Entrepreneurship

Michael Peres with Karen Leos, Vice President of Global Sales and Professional Services at Tellabs, about why network infrastructure deserves a bigger place in conversations around sustainability, cost, and long-term building strategy. With more than 20 years at Tellabs and a career spanning IT, global support, technical services, and customer success, Karen brings a practical, customer-first perspective to how organizations can rethink connectivity from the ground up.

Michael Peres sits down with Art Abal, co-founder of Vana and a leading thinker at the intersection of data systems, AI, and governance. With experience ranging from advising the Prime Minister of Timor-Leste to running global data sourcing at Appen for products like Google Search, Facebook Feed, and ChatGPT, Art has spent his career figuring out how human data is collected, valued, and used – and what a fairer AI economy could look like. Now at Vana, he’s working on user-owned data networks that put people, not platforms, in control.

Michael Peres speaks with Goedele Mangelaars, solo founder of Pink Notebook, an AI-powered trip planning platform designed to make travel planning more visual, collaborative, and actually useful. With a life shaped by constant travel across the U.S. and London, plus experience at Skyscanner, Terra API, and Captify, Goedele brings a sharp perspective on why planning trips still feels more broken than it should.