there was something waiting for her at the end of it.   
• She ended up in LA with a friend and two months later she was married and living in San Francisco.   

• She loves the SF ecosystem which is crazy, and you can ideate, and people are always saying yes, and… 
• Anne talked about being new to the area and knowing absolutely no one.  She attended lots of events to meet people but knew that there were a lot of people in the groups that had something in common.  She started connecting them and realized that she had a passion for something that feels really good.   
• She started a consumer product company as a side hustle with her husband and started working for Genentech.  She saw there was no support system in place for women, so she started Bubbles and Biz. 
• Her experience at Genentech focused on neural networking led to an idea to create an algorithm to find the ways that people connect leveraging AI.  She took her hypothesis tested it out.     
• Anne quit her job at Genentech and took the leap to create the Guild.  She recently added video chat options to the in-person meeting options.  They now have members from almost all states on the platform.  

• Terri asked about who the ideal Guild member is, and Anne responded that it is any women from 18-90.  The algorithm considers many aspects of a woman’s life and interests and so it is not limited to professional women.  It can help other groups help their community members connect with each other and help companies connect their employees to each.   
• Terri talks about the importance of the women’s groups and organizations coming together to build a stronger, collective force.  
• If Anne could wave a magic wand, she would have people take a moment, before they do or say anything, to think about the effect of their actions on other people.   

Hello Alice is a great resource, especially for female founders.   

She also recommends taking a look at founder groups including the former YC group on Facebook and Founder Network.  

 

Terri’s Key Takeaway 

New is scary but it shouldn’t hold you back.   

• The Guild:  http://www.letsguild.com/ 
• Watermark:  https://www.wearewatermark.org/ 
• The Boardlist: https://theboardlist.com/ 

• Athena Alliance: https://athenaalliance.org/ 
• Hera Labs: https://www.heralabs.com/ 
• Hello Alice: https://helloalice.com/ 
• Founders Network:  https://foundersnetwork.com/ 

 

Contact 

Anne can be reached by email at anne@letsguild.com or through The Guild website at http://www.letsguild.com.   

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.  

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com. 

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife. 

Terri talks with Jacqueline about her work consulting with biotech, medical device, diagnostic, and digital health companies providing IT strategy and IT compliance services.   

 

• Terri and Jacqueline start out with some discussion about end of school year and the beginning of summertime.   
• Terri talks about her consulting work with Solutions2Projects and that she is still consulting, despite a recent comment by someone that they didn’t realize she was consulting.   
• Terri started her consulting company, Solutions2Projects, 13 years ago.   
• Terri does higher level IT strategic and compliance work within biotech, medical device, diagnostic, and digital health companies.  This has included IT strategy, IT compliance, IT system selection, IT project management, and vendor audits within life sciences companies.  

• Terri works with companies that have 30-300 people, moving towards or in Phase III clinical trials and/or getting ready for market approval and commercialization.  Terri likes to come in during Phase II to help the companies plan out their IT strategies in advance of when they need the systems in alignment with their corporate strategies.   
• Terri talks about how biotech companies outsource certain systems and processes early on and then later decide to bring in house and how the planning for this should be aligned with the corporate strategy.  
• Terri talks about computer validation and 21 CFR Part 11 (electronic records / electronic signatures) in an FDA regulated industry.   
• Terri works with systems and processes across an organization including clinical, regulatory, quality, financial, manufacturing, distribution, quality, HR, payroll, budgeting, business performance management, lab systems, etc.    
• Terri is a business person who understands technology and compliance.  Solutions2Projects’ value is in considering business, technology, and compliance requirements and needs.  

• Terri talks about the importance of data integrity in life sciences and how we use computer validation to demonstrate data integrity and control over the data and the systems.  
• Terri talks about the challenges associated with the introduction of SaaS in life sciences.  
• Jacqueline asked Terri about her first system selection and validation.  Terri talks about how she fell into life sciences a year after the 21 CFR Part 11 regulation was released (1997) and her first implementation and validation of JD Edwards at Coulter Pharmaceuticals following GAMP4.  GAMP5 has since been released and computer validation has evolved over the last 20 years.  
• Terri is a believer in taking a risk-based approach to computer validation and tailoring to each company’s risk tolerance and approach to the system.  
• Computer validation is all about defining what you want, testing to confirm you got what you wanted, training people to effectively use the system in a consistent manner, and then maintaining the system in a controlled manner.  To Terri, this makes good business sense.  

• Terri talks about the evolution of computer validation and some project and client stories.  
• Terri talks about GDPR.  
• Terri shares her concerns about potential litigation in the life sciences space between SaaS companies and life sciences companies because of computer validation and potential exclusion of data from regulatory submissions or complete response letters. She is starting to see more warning letters and 483’s around data integrity.   
• Terri talks about blockchain in the life sciences space.   
• Solutions2Projects is ideally suited for situations where this is an internal lead or project manager and Terri provides guidance, structure, and templates to help them with their processes.  Terri can help guide the business through the changes related to the new system implementations.   

• Terri has some project managers she likes to work with whereby she plans the project and then they are able to manage the projects with high level advisory and guidance from Terri.  
• Everything comes down to process and technology.  Terri’s favorite part of her work is to aligning corporate strategy with the system strategy.  When she can help life sciences companies see systems as business enablers and meet compliance requirements she is a happy camper.   

