For the 26th episode of On the Come Up, I was honored to be joined by Ms. Milagros Barsallo, who currently serves as the Director of Community Engagement for the Denver Mayor’s Office. Her career began at Cornell University, where she studied Government and International Relations. After college, her first role was as a bilingual third and fourth grade teacher through Teach For America in Colorado, working to support underserved students. Afterwards, seeing the persistent barriers between families and the education system, she founded RISE Colorado in 2012. The mission of RISE Colorado is to bridge gaps between underserved families and public schools by promoting educational equity and community organizing. Over the years, Millie has expanded her work to include civic leadership consulting and international education, including a Fulbright fellowship in Panama. Today, she leads efforts to foster inclusive community engagement and shape equitable city development initiatives in Denver.

For my first guest outside of Forbes 30 Under 30, I was fortunate to be joined by Mr Peter Hazlehurst. The CEO and founder of Synctera, a platform that provides the technology infrastructure, compliance tools, and banking partner connections to enable FinTech companies and other businesses to build and launch financial products like bank accounts, debit cards, and lending services. Originally from Australia, Mr Hazlehurst landed in North Carolina in the early ‘90s, where he started his career at Phoenix International. It’s hard to imagine a time before mobile email, and in part we have Mr Hazlehurst to thank for that: His startup Eizel innovated the mail system that would be acquired and rolled out by Nokia. His next move was to Yodlee, where he served as Chief Product Officer from ‘04-’11, overseeing some of the company’s most successful rollouts and transitions. Next, he went to Google, where he pulled another trick out of his hat: serving in several high-level positions (including CEO of Google Payments), he oversaw the development of tap-pay, perhaps the most ubiquitous form of payment used today. A digression from his fintech sojourn, his next stop was at Postmates, where he threw the company into the spotlight, growing the company 5%-10% weekly. I start to feel like a broken record, but I think he must have a Tony Stark Laboratory somewhere – After Postmates and a couple other startups, he went to Uber. Most people think of Uber as the modern-taxi service, but that’s because they take for granted all the work that goes on behind the scenes. Case in point the “transactional-less transaction” at the end of every ride, thanks to the extraordinary Uber Money payments team. Today he serves as CEO of Synctera, the glue between banks and fintechs. I don’t know the future of innovations, but I do know where I’ll find them: behind Mr Hazlehurst.

For the twenty-fourth episode of One the Come Up, I had the fortune of speaking with Mrs Karoliina Kauhanen – twice. Unfortunately (or, maybe, fortunately) the first go around had issues with the recording (and prompted new measures on my part), so I had the pleasure of a second interview. Mrs Kauhanen joined me all the way from Finland, where her career began at Humak University of Applied Sciences and the University of the Arts Helsinki, where she obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s in Arts and Events Management. During this time, she worked at the Classic Floorball Academy [Floorball is Finland’s most popular sport], where she was introduced to international affairs and marketing. Here, she oversaw an historic floorball match between Singapore and Finland. Commu was founded in 2019 on the eve of the pandemic – perfect timing for good deeds. The objective of the app is to connect those who need help and those who want to help. It was the first time Mrs Kauhanen and her co-founders started a company, and there were definitely some learning curves. Through fundraising and a rock band (Yes, they have an official rock band!!), they spread across the world – and rapidly. The first time I spoke with Mrs Kauhanen, two months ago, they were in three countries. Between then and now, they have proliferated to Portugal, the UK, and Asia, and even have some users here in America. I don’t propose to tell the future, but if I can apply one takeaway from my conversation with Mrs Kauhanen, is that we are all human. And we will always be humans.