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
36 episodes
The End of the Billable Hour with Bjarne Tellmann, CEO of FjordStream Advisors
Bjarne Tellmann spent 30 years as a general counsel at Haleon, Pearson, Coca-Cola, and Aramco. Now, as CEO of FjordStream Advisors and author of "Law in the Era of AI" (Wiley), he argues that the disruption of the law firm model will not come f...
Legal Ops at Scale: Sruthi Kosuri and Cindy Prabhakar of Marvell Technology
How does a legal operations team at a global semiconductor company cut contract request time by 73%, earn a seat at the CLO's staff table, and build board-level analytics, all while keeping pace with AI?In this episode of CZ and Friends,...
Replace Me: Jimmy Toy of Articore Group on AI, Copyright, and the Future of Legal
What if the best thing a lawyer could do is figure out how to make themselves obsolete?Jimmy Toy, Chief Legal Officer at Articore Group (the company behind Redbubble and TeePublic), has been using AI and machine learning in legal work fo...
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Inside Real Estate Law: Nicole Komin & Danielle Shainbrown hosted by Laurel Palluzi
Nicole Komin and Danielle Shainbrown co-founded two companies together out of Buffalo, New York: Bellwether Advisors, a real estate consulting and advisory practice, and Shainbrown Komin PLLC, a law firm. They launched both in 2022 and have bee...
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AI Governance and Why Legal Bottlenecks Start Upstream with Rachel Harris of Suzy
Rachel Harris, General Counsel and AI Governance & Privacy Officer at Suzy, joins Cecilia to talk about what it takes to be a solo GC at a high-growth AI startup.Rachel's career started in an unlikely place: plaintiff-side pharmaceut...
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Crypto Law, AI, and Legal Leadership with Molly Abraham of Coinbase
Molly Abraham, VP of Legal at Coinbase, joins Cecilia to talk about what it takes to build and lead a 90-person legal team through one of the most scrutinized regulatory periods in tech history.Molly started as a chemical engineer at Pro...
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Gagan Biyani CEO of Maven on AI, Learning, and Building Big
Online learning, AI adoption, and what it really takes to build a company worth building.Today's guest is Gagan Biyani, CEO and Co-founder of Maven and co-founder of Udemy, one of the largest online learning marketplaces in the world. Ga...
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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...
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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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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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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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...
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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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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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 ...
