Before It Happened

If being a woman in tech is hard today, imagine how tough it must have been for a female Ecuadorian immigrant in the 1990s. In this episode of Before IT Happened, our host Donna Loughlin talks to Mercedes Soria, co-founder of the AI-driven security company Knightscope and one of Silicon Valley’s leading advocates for women in tech. Mercedes came to the U.S. to study engineering and has overcome one obstacle after another to become one of the tech industry’s most inspirational thought leaders on diversity. Today, Mercedes is a Grace Hopper Celebration award winner, a TechWomen mentor, and a Women in STEM advocate. Her dream is to mentor girls who will later come to the U.S. to be engineers. That way, she says, her efforts will come full circle. Tune in and listen to Mercedes’ inspiring story as a trailblazer for women in tech.

Before any world-changing innovation, there was a moment, an event, a realization that sparked the idea before it happened. This is a podcast about that moment — about that idea. Before IT Happened takes you on a journey with the innovators who imagined — and are still imagining — our future. Join host Donna Loughlin as her guests tell their stories of how they brought their visions to life.

Jump straight into:

(02:15) - Mercedes’ childhood in Ecuador and her mother’s support to strive for more - “Ecuador is not close at all to the level of development that the U.S. is in terms of computers and engineering, which was where we studied.”

(07:58) - The tough years: Going to college in the U.S. - “All we knew is that we had to study every single day that we were in school. That happened until we got our engineering degree.”

(18:13) - Working at Gibson then jumping to Deloitte - “I applied to a hundred companies, and I only got three calls, and from those three interviews only Gibson would sponsor me to stay in the U.S. and work for them.”

(24:24) - How Mercedes got involved in equity and mentorship - “I was going to show this guy that I deserved to be in the job that I was given. I didn't want other women to have to go through that. Not only the fact that I was Hispanic but the fact that I was a woman in technology.”

(30:27) - Knightscope in Silicon Valley and winning the Grace Hopper Award - “If you're a woman, especially in technology in Silicon Valley, you have to prove your worth. As soon as you come in, it is assumed that you don't know anything.”

(38:04) - Tech Women, 50/50 Women on Boards and becoming a speaker - “Somehow someone from Tech Women told the State Department that I could be a really good speaker for the United States. And they called me.”

(45:39) - Solve24: Youth accelerator for STEM - “We're changing lives for girls that might not have known what technology is, or that might not have had the self-confidence to decide that they want to be in technology.”

Episode resources

Follow Mercedes on Twitter, LinkedIn & Forbes

Read Mercede’s Forbes article Three Effective Strategies To End The Shortage Of Women In Tech

Learn more about ​​50/50 Women on Boards and register to attend The San Francisco Conversation on Board Diversity

Join Chief, the exclusive network of executive women

Get involved with the U.S. Department of State’s program TechWomen

Get involved with Solve24

Find even more resources for Women in STEM

Learn more about Knightscope's autonomous technology

Before IT Happened is produced by Donna Loughlin and Studio Pod Media with additional editing and sound design by Nodal...

In a world where 45% of hires fail within the first 18 months, matching talent to the perfect workplace is almost magic. In this episode of Before It Happened, our host Donna Loughlin tells the story of Mike Fitzsimmons, co-founder and CEO of Crosschq, a cloud-based service that combines human intelligence and AI to reinvent how companies hire. Crosschq’s mission is to better match companies and talent through what it calls human intelligence. The idea is that a good hire helps both the employer and the employee, plus it leaves a positive impact on the community.

Listen now and learn how Mike is revolutionizing the art of hiring by putting the human factor back into human resources!

Before any world-changing innovation, there was a moment, an event, a realization that sparked the idea before it happened. This is a podcast about that moment — about that idea. Before IT Happened takes you on a journey with the innovators who imagined — and are still imagining — our future. Join host Donna Loughlin as her guests tell their stories of how they brought their visions to life.

Jump straight into:

(01:40) - Mike’s youth, college inspiration, and his very first job at Circuit City — “I signed up immediately and a few weeks after college, I was on my way to open up a call center.”

(07:25) - Why hiring is so hard and the birth of Crosschq — “Hiring and retaining talent is hard, you learn that pretty early if you're aware and paying attention.”

