Build What Doesn’t Exist — with Tina Sharkey (iVillage, AOL, BabyCenter, USC)

In this episode of Clover, I sit down with the brilliant and wildly accomplished Tina Sharkey for a conversation that honestly feels like three masterclasses in one: community-building, career design, and the future of human connection in an AI-driven world.

Tina walks me through her very non-linear career path—from hanging out in her mom’s New York fashion office as a teen, to an unexpected pivot into tech and investing, to co-founding iVillage, bringing Sesame Street online, scaling BabyCenter globally at Johnson & Johnson, and launching community-first CPG brand Brandless. Through it all, she shares how she’s always brought the same “toolkit” with her: storytelling, community, curiosity, and a deep belief in creating products and experiences with people, not just for them.

We also dig into her current work at USC, where she’s teaching and backing Gen Z founders, experimenting with GenAI in the classroom, and thinking deeply about what makes us “divinely human” in a world of powerful machines. Tina is both optimistic and clear-eyed: AI can unlock a new kind of renaissance—but only if we protect literacy, critical thinking, and real human connection. And for women in leadership, she shares some tough-love truths about putting your hand up before you feel “ready,” finding hidden doors, and making your career a relay race—not a solo sprint.

Conversation highlights:

• From fashion floors to technology boardrooms
  How growing up with a single, career-focused mom in New York’s fashion world gave Tina early exposure to women in leadership—and how one moment in an investor’s office completely rerouted her from fashion into tech, media, and investing.
• Inventing “social media” before it had a name
  Tina shares the early days of iVillage, why chat rooms and message boards were so revolutionary, and how she coined the term social media to explain this new kind of community-driven content to advertisers and partners.
• Building iconic brands through community
  We walk through her roles bringing Sesame Street onto the internet, scaling BabyCenter into a global platform (including the birth clubs so many of us relied on), and designing Brandless as a community-led, access-first CPG brand.
• Serendipity, hidden doors, and saying yes
  Tina talks about the role of serendipity—from chance meetings in offices and delis to unexpected board roles—and how being open, curious, and willing to ask respectful questions has shaped every major career inflection point.
• Humanity as our moat around the machines
  Tina shares her framework for thinking about AI: why she uses it as a collaborator, not a replacement, and why our empathy, soul, and lived experience are the “moat” that machines can’t cross.
• Gen Z, consciousness, and going “punk” on attention
  From her vantage point teaching at USC, she talks about how Gen Z is already pushing back on screen addiction, what excites her about their creativity, and why reclaiming our own consciousness is non-negotiable in an AI world.
• Literacy, equity, and the stakes of this moment
  Tina opens up about the crisis of literacy in the U.S., how reading levels are tied to incarceration rates, and why democratizing access to education and healthcare is a core part of her mission.
• Real talk for women in leadership
  We close with tactical guidance: stop waiting until you’ve “done the job” to go for it, bring your authentic self everywhere you go, surround yourself with people who are brilliant at what they do, and remember that careers are built in teams and relay races—not through hero moments.

Connect with Tina on LinkedIn (her most active platform), Instagram,

Transcript

Erin Geiger: 0:10

Thank you everybody for tuning in to the latest episode of clover. All about women in leadership today, we have I'm Tina Sharkey. I do not know where to start with, Tina. When I was reading your background and everything that you've been involved in, I'm like, there's so much to talk about. So welcome Tina to the show. So ecstatic to have you here.

Unknown: 0:32

I'm so thrilled to be here, and even though I'm not physically in Austin, I love Austin, so I feel like, you know you got to go have some fried pickles for me today, just so I can joy of Austin.

Erin Geiger: 0:43

It's so funny. When I first had someone offered me fried pickles, and I was like, How is that a thing? And then I have them, and I'm like,

Unknown: 0:50

Okay, it's a thing. It's a thing. I used to be on a board in Austin. It was the board of HomeAway, which now is VRBO, and it was like I went full Texan barbecue every time I went down there with my fellow board members. And then I got so into it that at the airport, one of your famous barbecue outlets, I don't remember which one would sell, like a vacuum packed, not pickles, but, you know, the barbecue. And my boys used to be so stoked for those board meetings. When's your next home away board meeting? I was like, why are you sending me somewhere? They're like, No, you got to come back with the barbecue. And then I told my other board members, then we all would like go to the airport early to get the barbecue in our freezer packs or whatever they were. And it became a ritual. So so have some barbecue for me. I

Erin Geiger: 1:37

will. And it's so funny, you mentioned the airport because I feel like they're trying to make it like a destination. You know, that because they really do have good food there, and they have a

Unknown: 1:45

they really do, I think such a clear memory of the Austin airport food because of the barbecue.

