Episodes

About Carl Over the past decade Carl Kinghorn has had the opportunity to grow as a leader within EFC Systems. He has championed changes to culture, processes, and development techniques that has enabled scaling the company’s ability to deliver quality software to its clients in the agricultural space. During this time, he’s seen the company triple in size; and in his role as VP of the software development group, he gets to be a leader and a teacher with a goal of enabling his teams to succeed. ...

About Mike Mike Cohn is the author of three of best-selling books on agile (User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development, Agile Estimating and Planning, and Succeeding with Agile). He is one of the world’s most sought-after and respected Certified Scrum Trainers, a keynote speaker, and an in-demand coach to companies throughout the United States and around the world. As the founder of Mountain Goat Software, Mike specializes in helping companies adopt and improve their use of agile proce...

Today on the show we’ve got Mike Burrows. Mike is a leader in the lean, agile and project management community. He’s a well known speaker and consultant. About Mike Agendashift founder Mike Burrows is the author of Kanban from the Inside (2014) and Agendashift: Outcome-oriented change and continuous transformation (2018); his third book Right to Left: the digital leader’s guide to Lean and Agile is due in 2019. He is recognized for his pioneering work in Lean, Agile, and Kanban and his advocacy...

About Thom: (Ret.) Navy SEAL Thom Shea is the founder and CEO of Adamantine Alliance, a Leadership training organization. Thom works directly with executives and high performance individuals who want to master the Five Pyramids of Human Performance® to achieve the next level results. Thom is a renowned Keynote speaker, presenting dynamic topics of Leading in Chaos, Forging Leaders, and the Culture of Leading People. Thom interviews high performance leaders on The Unbreakable Podcast. He is th...

Just another #1 world ranked video game player turned philosopher turned Navy SEAL turned non-profit startup CEO. John Allen is the CEO of Elite Meet, a Non-Profit organization he co-founded along with Jordan Selleck that connects high performing, transitioning veterans, like Navy SEALs and Fighter Pilots, with companies who are looking to hire. He started out at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, after which he served in the Navy as a Navy SEAL for seven years. Now the former Navy SEAL,...

About Jeff Jeff Haden is speaker, ghostwriter, Inc. Magazine contributing editor, and author of the bestselling The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up to WIn. Before changing careers he spent 20 years in manufacturing, starting as an entry-level shop-floor employee, climbing the ladder through a variety of customer service, human resources, production control, and multi-plant improvement team positions, to finally direct all manufacturing operations for a Fortune 500 co...

About John “How were you able to pull that off?” John has made a habit of creating seemingly impossible outcomes, whether transforming a struggling team to become the top performer, or engaging an audience with his playful, interactive, life-changing style. His belief is simple: we are each endowed with one unique genius, different than any other person on the planet. John uses his genius to create seemingly impossible outcomes and in doing so, helps people win big! His professional career spa...

Bobby Allen serves as Chief technology officer (CTO) for CloudGenera and as Stewardship Pastor for Wellspring Church. He brings the unique perspective of being a thought-leader in Cloud Computing while helping lead a Gospel-centered, multi-ethnic church in Charlotte, NC. Bobby is a veteran of Intel, Bank of America and multiple startups. He went into corporate America after being an Intel fellow at the University of Michigan. He is available to speak to your organization or at your next event ab...

As CISO for Webroot, Gary Hayslip advises executive leadership on protecting critical information resources and oversees enterprise cyber-security strategy. His mission includes creating a “risk aware” culture that places a high value on securing and protecting customer information entrusted to Webroot. Hayslip’s career in the fields of enterprise information security and network security spans more than 20 years and includes multiple CIO, CISO, and deputy director of IT positions for the U.S. N...

Today on the show I have Marin Wolfe (Marty). Marty is a systems engineer, creator of new solutions and innovations, a leader and motivator of the best and brightest, and focused on delivering solutions to the most complex challenges and supporting key goals. Marty is an IBM Distinguished Engineer and CTO, a technical executive of which there are only 600 across IBM’s entire global enterprise. Marty’s combination of technical depth, business acumen and delivery expertise has resulted in over $5...

Today on the show we have Heather Wilde. She was the eighth employee of Evernote, where she oversaw the company’s growth from thousands to 100 million customers. She’s published popular video games, trained Fortune 500 brands, advised hundreds of startups, and managed some major nonprofit programs. Now, as a fractional CTO through her own company ROCeteer, her award-winning work keeps the “Unicorn Whisperer” constantly traveling across the globe to find the next unicorn. About Heather Heather ...

I heard a story on the Accidental Creative Podcast once about pruning grapes in a vineyard. Todd said that many times healthy vines that are bearing good fruit need to be pruned off. The reason is that the vine cannot grow new, more productive branches until some of the other branches are pruned. So cutting out good and fruit-bearing branches may be necessary in order for the vine to increase in capacity overall. This holds with us at work and in life. Sometimes we have to shutdown old dreams or...

