OM DENNE EPISODE
Miriam Altman-Reyes, founding managing partner of Brass Ring Ventures, discusses her path from public school teacher to entrepreneur to venture capitalist, and how each chapter informs her current work leading a seed fund and growth studio focused on the future of work and learning. Drawing on her experience co-founding and selling Kinvolved to PowerSchool, Miriam explains how her team of exited operators supports early-stage founders across four investment themes: early success systems, operational efficiency, social capital development, and workforce upskilling and reskilling. The conversation explores how private capital can play a distinctive role in scaling AI-driven solutions for learners and workers, and why the defensibility of technology matters more than ever as larger players enter the education and workforce space. Miriam shares examples from her current portfolio and offers practical guidance for leaders navigating labor market shifts, emphasizing adaptability, mission alignment, and the enduring importance of human skills that AI cannot replace.
Transcript
Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces podcast. I'm Julian Alssid.
Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning.
Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained.
Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our workforces consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education, industry, and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in.
Kaitlin LeMoine: In our recent Work Forces episodes, we've looked at the future of work through different lenses, from the technical infrastructure of credentials to the institutional shifts happening at community colleges and national nonprofits. And today, we're continuing our focus on the innovators who are driving these changes by looking specifically at the role of investment in the work and learning ecosystem.
Julian Alssid: While we often talk about policy and systemic shifts, it's equally important to understand how private capital and exited operators—or founders who have successfully built and sold their own companies—are identifying and scaling the next generation of solutions, particularly as artificial intelligence begins to fundamentally reshape how we prepare the workforce.
Kaitlin LeMoine: And our guest today brings a unique perspective as both a successful entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Miriam Altman-Reyes is the founding managing partner of Brass Ring Ventures, an exited operator-led seed fund and growth studio. Miriam and her team focus on investing in AI-driven solutions that prepare learners and workers for a rapidly evolving labor market.
Julian Alssid: Miriam is an expert in the industry who's experienced the full life cycle of a social impact startup. She was the co-founder and CEO of Kinvolved, which she led from its inception to a successful acquisition by PowerSchool in 2022. Her leadership has been recognized by many, including Forbes 30 Under 30 and the New York Times, and she maintains a deep commitment to driving economic mobility for underrepresented populations.
Kaitlin LeMoine: Miriam, your path from being a public school teacher in New York City to leading a venture fund gives you an incredible perspective on how to best support innovators and solve for the challenges ahead across learning, work, and economic mobility. We are very excited to have you with us. Welcome to this podcast.
Miriam Altman-Reyes: Thank you. I'm really thrilled to be here. Appreciate you having me.
Julian Alssid: Yes, Miriam, welcome. And so we've talked a little bit about your background, but we'd love to hear in your own words about your journey—the path that led you to found and lead Brass Ring Ventures.
Miriam Altman-Reyes: So, I moved to New York right out of college, almost 20 years ago—amazing to say, hard to believe—to initially start a career in education. I moved to the city to teach in a public high school through a program called Teach For America, where I witnessed firsthand many different challenges facing our education system. But the one that really stuck with me because it was just so foundational was student absenteeism. You know, kids who would miss school for a variety of reasons, but at the end of the day, you know, as, uh, as I think we all know, if, you know, you don't show up, it's very hard to be successful, um, in whatever it is you're trying to achieve. And I think of my time in the classroom as really kind of trying to understand some of the underlying challenges behind student absenteeism and the opportunities to solve for it. And I found, from an operational perspective, that there were really two parts of the challenge that I felt that eventually technology could help solve. One was that educators, administrators, parents, and students themselves didn't have access to data to really help understand what's going on and therefore inform interventions to solve the problems. And then, two, that those stakeholder groups were really not able to be in close and regular communication to help, ideally, even prevent absenteeism from happening in the first place, um, because of just a really broken communication sort of system between school and home. So I left the classroom having sort of thought of the challenge—I certainly witnessed the challenge, um, thought of some of the solution possibilities. I actually left the classroom thinking I was going to start a school as I entered into my graduate degree at NYU's Wagner School of Public Service. And in the first two weeks of the program ended up pivoting to starting an education technology company. And eventually that, uh, company offered a platform of multiple tools that did just what I just described, you know, providing more real-time access to data and facilitating two-way communication between school and home, really heavily focused on underserved populations where student absenteeism tends to be most profound. And so I led as one of the co-founders and the CEO of the business over the course of about eight years from, of course, idea through eventually our exit, as you mentioned, uh, in your earlier comments. Many different chapters along the way, but, um, you know, and lots of highs and lows, as with any entrepreneurial business. But maybe some of the highlights are that we, first of all, from an efficacy perspective, achieved positive results from three third-party efficacy studies that really showed that our solution did, in fact, work at reducing absenteeism, which therefore had impacts on short- and long-term academic gains, including graduation. Also, we became a profitable business, even though we did raise financing over the years from a number of different sources—from venture capital to debt financing