Erin Geiger: 1:51

Yeah, that's so funny. Okay, cool. So I always love to start the discussion with kind of like your origin story. Let's say, you know, like, how did you get to where you are? Because it's just so fascinating to be and everybody always thinks their own story isn't fascinating, but it always is to others. So I just kind of like walk me through your, you know, your career journey, and, you know, and I always like to weave in, like personal stuff, like what was going on as well, because we that just, we all can connect with that. That kind of led you to where you are today.

Unknown: 2:23

Yeah, so it's a long story, and I'll try and just give you the highlight. I'll do, like the Candy Land version of it, we'll go through, you know, over some bridges, under some tunnels, you know, avoid, avoid any mudslides. But there were so many of them. So the fun part of this story, I think, is the origin part, which is that my mom, may she rest in peace, was a dynamic single mom for my teen years, and she was a career mom, and she ran fashion companies in New York City, and I went to high school in New York City, so we were like roommates, right? Because she was single, my sister's already out of the house, and so after high school, I would go to her office and do my homework, and she used to say, you can sit in any meeting you want, just only speak when spoken to, and make sure the person running the meeting was okay with that. So since it was a fashion company, there was a lot of women, a lot of women in leadership roles. And so they all were such, you know, great aunties and mentors to me. And I got to sit in a lot of meetings. And occasionally, if they didn't have, like, a house model in, I'd have to put on the clothes. And that was fun. It was like playing dress up and and I saw so I really didn't know that, like, feminism was like a thing, because I saw female leaders. So, you know you see what you know you know what you see. And I only found out later that that was like a thing where I then put my sights like you are in elevating women. But I graduated college, I went to University of Pennsylvania, and I thought, well, I want to be just like my mom. So I want to get a career in fashion. And so I got my first job was like a showroom girl, and I hated it, and so while I was doing that, I it just wasn't intellectually challenging. It wasn't that interesting. I didn't mind starting at the bottom that I had never had an issue with, but I wasn't intellectually engaged. And my mom quite graciously, set up these, like 15 minute mentor interviews with people in fashion. And so I know that when somebody asked me if I can, and I don't want to launch on this podcast, and I'm open for all of that, because I only have so much time, but I really do try and help others, because people have helped me. So she set up a meeting with the guy who was like a Japanese Shogun who owned Anne Klein, Donna, Karen, like all these companies, and I was waiting in his office, his assistant. And these were the days where people had these big desks and two chairs in front of their desks. It's not like that anymore, because we have laptops and zooms and waiting for a coffee, but it's just it was much more of a formal time. Him, and he was late, and so I was just sitting in his office, staring, you know, at his wall, and behind his desk he had like stacks and stacks and stacks of what looks like scripts, and they all had like names on the spines, but they weren't scripts. They were business plans. And so I'm staring at them, and they're, you know, reading the spines, not touching anything. You know, it's like I was in his office. I had to be very careful, and one of them was, or looked like, a business plan that I co authored when I was at Penn in my entrepreneurial management class. So when he came in and he apologized, and, you know, I'm sorry, I'm late. And then Donna Karan came flying in, and I was like, oh my god, Donna Karan, I was just like, it was just like one of those crazy New York moments. And then she left, and then I said, you know, I beg your pardon, I don't mean to be intrusive, but I saw these things. And I said, what is that? And he said, Oh, that's I have another business with a partner, and we look at different businesses and we invest, sort of like a sea he was like an angel investor before we called it that. And I said, well, that if that's the company in Philadelphia with the vending machines, they have patent issues. He's like, how do you know that? And I was like, Well, I co authored that business plan. He says, Oh, well, you've got to meet with my partner. So the next day, I met his partner, and I never went into fashion. I left my showroom job. I started working for them, working on their technology businesses, their investment businesses, all kinds of other things. And so the moral of that story is, you know, you got to find the doors even when they're not available. And you just never know. You make the advance. You don't know what's the worst thing that can happen, as I tend to say to my kids all the time, like shots on goal, and I was very polite and very respectful. But had I not asked that question, we could have been like, you know, sliding doors, where I never it would have been sitting there, and I never would have known. So my career took a very sharp turn, and they were also investors in technology studio called Rebo, which was the first studio to bring high definition television to the United States, because it was created in Japan. He was a Japanese Shogun. He was very friendly with the Merida family that owned Sony, and they were the people that were commercializing this technology. So we were prototyping it here, and I went to work there as part of their investment, almost like an embedded person. But then we looked at other deals, etc. Cut a long story short, within two years, I was on the American Electronics Association HGTV Task Force. I got really enamored. I was lobbying Congress. I was involved in technology standards. I was the youngest woman to be on a congressional Task Force, and it was really a fascinating time, and I found that I loved the technology, but more importantly, I loved the applications. And how can you dream up ways to make the technology accessible, understandable and deployed, as opposed to the creating of the technology? Because what is the sound of a tree in a forest if no one's there to hear it, you know when it drops? And so that we started making short films. We won a Palme Dora Khan, we partnered with David Hockney on the first HGTV frame store. We made award winning music video, music music videos with world renowned cinematographers, because the technology was so high resolution that you could do all kinds of layering. Today, you could do this on Sora with one prompt, but at the time, it was revolutionary. And what was interesting is that the Japanese, when they were bringing it to trade shows, they were putting this camera with this amazing resolution on, like a bouquet of flowers, and it was beautiful, like you would see the details in the flowers, but it wasn't showing the use cases. And so part of my art that I was discovering was my ability to find ways to take products, services, experiences, and marry them with people and applications that brought things to life, and the sort of that that narrative and storytelling as deployed to product and experience. And so from there, one of the I also would do convenings, where I would bring people in the we were in New York. So the ad industry went to Hollywood. We went to con like film people, the artisans who were creating things, and having them put the technology in their hands. And that then led me to a very bespoke and high end design strategy and technology firm here in there in New York, because they would come to our convenings, and they asked me if I wanted to head up their technology practice, where they were working with CEOs and other leaders to help tell their stories. At the time, it was for annual reports, it was for major launches. It was for rebrandings. It was for identity systems, but very like C suite stuff and I there met Barry Diller. And because he was one of our clients, and he was just bought QVC, and he was a CEO, or the big investors in QVC, he'd come out of Fox, and it was like, okay, at the time, people thought home shopping was like people in trailer parks buying cubic zirconian At one in the morning. But we were like, wait a second, that's not what it did, is all so we created a new channel, and we brought in Nike and Diane from Furstenberg, which she wasn't his wife at the time, but they were best friends, and we were creating this experiences. And we created a new channel called q2 we brought a different he then hired me to go start this new channel with a group of co founders. And I was like, Okay, I'm going to run programming, run and run, bringing these experiences to life that are live, but with brands that you recognize or brands that you discover. And it was there that I discovered that in real time, if you sat in the control room of any kind of a live home shopping experience, there's robotic cameras, because they're like, fixed on the set. But then there's the phone calls that are coming in. And so there's like, literally, the director, who's in the booth with all the different screens he sees, or she sees, the phone calls that are on the line for this product, and then they they cut to the phone call, or the phone call comes over the air, and then the host is interacting. And I was like, and then you'd see the sales go up in real time, because people in community. And that's when I really got lit up about community, and community being an accelerant. And community wasn't about like an omni channel relationship, it was about a relationship. And how do relationships and people create experiences for a reason? In that case, it was a product a season or like a lifetime. And what did those tribes mean? So when somebody we brought on air that had a great following, even before social media, people would call in and want to be a part of it. So after I left there, we a couple of our the team from that company, we co founded I village, which was the first community for women online, and we partnered with AOL. They were our first investors, and we sort of claimed victory. We're going to be the largest community for women online and and we ended up taking the company public. I left right before that, I was the chief community officer, the co founder, and that was where I coined social media, because I was trying to explain to people, well, we have service media, transactional media, educational media, financial media, but then there's this social media where we're surrounding chat rooms or message boards, and the people are creating the content and we're creating the context. So it's a new kind of media, because advertisers and partners didn't understand what it was. And after I village, I left to go to that my dream job, which was I went to work for Sesame Street, and I put Sesame Street on the internet with an extraordinary team. They weren't on the internet yet, and the way that happened was not dissimilar to how the first business plan story. I was living in an apartment building when I was at my village, and on the bottom half of the apartment building you're a New Yorker was right across from Lincoln Center, and so it was commercial offices, and then above was a building, and there was a major fire. I think it was Herbie Hancock's apartment. Somebody had a major fire in that building. And I went running home because my dog was there, and I got notified that there was this fire. The dog ended up being fine, and we were all holed up in this like New York deli underneath the building, waiting for the fire department to let us back in. And Sesame Street was on the first two floors of that building, the offices, not the street itself that was shot in Queens, anyways. And I ran into a woman that I knew from q2 who was the CFO of Sesame Street, and she's like, Oh my gosh, what are you working on? Now, I saw I village, we don't have a we don't have an internet strategy. Would you come talk to the board? I was like, when I come talk to like, Big Bird, like, Absolutely so so I came, and they were like, Oh, would you want to start this for us? And that's how that happened, just by serendipity of being in this deli with this woman, Anne sardini. And so I did that for a few years, and then I started to have my children, and I on mat leave. I got recruited by Ted leonsis, actually, to come back to AOL and to help fix the networks and to create a network role. And so I went down to AOL, and I really looked at, how do we take this service? How do we so I was originally head of all community, and then ahead of many of the channels on the AOL network, like we called it life management, but it was recipes, lifestyle, women's women. Uh, life management, personal finance, education and resources, homework help, like all the things on the service that people are using for what we called life management. That was like an internal name, and I said, Well, we kind of have to make every day easier for everyone like that. How do we take a network and an experience, and how do we integrate community into that, but then also make sure that community is like about facilitation, not about producing. We don't need to produce all this content. But at the time AOL and Time Warner were partners. They were owned and merged as companies, a very famous, failed corporate partnership or merger. But I worked a lot with the Time Warner Time Inc people at Time Warner to take we created recipe databases and other things that created utility so that people could use all these things. So I stayed at AOL for a few years. Eventually, I was given the great privilege of taking AOL from a private network out onto the open web, and I led the aol.com team. I led the messaging team, so that was aim ICQ and other messaging platforms, as well as all of our communities. And then I got recruited to go to Johnson and Johnson to turn around a company they had bought called Baby Center, and they didn't exactly know what to do with it. And so my kids were young, and I thought, Oh, well, that's an adventure. So we moved to California, because the company was based here j and J's headquarters is Princeton, New Jersey, but they have companies all over the world, and I found this beautiful company that was like a web one, oh, company built on largely popsicle stick and glue, because in web one, oh, there weren't SAS tools to do those things, and I had the privilege to turn that company around. Scale it to the point where, when I left Baby