UNLICENSED THERAPISTS
We are on a quest to illuminate the elusive "Unicorn Factor" in everyday People, Businesses and Relationships. Join us on our journey
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The UNICORN FINDERS
Jake Shepherd
Voted Most Likely to
"Know someone who can help"
Jake is an entrepreneur, author, techie, investor and connector with a passion for people and how technology can transform good business into great. He has spent the last 10 years in Raleigh, NC creating opportunity for techies to connect to each other, investment, talent and customers. Jake brings his network and opportunity together to launch software products and bring digital transformations to his clients.
He is also known for founding the Downtown Techies networking groups which totals over
5000 techies in the
Raleigh-Durham area.
Dan Thompson
Voted Best Dancer and
best advice giver
Dan is an advocate, relationship builder, innovator, and meme creator that tries to bridge the gap between talent and solutions. Dan has spent the last seven years in Tampa, FL after pit stops in Orlando, South Florida, Iowa, Gainesville, and South Florida (again). He is an advocate for technology education, growth policy, and creating environments that foster economic growth for lower economic areas. He is a notable podcaster with over 800k listens on a single episode) , an avid boater, and pretends he is sommelier, despite a very average palate for wine.
Taylor Desseyn
Voted Tallest and
Best Hawaiian Shirts
Taylor is a former touring Nashville drummer turned recruiter that has experience recruiting both on a national scale and on the local level in Raleigh and Nashville. He mainly specializes in recruiting software developers and has a knack for growing internal teams. He has grown teams double/triple their size, and he has implemented new recruiting frameworks from scratch. Taylor has been invited to code conferences across the Southeast the last few years (Codestock, Code on the Beach in Jacksonville, and Music City Code in Nashville) to name a few. Taylor's passion is floral shirts, drinking a good french rose, playing with his corgi, and traveling the world with his wife
THE STORY
The Unicorn Finders Podcast was birthed after years of conversations, wins and losses and observations in our every day lives. With over 30 years of combined experience in leading and scaling high performing teams, investing, start ups, recruiting and conference circuits, Dan, Jake and Taylor decided they wanted to start the search for common threads between successful people and companies, highlight some heroes and offer any help or insight to whoever needs it on their journey. They hope to help uncover the "unicorn factor" in every day people, businesses and relationships. Thanks for tuning in!
FRIENDS OF THE SHOW
Chiitra Tibbs
Chiitra is Software Development Engineer at Amazon and founder of Southern Enrichment, a company focused on providing culturally based digital literacy and computer science curriculums for students grades 6th through 12th.
Morgan Cates
Morgan is leading the Project Shift Engineering Fellowship with the goal to help adult students of all backgrounds learn and contribute to the software industry.
Dr. Rose Lorenzo
Dr. Rose is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Hackathon Jr. a non-profit organization that provide children with access to STEM education and preparing the next generation of leaders to solve problems with technology.
Nader Dabit
Nader is a Senior Developer Advocate at Amazon. Specializing in GraphQL, cross platform, cloud enabled web and mobile application development.
Larry Long Jr.
Larry Long Jr is the Director of Collegiate Sales at Teamworks. He is also the Founder and CEO of Larry Long Jr LLC, which focuses on sales motivation, inspiration, training & coaching.
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Danny Thompson
Danny is a software Developer, Community leader and has helped over 70 people land their first jobs in tech. His biggest goal is to help people, by teaching, giving resources and guidance to help them change their lives.
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Kyle Mumma
Kyle Mumma is the Founder and CEO of NextPlay, a software startup helping athletics organizations to engage their communities and enhance post-sport outcomes for their athletes
Jeff Kirschner
Jeff is a serial entrepreneur with a love for storytelling. He is also the Founder and CEO of Litterati, a movement that’s “crowdsource-cleaning” the planet. Now in 165 countries, the Litterati community identifies, maps, and collects waste resulting in an Open Litter Database the largest of its kind.
Ryan Burgess
Ryan is a Software Engineering Manager at Netflix, leading the Infrastructure and Tools team in Productivity Engineering. Ryan is the host of the popular engineering podcast, Front End Happy Hour.
Friends of the Show
Friends of the Show