CZ and Friends
CZ & Friends is a podcast about what it takes to lead and evolve legal in an era of exponential change. Hosted by Cecilia Ziniti, former General Counsel turned founder and CEO of GC AI, each episode features candid conversations with legal and business leaders who are building for scale, taking bold bets on technology, and leading with humanity. Whether you're a GC, operator, or in-house counsel, this podcast is your front-row seat to the future of legal.
Episodes
29 episodes
AI, Leadership, and Why Great Legal Leaders Let Go: Matthew Campobasso of Zone & Co.
What does it mean to lead legal without white-knuckling every outcome? Matthew Campobasso, Chief Legal Officer of Zone & Co., joins Cecilia Ziniti on CZ and Friends to answer that question head-on.Matthew brings nearly 20 years of l...
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Season 1
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Episode 29
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52:49
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AI and the Cost of Getting It Wrong with Sarah Binder of BetterUp & Sophie McNaught of SVB
Sarah Binder, General Counsel at BetterUp, and Sophie McNaught, Managing Director at Silicon Valley Bank and advisor at Primary Venture Partners, join Cecilia for a sharp conversation on how legal and business leaders think about risk when the ...
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Season 1
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Episode 28
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47:30
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Translating Tech to the Courtroom: Michael Jacobs of JAMS on the Smartphone Wars and AI
Michael Jacobs, recently retired Partner and Trial Lawyer at Morrison & Foerster, current Evaluative Mediator and Arbitrator at JAMS, has spent decades at the center of the biggest technology disputes of our time, including Oracle v. Go...
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Season 1
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Episode 27
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48:40
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Scaling Legal in Education: Elana Freeman of Swing Education
How do you scale legal and compliance in one of the most complex regulatory environments, without becoming the “no” department?In this episode of CZ & Friends, Cecilia Ziniti sits down with Elana Freeman, Head of Legal & Complian...
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Season 1
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Episode 26
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40:36
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The Tolstoy Test for Legal Leadership: Ron Bell of Collective Health (ex-Yahoo, Apple)
Ron Bell shares lessons from nearly three decades in Silicon Valley. From Apple during its near-collapse, to Yahoo’s formative years building one of the Valley’s first scaled in-house legal departments, to leading legal and administrative funct...
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Season 1
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Episode 25
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48:42
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Calm Under Pressure: How Great CLOs Build Trust with Anirma Gupta of Unity
Anirma Gupta is a growth-stage legal leader with 3 decades of experience across tech, law, and leadership. In this episode she talks with Cecilia about what it means to “create the conditions” for good decisions. Anirma shares a practical model...
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Season 1
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Episode 24
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32:28
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Lawyers and Outsiders as Founders: The Operator Mindset with Mallun Yen of Operator Collective
In this episode, Cecilia talks with Mallun Yen, Founder and CEO of Operator Collective, about judgment, risk, and why being an “outsider” can be a real competitive advantage.Mallun traces her path from patent litigator to Chief IP Counse...
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Season 1
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Episode 23
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45:40
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Leaving the GC Seat: Matt Gipple of Dryvebox on Product Judgment, Regulation, and Becoming a Founder
Matt Gipple, former General Counsel of Cruise and now co-founder of Dryvebox, talks with Cecilia about his the transition from legal advisor to decision-maker.Matt shares what it was like to join Cruise in its earliest days - working out...
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Season 1
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Episode 22
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52:21
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Becoming the GC Without Losing Your Life with Joseph Schohl of Inside Counsel Academy
In this episode, Cecilia Ziniti sits down with Joseph Schohl for a candid conversation about what it really takes to succeed in the GC role without burning out. Joseph is a former Fortune 500 healthcare General Counsel (DaVita), Founder of Insi...
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Season 1
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Episode 21
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40:38
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From One Lawyer to Fortune 500: Maury Bricks & Michele Murray of GPM Investments on Building Trust and AI-Ready Legal
What does it take to scale from a department of one to a 30-person legal team inside a Fortune 500 company?General Counsel Maury Bricks and Associate General Counsel Michele Murray of ARKO Corp. / GPM Investments join Cecilia for a c...
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Season 1
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Episode 20
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47:59
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From Skeptic to Strategist: Danielle Sheer of Commvault on Trust, AI, and the Future of Legal Leadership
In this episode, Cecilia Ziniti talks with Danielle Sheer, Chief Trust Officer and Chief Legal and Compliance Officer at Commvault, about how legal leadership is evolving inside modern companies. Danielle explains why she adopted the title Chie...
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Season 1
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Episode 19
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46:53
Facts Don’t Lie: SEC Insights, AI Risk and Keeping Law Human with Rebecca Fike of Reed Smith
Chambers-ranked Reed Smith partner and former SEC Senior Counsel Rebecca Fike brings a decade of enforcement experience to this episode of CZ & Friends. Rebecca shares how major investigations really unfold, why “facts don’t lie,” and how c...