to strategic sources, um, you know, grants and others. We did become profitable, um, before we were acquired. And we were a business that sold our software to arguably one of the hardest, uh, you know, buyers that exists, that's K-12 schools and districts across the US. And at the time of our acquisition, we had customers from small rural districts to New York City public schools across about half of US states. So it was a really great run, um, and super proud of the work that we did. I then stayed on at PowerSchool, who had acquired us, which then had recently gone public. We were their second acquisition as a publicly traded company, as primarily in the role of Vice President of Go-to-Market Strategy and Partnerships for their New Solutions Group, which essentially was spun up around the time of our own company's acquisition, with the goal being to help develop more, um, sort of organic growth to help offset a lot of the acquisition-related growth that PowerSchool, um, had become famous for over, you know, many years. Uh, and so I reported to the Chief Product Officer and worked on launching four products across the entire ecosystem of PowerSchool's, I think, maybe 25 to 30 products in total. So really got that much broader perspective after having been so specifically focused on building my own business and my own problem set for many years. And that was certainly, by, um, opportunity and also by design. But ultimately, I decided that I really wanted to be closer to the early stage, closer to the ground, and closer to the impact. And also had, you know, that entrepreneurial spirit in some ways never dies, and so I knew I wanted to start something, uh, new again. And so I left PowerSchool just about three years ago to start Brass Ring Ventures with the initial idea being that as a founder, you know, I had incredible mentors, advisors, and board members who were exited founders and operators in their own right, and they knew exactly the right time to provide support, how to provide support, how to push, um, and also how to let me sort of like lead and learn, um, as a first-time, uh, CEO. And I realized in talking with dozens of other founders that were earlier in their journey that that experience that I'd had was particularly unique. And I also was really fortunate that I had a team of exited operators and founders in my last business's executive team that wanted to work together again. And so we came back together as partners in Brass Ring Ventures, both the studio and now in the fund. Um, I'm sure we'll go into more, but that is a little bit of how I got to where I am today.
Kaitlin LeMoine: What a cool and amazing story, and certainly can see how you draw upon so many of your lessons learned across your eight years, I think you said, in that kind of startup space. I'm curious—you started to speak more of the importance of having coaching or mentorship as you were designing, you know, a new venture. And so I'm curious to dig a little bit more there and talk about, you know, what specific challenges in the future of work and learning is Brass Ring Ventures looking to solve through both the investment strategy and also the growth studio?
Miriam Altman-Reyes: So, over the, you know, last three years of working with several dozen companies at this point, into which we've invested in a handful and that number will continue to grow as we continue to have, uh, additional capital deployed through our fund, we've identified four core themes that we're, you know, looking to support both through the studio and then the studio really is a mechanism to feed into the investment fund, so they sort of go hand in hand. And so we invest across the life cycle of the learner, as we describe it, so everything from early childhood through K-12 age, learners through higher ed and sort of alternative pathways, uh, and even into workforce and adult learning. Um, so the idea being sort of helping people continue to improve and, you know, gain access to new opportunities in the professional, you know, um, and ultimately economic opportunity and mobility, um, which is sort of the overarching theme of what we're looking for in our fund from both an impact and a financial return perspective. So those four themes, um, sort of align to those age segments are: first, what we call early success systems. So those are technologies that are helping prepare our youngest citizens and and early learners for their first formal schooling experience, and or solutions that are helping parents and caregivers access quality, affordable childcare, which then in turn has a really important impact on workforce retention as well. Uh, there's lots of data and studies out there showing, particularly for women, um, but not exclusively women, that, uh, there's many people who are leaving the workforce because they're just finding that the the sort of cost trade-offs are not there, um, to kind of stay in the workforce. That's the first theme that we're investing in. Second are solutions that are really helping drive operational efficiency for some of these, you know, more institutional, bureaucratic institutions, like K-12, like higher education, even into sort of workforce corporate environments, helping these institutions do more with less, primarily leveraging AI, you know, in ways that really work for them and can drive more productivity and efficiency as budgets in some ways are getting, you know, shifted and constrained. Third are solutions that are more learner-focused that are helping learners develop what we call social capital skills, and that would encompass skills and tools that are helping people develop like emotional intelligence, um, social-emotional connectivity, communication skills, things like, uh, creative thinking, problem-solving, critical thinking. All these things that, you know, AI is not going to replace and arguably that the worker today and tomorrow needs to be even more adept in as AI becomes more of a solution to replace some of the rote skills that are, you know, existing, especially in entry-level or even mid-level jobs. And then fourth are solutions that are helping upskill and reskill both the current and the future workforce, um, which is very aligned to that third theme. So we're really excited, and again, these themes are both, uh, aligned to what we've seen as our, you know, working by working hands-on with companies in these different areas, but also really validated by the research much more broadly, uh, that shows that these are areas that are not only impactful to society as a whole as we're seeing these like major shifts and we're just at the tip of the iceberg, but also are going to drive, you know, a financial return, really kind of that doing well by doing good concept that I wholeheartedly believe in.