Center, six or seven years later, we were in 22 countries, 14 languages, and eight out of 10 babies in the US were Baby Center babies, and we had a thriving social network that I bought, a startup social network for moms, integrated it, then we platformed it and rolled it out around around the world. We even did a great nonprofit, almost like an NGO, that we started, called mama, which was the mobile alliance for maternal action, where we took our technology, deployed it to mobile phones for healthcare workers in the developing world, and that has still thriving around the world. And I got J and J, our corporation, to write a founding check. We launched at the White House with then at the time, Secretary Clinton. And it was kind of a remarkable time, because I got to have that startup experience with my baby Center team and replatforming and rebuilding, but then I got to be part of the larger J and J experience. And I guess my day job was running Baby Center, but my other job was being a sort of a disruptive innovation person across oncology Task Force, diabetes Task Force, other things. And so my grandfather used to always tell me, you know, you should pay them for the experience. And I felt that way there, because sitting on a consumer board of such a large global CPG, but then also having adjacencies to the largest healthcare company in the world, and being able to interact with our pharmaceutical teams, our medical device teams are and people who really shared a common mission, no matter what division you were, very credo based extraordinary culture that was, that was wonderful. And then I left Baby Center, but decided to stay in the bay area because I fell in love with Marin County and Mount Tamalpais. And I was going back east all the time anyway. So I felt like, wow, raising my kids out here is really extraordinary. And I went and was cross training. One of the things that j&j was, I couldn't say yes to any boards. And so, because when you're part of that big corporation, every time I raise my hand, they're like, Good, go work with the oncology team. Good. Go work. You have time. We have 327, operating companies. So, so I wanted to go on boards, and that's when I joined the Home Away board out of Austin. And I started sort of doing venture and kind of bridge building between corporations and startups, because I was both a startup entrepreneur and an intrapreneur, having worked at big companies, and that was really fun. And when I was there doing that, we had the idea to incubate my next company called brandless. And so along with my co founder, we incubated that company, we funded that company, and then I rolled out, replaced myself in that role, and we had a go at brandless, which was just an extraordinary startup experience. So that, then was my third. Eye village was my first. The Foundry experience my second. And the brandless was my third. And then turnarounds and Baby Center and that early venture stuff with the Japanese Tomio taki and just there was a throughput. It, which was, what does it mean to be in community with the people you exist to serve. Who are your stakeholders? How do you think about that and so brandless, even though it was a disruptive CPG, I built it as a community brand. How do we co create alongside our community? What does our community want? How can we serve their needs? And most importantly, how do we democratize access to wonderful quality things at great prices, starting with the things you use every day. And so we built that up. We were on $100 million run rate. We ended up selling the company covid happened. My co founder relocated back to Australia and and then we were home. And you know, you and I talked about your podcast being at home, and my two at that time, you know, early 20s, late teens, sons kind of ricocheted back home. And one was just graduating high school, and they graduated in a car in 2020, and the other one was at USC at the time, and they came home. And so here I was home. Sold the company, everyone that's in lockdown. I was focused on my family. Again, I'm a mother first, always, and I always loved to do guest lectures. And Harvard had written a case about brandless and a lot of I'd always loved going to schools and helping. And USC called and said, Would you give a guest lecture? And I was doing it from this same chair where I'm where I'm sitting now, and I said, Sure. And then after that guest lecture, because I had built the construct of a lecture around this idea of community playbooks, and what would that mean if I took it away from brandless, or I village, or any of those things, and said, How or Baby Center? How would I do that, just as a framework for any entrepreneur. And they said, Wow, can you come back next week? The students would like to show you the projects they changed as a result of your lecture. I was like, well, I'll be in this chair, so why not? Like, you know, no one's leaving their houses. And then the professor called me afterwards. He said, Would you be interested in creating a course? Because, like, there's a there, there. And I was like, You mean midterms and finals? And he said, Yeah, that's kind of what we do here. But I had been a professor before. Guest lecturing is not the same thing. So So I said, Well, let me have a go at it. And so I built out this course. It was wildly successful. People were passing around my lectures. It was on Zoom because of that. And then when the covid abated, the Dean invited me down, and he said, Look, I want you to really think about in this academy, because it was at the Iovine and Young Academy, which is Jimmy Iovine and Dr Dre, when they sold beats to Apple, they had a great exit, and they went to USC and said, We want to build a school. We sold it to Apple. We kept looking around for Steve Jobs, and we couldn't find any except for him. We want to build a school that actually sits at that intersection of product design, entrepreneurship, culture, technology. So the Dean came to me and said, along with some of our colleagues here, would you want to build like business of Innovation Pathway I was like, put me in. And so that's when I not only became faculty and a lecturer, but I also created a program called the innovation quest. And the innovation quest is a like, in my vision, a 21st Century Education is not just anchored in curriculum, because you can get those facts online, but it's experience driven. And so how do we create an experience for our students where they have access to each other, access to community, access to resources, and building their toolkits with practical applications? How do we give them prizes? How do we accelerate their MVPs? How do we find them lawyers like, how do we kind of create a founder toolkit and an innovator's toolkit that complements the curriculum. And so the innovation Quest was born, and then I got my first gen AI grant, so I'm a principal investigator, which is like a term I had to look up for Gen AI and society to accelerate student ventures as part of this innovation quest, working with extraordinary colleagues at USC, and that's what I'm doing now, in addition to corporate advisory and board work, and I give I do a lot of moderation and a lot of keynotes on innovation or moderating really interesting conversations or convenings. And that's where I am now. The end. Wow. The beginning.

