Podcast Ep. 12 Stanford MBA ’95 Jillian Leslie meets MBA ’25 Mehek Mohan

Today, I’m joined by Jillian Leslie from the Stanford MBA Class of 1995 and Mehek Mohan from the Class of 2025. Jillian is a creative entrepreneur, podcast host, and digital business builder. Before co-founding MiloTree, a platform that helps content creators grow and monetize their audiences, Jillian worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood. She also hosts The Blogger Genius Podcast, where for over seven years she’s interviewed top minds in the world of digital entrepreneurship. Her journey blends storytelling, tech, and a deep understanding of what today’s audiences need.

 Mehek is a second-year MBA student at Stanford GSB with a background in molecular biology and AI-driven healthcare. After leading automation projects at Genentech, she’s now building Kahani—a personalized, tech-enabled eating disorder recovery platform. Combining her experience in biotech and product innovation with a mission to destigmatize mental health, Mehek is pushing the boundaries of how digital companions and micro-therapies can support meaningful healing.

 Together, Jillian and Mehek explore how storytelling, technology, and entrepreneurship are reshaping mental health, recovery, and what it means to connect with others—across generations and digital platforms. It’s a conversation about creativity, courage, and designing tools that speak to the human experience.

Chapters: 

00:00 Introduction and Backgrounds

03:59 The Journey of Kahani: A Recovery Platform

07:01 The Role of AI in Mental Health

10:09 Storytelling and Content Creation

13:02 Building a Digital Companion for Recovery

16:02 Engagement and User Experience in Recovery

19:01 Creativity in Business and Content Creation

22:02 Lessons from Building a Business

25:02 Iterating and Adapting to User Needs

28:10 Finding Purpose in Creativity

29:49 Navigating Career Paths and Personal Growth

31:01 The Journey into Healthcare and Entrepreneurship

33:56 The Impact of Personal Experiences on Business Ideas

36:51 Life as a Series of Chapters

40:13 Learning from Different Generations

45:10 Building Networks and Maintaining Values

53:01 Reflections on Personal and Professional Growth

Join the Podcast Series
Stanford MBA: From Baby Boomer to Gen Z | Class of ‘95 Meets Class of ‘25

Each of these episodes will feature a different pair of Stanford MBA people -- one from the class of 1995, and one from the class of 2025.

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Entire series playlist:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSaVisoF0D_GKxVmHmakNxdpAJCb5_VTP

More info: https://www.katharinemclennan.com/

Contact: kath@katharinemclennan.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katharinemclennan/

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Backgrounds
• 3:59 The Journey of Kahani: A Recovery Platform
• 7:01 The Role of AI in Mental Health
• 10:09 Storytelling and Content Creation
• 13:02 Building a Digital Companion for Recovery
• 16:02 Engagement and User Experience in Recovery
• 19:01 Creativity in Business and Content Creation
• 22:02 Creativity in Business and Content Creation
• 25:02 Iterating and Adapting to User Needs
• 28:10 Finding Purpose in Creativity
• 29:49 Navigating Career Paths and Personal Growth
• 31:01 The Journey into Healthcare and Entrepreneurship
• 33:56 The Impact of Personal Experiences on Business Ideas
• 36:51 Life as a Series of Chapters
• 40:13 Learning from Different Generations
• 45:10 Building Networks and Maintaining Values
• 53:01 Reflections on Personal and Professional Growth

Transcript

Note: this transcript is generated by AI, so it won’t always be perfect, especially when it comes to: 

·        Incorrect breaks in a sentence (AI hears the pause and assumes a new sentence)

·        Exact word recognition – you may see that there are words that don’t make sense from time to time

Katharine McLennan (01:02)

Today I'm joined by Jillian Leslie from the Stanford MBA class of 1995 and Mehak Mohan from the class of 2025. Jillian is a creative entrepreneur, podcast host, and digital business builder. Before co-founding MiloTree, a platform that helps content creators grow and monetize their audiences, Jillian worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood.

She also hosts the Blogger Genius podcast where for over seven years she's interviewed top minds in the world of digital entrepreneurship. Her journey blends storytelling tech and a deep understanding of what today's audiences need. Mehak is a second year MBA student at Stanford GSB with a background in molecular biology and AI driven healthcare. After leading automation projects at Genentech,

She's now building Kahani, a personalized tech-enabled eating disorder recovery platform. Combining her experience in biotech and product innovation with a mission to de-stigmatize mental health, Mehak is pushing the boundaries of how digital companions and micro therapies can support meaningful healing. Together, Jillian and Mehak explore how storytelling, technology, and entrepreneurship are reshaping mental health.

recovery and what it means to connect with others across generations and digital platforms. It's a conversation about creativity, courage, and designing tools that speak to the human experience.

Katharine McLennan (02:38)

So Mahek, tell us where you are.

Mehek (02:38)

Thank

I'm sitting here in our pass down with, I have nine roommates and a dog. It's a huge house on the intersection of Redwood City and Menlo Park.

It is the first day of the quarter, of our last quarter of GSB, so we are very, very excited and a bit nostalgic. I spent the full day working on my startup, which I'm building with my amazing co-founder, who is not at Stanford. It is an eating disorder recovery platform, thinking about digital components to your care team, something I'm very passionate about.

it looks beautiful. My co-founder is an absolute genius and one of my best friends. So he is, nearby. He commutes and we're able to work on this together. And I am gearing up to head to the law school advanced negotiations class, which starts today. So I thought I would take some classes across the street. Why not use this quarter to try that?

Katharine McLennan (03:38)

Julian, where do we find you?

Jillian Leslie (03:40)

So I am in Austin, Texas.

Katharine McLennan (03:42)

All right. And what are you up

to on this Wednesday, Jillian?

Jillian Leslie (03:47)

So I build online businesses with my husband and I also have a podcast called the Blogger Genius podcast that I have been recording for seven years, so go check that out. And really, I help content creators monetize. I help them grow their audiences and I help them sell products and services to their audiences. And so it's a real, and a lot of our customers are moms.

Mehek (03:48)

you

Jillian Leslie (04:14)

And so it's really fun to, cause I understand what that is all about.