About Francesca Francesca Gino is an award-winning researcher and the Tandon Family Professor of Business Administration in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit at Harvard Business School. She is also affiliated with the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, the Mind, Brain, Behavior Initiative at Harvard, and the Behavioral Insight Group at Harvard Kennedy School. Her consulting and speaking clients include Bacardi, Akamai, Disney, Goldman Sachs, Honeywell, Novartis, P&G, and ...

About Patty Patty Hatter is a multiple award-winning technology, business and operations leader who drives digital transformation and growth for global companies. Patty currently advises early stage technology companies, focused on key technologies such as cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, and blockchain-enabled enterprise applications. She also serves on the Board of Directors for Barrick Gold (NYSE:ABX). Prior to this, Patty was SVP of the McAfee Services organization, where she drove 50% ...

No matter how good you are, at some point in time, you will fail. It’s inevitable. Failure is not a problem, its promise. How we respond to failure is crucial to how we is the most important part of failing. It’s not the failure that stops us, it’s the inability to learn and move forward that stops us. I’ve failed at many projects, on tests in school, at sports and about in every area of my life. We all fail and we should not fear failure. I once had a boss that made my team fear failure. He thr...

Today on the show I’m honored to have Michelle Dennedy, VP and Chief Privacy Officer at Cisco Systems. About Michelle Dennedy Michelle Finneran Dennedy is Vice President and Chief Privacy Officer at Cisco, where she works to raise awareness and create tools that promote privacy, quality, respect, trust, and asset-level possibilities for data. She is a unique visionary in the field of privacy and the IT industry, bringing together multifaceted approaches that provide sincere privacy protections ...

Last week I was honored to have Tom Rath on the show to talk about some of his books and how they impact leaders. Today I want talk about some of the take aways that I had from Tom’s books and how they have impacted my life. Eat Move Sleep Walking Meetings 10,000 steps Standing no sugar in coffee cut out fruit juices cut down on bread SLEEP!!!! Are You Fully Charged? Work in bursts Pomadora Technique Search for meaning, not happiness Strengths Finders 2.0 Focus on your strengths Bu...

Today on the show we have Kevin Griffin, owner, trainer and consultant at Swift Kick. Kevin was gracious enough to have me on his show, the Swift Kick Show a few months back. Here’s a link to that episode. As a software professional with over ten years of experience, Kevin Griffin has had the fantastic opportunity to work with a variety of industries ranging from Military to Health Care to Ticket Brokering. A lesson he learned early in his career was that true experts and professionals teach e...

I’m honored to have multiple time #1 New York Times best selling author Tom Rath on the show today. At one point, prior to writing best selling non-fiction books, Tom was a technical project manager. He offers great insight into his life and work during this interview. We talk about ways to increase health, well-being and happiness in general. We discuss focusing on your strengths and Tom’s advice to young leaders. Tom’s books have made a big impact in how I do certain things in my life which I’...

Today on the show we’ve got Kahlia Braswell, executive director of INTech Camps for girls. We talked mostly about INTech Camps and diversity in the technology fields. Kahlia mentioned the NC WIT as a resource for writing job descriptions and more. About Khalia Khalia Braswell received her first computer in the 4th grade and was instantly hooked. As a result of her early interest in tech, she enrolled in Phillip O. Berry Academy of Technology, in Charlotte, North Carolina, for high school, where...

About Dave Dave Bittner is the producer and host of the CyberWire podcast, a top-rated daily cyber security news program produced in Baltimore. He’s been tinkering with electronics practically his whole life, cobbling together a computer system to dial in to pre-internet BBS systems at the age of ten with the money he saved from his paper route. After college (University of Maryland, Radio TV and Film) he was among the pioneers of desktop digital video, cofounding Pixel Workshop, an award winnin...

Today on the show we have Alan Stevens. I heard Alan speak at a local conference on leadership many years ago and he is one of the people that first sparked my interest in leadership. I was honored to have him on the show. Alan is an advocate of open spaces and today we talked about how to get fired… that’s right. About Alan Stevens Alan Stevens is a passionate software developer with years of experience delivering working software that meets users’ needs. He has shipped software on the web and...

Joe Topinka, a career CIO, is a dynamic author, speaker, and coach and a three-time CIO-of-the-year award winner. He has over 35 years of success leading IT organizations and driving meaningful business results in the process. His game-changing IT Business Partner Program bridges the chasm between business stakeholders and IT organizations. Joe is a frequent keynote speaker on this subject where he shares his vision at industry events across the country. His bestselling book, IT Business Partner...

What’s your Plan for______? I decided to do another short solo show for those of you that might have missed the earlier format of A Geek Leader shows. This is a quick tip that I picked up from a parenting course. Now before you rule out using parenting techniques at work, let me confess and say that I use them all the time… and they work. This one is is called “What’s your plan for______?” Let me explain. If you notice a task that you’ve delegated to one of your team members is not getting don...