Erin Geiger: 24:22

That's so incredible. There's so much to talk about in there, and I have so many questions to ask you. And as you were talking, I was like, This is so interesting, because I feel like you and I, you know, were in similar spots, in similar times, like things that you were mentioning. I was like, Oh my gosh, I remember that, you know, like when you mentioned your you shifted your career, like you thought you were going in one direction, and then you're like, the business plan and all that. It was like a trend I saw as you were speaking of like, I feel like you were just open, you know, to what might be. Because, you know, correct me if I'm wrong. But it seems like a lot of the movements you took were not pre planned, like you were just like, oh, you know, like, this opportunity came to you. And I feel like opportunities come to a lot of us, but where we don't see them, you know, we're so we're kind of closed off, because we're like, this is the direction I'm going in, and you have these blinders on. But I feel like that wasn't the case for you, where you thought you were going, but, oh, this is here. Cool. Let me try that. You know, would you say that's the case of, like, where you were kind of very open to other opportunities and what might come your way?

Unknown: 25:34

Yes, I did not reverse engineer my career. I would say that. But what is a slight tweak on that would be I brought my toolkit wherever I went like I've always been uniquely me and so I'm not there is no playbook for my career other than me always bringing my authentic self to everything that I've done. And so if I felt like I could learn something, to a team, an entrepreneur, a company, a board or even building something myself with a co founder, or what have you, an investor, etc. Those are things that I would lean into. So it wasn't I've never been collecting trophies or collecting things. That's not my jam. I want to have meaning and input and purpose in everything that I do. I'm a very purpose driven entrepreneur. I'm a very purpose driven professor. I'm a very purpose driven in, you know, human and so I believe very much in using that rubric away in a way to think about what, what is my contribution that's unique? What can I learn? What can I share? And how do I give this situation, whatever it is an unfair advantage. So for me to start a boot camp at USC, or for me to stage a venture showcase, like I've been doing that my whole career, in various ways, shapes and forms, so it was natural for me to want to deploy it there with a new with Gen Z, and now what I love is that I have Gen Z in the classroom and I'm in the boardroom and I'm advising entrepreneurs, but I'm advising corporate leaders as well to understand, like, how do you have empathy for this generation? Don't just read the stats and the demographies of where they spend their time. Like, how do you walk their walk? How do you understand? And then vice versa, if you're an entrepreneur and you're pitching to a VC, or you're pitching to a corporate or you're trying to get this new job. How do you think about it's not the golden rule of treating everyone as they as you want to be treated, treat them as they want to be treated. And it's upside down, like our new mass culture is subculture as opposed to, like, top down. And so I'm a, I'm a, I'm always a curious learner. And I see opportunities where maybe others don't see it.

Erin Geiger: 28:10

Yeah, I would. I do see that in you, for sure. And I feel you were at the advent of so many things, like, you know, when you were talking about the storytelling aspect of, like, wow, you're ahead of your time, you know, back then. So I remember that shift of when people started to weave storytelling into their products, into their advertising and everything in a larger scale, and when you mentioned community, I helped run tv.com when it was a part of CNET and then part of CBS interactive and tv.com, whatever that really, yeah, okay, so there was user generated and so, you know, like, we just curated the content. These super fans were the ones who, like, right?

Unknown: 28:51

They're the facilitators. They were the content makers. And that's a very different role than producing Exactly.