• GAMP5:  https://ispe.org/publications/guidance-documents/gamp-5 

• GDPR:  https://www.eugdpr.org/ 
• Arena Solutions:  https://www.arenasolutions.com/slc/ 
• John English:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/johntenglish/ 
• Lisa Scotch:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisascotch/ 
• Lighthouse:  https://lighthouseis.com/ 

 

Contact 

Jacqueline can be reached through her website at https://www.jacquelinesteenhuis.com/ or via Twitter at @andYoureaGirl.  

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.  

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com. 

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife. 

Who is Christine Tao?  

 

Christine Tao is the CEO/Co-founder of Sounding Board, a VC-backed startup bringing personalized, continuous leadership development to the $40B+ leadership & training industry. Prior to co-founding Sounding Board Christine was a Senior Vice President of Developer Relations at Tapjoy, a venture-backed, leading mobile advertising platform. She led the growth of Tapjoy’s network business from $0 to over $100 million in revenues in less than 3 years.  She has also advised several venture-backed startups including Flyby Media (acquired by Apple), Immersv & Comprendi. Prior to that she led e-commerce partnerships and strategy at YouTube. Christine holds an MBA in Marketing & Operations from Wharton and a BA in Business Administration from UC Berkeley. 

 

Show Highlights 

• Christine shares her experience growing up in a family business and how that has influenced her professionally and how she operates as the CEO/Founder of Sounding Board.   
• Christine shares the importance of thinking big when starting a business and making sure there is a strong sense of purpose for the employees to believe in and subscribe to.  She gives her dad credit for this thinking.   
• Christine talks about the importance of providing employees with purpose and opportunities for growth. This is important right now because there is a war for talent and you want to attract the best talent.   
• Christine explains her personal journey that led her to start Sounding Board.  
• Terri talks about her experience working with an executive coach and how valuable the experience has been for her.   

• Sounding Board is all about democratizing coaching for employees throughout the organization so that they can grow and scale at a rate they aren’t able to do on their own.   
• Christine turns the tables on Terri and asks her for one of the major takeaways from working with a coach.  She responded in how she recommends approaching working with coaches.   
• Terri shares how her experience working with a coach helped her not only professionally but personally as well.  The work she did applied across her life.   
• Christine talks about how coaching has shifted and how Sounding Board uses tech to scale coaching.   
• If Christine could wave a magic wand, she would change people’s assumptions and have them come into conversations thinking the best of the other person or people in the conversation.   

• Bonus questions (new):  Christine’s recommended founder resource is the podcast The Startup Chat.   

• Sounding Board:  https://www.soundingboardinc.com/ 
• Tapjoy:  https://www.tapjoy.com/ 
• Women’s Startup Lab:  https://womenstartuplab.com/ 
• The Startup Chat (podcast):  https://thestartupchat.com/ 

 

 

Contact 

Christine can be reached via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/christineptao/.   

 

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.  

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com. 

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife. 

Who is Stan Mirzayev?  

 

Stan Mirzayev is a serial entrepreneur and an auto enthusiast in Phoenix, Arizona.  He is CEO of Parts Detect and COO of his family’s business, In & Out Lube and Repairs.  Stan is also on the board of advisors at the Arizona automotive institute and has invested his knowledge into his craft, community and industry. 

 

Show Highlights 

• Stan was born in the former Soviet Union and his family migrated to the US when he was 4.  They had a choice between the US and Israel. They had to leave everything behind and start from ground zero.  
• Stan talked about growing up in New York City.  His father worked 20 hours a day to provide for his family and ultimately got into the automotive industry.   
• Stan works with his dad in one of the family’s automotive shop in Phoenix, Arizona where they moved to 13 years ago. Stan talks about the move to Phoenix from NYC when he was in high school.   
• Stan talks about his father being his hero. He was inspired to start his own businesses because he saw his father doing it.   
• He knew that if he failed, he could treat it as an opportunity to learn and that he could always start over again.  Seeing what happens is half of the excitement.   

• Stan started a new venture with his cousin, Alex after reviewing lots of ideas with Alex and Alex finding agreeing that the idea was THE idea.  The company is to simplify the parts logistics for auto shops.   
• They created an MVP and took it to some vendors and then did some research.  They got a great response and then they ran with it.   They are converting the current product onto the blockchain.  
• Stan shares the story behind the name of his company, PartsDetect. The journey to the name involved testing it out on his dad and making sure he could say the name.   
• Stan’s dad thinks he owns 50% of the company because Stan is his son.  His dad is coming around the slowly to the idea of the company but is somewhat old fashioned when it comes to work and productivity.   
• Stan and Alex share their experience as new entrepreneurs.  

• Stan has a sister with a daughter named Bella who is 7 who is his heart and joy.   
• If he could wave a magic wand and change something in the world, he would remove irrational fear.   

• PartsDetect:  http://www.partsdetect.com/ 

Contact 

Stan can be reached via Linked at https://www.linkedin.com/in/stan-mirzayev-14028970/ or by email at Stan@PartsDetect.com.  You can follow him on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/partsdetect/ or on Twitter at https://twitter.com/PartsDetect 

 

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.  

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com. 

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife.