WoVen: Women Who Venture

Passion Meeting Purpose: With Sue Siegel Aug 17, 2021

On this episode of WoVen, Nina Kjellson from Canaan talks to Sue Siegel, who, over 30+ years, has worked as an operator, leading innovator, VC investor, thought leader, and board member of industry-changing companies.

Sue has repeatedly been recognized for her leadership skills, and in 2020 she was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by Global Corporate Venture.

Today Sue shares how learning of her mother’s struggle and success encouraged her to fight for her own progress and achievements, and equally to celebrate others’ accomplishments. She imparts wisdom on building and sustaining top-class teams in order to produce the best possible work, and how her five ‘Ways of Working’ principles guide and strengthen the workforce.

Together, Nina and Sue discuss how business has progressed over the course of Sue’s expansive career, as well as a number of silver linings we can glean from the pandemic. These include reaffirming the importance of family time, technological acceleration, and positive, deliberate changes in recruitment, diversity, equity, inclusion, and retention.

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Closing the Gap to Access: With Headspace’s Dr. Megan Jones Bell Jul 22, 2021

On this episode of WoVen, Canaan’s Nina Kjellson speaks with Chief Strategy & Scientific Officer at Headspace, Dr. Megan Jones Bell. Megan oversees medical and clinical affairs, behavioral science and clinical research, design research, and the company’s digital health subsidiary: Headspace Health.

Megan shares how her own mental health journey led her to study psychology and wanting to turn her negative experiences into a source of strength for herself and a source of positive impact for others.

The two explore how the company reacted with agility and speed to adjust its offerings at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, listening to, and acting on, feedback from within its workforce and its members. From free access for healthcare workers and the unemployed, to reshaping the working week, they also discuss how to put the mental health and needs of ourselves and our employees first.

Content Warning: this episode contains conversations about disordered eating and suicide.

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The Best of WoVen: Stepping Into The Unknown Aug 24, 2020

Unknowns: To truly set ourselves apart we need to have faith in our own abilities and take the plunge. From lightbulb moments, to dodging educational expectations, our guests prove that by venturing into the unknown we are able to unlock new potential, for our careers and ourselves. We’ll hear from Julie Wainwright, Julia Collins, Candace Nelson, Dr. Odette Harris, Amy DuRoss, Michelle Phan, and Glo Harris about forging new paths, taking risks, and finding their true callings.

Hosted by Laura Chau, WoVen : Women Who Venture is a podcast from Canaan and Edit Audio Inc. that represents a platform, a community and really a celebration of venturesome and adventurous women in healthcare, tech and business.

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The Best of WoVen: Importance of Community Aug 10, 2020

Community: Often we think about success as being a personal achievement, but these guests demonstrate the power of being an active part of a community. Whether it’s hearing advice from a leader, or sharing concerns with associates, working in collaboration with and seeking support from others can shape the way we think and act, ultimately compelling us to become better versions of ourselves and better managers of our teams. We’ll hear from Julia Collins, Karla Gallardo, Glo Harris, Michelle Phan, Gail Medaris, Amy DuRoss and Dr. Odette Harris about inspiring high school teachers, managers with emotional intelligence, and the overlooked loneliness of being a CEO.

Hosted by Laura Chau, WoVen : Women Who Venture is a podcast from Canaan and Edit Audio Inc. that represents a platform, a community and really a celebration of venturesome and adventurous women in healthcare, tech and business.

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The Best of WoVen: Balancing Work and Family Jul 27, 2020

Balance: Domestic responsibilities have always fallen more heavily on women than on men, and that remains true even when both partners work outside the home. Juggling domestic and professional life has always been hard, but COVID-19 has made that balance impossible. Our co-host Nina Kjellson finds that even in these pre-COVID interviews, our guests provide much inspiration and guidance in their individual perspectives and experiences as working moms. We’ll hear from Dr. Odette Harris, Mariam Naficy, Karla Gallardo, Ginger More, Julia Collins, and Amy DuRoss to hear the similarities between starting a family and a company at the same time, the difference supportive managers make, and why women should take more entrepreneurial risks before having children.

Hosted by Nina Kjellson, WoVen : Women Who Venture is a podcast from Canaan and Edit Audio Inc. that represents a platform, a community and really a celebration of venturesome and adventurous women in healthcare, tech and business.

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The Best of WoVen: Combatting Prejudice and Inspiring Change Jul 13, 2020

Prejudice: Last time we explored the power of self-care. This episode, we’ll dig into prejudice, a draining reality that most women, and especially women of color, have to deal with on a regular basis. Being an “other” in a predominantly white and male working environment comes with many challenges, but it also comes with an opportunity to influence change. Our co-host Laura Chau reveals the ways in which our guests experience, cope with, and push back against the prejudice they face. We sit down with Odette Harris, Julia Collins, Julie Wainwright, Amy DuRoss, and Mariam Naficy to hear how they embody confidence, unapologetically innovate, and evoke change for the future.

Hosted by Laura Chau, WoVen : Women Who Venture is a podcast from Canaan and Edit Audio Inc. that represents a platform, a community and really a celebration of venturesome and adventurous women in healthcare, tech and business.

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The Best of WoVen: Self-Care and How to Look After Body and Mind Jun 29, 2020

Self-care: Last time we explored the power of resilience. This episode, we’ll dig into self-care, the yin to resilience’s yang. At a certain point, physically and emotionally, even the most successful women need to take a pause, step out of the ring, and take care of themselves. Our Co-host Laura Chau reveals the ways in which our guests decompress, find calm, and look after both their bodies and minds. From exercise and mindfulness practices, to quality time with family, we learn how these women find space for self-care among all the day’s demands. We sit down with Karla Gallardo, Michelle Phan, Amy DuRoss, Glo Harris, and Gail Maderis to hear how they look after themselves to prevent, or recuperate from burnout, and what it’s like to have to choose between your career and mental health.

Hosted by Laura Chau, WoVen : Women Who Venture is a podcast from Canaan and Edit Audio Inc. that represents a platform, a community and really a celebration of venturesome and adventurous women in healthcare, tech and business.

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The Best of WoVen: Resilience and How To Bounce Back Stronger May 27, 2020

Resilience: This is a challenging time for everyone, and in this first episode we explore how to cope during hard times and bounce back from them. Our Co-host, Nina Kjellson brings us behind the curtain on the wise, inspirational and sometimes hilarious experiences of women in our community who have persevered and overcome hurdles. Whether it’s unexpected change in their personal lives, profound moments of self-doubt, or macro-economic downturns, we are let in on the personal accounts of resilience by these motivating women. We sit down with Gail Maderis, Dr. Odette Harris, Glo Harris, Julia Collins, and Julie Wainwright to hear how they prevailed against adversity, were fueled by their setbacks and answer the question: why are women harsher critics of ourselves than our male counterparts?

Hosted by Nina Kjellson, WoVen : Women Who Venture is a podcast from Canaan and Edit Audio Inc. that represents a platform, a community and really a celebration of venturesome and adventurous women in healthcare, tech and business.

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The Woman Who Gets Inside the Heads of Execs at Facebook, Google and More Feb 04, 2020

Gloria Harris - a.k.a. Glo - is an executive and leadership coach who has worked with many Fortune 100 companies, and in her work, she trades in concepts such as self-confidence, self-awareness, mission and vision, truth-speaking, team alignment, legacy and succession. Glo gets really deep into the mud of it, looking at what it is to aspire and to achieve, and also how all of us wrestle with personal and institutional demons along the way.

Glo has a master's in social work from Washington University in St. Louis, and she's trained as a psychotherapist with a specialization in Gestalt, a theory that emphasizes that the whole of anything is much greater than its parts. She spent years as a therapist to individuals, couples and families, and also taught at universities.

These days, Glo travels the globe to coach, teach, train and inspire her clientele, which includes executives from Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Lyft, Twitch, McKinsey, State Street Bank, Carnival Cruise Lines and Albertsons Grocery. In short, her impact spans every industry, market, tenure, type of workforce and culture.

Glo is originally from upstate New York, and has lived in the hills of Oakland, California for around 20 years. She's married, has three children, two stepchildren and seven grandchildren.

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Three Industry Leaders on Championing Women (and Girls) in Business Jan 21, 2020

In this special episode, three trailblazers take the stage at the annual WoVen gathering during the J.P.Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco: Pam Kostka, Roxanne Christophe and Diana Kapp.

Moderator Pam Kostka is the founding CEO of All Raise, a nonprofit on a mission to accelerate the success of women in the tech ecosystem. Roxanne Christophe is the founder and executive director of Girls Crushing It, an organization that is empowering girls between the ages of 8 to 18 to flex their leadership muscles. And Diana Kapp is the author of a recent book called Girls Who Run the World: 31 CEOs Who Mean Business, which chronicles the stories of 31 CEOs and their achievements.

They take the stage to discuss the progress women have made in business, the chasms that are left to cross, and how to support young girls entrepreneurial instincts. Increasing diversity in our industry - whether that's investing, innovating or executing - takes all sorts of efforts, and these three women who venture are committed to expanding the pipeline and to celebrating women's achievements.

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Minting a Thriving Global Marketplace of Artists from a Niche Stationary Brand Jan 07, 2020

Mariam Naficy is the founder and CEO of Minted, an online design marketplace that produces stationery, paper goods, home decor products, and really, anything to support an intentional lifestyle.

And it's all based on crowdsourced designs from a talented community of independent artists from over 100 countries. Mariam is no stranger to an eclectic community. She is the daughter of Iranian and Chinese immigrants and lived all over the world growing up. She points to these diverse experiences, and the experience of often being an outsider, as the foundation for her ability to approach entrepreneurial problems from a new perspective.

In 1998, she founded Eve.com, an e-commerce cosmetics company which she then sold for $110 million just two years later. She followed it up with Minted, which she originally intended to run as a lifestyle business she could operate while raising her young kids. But, after a bumpy start, and almost shutting down the company, Mariam realized the unique value of the community of artists she had built. She has now gone on to raise nearly $300 million in venture capital, valuing the company at well over $700 million.

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Democratizing Healthcare with Activist Roots: A Conversation with Amy DuRoss Dec 17, 2019

Amy DuRoss was born and raised in the Washington, D.C. area and politically engaged at a very early age by lawyer-activist parents, as well as her Quaker school, both of which nurtured her strong social justice compass. She studied humanities at Yale, Oxford and Stanford, graduating with a master's degree in English, and then returning some years later to Stanford for an MBA.

Amy's career has spanned tech, consulting, policy and healthcare. With 10 years at really big organizations such as E-Loan, G.E, the World Bank and Life Tech, as well as in precision medicine startups from Gene Sage to California's Prop 71 initiative to Navigenics, and ultimately to the founding of Vineti, where she is CEO. Vineti is defining a whole new software category for precision medicine therapy management by enabling vein to vein supply chain documentation and analytics for these breakthrough new therapies.

Amy has been honored by fellowships with the Cora Foundation and the Aspen Institute, in fact twice, and she is actively committed to diversity and inclusion across business and in politics. With three young children and a writer husband, Amy is living the Bay Area dual-income, always -on chaos and is doing so with incredible finesse and stamina.

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Beauty, Burnout, and Bitcoin with the Original Influencer, Michelle Phan Nov 19, 2019

Michelle Phan was a creator and influencer far before those were even a thing. In 2007, while working as a waitress and struggling to make ends meet to attend art school, Michelle began posting beauty tutorials on YouTube. Her infectious personality and creativity quickly garnered her millions of subscribers. She went on to found IPSY in 2011, a beauty sample subscription service that was valued at $800 million dollars in 2015. She also was one of the first creators ever to launch her own product line, which she did in 2013, launching EM Cosmetics in partnership with L'Oreal.

Michelle has received countless accolades, including being named to Forbes 30 under 30 and Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People. Yet, the demands of all of Michelle's fans and business partnerships, as well as the vanity as a beauty industry, led her to burn out in 2016. Faced with a choice of her career or her mental health, Michelle chose herself. She took a digital hiatus that shocked her millions of fans.

In 2017, Michelle came back to the public eye, but this time on her own terms. She exited IPSY and purchased EM Cosmetics from L'Oreal, relaunching it with full creative control and ownership. Today, she is completely self-funded and contract free for the first time in her more than decade long career. On this episode, Michelle talks about the importance of creative control and learning to say "no".