Katharine McLennan (04:20)

Oh, Jillian, that's amazing. We definitely didn't have content creators in the 1995 world. I mean, we had plenty of content, but they were probably almost hand writing their books. I don't know what percentage of our class actually had laptops. But a lot of us were going into the computer labs to use the computers. And the internet had just.

sort of emerged and was emerging with Netscape going public in 1995. That was kind of the first internet service, So we like to talk about sometimes how ancient our service was. But I want to talk about what content creation is in a moment, because here you guys are. Now, Mehek, before we do that, let's talk about the eating disorder and how you're going to do what

Jillian Leslie (04:47)

Yes.

Katharine McLennan (05:12)

you even call it? Like, how do we say what you're doing? Describe that a little bit.

Mehek (05:17)

Yeah,

of course. I'm so happy too. This is very near and dear to my heart. So the company is called Kahani. It's a Hindi word that means story. And I really believe that it's so important to have people feel empowered to write their own recovery journey stories. And that's why we've built the platform that we built. Essentially, you have all of these parts of your care team that integrates with, you know, your medical providers.

But recovery happens every minute of every single day. It's not Tuesdays at 4 p.m. with your therapist or your dietician, right? And so as we think about the digital age and how much time our generation and the generation below me, I am still technically a millennial, last on the list, spends time on their phones and on social media. There's a lot of diet culture speak. There's a lot of content that's very harmful in thinking about our body image, our self-esteem.

Jillian Leslie (05:58)

Mm-hmm.

Mehek (06:11)

And for very personal reasons, this is something that I wish existed for a couple of my best friends who went through a pretty brutal but successful recovery journey. And this is something where thinking of your digital companion, we never thought about that in healthcare before. I came from the world of healthcare. I worked in pharma beforehand. My co-founder is a tech genius. And together we thought, why can't we bring gaming to recovery, gaming to healing?

There's something really exciting about building a product that is beautiful and engaging. And that is something that doesn't really exist in the healthcare space and certainly not in the eating disorder sphere. And so we thought we would take the best concepts of gaming and product design and user experience and turn that into micro therapy skill sets that are deeply personalized to each individual's unique behaviors, triggers, or coping mechanisms that maybe may not serve them anymore. So think of it like a circuit breaker that's with you 24 seven.

deeply personalized because we have the beauties of AI to lean on and use in this day and age. And so it's something that I think, I hope will impact millions of lives because this is a really big problem. Someone dies every 52 minutes and it's about 10 % of the US that's affected and still highly stigmatized space. So most people don't know that. And this is something that you probably know someone struggling with an eating disorder or maybe you've experienced that yourself.

Katharine McLennan (07:25)

Oof.

Okay, for sure. Yeah.

Mehek (07:35)

this is supposed to help kind of be where depression and anxiety were 10 years ago where it was very stigmatized and now people talk about it. And so my hope is that we can speed that process up for eating disorders too.

Katharine McLennan (07:46)

Gillian. if Mehek was your client, what would the content creation person do? How does that work?

Jillian Leslie (07:55)

Well, I think the personal piece of this, like for potentially, I don't know if you've experienced a needing disorder, but you seem like you've got people close to you who have. And here's the thing, people relate to people. And people want to hear stories from others who've been on that journey. What I like to say is not,

when we're thinking about sharing content, sharing about our lives, you don't want to share the pain, the gaping wound that you might have in that moment, but you do want to share the scar. So when you've passed through and now you've come out the other end, and again, life is always a journey and it's always about learning, but when you have those nuggets, you want to go, hey, I see you, I know where you are, I've been there.

Katharine McLennan (08:34)

Yeah, I love it.

Jillian Leslie (08:50)

It was awful for me too, but here's the new place that I'm at and you can get to.

Katharine McLennan (08:58)

I love it. And so when we look at this whole world of content creation, Julian, like, and we look at the last 30 years and it's way more, it sounds like it's even more than content creation because you're looking at healing. I love that word. But if you look at just on a business sense, content creation, Julian, let's zoom back to 30 years ago.

Jillian Leslie (09:24)

well, I, okay, so before, I don't know if you know this, but before I got to the GSB, I was working in Hollywood. And after the GSB, I moved to LA and I became a writer. So I was a writer and I wrote TV and I wrote film.

Katharine McLennan (09:35)

Yes!

Because you and Al were amazing together in improvisation. And in fact, I just got a text from Al because he's going to be joining one of these with one of your colleagues, Joel, who I also understand is improvisation.

Mehek (09:43)

Yeah.

Aww, I love

Joel. He's

Jillian Leslie (09:54)

was you're taking classes across the street at the law school. I took improv, directing, all these other classes across, well, they were right by where our old GSB was. And so really, it's funny because I had gone undergrad to Stanford and I was so serious and I-

Katharine McLennan (10:05)

Fantastic.

Jillian Leslie (10:13)

worked really hard and I didn't have a ton of fun. So by the time I got to business school, was like, screw this, my grades don't matter. I just have to pass my classes. I'm gonna relive, know, do it, kind of do a do-over. And so that was really, it was great. And I use, I think that some of the classes, like my improv was so valuable and has been so valuable. The other class that, I don't even remember this, Kath.

Mehek (10:16)

Yeah

Katharine McLennan (10:30)

love it.

Jillian Leslie (10:41)

We had a class on the Enneagram.

Katharine McLennan (10:44)

You know we had a class

on the Enneagram. my gosh. What? How did I miss that?

Jillian Leslie (10:47)

an entire real class and it was on the Enneagram and lit,

Mehek (10:49)

No.

Jillian Leslie (10:52)

I don't know, but it was great. like, honestly, like I would be like, I like type everybody since like since the class. So those, and I don't know, do you know what that Enneagram is?

Katharine McLennan (10:59)

Yep, yep, yep, yep.

Mehek (11:03)

I do know what it is, but we don't have that class.

Jillian Leslie (11:06)

It's like a personality typing class. And what they would do is every class they'd go, okay, here's what we're gonna, we're gonna have a bunch of ones come in and they would all like be in panel. Okay, today we're gonna have twos. And then the goal of the class was for you to figure out by the end of it, what you were and like who the people closest to you were.

Mehek (11:09)

Yeah.

Katharine McLennan (11:09)

you

Mehek (11:18)

haha

Huh.

Jillian Leslie (11:30)

I went to Hollywood and I became a writer. then, so I've always been about storytelling and creating content, it's just shifted. And now I build software with my husband.

Katharine McLennan (11:35)

Yes! Yes! Yes!

How awesome is that, So tell us, because if I have an eating disorder and I'm going to use, what are we gonna call it? Your platform, your app, your, what do you?

Mehek (11:40)

you

We can call it

your recovery bestie.

