Episode 8: When Everything Changes

Written By Laurel Haak

In this episode, we explore interruption with Andrea Michalek. A serial entrepreneur, Andrea started her career as a software engineer working on innovative search algorithms. Early on, she was tapped to lead a spin-out, and she was hooked. Andrea has led spin-outs, start-ups, and a major acquisition (twice), all in the space of search technology, research literature, and more recently in scholarly reputational management. All that stopped abruptly in 2020, when Andrea suffered a traumatic brain injury from which she emerged over the course of three years. Join us as we talk about her career of interruptions and diversions, and her experience re-starting her own life.

Links

To learn more about We Interrupt and to suggest people we should talk to and topics you think we should explore, please see our webpage at: https://www.weinterrupthis.com or contact us on twitter at @HaakYak. 

You can find more about Andrea on LinkedIn and her coaching practice at Topular Strategy.   

Credits

  • Emma Levinson created the artwork on our website

  • The intro music is Bartok’s "Melody with Interruptions",  Mikrokosmos, Volume 6, played by Dr. Alan Huckleberry, for The University of Iowa Piano Pedagogy Video Recording Project https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt3CimYcisU.  Additional music is  “Deconstructed” by MagnusMoone, licensed by Tribe of Noise BV.

  • The Podcast photo is a public domain image, obtained from rawpixel. (License CC0 1.0) https://www.rawpixel.com/image/3296931

Laurel Haak

Founder and CEO of Mighty Red Barn, enjoys exploring and testing new ideas. She uses her experiences as a biomedical researcher, policy wonk, company leader, and non-profit Board member to support impact-based organizations building digital infrastructure. She takes a collaborative approach to align growth with social benefit, experiment and refine value-adding products, and evaluate mission success. Laure has created and contributed to several tech start-ups, pioneered and scaled virtual teams and companies, and built communities of practice and collaborative work environments across government, academic, non-profit, and corporate sectors.

https://www.mightyredbarn.com
Previous

Episode 9: On Creating Inclusive Pathways to Innovation
Next

Episode 7: Neurodiverse Workplaces