Alma Matters: The DL On Finding Success

Michael Taormina has done it all. While his position now is Head of innovation & Strategic Partnerships at Group 1001, he's actually founded several companies (including Co-Founder of CommonBond!), acted as CFO and financial advisor for even more companies and still believes another company is there to be discovered. 

Graduating summa cum laude from Georgetown, he then went on to do a 6 year stint at JP Morgan before realizing that entrepreneurship was a passion. So what better place to go than Wharton? ;)

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Music: Purple Planet

Oliver and Sasha Zabar have lived and breathed food basically since they were born. Their father, Eli Zabar, has created his own empire in New York with Eli's, which has become an Upper East Side institution, and the twins are trying to branch off and do the same. 

Devon is the brothers' most recent project together. The craft cocktail bar and restaurant offers creative, whimsy cocktails and a selection of shareable plates inspired by the team’s extensive travels in France, North Africa and the United Kingdom, which are made with local, seasonal ingredients sourced from the family-run rooftop greenhouse on the Upper East Side, as well as house-made breads from Eli’s Market on the Upper East Side and the family-run Broome Street Bakery. Enjoy this episode and come out to Alma Matters' next live event - when all the craziness winds down! 

If you're on Instagram or really any social media platform, you'll know Comments By Celebs, the popular account that showcases celebrity interactions and sheds light on the fact that famous people - they're just like us. Emma Diamond and Julie Kramer unintentionally landed on a goldmine when they realized the Instagram algorithm changed to bring celebrity comments to the forefront and identified the opportunity to capitalize on it. Since its conception, Comments by Celebs has racked up 1.4M followers and has spun out into different accounts: Comments by Bravo, Comments by Bachelor, Comments by TikTok etc. In this episode, Emma and Julie talk about starting the account back in their Syracuse days, foregoing their original plans of going to grad school to pursue this full time and what's in store for the future of Comments by Celebs.

When the year started, I made it one of my 2020 resolutions to start reading again because up until then, the extent of it had become work emails and instagram captions. I was a huge English nerd so I always used to leave reading books and plays like The History Boys, anything by Arthur Miller, A Little Life, The Great Gatsby etc etc. One of the books I had the chance to read snippets of and have been extremely excited about it is Buy Yourself the F*cking Lillies. Take it from Chelsea Handler and Adam Grant, two of my favorite human beings on the planet, who called it “compelling, persuasive, and useful no matter where you are in your life,” and “a bracingly honest, funny read . . . like Wild meets You Are a Badass.”

The book’s author Tara Schuster graces the podcast this week and I could not be more excited. After graduating from Brown University, she landed at Comedy Central where she’s had a storied career and now sits as the VP of Original Programming and Development. Some of the shows she’s been in charge of include Key and Peele and David Spade’s Lights Out - no big deal. In this episode, she talks about the lessons that Brown taught her, the evolution of her Comedy Central career and the inspiration for Buy Yourself the F*cking Lillies. 🌷

The beauty industry is an increasingly saturated space. I literally get the most overwhelming wave of anxiety when I walk into a Sephora or even the beauty floor at a Bloomingdale's or Nordstroms. Even though I have some mainstay staples, I'm always intrigued by the products on the next shelf or the lipsticks and glosses that influencers on the store signs are telling me to buy. So I always appreciate a brand that tries to break through the clutter and provide just the key essentials to a good beauty routine. 

Wander Beauty has been doing that since its inception in 2015, when co-founders Divya Gugnani and Lindsay Ellingson met at a party and bonded over their love of travel and conversely, their frustration over the lack of efficiency in their beauty bags. In this episode, Divya talks about how her early beginnings at Cornell, foundational background at Harvard Business School and experiences working on Wall Street helped her to take on the new challenges that come with being an entrepreneur and CEO sitting at the helm of an ever-evolving beauty disruptor.