Katharine McLennan (11:54)

Recovery bestie. OK, so I'm going to have a relationship with what? My bestie. it going to be through how does this work? And it's so related to storytelling, isn't it? And tips and yeah, go.

Mehek (11:59)

you

Yeah. Yes. So this

is something that I think is really interesting that I've been noodling on a lot. And I'm super curious, Jillian, your perspective on this, but with the rise of AI, a lot of the things that we've been thinking about is, at least earlier on, was this idea of empathy, right? And how there's this camp that AI will never be able to replace humans because of this idea of empathy.

And then there were some papers that came out that really, really changed my perspective on this concept around the perception of empathy. And as long as you feel like you feel seen and you feel heard, then it doesn't really matter who you're getting it from. And there's some data now that shows that in, know, randomized studies, you see this where, you know, people are even more receptive to AI because they can, especially in the medical space.

Jillian Leslie (12:39)

Mm.

Katharine McLennan (12:40)

Mmm.

Mehek (12:58)

can spend more time with you, can keep going back and forth, it can give you all those words of affirmation that a doctor who can spend seven minutes of time with you can't do. And so that's something that we've been really thinking about in our both text and voice based elements of the app, where in these 90 second to two minute long tasks that are really just supposed to help you be a little bit more introspective on what brings you to the app today, what's going on, what stressors exist.

You get to have this text exchange that's rooted in evidence-based therapies so that you're actually learning a skill set and being able to apply it directly to external stimuli.

Katharine McLennan (13:34)

Okay, so I'm gonna get on there and it's a Wednesday. And what's my 90 seconds? What am I gonna get? Let's just play it through. What am I gonna ask?

Mehek (13:46)

Yeah,

so you're going to go in there and the apps going to say, hi, what brings you here today? How are you doing? remember, we're going to use this at least initially paired with a specific behavior or coping mechanism that you're working on. let's say lunchtime is really, really hard and you tend to engage in behaviors that are maybe more restrictive around lunchtime. noon comes around, it's Wednesday and we know that we're about to sit down for lunch and we're already starting to have those difficult thoughts.

Katharine McLennan (13:57)

Now give me one. What's the... Yeah.

Mehek (14:13)

You'll come in and you'll say, hey, I'm having a hard time. It's lunchtime and I just don't feel like I want to have this meal. So the app might say, okay, let's talk through a little bit more. Where is this coming from? How often has this happened? And the more you use it, the more I'll start to learn your patterns and say, we know that this is something that you struggle with at this time. So now let's recommend a skillset for you to do. So one of my favorite skillsets is rooted in CVT and it's called putting your thoughts on trial.

So what is evidence for and evidence against that thought? And it's really helpful because it just helps you to create a little bit more of a balanced perspective. So maybe when we have this elevated sense of self where we think that we're gonna be 100 % right in whatever we're thinking about, it's helpful to take a step back and another perspective and then really be able to weigh it and say, okay, I guess there is an opportunity to think about this thought in different ways. So maybe it'll force you to say, you know,

Katharine McLennan (14:43)

Yeah.

Mehek (15:08)

I don't want to eat because this is going to ruin my self image for today. And maybe the alternate thought to that is I'm nourishing my body. This energy is going to allow me to go to this event after school, which I've been really looking forward to. So that perspective then helps you think, okay, it may not work at the get go. We know behavior change takes time, but it's starting to build that muscle of, okay, we can start to understand.

Katharine McLennan (15:17)

fantastic.

Mehek (15:33)

one perspective and another perspective and start to kind of come to common ground. Again, kind of like that circuit breaker. And they're supposed to be quick because we know your attention span's kind of going to be limited.

Katharine McLennan (15:39)

but

Yeah, nowadays. But it's interesting, Gillian, because if you go back to the storytelling that would have been fantastic to do. You guys probably did that in improvisation and writing and, you know, became different characters altogether.

Jillian Leslie (15:52)

You

Yes, well, again, that's what lights me up. It's interesting the heck though. I was just with my mother who is a clinical psychologist and I was showing her how you can talk to chat GPT, which is different than when you type and how powerful it was. And we were talking about it as a way to do therapy. And my mom said, my God, this is incredible.

Mehek (16:10)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jillian Leslie (16:21)

No, my mom's retired. She's not worried about like losing clients or anything to chat chibiti. But she said something that I thought was really interesting. She said, I think this could be so powerful because I bet you people will be more honest with the AI than they would be with their therapist. Because even though their therapist is supposed to be neutral, you're still performing in many ways for your therapist. So she saw it from this whole

Katharine McLennan (16:37)

Mmm.

Jillian Leslie (16:49)

cool perspective. And there was an article I read recently about how people are using Claude for relationship advice. For some reason Claude seems to be the AI that's the go-to for that. you know, so anyway, so I see this, like I think it is, it's not just in the future. This is now.

Mehek (16:57)

Mm-hmm.

Katharine McLennan (17:03)

I love it.

Mehek (17:11)

Yeah, actually, so actually a really cool part of that too is a few of us are doing this here at the GSB, which might sound kind of crazy, but also completely uncoordinated. It's not like we told each other about this, even better. So one of my best friends at the GSB, Mark and my boyfriend, who's also at the GSB, we actually met him here last year. And I all kind of have,

Katharine McLennan (17:11)

my gosh, Dylan.

Good, good, even better.

Yay!

Mehek (17:38)

our journals and kind of like journal entries written online. So we have a Google Docs, we have a bunch of, you know, a long, long log of everything about ourselves. And we all kind of uploaded that into Chachi BT. And we're like, let's just create mini versions of ourselves to be able to be thought partners that are actually relevant to ourselves. And it's been awesome because it really, really gives you that feedback and it knows your history and it's able to kind of pull and understand.

Jillian Leslie (17:57)

Mmm.

Mehek (18:04)

Okay, well based on your patterns and based on your experiences, this is probably why you're feeling this way. It's so effective. So this whole idea of digital companions, and I'm speaking about this in the eating disorder space, but I mean, as we think about agentic AI and all of the new trends coming up, there's so much opportunity to be able to have that real time buddy, that little angel and devil on your shoulder for every single moment and every single task you could imagine.

Jillian Leslie (18:11)

Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Katharine McLennan (18:29)

Wait a minute, you used a term called, I missed it, Eugentic AI, was that the term? Agentic for agency, okay. Okay, all right, goodness gracious, Jillian. What would you do with this beautiful client if you had Mac as your client, Jillian? What would you, how would that work?