Julian Alssid: Wow, that's a—that's a pretty broad mandate you've given yourself there, Miriam. So, given where you sit now as CEO and managing partner, what are some of the most exciting innovations that you're seeing in the early stage EdTech work and in and in the market more broadly? We'd love to hear some specific examples.
Miriam Altman-Reyes: So, we just invested—our first fund investment in a company called Doowii, uh, which is basically pulling together data from many disparate systems and making it immediately actionable and sort of, um, uh, helping inform decisions both in the K-12 and higher ed institutional, for the institutional kind of buyer and user. So they fit nicely into that operational efficiency theme that I had mentioned is one that we're looking to invest in. Really, you know, interesting company, you know, have a number of partnerships that they developed early on, um, that really helped them drive growth and expansion, as well as working directly with schools and districts. And so, we think there's really high potential for Doowii, you know, and companies like that in the sector, and that's why we're excited to make our first investment in them. We're looking at a company as well that we're excited about that I probably can't name by name, but it may be illustrative of some of of what we're seeing, that is, um, developing, you know, similarly kind of AI, um, workflows and supports both training and upskilling, as well as like, (for example) financial management capabilities for small business owners. Um, small business, you know, represents more than half of our workforce and continues to grow, especially as again, sort of the corporate workforce is changing, and people are looking for different types of working dynamics and environments and opportunities. But a lot of, uh, a lot of small business owners are not necessarily like CFOs by background, right? Uh, and so there's a huge opportunity to help them really build bigger and more successful and sustainable businesses through leveraging tools like this, and then also help scale and upskill and reskill their employees, um, as well. So, those are a couple of examples. There's also a number of companies—one that I did an angel investment in, several others we're looking at that are more in like the social capital development space. So, there's a company called Hiveclass that basically has a sort of whole full spectrum solution for both mental and physical health and wellness for K-12 specifically as at least a starting point, which is really unique. There's a lot of kind of social-emotional development and mental health, uh, content and platforms that are available to K-12. There's less in the physical education space, but, you know, maybe some competitors. But there's really no one who's bringing these, the physical and the mental health together, which is again, really foundational. If you don't have your physical and mental health as a baseline, it's very hard for, you know, students to be successful in school and and therefore to build the habits that ensure that they're successful, you know, longer term as they become employees into the workforce. So, there are so many companies. I mean, I look at, you know, dozens of companies in a week, and sometimes even in a day. Um, but that gives you an idea of some that I think are really exciting in the market.
Kaitlin LeMoine: So, you mentioned, Miriam, the impact of AI on your work and and how you're thinking more about, you know, what are the uniquely human skills that we can all help to build in a time and space where AI is perhaps doing the more rote work more readily? But but there are these unique human, human capabilities. Just curious to hear how your work has shifted even over the last few years around the technology piece of how you think about your investment strategy, because I would imagine there's some shifting that that happens and continues to happen. I'm sure across your work, but that's one area that, when you mentioned it, I was like, "Oh, let's talk more about that."