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Season 1
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Episode 18
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47:51
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Owning Risk, Building Trust: Ben Jacobs of Xero on Leadership, M&A, and Kindness in Law
What does it mean to own risk instead of advising on it?Ben Jacobs, General Manager of Legal for Strategic Growth & Development at Xero and President of the In-House Lawyers Association of New Zealand (ILANZ), joins Cecilia ...
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Season 1
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Episode 17
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40:32
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Culture as Strategy: Bill Berry (Chief Legal Officer) and Ariana Goodell (Sr. Counsel) of Verkada on Trust, Boundaries and Better
High performance without ego - that’s the playbook at Verkada. General Counsel Bill Berry and Senior Counsel, Privacy & Policy Ariana Goodell join Cecilia Ziniti to share how they build a legal org people love to work with—one that ships pr...
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Season 1
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Episode 16
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52:18
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Courage and Conscience: General Counsel Jordan Breslow on Integrity and Plain English Lawyering at Etsy, Opsware, and in General
When everyone said yes, Jordan Breslow said no, and that decision kept his company out of scandal.The longtime Silicon Valley GC (Geoworks, Opsware, Silver Spring Networks, Etsy) joins host Cecilia Ziniti to share what decades inside tec...
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Season 1
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Episode 15
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38:36
Original by Design: Deepgram GC Holly Hogan on AI Guardrails and Leading with Authenticity
Holly Hogan has built her career leading through change, from nearly a decade scaling Automattic (WordPress.com, Tumblr, Day One) to her new role as General Counsel at Deepgram, a frontier voice AI company.In this episode, she shares how...
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Season 1
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Episode 14
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45:14
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Ask.com to AI: Doug Leeds on Curiosity, Persuasion, and Reinventing Leadership
Doug Leeds has lived through multiple technology booms—from the early internet to today’s AI wave. As CEO of Ask.com and IAC Publishing, he went head-to-head with Google, scaled digital publishing, and even pivoted a search engine by partnering...
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Season 1
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Episode 13
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39:26
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Instacart Legal: Making AI Everyday Practice
Today’s guests are Nicole Altman, Senior Counsel, and Kelly Noguchi, Senior Legal Technology and Operations Manager, at Instacart. They are helping shape how a public company’s legal team experiments with, adopts, and scales AI. Together, they ...
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Season 1
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Episode 12
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49:12
Telehealth, Trust, and AI: CLO of Simple Practice Ali Hartley on How Legal Scales Healthcare
Today’s guest is Ali Hartley, Chief Legal Officer at SimplePractice. Ali has spent her career navigating healthcare’s toughest challenges at Sutter Health, Favor, and Carbon Health before stepping in to help scale SimplePractice. Along the way,...
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Season 1
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Episode 11
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49:04
Move Fast, Build Trust: Peter Katz on Scaling Legal at Duo and Expel
Peter Katz (GC at Expel; former first GC at Duo Security) shares how he scaled legal inside high-growth cybersecurity companies while keeping the business moving. He explains why great in-house lawyering starts with relationships, clear risk ch...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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36:46
Cleared for Takeoff: Kerrie Forbes of JSX on Playing Fair and Building Legal Strategy in Aviation
From 16 years at Southwest to leading legal at JSX, Kerrie Forbes knows what it means to navigate turbulence—regulatory battles, competitor challenges, and high-stakes litigation—while keeping fairness and trust as her North Star. In this episo...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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34:35
Legal as a Product: David Morris on IPOs, Global Expansion & Building High-Impact Teams
What does it look like when a general counsel reframes legal as a growth engine instead of a cost center?Today’s guest is David Morris, a seasoned GC who has led through IPOs, multi-billion-dollar SPAC transactions, and global market exp...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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48:22
From Engineer to CAO: Diane Honda on AI, Trust, and Leading Change
What does going from writing code to leading legal, compliance, HR, and security at a high-growth tech company look like?In this episode, Diane Honda shares her journey from Carnegie Mellon software engineer to GC who took Barracuda Netw...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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41:49
Turning Legal Into a Growth Engine: IRC's CLO Chuck Kable on Strategy, Compliance & Change
What does it take for a GC to operate as a true executive leader—driving transformation across legal, compliance, and beyond?Today’s guest is Chuck Kable, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at Innovative Renal Care, whose career in...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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47:38
Quantum & Law: Kaniah Konkoly-Thege on Quantum, Policy & Leadership
How do legal leaders navigate the complexities of emerging technologies like quantum computing while shaping public policy and guiding organizations through change? In this episode, Cecilia Ziniti sits down with Kaniah Konkoly-Thege...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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40:41