Jillian Leslie (18:33)

Agentic.

Mehek (18:34)

Agentic. Agentic.

Jillian Leslie (18:48)

Well, I think she's doing

a lot of really good things. I would just, again, I would start building in public. I would start sharing your story. I would start building your tribe of people who get you. And the other thing I would say, get a little spicy. Put some opinions out there that could be perceived as, I don't wanna say controversial.

But I do want to say where you put a stake in the ground and go, this is who I am and this is what I believe. Because the people then who...

totally disagree will be like, you are not my person, but the people who agree with you will feel so bonded to you. So we lived in this world where everything's a little milk toast and everything is safe and everything feels kind of like it's been like kind of put a you put a filter on it. And I would say be willing to take some risks to bring the people to you.

who you know who could best benefit.

Katharine McLennan (19:52)

I love it. love it. and Delia, if you had to describe and how you've been in the business of content creation now with your husband for how many years? Nine, was it?

Mehek (19:54)

I love that.

Jillian Leslie (20:03)

Oh my God,

we started our first company in 2009. I don't know if you were born yet, my heck.

Katharine McLennan (20:07)

All right.

Mehek (20:08)

.

Katharine McLennan (20:08)

my gosh. my gosh. Yes. So, but what prompted you to do this in Dylan?

Jillian Leslie (20:14)

So I was working in Hollywood, I was writing movies, and I had a movie that was about to get made, and then it fell apart not because of me, but I had my daughter. And that to me, I all of a sudden said, I don't care

Katharine McLennan (20:23)

Yep. Okay.

Jillian Leslie (20:29)

about being in meetings with celebrities anymore, I have a bigger job.

Katharine McLennan (20:36)

huh.

Jillian Leslie (20:36)

I'm

Lainey's mom and it shifted everything. And I said to my husband, who at the time was head of product at MySpace back in the day, I'm like, you know what? Let's build something ourselves. So as a side project, we built a site called Catch My Party and we've grown it into the largest party ideas site on the web with user generated content. And initially we built this site for teen girls because my husband's working at MySpace. I'm writing teen girl comedies.

Mehek (20:44)

Hmm.

Katharine McLennan (20:45)

Gosh.

Jillian Leslie (21:03)

So it's like, okay, these are our people. And then I learned a very important lesson, which is it got really weird because we had this platform and I'm stalking like teen girls on the internet going, hey, I'm a 30 something year old mom. Like, would you put your party photos up on my site? And nobody would. However, moms with Etsy shops who...

Mehek (21:16)

no!

Jillian Leslie (21:29)

created beautiful parties and wanted to sell their party supplies, started putting their party photos up on our site. And we initially were like, no, we've attracted the wrong audience. We need to delete all this content. And then we took that step back and said, whoa, wait a second, maybe this is our audience. These are the people. And so we leaned into it and figured out how to serve them better. And I think that is something that was one of the first lessons that we learned.

Mehek (21:34)

Hmm.

Hmm.

Jillian Leslie (21:56)

that you're co-creating. You think you know, but it's very humbling because you put it out there and then you get people's reactions. Like, heck, I hope you're putting your app in front of people all the time and saying, what do you think? What do you think? How would you improve this? Because it's like getting so close to your customers so that stuff that, and to hear how they talk about it in their language, using their language back at them.

Katharine McLennan (22:09)

What do think? Yeah? Yeah.

Mehek (22:12)

yeah.

Katharine McLennan (22:21)

Mmm. Mmm.

Mehek (22:21)

Yeah.

Jillian Leslie (22:24)

I

Katharine McLennan (22:25)

how do you do that? What have you been doing? Have you been doing this for the last two years in addition to taking classes across in law school and taking corporate finance and taking whatever are their favorite ones? Not the Enneagram, but... Yay!

Mehek (22:39)

MGE. you? Touchy feely MGE. Oh yeah, so

Jillian Leslie (22:40)

I know!

Mehek (22:46)

I came into business school knowing I wanted to start a company in the healthcare space. And so that was my goal. I didn't actually officially start working on it really until the summer when I got the IDEF stipend. So that allowed me to, it basically allowed me a sponsorship to do.

go explore and do entrepreneurship for the summer. So my co-founder and I moved to New York and we had such a fun time because the initial maybe three or four months of us building was all of these ideas we had that we ran through, ran by, you know, a couple of our close friends. And, know, there's this book called The Mom Test that almost everyone has read when it comes to, right? And so, you know, your close friends will tell you this is...

Jillian Leslie (23:23)

yeah yeah yeah!

Mehek (23:27)

awesome and you know our friends who were in recovery are like I totally would have used that when I was you know in recovery and so we're like great we're so excited we have such good feedback and then he and I being you know having so much fun brainstorming and he has just such a beautiful visual mind you know we got really carried away with all of our visuals and everything and then we got to the point where we were like is this what people actually want are people gonna keep using this and so we started showing it to people we had a little bunch of people download it

And then our engagement metrics were a little low. we're like, hmm, people aren't really coming back to the app. So we started thinking more about like, what is good game design? What are, what are core loops? How do we make sure that there's an incentive and a reward for people to come back each time? Because this isn't like a normal game. It's not, you know, we, we say that something controversial, I guess, our, our take on recovery is that it should feel like play. Now, most people think play has to be fun all the time.

Our take is that play is not always fun. It's challenging, rewarding, engaging, and it can be fun sometimes, but it's not always fun. And this is tiring work. I mean, you're confronting self-limiting beliefs and talking through urges and relationships that may not serve you. It's not always easy work in this app. And so how do we make it more engaging? So then we started doing really rapid experimentation. And so he would come up with a couple of ideas and we would think about the visuals for it. And then we would go ahead and show it.

to 10 to 15 people on our network who had all reached out to us that they were in recovery and wanted an extra resource. And we'd, you know, iterate with them and make sure we were really, really building the right product and not overcomplicating it with so many cool features because really thinking we, I just took the product market fit class with Andy Radcliffe and that was phenomenal. It was such a game changer in how I viewed, you know, the early days of building. And so we stripped everything down. said, okay, we're just going to build.

the one thing that people are really, really desperate to buy. And that is how we kind of started getting a better focus, a better design, and a really tight engagement and collaboration with the end users. And that was something that has been really perspective altering because these people are amazing and their journeys are so different. And it's so important to honor that to the best of our abilities in the app.