Erin Geiger: 28:57

And so that was a shift, right, especially in the entertainment land, you know, it's like, okay, wait, we're not producing the content. We're just curating. You know, what these what these fans want. And I do have to say, when you mentioned Baby Center, I was like, Oh my gosh. When I was pregnant with my kids, like, so long ago, that was my go to, like, I was on babies that are like, you're Yay. I love eating babies that are moms. It's like, your baby is the size of a walnut, yes, yes, yes, I remember that. So I was like, Oh my gosh, it's amazing. It's like, seeing my life flash before my eyes. I am so curious. Like, we were talking about how you coined the term social media before was even a category. Now it's like, you know, everybody knows, but like, what did you see that right? That there's like, that human connection, and I feel like you saw it before the rest of us might have, you know, of online, of like, you know. So it's like, how, what did you see that others didn't when you think about social media and, you know? And what do you see about the next wave of human, human connection? Online, especially with AI and everything kind of going in that direction. What are your thoughts there?

Unknown: 30:05

Yeah, I think a lot about that stuff. So I remember we toiled for, you know, I don't think I slept for months when we were launching, I village, we were building it. We were, you know, getting all this content online, and we were licensing content, and we were uploading content and editing content, and that was not so much my team, that was more the editorial team and my team, although I was responsible for kind of all of it, was really about like the facilitation model, because we were AOL was our partner, and we were launching on AOL and on the open web, and aol's unique moat really was their chat rooms and their messaging and their and their community boards. And so I remember one night we just launched parent soup, which was the first i village property, and our moderators, because we wanted our chat rooms to be like, well lit, and someone was home, and people weren't, like, spamming them whatever. So they were PS, like, so I was PS, Tina, and you would have been PS, Erin, and people knew that you were the moderator, and it was like, 11 o'clock at night here in California. No, I was in New York. It was 11 o'clock at night in New York, so that meant it was like eight o'clock at night in California, and the chat rooms were going mad. And I was like, hi, you know, so excited, like, we've been building this thing, and people were finally in it. And I was like, Hi, what's your favorite thing about parent soup? You know, I write, and then the first answer was us, and the next answer was us, and the next answer was us. And I'm like, so weird. Like, why do they like it? Because it's in America. And then I realized that wasn't us, it was us. And I thought, Oh my gosh. I can't believe that we built something that basically said the lights are on someone's home. Come on in. This is a safe place to connect. And people were connecting for a reason. They needed help with, you know, lactation a season. They were all new parents, and they were struggling with, you know, work, life balance, or what have you, or a lifetime. And it turned out that in we saw this, a Baby Center, 1020, years later, Baby Center moms are still besties from their birth clubs. They go to Vegas together. They have annual meetups, all kinds of things. So I had this moment where I realized we were in the art of facilitation, and I was reading, and I knew Sherry Turkle at the time, and like it was all about connection. And that loneliness at the time wasn't a full epidemic of which it is today, but I definitely felt this sense of people were looking for their people, and how could you know we be a facilitator of that? And then when you look at now, and I told you earlier about like, trying to explain what this media was, so that's where social media came up, because I was trying to explain to advertisers that we had service media, news media, transactional media for recipe, that's service media. DIY, that service media, this was like a new form of media, and advertisers need to get comfortable not knowing what the content was going to be. And that's why we said, look, we're a well lit place where, you know, someone's always home, so you can trust us, you know. But then now in the world of AI, I think very deeply about this, and I think that humanity is our moat around the machines, and that as we begin to collaborate with machines, which I think are awesome, and I use AI every day, but I use it as a collaboration partner, as a thought partner, but the empathy that I understand for the human experience is uniquely mine, and what makes me uniquely human, and so this conversation that we're having right now, I don't think I could have with a bot, not that the bot couldn't ask me the same questions, but it wouldn't prompt a reflection from you, it wouldn't prompt a memory from you. It wouldn't create a longing or a reference point or a sentiment. And so that's where our souls lie. And you know, we have five senses that are documented, and as moms or people, we always check them with our kids. You know, how are their eyes? How are their ears? How is their smell, sound, touch. But I believe our soul is our sixth sense, and I believe that that needs to get nurtured from the minute we arrive and and I believe that our souls and our humanity really are what makes us divinely human. And so in a world of AI, we could head towards the. Apocalypse, or we could head towards a renaissance in what productivity, in reimagination, in new cities, urban development, world hunger, like there's so many diseases, healthcare, things that can be solved in collaboration with augmented intelligence and and speed and data processing that we couldn't do before, and that's exciting. And so if we keep that moat and preserve that mode, and we nurture our souls and we understand what makes us divinely human, then I think this could be a path to a utopian world, although I don't believe there is such a thing, but then an apocalyptic world. And so we have choices, and we can choose love over fear. And so I choose love, I choose soul. I choose optimism. I choose possibilities. I choose problem solving, and I choose connection. And so I think that in this epidemic of loneliness, we need to move towards a screen free world. We need to move to make sure that there's literacy from the very early days. I'm on the National Board of PBS. I care deeply about literacy. The literacy numbers in this country are abysmal and getting worse, and if we outsource our own intellectual development, but more importantly, our children's intellectual development and their early reading skills, cognition skills, critical thinking skills, to machines, that is a path to a dystopian world, and that is a path to the end of modern civilization. And I don't believe that that's where we're going to go, but we have to be intentional about it. We can't see this to somebody else. We all have to be very engaged and very focused on what does it mean to use these tools to enhance our own curiosity, our own intellectual journeys, and to teach us things that weren't maybe accessible before, right? The whole world gets a tutor now. How awesome.