(13:50) - Poor hiring is a worldwide issue — “You should stop reporting on quantity and then filling seats quickly. We have to start thinking about quality.”

(18:03) - Human Intelligence Hiring — How Crosschq helps companies find the best talent -

“We get content and data from people, for people and convert that into actionable data and insights that companies can use.”

(22:11) - Bias vs. Equity: How to neutralize profiling — “Age, ethnicity, sex. All of those biases still exist. We're going to help bring data to the table to help convince companies and lead them to try to reduce as much of that bias as they can.”

(25:15) - COVID-19 and the impact Crosschq has had on the community — “We provide our service for free to companies like 70 million jobs, which is the leading platform for Anti-Recidivism in the US. We're trying to help people that are trying to help themselves.”

(31:10) - What Mike has learned from the pandemic — “I've been just so impressed by how absolutely tough all of us are and how everybody's persevered.”

(33:27) - Changing the culture within companies — “We have to be hyper-aware at keeping folks engaged and engaging in a real and meaningful fashion.”

Episode resources

Connect with Mike on Twitter and LinkedIn

Learn more about Mike’s company Crosschq

Read Michael Fitzsimmons of Crosschq: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Began Leading My Company

Read Mike’s interview with Natfluence

See Mike’s profile on the Forbes Next 1000 list

Before IT Happened is produced by Donna Loughlin and Studio Pod Media with additional editing and sound design by Nodalab. The show coordinator is Deanna Morenci with audio engineering provided by Dave Clarke-McCoy. The Executive Producer is Katie Sunku Wood. All episodes are written by Jack Buehrer.

Thank you for listening! Follow Before IT Happened on Instagram and Twitter, and don’t forget to subscribe, rate and share the show wherever you listen to podcasts!

Sometimes to give meaning to our work, we need to remember who we are and where we came from. In this episode of Before It Happened, Donna speaks with Praveen Penmetsa, co-founder and CEO of two groundbreaking startups — one of which is revolutionizing the agricultural industry.

While Praveen’s love for cars and engineering brought him to the United States, it was his family’s farming background in India that gave him the idea for Monarch Tractor. Through his newest venture, Praveen and his team have developed the first electric tractor that can also produce enough energy to power a home. As Praveen likes to say, Monarch is “the bridge between farm sustainability and farm economics in one product.”

Listen now and learn how every moment of this engineer’s life — from his childhood in Southern India poring over American auto magazines to working on race cars in Huntington Beach — led to his revolutionary idea for the future of farming.

Before any world-changing innovation, there was a moment, an event, a realization that sparked the idea before it happened. This is a podcast about that moment — about that idea. Before IT Happened takes you on a journey with the innovators who imagined — and are still imagining — our future. Join host Donna Loughlin as her guests tell their stories of how they brought their visions to life.

Jump straight into:

(00:53) - Praveen’s Agricultural background and his interest in cars and technology - “I would have all these dreams of, ‘Oh yeah I’ve got to go to California and drive these fast cars and play with all of this high-tech,’ from quiet old computer magazines and car magazines.”

(04:15) - Finding his first job after graduation - “I threw everything I owned into my car and drove across the country for two days nonstop to start work at Huntington Beach.”

(09:26) - Praveen’s first startup: Accelerating high-technology products to the market - “It was super cool to have a car that I touched and worked on on the cover of Road & Track, a magazine that I used to buy on the sidewalks in India for like 10 rupees.”

(12:52) - Monarch: The first electric tractor comes to life - “It definitely was the first lithium-ion tractor that could also power things. So not only could it be charged from a solar panel directly, we had power plugs that we could power things off the tractor.’”

(19:23) - Helping farmers worldwide and pushing agriculture forward - “We see ourselves as a bridge between farm economics and sustainability. It's the one thing, probably the only thing that connects farm sustainability and farm economics in one product.”

(24:38) - How to make it through the pandemic - “At a time of COVID where most businesses are shut down, farmers were very impacted because of the supply chain disruptions.”

(27:05) - The tractor’s reception: Would Elon Musk like it? - “I don't know what our Silicon Valley leaders would think about it, but we do know what farmers think about it and we are happy with their reaction.”