Katharine McLennan (25:44)

interesting to me as I listen to this, to the class of 2025 is the creation, the creation of ideas. That's what you and the likes of Al and many of you were awesome at. And when we look at most of our classmates, including me, when we went back to consulting or we went back to investment banking or we went to say big corporates,

And a lot of that was problem solving. So we were given the problem. And then we were to use our smarts and our analytics to respond to the problem. But what I noticed in this generation and you by default, Jillian, this huge creativity, I'm not sure we got that muscle except for you guys trying to show us how to do it. So it's really interesting, Jillian, to watch these guys.

Jillian Leslie (26:15)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

For

me, okay, so my job after college, I went and I worked at Disney in their strategic planning department. And I hated it, I hated it. And I thought to myself, you are renting my brain Monday through Friday. Like, you tell me what to do and the spreadsheets and stuff and I could put these numbers in, but any smart person could do this job. There's nothing Jill about it. And that for me was like death sentence. So I felt like I had a

Mehek (26:38)

Thank

Katharine McLennan (26:42)

okay.

Yep. Yep. Yep.

Jillian Leslie (27:05)

crisis at age 25 thinking this is it. I worked so hard in college, high school, college, whatever to be here and this sucks. And so I had to figure out what made me tick and what made me tick was creatives. There's nothing. And then I think about it.

and then I work on it and then that sucks at the beginning and then I keep iterating and keep iterating and it gets a little better and a little better and then at that end, there's something there. And then that, you know, it still couldn't be improved but for me that gave me like meaning and purpose. So I feel like it was my crisis, my midlife crisis at 25 that made me shift and say like I...

Katharine McLennan (27:43)

Yeah.

Jillian Leslie (27:52)

between my first and second year, I worked at McKinsey and I knew I wanted to be a writer. So I go to McKinsey and I go, hey guys, okay, great, this is cool, like in LA. I'm only gonna work here for like eight weeks because then I'd have enough money where I could spend the second part of the summer in my shitty apartment writing, writing screen, writing scripts. And they were like, what? Like, what do you mean? Like we've never met anybody like you before. And I was like, no, no, no. I go, okay, just eight weeks, that's all I want.

Katharine McLennan (28:10)

Fantastic.

Jillian Leslie (28:21)

And they let me do it. I give them credit. They really did. And they said to me afterwards, like, hey, if this whole writing thing doesn't work out, you could always come back. So I always knew in my back pocket that even though I was a starving screenwriter, that I had this as like a back, like just as something to do. they, like, so there I am at McKinsey and like my, I don't know what he was called, engagement manager is like, hey, the people who do really well here are the people who like to think about

Mehek (28:34)

Yeah

Wow.

Jillian Leslie (28:49)

complex business problems in the shower. Now the truth is, I have my own companies that I build and I do like thinking about complex business problems in the shower. However, I was working on this case for Hunt Wesson. I don't know if I can tell that this 30 years ago. Like the tomato people and whether they should transfer their tomato products via rail or.

Katharine McLennan (29:04)

Yeah.

Jillian Leslie (29:12)

And I was like, I do not want to think about this in the shower. This is so, I'm in the wrong place. But they were so nice and they were great. And I get how, you know, was like a much better environment than say Disney, but it was like, this is not for me. So I learned that, so heck, I say, make sure you're checking in with yourself so that you go, yes, this is the right path for me. Because, you know, that was like,

Mehek (29:12)

Hahaha

You

Katharine McLennan (29:21)

So.

Jillian Leslie (29:42)

It was painful, that was hard for me.

Mehek (29:44)

Yeah.

Katharine McLennan (29:45)

So the shift though, it was pharmaceutical in the heck, right? The industry to where you're going, is that a gigantic shift the way that Jillian's talking about?

Mehek (29:49)

Mm-hmm.

Well, so I've always really been interested in healthcare. I studied molecular cell biology in undergrad at Cal and then I went and I was at that time working in an incredible lab or on gene editing with Dr. Doudna right before she won the Nobel Prize. It was one of the coolest times to be at Cal and then in my senior year I thought maybe I'd try my hand at entrepreneurship.

Katharine McLennan (30:09)

my goodness.

Mehek (30:18)

and I thought about STD tests and how they are not personalized, like not at home. They're not real time or rapid. And there should really be like pregnancy tests, a way to test for STDs at home in under five minutes. So I was building that tech as part of my thesis and thought, this would be a great company. I was having a lot of fun, but I was also like 21 or 22 or something. And that was right when Theranos was blowing up and being a...

female founder in microfluidic diagnostics specifically was literally the worst thing, especially because I was straight out of undergrad. So I really didn't know anything. But I really thought that it could be awesome, but I thought maybe it might be better to get some industry experience. So I went to pharma and I was really, really lucky because I had a phenomenal team, a team that gave me so much accountability, so much responsibility, autonomy.

Katharine McLennan (31:07)

Mm. Mm.

Mehek (31:09)

empowerment and I was able to lead some pretty awesome initiatives at a pretty young age. And I had the support behind my back that just gave me that feeling of, you I can do this and especially in an industry that sometimes moves a little bit more slowly. And I was able to work on some pretty cutting edge projects around using AI to improve our clinical trial workflows. And so that was really, really exciting to me. And I've always loved the health and sciences space. So I knew I wanted to stay in that space in business school.

And that coming to this idea was kind of a bit of a run around way. had two other ideas that I started off with. And ultimately to your point, Jillian, I wasn't the right person to build those products. The initial two that I had started with my first few ideas and the space, like I wasn't the person to make that come to life. And I think if you want to build something really impactful and lasting in healthcare, you really have to care about the topic. And so I had a bit of a...

come to G this moment of soul searching for myself. And I sat with my co-founder, Brandon, and I was like, you know, Brandon, we need to work on something that we both really care about and that we can commit to for long, long periods of time. And that's how we landed on this is, you know, we both share a friend who's in a beautiful place in recovery now. And I have, you know, a couple other more deeper personal experiences with some of my loved ones and.

And you know, we just agreed like this is something that we can really do together and we can do it well. And so that's kind of how we got there, but it was a bit of a roundabout way. mean, initially we were doing like a parent app and then a medical triage app. I'm not a parent, I'm not a doctor. So those things didn't really work out.

Katharine McLennan (32:45)

gosh, I mean, and of course it all changes as you suggested when you do become or if you have the opportunity to become a mother and you know, so what's that transition like now that we raise it? What happens?

