What Fuels You

Hosted by Fuel Talent

Business Technology NewsInterviews guestsExplicit

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Episodes

246

Latest episode

Jun 2026

Language

EN-US

About the show

Shauna Swerland, CEO of Fuel Talent, launches the What Fuels You podcast, where she sits down with influential, interesting and successful leaders to learn from them. She digs into the stories and choices that made them who they are today, with the goal of sharing the inspiration, perseverance and stories of resilience that are normally only shared within an inner circle. You'll walk away feeling fueled by each episode as Shauna uncovers things like personal hardships and failures, what it’s like to become an entrepreneur and tips on building a successful career.

Listen to episodes

60 recent

June 2, 202646 min

Victoria Thain Gioia - Co-Founder and CEO of Perelel

Victoria Thain Gioia is the Co-Founder and CEO of Perelel, the first OBGYN-founded vitamin company offering doctor-formulated, research-backed supplements designed to meet the unique needs of women at every stage of their hormonal journey. Before founding Perelel, Victoria worked in investment banking and private equity, then moved into finance and operating roles at The Honest Company, Olive and June, and Carbon38. In 2018, while pregnant with her second child, she learned her daughter would be born with a cleft lip—often linked to nutritional deficiencies—despite taking all of the recommended vitamins. That experience led her to partner with OBGYN Dr. Banafsheh Bayati to bring real medical rigor to prenatal nutrition. Perelel launched in 2020 as a direct answer to the one-size-fits-all model that had dominated women's healthcare for far too long.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

May 5, 202655 min

Greg Davidson - Co-Founder and CEO of Lalo

Greg Davidson is the Co-Founder and CEO of Lalo, a modern baby and toddler brand built around the idea that new parents deserve better: better design, better guidance, and products that actually grow with their kids. Greg's path to founding a baby brand is not what you'd expect. He came up through a series of fast-growing startups in sales and go-to-market roles at Elastic, Krossover, WayUp, and Artsy before co-founding Lalo in 2017 with his former WayUp colleague, Michael Wieder. Neither of them had kids at the time. His first child was born in 2020, just after officially launching the business in 2019 and right before a global pandemic. They were somehow still able to grow 400% that first year. Lalo has since raised a $10.1 million series A, and expanded into Target, Babylist, Pottery Barn Kids and beyond. Greg is based in Miami and is a dad of three.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

April 21, 202643 min

Ross Goodhart - Founder and Co-CEO of Jupiter

Ross Goodhart is Co-CEO and a Founder of Jupiter—the new standard in dandruff care,delivering clean, elevated, and seriously effective dandruff care products. He was born andraised in Hawaii, and received his B.B.A from the University of Michigan School of Business in2002, with an emphasis in Finance, Accounting and Entrepreneurship.From 2002 to 2015, Ross worked in investment banking at Peter J. Solomon Company andthen private equity at Siguler Guff & Company, managing funds focused on consumer andtech investments in emerging markets.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

April 7, 202655 min

Jennifer Worthington - Co-Founder and President of Two Dice

Jennifer Worthington is the Co-Founder and President of Two Dice, a new live experience company she's building with George Kliavkoff, with whom she shares a belief in the power of live experiences to create connection and lasting memories.  She started her career at Jerry Bruckheimer Films, where she rose to senior vice president at age 23, working on some of the biggest films of that era: Armageddon, The Rock, Black Hawk Down, Pirates of the Caribbean. Then she walked away from Hollywood to open the Coyote Ugly Saloon on the Las Vegas Strip, which became the highest grossing bar per square foot in the country.  Jennifer is the author of In the Spirit of Las Vegas for Assouline and the creator of Little Angels, a multi-platform entertainment franchise developed in partnership with Mark Burnett and Roma Downey and now part of Hearst Entertainment. Most recently, she served as CEO and Co-Founder of Play Social Inc., where she launched Play Playground, a next-generation experiential entertainment concept redefining social play for teens and adults. She holds a degree from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

