Guests

Zach Will is the Founder & CEO of Kona Brand, an apparel company that creates fun winter flannels by blending traditional flannel with Hawaiian Aloha shirt flair. A UConn management and entrepreneurship major, he started the brand as a class project.

Guy Raz is the creator and host of NPR's How I Built This, and founder of Built-It Productions and Tinkercast Media. A former NPR Berlin bureau chief and Pentagon correspondent, he has earned a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard and an Edward R. Murrow Award for his investigative journalism.

Jensen Huang is the co-founder and CEO of NVIDIA, which builds graphics processors and AI computing platforms. Born in Taiwan and raised in the United States, he co-founded NVIDIA in 1993 and built it into the world's largest public company.

Mark Goldfarb is the founder of In Mark's Kitchen, a business dedicated to delivering quality products and services. With a focus on customer satisfaction and operational excellence, Mark Goldfarb has built In Mark's Kitchen into a trusted name in its market.

Yadi Derisse founded Yadi's Artisanal Empanadas to bring authentic, handcrafted empanadas to college campuses in New York. Starting with family recipes, she built a small operation into a growing business. Each empanada is made fresh daily, blending Latin American tradition with student convenience.

Meridith Baer is the founder and CEO of Meridith Baer Home, the nation's largest home staging company. A former screenwriter turned designer, she pioneered the home staging industry over 25 years ago.

Kristin Ruud is the founder and CEO of Northern Classics, an outdoor clothing brand launched in 2018 after she welcomed twins. Based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, she was recognized in Crain's 40 Under 40. Ruud holds an MBA from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.

Jael Thorpe is the founder and CEO of Gameday Social, a certified women-owned collegiate sports apparel brand. A lifelong entrepreneur, she spent over a decade running boutique stores in Brookings and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, before launching Gameday Social to serve female sports fans nationwide.

Brian Smith is the founder of UGG, the iconic sheepskin footwear brand. Born in Australia, he launched UGG in 1978 with a $500 loan and 500 imported boots, building it into a global billion-dollar brand before selling to Deckers in 1995.

Jane Wurwand is the founder and chief visionary of Dermalogica, the world's leading professional skincare brand. Born in Edinburgh and trained as a cosmetologist, she built the company from a small LA classroom in 1986 into a global brand that's trained over 100,000 skin therapists.

Co-founder of RXBAR and founder of David Protein. Rahal built the paleo-friendly protein bar brand around simple ingredients before selling to Kellogg's for $600M in 2017, then returned to the market with David Protein in 2024 after his non-compete expired.

Laura Modi is the co-founder and CEO of Bobbie, the organic infant formula company she started after struggling to find clean formula for her first child. A former Airbnb director, she built Bobbie into a leading U.S. challenger to the formula duopoly.