Mehek (32:47)

you

Jillian Leslie (32:58)

Well, is

okay, so this is funny. I was at the GSB last, so my daughter is graduating high school right now and she's gonna be a freshman at Stanford next year. yeah, so we were visiting the campus in June and she was like, she hadn't gotten in or anything, but she was meeting up with a friend from high school. they met at CUPA at the business school and so I had like time to spare. So I had on my laptop and I.

Katharine McLennan (33:05)

Yeah. No way.

Jillian Leslie (33:24)

I sit at a table that has an outlet underneath it with like some second years, I guess. And like, I go, hey, like I'm like this old lady sitting there and I go, and then I'm listening though to them talk about their summers, right? Cause this was like June, right at the end of last year. And then I turned to them and I don't know why, but well, maybe cause it's also my personality. And I go, hey guys, I went to the GSB and they were like, you know.

Mehek (33:32)

Hahaha

you

Hello.

Katharine McLennan (33:49)

Yeah

Jillian Leslie (33:49)

Not really that interested.

And I go, can I give you guys, can I like give you some advice? And they were super nice. And they go, yeah. Because I said, I remember this. I remember the sweat and the freak out over what you're going to do for your summer. And I have now, I said, I have a lot of perspective on this. And I want you to know it's so not as important as you think it is. So just please like know that.

Mehek (33:50)

Hahaha

Katharine McLennan (33:55)

Here we go.

Mm.

Mm-mm.

Jillian Leslie (34:18)

because

you will look back and I said, please pay it forward that when you're out, know, so many years, you'll come back and remind because there, said, there's something in the group think at the GSB where we got there, Kath. And I remember like, I ended up spending my summer at McKinsey. Why? Cause everybody spent their summer at McKinsey. It wasn't that I had a deep love for McKinsey or consulting. you know, stepping out of, so there is this pressure

Katharine McLennan (34:36)

Everybody.

Jillian Leslie (34:47)

And most people don't know what they think their first job, let's say, out of business school is gonna be so important. And the truth is, and they go, most people stay at their first job for two years. And it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but not me. Because for me, this is gonna be like determinant of my entire life. So what I said to them is I said, what you're gonna find, at least for me, and Kath, I'd love to know what you think, becomes about chapters.

Katharine McLennan (35:13)

Yeah, that's for sure. I have a lot.

Jillian Leslie (35:14)

So, and it's not necessarily

like this smooth thing, like this continuous thing where you move in one direction. It's literally chapters, whether they be based on a relationship, whether they be based on a job, whether they be based on where you live, whether they be based on when you have children. And so to think that way, I thought was like, nobody told me this. So for example, like I was a writer in Hollywood. Okay, that was like,

Mehek (35:39)

.

Jillian Leslie (35:44)

12 years of my life and that was a chapter. And then I've started companies and I've had a daughter and so it's just a, it makes every chapter then like less, you know there'll be another chapter.

Katharine McLennan (35:58)

With plenty of disasters, least in terms of career and personal, as far as I'm concerned.

Jillian Leslie (36:01)

Totally, but like things explode

or somebody gets sick or you mess it up, like whatever, you get fired. And so I think having that perspective, now again, Mack, you're like, whoa, like, all right, that could be for you guys, but do just put, like do park that somewhere in the back of your mind. And for me, for example,

Katharine McLennan (36:10)

Yes!

Jillian Leslie (36:25)

I was just actually at lunch today with a friend of mine who went to the GSB, but she's much younger than us, Kath. She's like five years younger, so it feels like a different time. But we were talking about this, which is the book, when we were like, when I was a young mother, the book, Lean In came out. Do you remember that? And it was like, hey, and I had a friend, I was telling this to my friend at lunch, but I had a friend, we were living in Palo Alto, and I had a friend who went to Harvard Business School. And she had worked at Bain.

Katharine McLennan (36:31)

Yeah. Yeah.

yes, yes, yes I do.

Mehek (36:42)

Hmm... Mm-hmm.

Jillian Leslie (36:54)

And now she had a kid in my kid's class and we both looked at each other secretly and were like, I don't wanna lean in. Like don't wanna go work at Procter and Gamble and go be in the C-suite or work my way up and not be there to be able to be home with my daughter. And she's like, me too. Now ultimately she's like this real estate tycoon now and she has all these Airbnbs but meaning like we both were like, that doesn't fit us anymore.

Mehek (37:01)

hahahaha

Jillian Leslie (37:22)

We don't want to be in corporate America. Like there's Sheryl Sambour going, lean in you because you need to make space for other women. And I'm like, I want to be with my kindergartner. I want to be there at the end of the day when I, I want to work, but I want to work at home and I want to be flexible enough that I could be there and have dinner with my kindergartner. So I don't know about you, Kath, but like those are the things where I never in business school thought I would want that.

Mehek (37:25)

Hmm. Hmm.

Katharine McLennan (37:28)

you

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

I don't,

Mehek (37:49)

Hmm.

Jillian Leslie (37:49)

I was so

like, no way, I'm gonna be in the C-suite. I'm gonna be like Martin Scorsese. You know, that was my vision. And then you go, you know, all right, I'm okay not being Martin Scorsese, because my daughter drew this amazing picture today in kindergarten.

Katharine McLennan (37:55)

Yeah

I love that joke.

I know, I love that. But if you go back, mean, one of the cool things is this conversation that Gillian's describing. because in your generation, you're saying at the cusp of the millennials and about to term, how do you see the elder generations? Do you experience them in your family? Is there a connection? I think you must have it with the professors, hopefully at Stanford.

they're giving you perspective. How do you experience that? And maybe how does it help you in your business ideas?

Mehek (38:38)

yeah, I mean, I feel so grateful to have the advice, you know, Jillian, Kath, your advice is so amazing. And being in an environment where we can learn from people who've walked the path is something that is very, something I don't take lightly. I absolutely love some of my professors. I've been able to form deeper relationships with a few of them. And that's something that has been very transformative. I also think,

Nowadays, think in business school, I think it's so easy to see the next shiny thing and think, could that be for me? Could that be for me? And so I made a pretty conscious decision after my fall quarter of my first year to stop doing that and focus on the thing that I wanted to do so I could maximize the time that I have here. And so in that process, though, when I focused on entrepreneurship, that opened up a whole other can of worms because it was like, well, how do you do that? How do you start a company and how do you...

do it right and what are all the pitfalls and you go to all these brown bag lunches and all these BCs come to campus and they tell you one thing and another thing and some of that's conflicting advice. Some of it's really just vague high level advice and some of it's just you got to do it to learn it kind of thing. some advice that I've started to really, really enjoy now is I guess advice that's a little bit couched with this was my experience at this point in my life because this was going on in my life.