Erin Geiger: 37:15

Yeah, and I feel like you're at the epicenter of this all, like with the work that you're doing at, you know, USC, you're the principal and such a great title investigator,

Unknown: 37:27

private investigator, like, when you like a raincoat, they were like, No, that's actually not what

Erin Geiger: 37:34

it is. You should maybe Google that, yeah. But, you know, you're kind of, like, focused on Gen, AI and everything. What? So, what excites you the most about that So, and also, what kind of scares you? Is it that intersection of like, what direction are we going to take? Ai, you know, is it like, okay, we can use it for good, and that's what excites you the most. And like, what is that? What kind of like spooks you a bit? It's like, okay, if we don't do it for that. And we go

Unknown: 38:01

a lot of things. I think that, you know, there's a lot of ideas, and I think that ideas are worth nothing. It's all about the execution. And one of the challenges in execution in the past was you needed, often a technologist to be running alongside you. And now I think the possibilities for getting farther along, to develop your ideas, to test your ideas, to look for product market fit that AI can enable a lot of that. And so I think it really liberates a lot of people who didn't think they could have, you know, a piece of that opportunity, unless they could be a physical builder, and I don't think you need that as much today. I would say also I want to see I believe in this generation, I believe that you're already starting to see movements towards screen free, towards flip phones, towards audio devices, things that can reclaim their consciousness. And I believe we have to go fully punk on consciousness and say, like I own this. Somebody else cannot take this from me. I won't be here in 100 years. I won't even be here in 50 years, but my kids will, and my grandchildren will if I'm blessed enough to have them, and their children will, and so we have to enable that generation to solve problems. We got a lot of problems, but they can do it, and I want to help. And I'm very energized. I'm working with an entrepreneur right now who is working on solving, you know, literacy challenges for children struggling with literacy. I mean, do you know the stat that many cities plan their prison beds based on the reading level in that town? And if you can't read about fourth grade reading level, the likelihood that you're going to end up in jail is pretty high. That's not okay. Hey, we need to fix that. We have to give access to people, to education. We need to democratize that. And that's what public media does, that's what PBS does, that's what Sesame Street does. And so democratizing access is a big theme for me to healthcare as well. And I think AI has tremendous potential and healthcare, it already is disrupting it that way, and it does democratize a lot of things, and doctors play a very unique role. And so we need to work with the agents to have more output, have more access, have more capacity, because we don't have enough people that are skilled in these areas. So I'm very optimistic.

Erin Geiger: 40:40

Yeah, yeah, I am too. And so I'm glad to hear it from somebody who's like in the trenches every day with it, you know, having this, this optimistic outlook on it, I have so many more questions for you, but I know I'm taking up so much of your time. So I'm going to ask like, one or two more and let you go. But kind of speaking of, like, AI and new innovations like you. You have been one of the few women that have been in the room where, like, entire industries were being created, right? And so it's like, I'm curious from your perch, when we think about women and leadership, what have you see? What have you seen change along your career, as far as women's impact, women in leadership and their impact, and what hasn't changed and what needs to by this point,

Unknown: 41:33

a lot has changed. A lot stayed the same, and some things are rolling back. So let's talk about the positive for me, and one thing I coach people on is, oftentimes women feel like they need to have done the job in order to get the job right. Generally speaking, men aren't like that, you know. And I think that in many ways, when you look at little kids in the playground, you know, the boys, when somebody's recruiting for a pop up kickball game or a pop up, you know, baseball game during recess. The boys just say, put me in, you know, whereas the girls feel like, Oh, I'm not sure. I don't know. I this. So I think those that translates to real life, and so you don't have to have done the job to be good at the job and to have the skills for the job. So put your hat in the ring. That's number one. Always put your hat in the ring. Number two, show up as you don't show up as somebody else, because being you, authenticity, it's the only thing that scales. And honestly, that's all I can remember now. Like, you know, so I, but I've always felt that way, like, I've always just been Tina, like, I have a point of view. I have something to add. There are places where I can make really unique and extraordinary contributions, and there are places where I'm not the person who has that perspective. So I yield. You. Don't have to put yourself in every conversation. You don't have to, like, find your lane, but also stay curious. Surround yourself with really interesting and complimentary people. Always work with people who are quote, unquote smarter than you about the thing that they're smart about. But don't subjugate yourself like be a curious learner if you want to learn something, teach it. I've learned that at school because the discipline of going through the curricular development, the milestones, the workshops, the assignments, I think I've always been like that in the work world too, which is, let's co create together. There's not, you know, I'm not a hero worshiper, and I don't believe that one person can win any one race, life, work, boards, teams are relay races, and you have to really figure out, like, What team are you on, and how do you make that the best team, and what role do you have to play to make that the best team? And maybe you're not the Excel jockey, but maybe you bring something else to the team. And so just don't just look at like the job spec. Think about where the value can be added, and raise your hand and volunteer for that next thing. Go the extra distance, because that's how you meet people. That's how serendipity and alchemy happens. And you just don't know, find the hidden doors. You know, I'm a Harry Potter fan. And for those of you out there who know Harry Potter, you know, find the Room of Requirement. You know that door is there, and behind it are all kinds of things that you need, but if you don't look for it, you don't make the advance, you won't know.