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Keeping It Real in Business and Fashion Nov 05, 2019

Julie Wainwright is a true Silicon Valley veteran. She has been the CEO of multiple tech companies, including two public companies, and is currently CEO of The RealReal, an online luxury consignment site. Julie took The RealReal public in June of this year, and is one of only a handful of female founder CEOs who have accomplished that feat.

After working as a turnaround CEO for companies in tough times, The RealReal was the first company she founded from the very start. This gave her the chance to craft a company where she, and all of her employees, could show up as their authentic selves, follow a passion, and upend the fashion world. And today, millions of shoppers and cosigners are thrilled that she did.

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Coming soon... WoVen Season 2! Sep 12, 2019

Stayed tuned for the second season of WoVen, with even more stories of inspiring women in science, technology, and venture capital.

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Working with Grit (and a Patient's Perspective) in Women’s Health Aug 13, 2019

Gail Maderis is president and CEO of Antiva, a biotech company that's developing novel, topical therapeutics for the treatment of diseases caused by human papillomavirus, or HPV. HPV is a major cause of certain cancers.

In the U.S. alone, more than 500,000 women and 300,000 men are diagnosed with HPV-lesions each year. Most patients with HPV cancers will eventually need surgery to remove or ablate their lesions. But, while these surgeries can be quite effective, the procedures can also cause significant discomfort, as well as infrequent but very serious issues. Antiva’s solution is a much-needed, topical treatment that could make these riskier procedures a thing of the past. Gail and her team have made major progress since founding the company, and their drug is now in early human clinical trials.

From her earliest days growing up in San Francisco to her time at university -- from a bachelor's at Berkeley and an MBA from Harvard -- Gail has had a fierce determination to excel and achieve, even after her own diagnosis of multiple sclerosis 13 years ago. Her steadfastness has served her well in twenty-plus years in the biopharma industry. In 2015, just when Gail thought she’d retire and enjoy some traveling, Cannan’s partner, Wende Hutton, had a better idea: recruit Gail to build and run Antiva and to champion not just the company but a cause.

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Building a Brand (and Dream) with Fewer Better Things Jul 30, 2019

Karla Gallardo is the co-founder and CEO of Cuyana, a San Francisco-based women's clothing and lifestyle brand. She and her co-founder Shilpa Shah founded the company in 2011 with the concept of fewer, better things. Born and raised in Ecuador, her story is one of immigration, determination, careful planning, and family. With an immigrant mentality, Karla put her all into achievement and traditional definitions of success: an ivy league education, a STEM degree, a coveted career in investment banking.

But, she always had an urge to build something bigger, a company that would impact the bottom of the pyramid. Now, since starting Cuyana with a $20,000 loan, and a hat, of all things, as their first product, the company's attracted tens of millions of dollars in investments.

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Blazing a Trail (and Building a Family) as a Pioneering VC Jul 16, 2019

Ginger More was a true pioneer in the male-dominated venture capital world of the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s, and she is who the next gen want to grow up to be. Born the second of three children to a schoolteacher and a fireman, Ginger attended the University of Bridgeport as a math major, and she married while she was still in school. She began a family as a military wife and also while working full-time at Wright Investors’ Service. She even completed the totally grinding three-year charter financial analyst certificate program on her own time with young kids.

In 1978, she joined Oak Investment Partners and became a partner there just two years later. At Oak, Ginger invested in a number of IT and healthcare companies, and she was responsible for Oak’s investment and board positions in market making companies like Genzyme, Stratus, and Compaq.

Genzyme went on to set new standards for the industry. At a time when rare diseases were completely neglected by the pharmaceutical industry, the company built their business to serve exactly that unmet need.

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Feeding the World (and Saving the Planet) - A Conversation with Julia Collins Jul 02, 2019

Julia Collins has dedicated her career to tackling some of the most difficult problems that our world faces: food insecurity, agricultural damage, ecological dead zones. Our food system is critical to everyone on this planet and Julia is the woman audacious enough to tackle it, head on. Julia has also dedicated her career to food. She started as a restaurateur working alongside Danny Meyer among others to open some of New York City's hottest restaurants.