Now that might not be the case for you. If it is this lean in to this advice, if it isn't throw it away. And I like that a lot because it gives, I think the consumer a little bit more flexibility in and a little less pressure around this is the way I should go. Because I think our brains are highly malleable at this point in time. And we all come in with these conceptions of who we are and just like in college and just like in high school, we come back to an environment where there's a lot of group think as you said, and there's a lot of

Jillian Leslie (40:06)

Mm.

Mehek (40:28)

pressure to be the archetypal X or Y coming out of business school, be that a consultant or be that an entrepreneur or any range of careers in between. And so I find it very beautiful to engage with different generations. And I love hearing the perspectives, but mostly I love hearing the stories because I think there's more to take away from the stories more so than necessarily the nugget of advice because I think advice, even when I give advice.

Katharine McLennan (40:50)

You

Jillian Leslie (40:50)

Mm.

Mehek (40:58)

high school students, it's all rooted in some bias I have of how it worked out for me. And how it works out is some function of effort and luck. And we don't really know how those are weighted in this world, right? And so I think there's an element of, I'd rather just hear like, what was exciting for you and why did you make those decisions? So I like the process part of it more so than the output part of it.

Katharine McLennan (41:18)

Oh, no, I love that. And it's interesting with you guys, Julian, I think the statistics for these classes now for the graduating people are so different from ours. think it's more like you tell me, it's like 70 % of you are starting your businesses and 30 % are going into companies or consulting. so the very invitation, I mean, for us, Dylan, I think it was all about building these platforms, not so much taking the content and

Jillian Leslie (41:42)

Yeah.

Katharine McLennan (41:47)

putting them on platforms that exist. we were, one of our classmates was building or found the Hotmail process and another one sort of built the eBay platform. And so what's really cool about your class is that it's very social cause. I I haven't met one of you that's not talking about the environment or the recovery process or the Medicaid, how they're gonna work with Medicaid.

on the platforms and the technology that exist. And so I don't, that's what I'm finding, Jillian, as we watch these generations and they have so much to teach us. What do you think? What are we going to learn from these guys the other way around?

Jillian Leslie (42:22)

Mmm. Mmm.

Well, just love personally, I just love their spirit. I just love their can do and because you guys have access to so much in terms of tools and things like you could build an entire like things in a weekend and like we could never have done that and that is so empowering. It's like amazing. So I just I love the creativity watching you guys create.

Katharine McLennan (42:49)

Yeah, yeah.

And that is the skill. And Mahak, if you look at the business school, obviously you're talking about hard skills. mean, we were back in doing our systems class with learning how to do a very basic spreadsheet that showed us how to do supply and demand or whatever. But as you look at the business school, what you're getting ready last quarter, what do you think the critical things that you've picked up?

on the way. What do you leave with and you go, wow, that made such a difference in where I'm heading.

Mehek (43:27)

Ooh, I love that question. It's so perfect as I start this next quarter too. It's like, do you, how am I grounding myself in the things that I've learned and how to make the most of this last quarter? Okay. Things I've learned is that so much of business school is your network, as everyone says, but all the way from high school to college.

You're building this muscle of how to understand who might be in your orbit and who might not be and what kind of values you share and how to define what those values are. And there's this balance between defining your values and staying within that realm, but then also saying yes to things and being open-minded and trying out all sorts of new things. And there's a real balance there. And I think it's really easy to lose that.

And, accidentally maybe either say yes to a lot of things and throw your values away or stick too rigidly into your values and miss a lot of new opportunities. And so it really is a muscle that I almost felt like I had to retrain in terms of how do you select the people who you think might be there at for the long haul 30, 40, 50 years later. a lot of that ebbs and flows and a lot of that you might be wrong in, and we're not used to being wrong.

in that sense because we trained that muscle and we thought, cool, good, done. We have our friends and now you come here and you think, well, how do you maximize the ability to form new super strong ties, but then also make sure you're spending enough time in the weak ties. So you'll be able to call on years and years later and catch up, but maybe who you don't call crying one day. Right. And so I think that has been a really interesting lesson. And the second one being that

It's so easy to take for granted being here once you get here. But from the outside looking in, this was the golden path. This was like the thing that, you I was so hungry to get to. And so a big, big thing that I'm really excited about this experience and that I've taken away is not losing that hunger and not losing that mindset around using every resource you can to the best of your abilities. E-mailing that person you think will never respond.

but who probably will because of your Stanford EDU email. Talking to professors who I read books about, like that I was so excited to talk to you who were in like engineering and med school. And I thought, well, like I would never be able to connect with them, but I'm at Stanford now and I can just email them and say, hey, I loved your book. And then they invite me over to their house to talk about it. That would never happen in any other world. And so it's this like, element of keeping the childlike wonder and awe alive, I think.

Jillian Leslie (45:56)

Mm.

and bravery, bravery to send that, to press send, you know, to send the email. Could you don't know?

Mehek (46:08)

Thanks

Katharine McLennan (46:11)

I mean,

this is the kind of thing I just want to sit at your feet, Mehek, and you just tell me, remind me, no, no, seriously, and send my children to listen, because they are your age. My daughter's getting married this year, and I just, I'd love, I want her to listen to this, because the wisdom that you're gaining and have gained is phenomenal for all of us. So, know.

Mehek (46:15)

No!

Yeah. congrats!

Jillian Leslie (46:23)

Wow.

Katharine McLennan (46:35)

Really, gosh, I had tears listening to you. don't know. What do you think, Jillian?

Jillian Leslie (46:39)

Yes, no, absolutely. I do feel like this is this special time and soak up everything, you know, while you're there, because then, I don't know, it is about kind of like recognizing though, that like you will continue to just reinvent yourself throughout your journey.

And like, Kath, you can speak too, because I remember when you spoke at our reunion. my God. It's like then life comes in and like, like sends you down a path that you might not expect. And it's just about kind of, I don't know, rolling with it or recognizing that we like I remember us as like newly minted MBAs and like, no, no, no, like we're we're good like.

Katharine McLennan (47:07)

Yeah, that's right.

Mehek (47:24)

Mm-hmm.

Jillian Leslie (47:30)

Life's not gonna come, like we're not gonna slip on the karmic banana peel. Like, no, no, no, we know better, because we know how to do math. We know what a keger, we know what a keger is. I don't even know what it is anymore, but you know.