Erin Geiger: 44:36

Yeah, I love that. And anytime somebody can drop in a Harry Potter reference, I'm all about it. That's beautiful. No, I agree at all, at all those points. If people want to connect with you online, what is the best way for them to do so?

Unknown: 44:51

So follow me on LinkedIn. That's the best place.

Erin Geiger: 44:55

Okay, we will have that link in the show notes, and I'm only you know

Unknown: 44:58

to to anyone. Doesn't hear back from me. It's not because I don't want to connect. It's just because I only have so much capacity. So hopefully this podcast will be able to tell some of those stories, and hopefully and your work and the other guests that you have, the extraordinary curation that you're doing is such a gift to people, and so thank you for taking the time to elevate and spotlight those stories, because people can learn so much from you and from the stories that you're curating and elevating. So I'm really grateful to you for that, not for this conversation, although Thank you, but for all of the sum of your parts is really remarkable, and you've dedicated so much time and energy to it. I really appreciate

Erin Geiger: 45:36

it. Thank you so much for saying that. That really means a lot. You know, it's a super passion of mine, and I think it's, it's work that you and I are doing, and it needs to be done. It's necessary. So I appreciate that. I also, I get to meet you. I know, I'm like, we just get to chit chat. And I'm like, you're from New York, I'm from New York. Let's talk about it. And I always, I end with a fun question, which is because we love music over here. So I always ask if you could only listen to one music artist for the rest of your life. Who would it be?

Unknown: 46:10

I as of today, well as of last week, I have a new answer to that question, because I am currently in a obsessive learn everything I possibly can, listen to everything I possibly can with a musician that you may know or you may not know, and his name is Jacob Collier. Do you know Jacob Collier? Don't think so. Oh my gosh, after this podcast, I'm going to send you stuff. But number one, follow him on YouTube. Number two, he is a talent for the generation I've never seen or experienced any human being with the talent that this young man has. And so he never went to no he went to high school. He didn't go to college. His mother was raised by a single mother with three kids. His mother is a concert violinist and a conductor, and he plays every instrument, including the audience. So I just, he just came here. He's on tour right now, so let's look up and see if he's coming to Austin, and then, like, whatever it takes mortgage your house, you've got to go see he recruited a 50 person orchestra with every instrument who they'd never met each other. It was here in San Francisco, sold outstanding room only, and then he wrote live with the orchestra who he'd never met, a new piece. He's like, violins, I'd like you to give me an F flat. And then, and then, as the orchestra is now all playing, he then turned to the audience and made us sing, oh my gosh. And all of a sudden, you're like, in the middle of the belly of joy. He's absolutely mind blowing. And so he just on Adam Grant last night, I listened to something he did with Simon Sinek last year. I've watched the documentary on him. He's he does a collab with Chris Martin that fills stadiums and will make your you'll ball for an hour. He's remarkable. Do you think

Erin Geiger: 48:17

I like him? I know exactly. I can't tell. I mean, it's questionable, honestly. Like,

Unknown: 48:21

I can't even, like, if you ever wonder if machines are going to replace just listen to Jacob Collier,

Erin Geiger: 48:29

wow. Okay, yeah, send me all the things, but I'm gonna look him up. I'm gonna check him out. That's, he sounds incredible. And I love that. I love it whenever musicians bring in, like a symphony, and, yeah, it's, just adds another like, he's he's a Wow, amazing. Okay, I'm so excited. Awesome. Thank you, Tina, for taking the time. Once again, people are going to get so much from this discussion, even just like learning about your career. And, you know, all the subjects and topics that we do have a little bit deeper into, you know, our audience, you know, runs the gamut from those are starting out in their leadership journey and those that are seasoned and looking for their next the next way they can make an impact. So this has been huge. So thank you again for taking the time. I really appreciate it my pleasure

Unknown: 49:13

to be continued, my friend. Yes. Thank.