Then came tech inspiration, leading Julia to co-found Zume Pizza, recently shortened to Zume, a robotic food delivery company based in the bay area. Started in 2015, Zume aims to make healthy food fast and accessible. The company shortens and automates the entire supply chain of food delivery, preparing the food while it's being delivered to the customer and it all started with a crowd favorite pizza.

Zume is one of those rare companies that has reached unicorn status. The company is valued at $2.25 billion and Julia is the first black woman to reach unicorn status with her company. Just to put it in perspective, a 2015 study showed that only 12 black women founders had raised at least $1 million in venture capital funding. By 2017 that number had nearly tripled to 34, but there is still a long way to go and Julia is working hard to make sure her story is no longer in outlier.

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Crafting Success (and Balance) in Venture Jun 18, 2019

Wende Hutton has been a venture capitalist for more than 25 years. A remarkable feat because, even today, the stats show venture is still very much a boys club. In 2018, only 9.7 percent of U.S. venture decision makers were women. Twenty five years ago, gender metrics weren't even tracked, as there were so few women even operating in the field. Except for Wende.

Wende is a true industry pioneer. She took a college love of physiology to venture capital, where she's built a career on identifying, building and investing in companies that can change the practice of medicine by bringing new drugs, apps and devices to market.

She’s a source of motivation and inspiration to women across venture and the entire healthcare space. She has achieved a tremendous amount without having to compromise also being a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter, and a person; making very deliberate choices her entire career to be able to have a balanced complete life.

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Whipping up Magic: From Cupcake Mogul to Serial Entrepreneur Jun 04, 2019

Our guest for this episode is Candace Nelson, who skyrocketed to culinary fame after she and her husband Charles launched Sprinkles Cupcakes in Beverly Hills in 2005. Candace is the quintessential entrepreneur. She is someone who is daring enough to break from the mold, and built an empire with sweat, ingenuity and a dream. She continues to generate ideas and chase new opportunities -- just because that's who she is. In addition to Sprinkles, Candace recently launched her newest culinary venture, Pizzana, a critically-acclaimed pizza restaurant with a location in Brentwood and a second location that just opened in West Hollywood.

Candace's entrepreneurial talents aren't just limited to what she can bake in an oven. She just launched a men's athleisure brand with her husband called Willy, and she’s also built a massive media career. She is the executive producer and judge of a new Netflix baking competition show, Sugar Rush, after being a longtime judge on Food Network's Cupcake Wars. She’s also launching a podcast with Dear Media called Live to Eat. And if that weren't enough, she and her husband make early stage investments in innovative retail and consumer brands through Cm2 Holdings.

Candace's career spans brick and mortar retail, e-commerce, media and investing. Her philosophy is that if something is well-made, people will want to pay for it and indulge, and all of her ventures have proved this to be true.

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Breaking Ground (and Battling Bias) in Brain Surgery May 21, 2019

Our guest for this episode is Dr. Odette Harris. She made history last year when Stanford’s department of neurosurgery announced she would become professor of neurosurgery — a feat that makes Odette the second female professor of neurosurgery at Stanford’s School of Medicine, and the second African-American female professor of neurosurgery anywhere...some truly remarkable achievements despite some serious headwinds.

She was born in Jamaica and earned her undergraduate degree in biology from Dartmouth College in 1991. When she studied medicine at Stanford University, she was the only black woman in her 1996 graduating class. Then, she was one of two women in her residency. And while Odette has also earned a master’s of public health in epidemiology from UC Berkeley, and has received numerous honors and fellowships for her work — among them, awards from the Western Neurological Society and the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, and an appointment as the president of Women in Neurosurgery — she is continuously perceived as someone meant to do menial work on the hospital floor, whether it’s taking out the trash or cleaning the bathroom. As Odette puts it, when you’re black and female and working at a mostly white hospital, you’re constantly reminded of that. And asked time and again to defend your credentials.

Odette credits her mentors for encouraging her to keep going. And today, Odette pays that forward as a professor and mentor of students of all kinds of backgrounds, and is vocal about using her own experience to change the norms for both women and people of color. And she does so with poise and positivity.

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