Katharine McLennan (47:39)

That is so funny. What's interesting, Mehek,

Mehek (47:42)

Hahaha

Katharine McLennan (47:46)

was, and this is where I'm really interested in just your understanding as I listen to you get this app up and really start to understand recovery. Because we were in the first five years of our reunion, we were like, OK, and such and such started this incredible company and this and that little, little, little. And then the rest of us are going, shit.

Jillian Leslie (48:01)

and he's a billionaire, yeah.

my God, I'm

a loser. I'm a total loser.

Katharine McLennan (48:09)

But nobody would voice that, right? So by the time we got to our whatever it was, I think it was our 20th or something, I'm like, you know what, screw that. I'm going to tell you how I just, you know, descended into the pits of my own recovery story and my own, you know, my own dealings with the fact that, hey, I'm not that Stanford typical graduate.

Mehek (48:23)

I love that.

Yeah.

Katharine McLennan (48:32)

And I think, Jillian, what's really interesting in our last reunion, there were no business stories. was all about people's personal journeys, of which some of which was just extraordinary. And what I like about, Mehak, what you're doing is you're already tapping in. And many of your classmates are already asking that question, which is, OK, technology exists, but how can it help us live?

Mehek (48:38)

Hmm.

Jillian Leslie (48:38)

Yes, yes, yes,

yes, yes, yes, yes.

Mehek (48:43)

Interesting.

Katharine McLennan (48:59)

with social issues? How can it help us with education issues? How can it help with political issues? So you guys must have some amazing conversations about that. You know what it really means? You know that we were having Jillian like in the in our own places, not in the business school courtyard.

Mehek (49:01)

Yeah. Yeah.

Jillian Leslie (49:16)

Well, here's what I think, have, you gone, Kath, how many reunions have you gone? Have you missed any?

Katharine McLennan (49:21)

I've gone to, I only interestingly went to the last three because I was like, I can't

go to those ones. I'm going to be like a failure compared to those people. I was actually quite frightened to go. was like, you know, I was like, well, I can't show up. But the last three have been just incredible. Incredible.

Mehek (49:31)

Yeah.

Good.

Jillian Leslie (49:38)

Cause like I have this analogy.

So I went, I've been to all of them except one. I think I missed our 10th. And it's kind of like, you're right. Like, I don't know if you did go to the first one where it was like, and then you're the bill, like the billion, know, Jeff Skoll is billionaire. And I'm in my crappy apartment in Brentwood writing scripts. Like, no, no, I was between jobs. didn't have, I hadn't met my husband yet. So I was just like, fuck, this sucks.

Katharine McLennan (49:44)

Okay.

No. No.

Jillian Leslie (50:06)

And then, but then after that, like every reunion, feel like, I feel like, you know, like, like a stream kind of runs over like rocks and over time it smooths the rocks. Were those rocks?

Katharine McLennan (50:17)

Yeah, I love it.

Mehek (50:21)

Hmm, that's beautiful.

Katharine McLennan (50:21)

Love it.

Jillian Leslie (50:23)

And so in like five year reunion, we're pokey and we're like, I'm gonna take on the world and I'm gonna be freaking amazing. And I'm gonna make a billion dollars. And then over time though, like life comes in, Kath, as you know, and then all of a sudden you get softened or you get smoothed over. And you're right, at our last reunion, it was like, my God, I've had cancer.

Katharine McLennan (50:37)

Yeah, yeah, it does. Yeah, it does.

Mehek (50:44)

Mm.

Jillian Leslie (50:48)

or, my God, my spouse died, or, my God, my kid has autism. And you just go, whoa. And it doesn't matter that I'm a financier in Singapore. Like that becomes so not as important, but your two kids who have autism becomes a much bigger deal. it's like, it becomes more heart centered. Wouldn't you agree?

Katharine McLennan (50:58)

You

Yeah!

and much bigger deal.

Mehek (51:07)

and

Katharine McLennan (51:11)

totally agree. And you guys are already picking it up. I'd love to hang out with you instead of going to the parties that were happening on the phone parties that I think you guys are still having in the LP, what are they? Liquid preference, LPFs. So as we wind up the hour, if you almost step back and you reflected on this

Mehek (51:14)

you

Yeah.

Jillian Leslie (51:27)

But yeah.

Mehek (51:29)

yeah.

Katharine McLennan (51:38)

very short little experience we're having. What are these type of conversations? How do we have them? are they important? Of course, they're important. But even after the hour, what do you reflect at the end?

Mehek (51:42)

you

man, this has been so, so amazing. And I'm so grateful for the time capsule that you've created by being able to do this. Like it's something that I think about like doing that in our class with the class 30 years under us. And it's such an incredible tradition that you've created because there is so much to learn. And also I just think it's really grounding.

At how much hasn't changed because we're human. And there are so many things that you thought 30 years ago that we think right now. And for better or for worse, mean, some things probably should change like the high school-ess nature and clickiness nature of business school at times. But, you know, it's also important to realize that as you both were saying, everything passes and things change and you have to just make the most of the environment that you're in. And it's so important to hear that.

from people who lived through it and are doing amazingly in their lives. And especially in a time when there's a lot of uncertainty on, this gonna work? Am I gonna be, am I gonna do the thing I wanna do or is it not gonna work out? And so having that reminder is so beautiful. And it's just really special to remember that, know, humans are humans and we'll always be humans.

Katharine McLennan (53:05)

goodness gracious.

Jillian Leslie (53:05)

And in 30 years,

you could be that like old mom sitting down at the table with the first years, freaking out about their summers, thinking it's the most important thing ever. And you're gonna go, hey guys, can I give you some feedback? Can I tell you that like...

Katharine McLennan (53:10)

you

Mehek (53:19)

Yeah, totally.

I almost think like something I'm almost thinking about is like, I never listened to that advice, right? Like you don't listen to that advice when you're in high school or you're in college or even in business school, you don't listen to your older people's advice because you just want to like break things and figure it out yourself. And so I'm almost wondering if there's another type of like, how do you stay, you know, and keeping that childlike sense of wonder and all alive, like how do you stay connected?

Katharine McLennan (53:37)

Yeah.

Mehek (53:47)

to the younger generation so that you can be there with them through their journey and not necessarily offer solutions because they're probably not looking for solutions. They think they are, we think we are, but really we're just looking to be heard and chat about some fun stories.