Episode resources

Connect with Praveen on LinkedIn

See the Monarch Tractor in action

Learn more about Monarch Tractor

Follow Monarch Tractor on Twitter and Instagram

Learn more about Motivo Engineering

Read Praveen’s interview on the 5 Things We Must Do To Inspire The Next Generation About Sustainability And The Environment

Before IT Happened is produced by Donna Loughlin and Studio Pod Media with additional editing and sound design by Nodalab. The show coordinator is Deanna Morenci with audio engineering provided by Dave Clarke McCoy. The Executive Producer is Katie Sunku Wood. All episodes are written by Jack Buehrer.

Thank you for listening! Follow Before IT Happened on Instagram, and don’t forget to subscribe, rate and share the show wherever you listen to podcasts!

Merging creativity with your personal story has been left for artists, but imagine what would happen if you could apply that level of meaning to your work in any industry. In this episode of Before It Happened, host Donna Loughlin chats with Donald Burlock Jr, veteran UX designer and author of Superhuman by Design. Through his experiences working in both the automotive and tech industries, Donald says he’s learned that while just about everybody has a superpower, few know how to unlock it. In this conversation with Donna, Donald explains how maintaining a creative core and an attitude of expectancy will push you forward in unpredicted ways.

Before any world-changing innovation, there was a moment, an event, a realization that sparked the idea before it happened. This is a podcast about that moment — about that idea. Before IT Happened takes you on a journey with the innovators who imagined — and are still imagining — our future. Join host Donna Loughlin as her guests tell their stories of how they brought their visions to life.

Jump straight into:

(03:20) - Donald’s childhood: The foundations of an artist - “My entire experience as a child in Dallas was just full of wonder, a lot of creative wonder.”

(07:25) - Artistic minded, mechanically inclined: Donald’s life-changing exposition to a world of diverse individuals - “It was definitely a time of understanding the different dynamics that the clash of cultures brought to an environment. It was really fundamental to opening my mind. Especially being a PK.”

(10:53) - How do you create an experience? Donald's eye-opening semester studying abroad in Europe- “Everything in the States it's always about convenience and everything's disposable and a bit forgettable and to experience a place where there were things that had that longevity to them, that were considered in terms of materiality, that was very different.”

(15:21) - The Aha! moment: Discovering the design world - “This is truly how it started. I'm 24, I'm looking into a window and there are these people who are controlling a machine that is machining clay to create wheels and the wall is just full of all of these amazing sketches.”

(18:14) - Getting invited to Steve Job’s Apple - “It was just literally an entirely new world that had opened up for me through that one trip to the Valley.”

(21:46) - Brand design & creative thinking: Donald’s work at Coca Cola and IDEO - “It didn't matter if you were doing something digital for a banner online, or if you were doing a can, every single aspect of their design was rooted in some precedent that they had established with their brand.”

(24:29) - Joining the tech startup boom & the philosophy behind Donald’s book Superhuman by design - “Superhuman by Design intends to build a bridge so that there's a very clear linear thought about how creativity and also your impact as an individual, are very much related.”

(34:23) - Yellow legal pads and highlighters: The physicality of words and Donald’s family contribution to the book - “I gave it to my mom because I knew at some point I was going to write about my grandfather and that was going to be a deeply personal story.”

(38:07) - How to hold on to the attitude of expectancy, engage your creative core and dial down inhibitions - “You have every superpower you need inside and there's more that you can get your hands on.”

(40:29) - What’s next for Donald? Supervillain by design - “I started writing about all the topics we're discussing very openly right now, everything from the imposter syndrome to the effects of what's happening with the pandemic to talking about, hopefully, more in-depth, my experiences as a black man.”

Episode resources

Follow Donald on Twitter and Instagram

Get Donald’s book SuperHuman by Design

See more of Donald’s design work

Before IT Happened is produced by Donna Loughlin and Studio Pod Media with additional editing and sound design by Nodalab. The show coordinator is Deanna Morenci with audio engineering provided by Dave Clarke McCoy. The Executive Producer is Katie Sunku Wood. All episodes are written by Jack Buehrer.

Thank you for listening! Follow Before IT Happened on