Become a Better Leader with the Unicorn Leaders Podcast 

In this season opener of the Unicorn Leaders podcast, Fahd Alhattab sets the stage for a new narrative—one centered around the underdogs. Drawing inspiration from the classic David vs. Goliath story, Fahd explores why small, scrappy teams often outperform their larger, better-resourced competitors. Using Google's historic win over Overture as a launch point, he teases a season packed with modern business stories—from tech startups to industry disruptors—showcasing how trust, speed, culture, and strategic clarity help small teams punch far above their weight.With upcoming guest interviews and deep dives into companies like Slack, Pixar, Netflix, and Shopify, this season is designed to unpack what really makes high-performing teams succeed. Whether you're a founder, people leader, or just team-curious, this season promises to deliver the tools and insights to help your team win—no matter the odds.

Eva Manole shares her use of a product led mindset for developing new strategies for learning and development. She dives into how traditional models are not always agile or adaptive especially with the rise of AI, remote and hybrid work environments.

With a deep passion for scaffolding the development of others alongside her expertise in leadership development she has transformed the learning and development of the Fullscript team by transitioning from a traditional top down approach to using a bottom up approach.

Andre Fernandez, is the Co-Chief Operation Executive at Invert and shares some valuable lessons and principles that he has embraced through his journey towards becoming a successful leader.

Learn how to let go and build high performing teams and discover some actionable insights that will transform your leadership approach and help you create meaningful impact.

Jonah Midanik, the COO and Co-Founder of Forum Ventures shares his journey and experience  recognizing that ‘what got you here won’t get you there. He has been lucky enough to have seen the startup journey from a variety of perspectives.

Jonah shares a crucial tip in this podcast's discussion. The tip for every founder or leader involves 3 key steps that Jonah walks us through in detail.

Jeanette Dorazio, Chief Executive Officer at Leadpages. Jeanette walks us through key obstacles she overcame in her journey toward becoming a successful female leader in tech.  

In episode 17, Jeanette lays out how to reach the next level of your leadership career. She shares 3 lessons gained through her journey: knowing what is happening in the market, which she calls “outside in” because “nothing important happens in the office,” listening first and understanding all sides before communicating, and finally, understanding how to interpret data.

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Krista Skalde, Operating Partner and Chief Talent Officer at Inovia Capital. Krista is responsible for designing and implementing talent management, organizational effectiveness solutions, and market-aligned HR practices.

In Episode 16, Krista lays out the framework for designing talent strategies. Krista expands on what to look for when designing your organizational structure. She shares some tips about when and how you should decide to design or re-design. Stick to the end of the episode to hear Krista’s key trends HR professionals must consider when in the process of designing an organizational structure. 

Kyle Racki, the co-founder and CEO of Proposify, Kyle helps thousands of businesses remove the bottleneck of proposals and get more visibility into the close. 

In episode 15, Kyle lays out the framework of the job of a CEO and some of the important pieces they’re faced with including: creating vision and auditing values, building out the executive team (title politics are real), hiring leadership contextually, having difficult conversations and holding people accountable.

Natalie Furness, CEO of RevOps Automated and Revenue Operations Consultant shares her journey and learnings along the way onto remote work and falling into the world of operations.

She speaks of finding your people through value alignment for both the work you do and the work environment you prefer. She helps deep dive into whether the trust has begun to break in remote work and what questions leaders should ask themselves to help mitigate this.

Website: www.revopsautomated.com

Chris Williams, former VP of HR at Microsoft has over 40 years of experience building and leading teams.

At Microsoft, he worked in product before stumbling into HR and eventually becoming VP of HR and responsible for 32,000 employees.Through it all, he’s seen his share of bad leadership and what makes teams succeed and fail. Find out what this common denominator is by listening to Chris' episode!

Today we have Shawna Stewart on the podcast, VP of People and Operations at Railz Financial. Shawna is truly a people-focused leader, she has extensive background in psychology and organizational behaviour and experience involving performance management, full scope operational effectiveness, succession planning, employee engagement and talent development.

Florent Schmahl, Chief of Staff of highly purposeful agtech company, Growcer, shares his journey and learnings along the way as he shifted his work from being focused on developing hard skills to now pursuing purposeful work. Over the years he’s has time to gather his insights on finding the work that drives you and how important it is in today’s labour market pressures.

Laura Mindorff is the brilliant COO at Wicket. Laura has developed years of experience under her belt and shares her very tactical advice on how to create effective culture through things like rituals, culture champions, and what metrics to watch out for to check-in on your progress.

In episode 9, Julia gives us insight into how she uses her humane recruiting approach to create a reputable employment brand that plays big dividends both inside and outside the company.

In this episode Shawn MacDonell shares how his experiences have highlighted the importance of becoming comfortable with essential leadership skills like approaching a productive conflict, giving and receiving feedback, and pursuing a proactive action-oriented attitude.

In this episode, our guest Brittany shares how her leadership journey and styles grew and evolved as she rose through the ranks to eventually becoming Chief Talent Officer of Shopify. She shares her lessons along the way and how they all helped her build her leadership confidence to succeed at a unicorn level company.

In this episode, our guest Amanda shares the secrets to attracting, hiring and retaining the star employees that will bring your company from good to great.

In this episode, our guest Sam tells us about how he created a vision that helped guide his company and how important it is for you to do this too.

In this episode, our guest Cassy explains the different ways employees can be motivated and how important it is to recognize their unique motivation styles.

In this episode, our guest Aydin walks us through how you can improve employee retention and create a more productive team by improving your workplace culture.

In this episode, our guest Craig shares why, as a manager, it’s so important to create an environment where there’s psychological safety and strategies to help you create this beneficial environment in your workplace.

In this episode, our guest Michael talks about how radical commitment to people is the foundation of a good leader and leaders need to take the wants of employees more seriously.