March 24, 202646 min

Ardie Sameti - Co-Founder and CEO of Scala

Ardie Sameti is the Co-Founder and CEO of Scala. Ardie is part of a new generation of Northwest leaders rethinking how AI can solve one of the biggest challenges in enterprise operations—the ability to act on customer data in real time. Scala is building an AI platform that unifies enterprise data and turns it into actionable intelligence, helping leaders see what's happening across their operations, respond faster, and empower their teams to perform at their best. Before co-founding Scala, Ardie spent nearly a decade at Accolade leading AI and Platform initiatives inside high-volume healthcare operations. Ardie and his wife Ali are raising their three young kids in Kirkland, and he remains deeply engaged in the Pacific Northwest startup and community ecosystem.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

March 10, 20261 hr 7 min

Deborah Benton and Amanda Schutzbank - Founders of Willow Growth Partners

Amanda Schutzbank and Deborah Benton are Co-Founders and General Partners at Willow Growth Partners. Willow is an emerging growth fund providing early capital to entrepreneurs building next-generation, values-led consumer brands. They typically lead the first institutional round for companies generating $1-5 million in revenue, applying a disciplined approach to valuation, capitalization, and scaling for long-term success. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

February 24, 20261 hr 13 min

Evan Zhao - Co-Founder and CEO of Pacagen

Evan Zhao is the Co-founder and CEO of Pacagen, using biotechnology to revolutionize consumer products. Before Pacagen, he served as Chief Science Officer at ODDITY, and previously built and sold Revela. He earned a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University, and completed work as a Schmidt Science Fellow at Harvard.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

February 10, 202652 min

Aaron Finn - CEO of SingleFile

Aaron Finn is the CEO of SingleFile. He has spent over 25 years building and leading technology companies across consumer, internet, digital advertising, healthcare, and legal and compliance infrastructure. Earlier in his career, he held leadership roles at classmates.com, where he worked on customer acquisition analytics and scaling consumer platforms. He later co-founded AdReady, an automated advertising company, and led it through multiple growth phases and an eventual acquisition. Across those roles, Aaron has often been responsible for stepping into complexity and helping organizations scale responsibly. He joined SingleFile in 2021 to lead the company through its next phase of growth, with a focus on clarity, execution, and building infrastructure that works quietly and reliably in a highly regulated space.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

January 27, 202652 min

Brent Beardall - President and CEO of WaFd Bank

Brent Beardall is the President and CEO of WaFd Bank, the largest bank headquartered in Washington state with more than $27 billion in assets and 200 offices located in nine Western states. He has spent over two decades at WaFd, rising through Finance and Operations before becoming CEO in 2017.  Known for his candid leadership style and public advocacy for community banking, Brent has led WaFd through significant economic disruption, strategic pivots, and cultural transformation. He is a Stanford Executive Program graduate, a CPA by training, and serves on several civic and financial boards. Brent often describes himself as the luckiest man alive, a perspective shaped by lived experience, gratitude, and responsibility.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

December 23, 20251 hr 14 min

Court Lorenzini - Founding CEO of DocuSign and FounderNexus

Court Lorenzini is the founder and CEO of multiple successful technology startups including DocuSign, Point.com, Primus BioVision and MetaBrite Inc. His latest venture, FounderNexus, aims to triple the success rate of venture-backed startups, and his work with the Lorenzini Family Foundation is aggressively investing in building a stronger and more equitable society. Additionally, Mr. Lorenzini serves on the Boards of many early-stage companies across the US and UK as well as the United States Olympic and Paralympic Foundation, and is an active investor and advisor. Over his career, Mr. Lorenzini has raised over $300M in venture and strategic funding from leading corporations and venture capital funds. Prior to his entrepreneurial ventures, Mr. Lorenzini held senior management positions with Cisco Systems and KLA-Tencor, including two years running a technology business in Neuchatel, Switzerland. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Duke University and post graduate credentials from Stanford University, UC Berkeley and University of Wisconsin at Madison.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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