Miriam Altman-Reyes: Absolutely. Yeah, it's a really exciting time, I think, you know. Certainly there's there's a level of uncertainty in times like like today's, but I think I'm extremely excited, you know, just thinking only in just the last three years of working with, several dozen companies, at this point, you know, even though we've, if we just start there, right? Since we started Brass Ring, I think, you know, the kinds of companies, um, the access to development of technology and like the ability to to invest in R&D with, you know, limited resources is so much broader than it used to be, at least to get kind of initial ideas developed and out the door. You don't need to hire a full engineering team at that stage, right? And then as now business continues to evolve and grow, you can get so much more out of a smaller engineering team today than you could even five years ago because these engineering teams themselves are using AI tools, for example, to help facilitate the development of the products that they're building. Which, of course, again, if we're talking about operational efficiency, it helps them, you know, do more in fewer hours than they ever could have done, you know, before without these kinds of tools. So, I think, you know, access to technical talent, um, at a reasonable price is definitely expanding. There's obviously the flip side where, you know, people are raising huge amounts of money in certain, you know, sectors and industries and investing tremendous amounts in technology development as well. If we're thinking really specifically about our sectors and sort of the stage businesses we're in, I think it's really like largely a really positive outcome we've seen. I think the flip side is that because it is so much easier for anyone, uh, to kind of develop technology, uh, you know, to some degree or another at least, the defensibility of technology is something that we scrutinize a lot more than we used to. We always did, but it's just something you have to look at much more carefully and closely, you know. What is the real moat for this solution? How do we know that some of these bigger players are not going to be able to, you know, easily displace, um, the existing solutions? And also, these bigger players are paying a lot more attention to education and workforce-facing technology than they ever have before. The Googles of the world had EdTech, but, you know, arguably are investing a lot more in really influencing, uh, and building tools to help shift how, uh, school operates and how the workforce operates in a way that they weren't doing, you know, 5, 10, 15 years ago. There's just a lot more attention paid, so the competitive risks are much higher. So, you know, that's an interesting dynamic that we're seeing as well. You know, and just the proliferation of technologies out there as well, right? Like where there may have been, I don't know, 10 upskilling and reskilling solutions 10 years ago, now there's 100 or 1,000. And so, again, just being able for founders and and these companies to be able to, A, you know, get a chunk of the market early, and B, differentiate and really communicate their unique value proposition and also, you know, their their team's unique perspective and skill set and lived experience and how it sets them apart and sets them ahead is more important today, I think, than it, you know, ever has been in the past. So, those are a couple of things that we're, you know, noticing. I think, you know, people talk a lot about valuations as well in venture, um, you know, when it comes to AI-driven solutions. I think, you know, in certain industries certainly we've seen, you know, valuations go all over the map. I think in future of learning work, generally, they've been fairly right-sized, which I think is good for the industry overall, um, and, you know, not extremely overpriced, frankly, uh, which I think just sets like these companies, founders, and their investors up for longer-term success as we navigate what the future looks like as well.
Julian Alssid: As I understand it, you take a pretty hands-on approach with your portfolio companies, and it'd be really interesting to hear you talk a little about the sort of hurdles, the common hurdles that you see founders that founders face building their for the future of work and but also how do you help them address these challenges and scale? I mean, you know, you gave a little, you gave us a little taste of what it was like for you going through the trials and tribulations of startup land. How do you keep them all sane?
Miriam Altman-Reyes: I'll answer that in a few parts. First of all, the most common things that we see founders need right out the gate are support with sales and go-to-market, just, you know, increasing their revenue, figuring out their revenue operations, talent acquisition, etc. Everything that, their narrative, their presentation, everything that's tied to top-line increasing their growing the business. Tied to that is also making sure that their retention of the existing customer is also strong and there's an opportunity for expansion. So that's sort of the whole bucket, I would say, is like revenue and growth. Um, and that usually is number one, uh, even if there are different flavors of just like what kinds of things that founders need help with, and uh, where I personally have a background in, you know, sales and go-to-market, just from sort of learning on the fly, no- nothing formalized, uh, in my like professional training, um, early, uh, schooling training, I guess, but just for like lived experience. Um, and we have several members of our team including an operating partner focused on growth who's served in several leadership capacities who, you know, together we take a really hands-on role with founders on that particular sort of area. The second, I would say, is everything related to kind of, um, you know, cash flow operations, financial management, and fundraising. Uh, you know, those kind of all go hand-in-hand to some degree. We find a lot of times that founders in our sector, future learning work, come in with incredible lived experience, and you can't teach lived experience. So to me, that's incredibly important. But very little business experience, you know, in business acumen. And so, uh, the good news is that you can teach those kinds of skills, right? Like how to review financial statements, how to create financial projections that are, you know, based in realistic assumptions, um, how to execute against those, um, how to adjust and scenario plan if you don't hit your revenue target, right? Like when, you know, how do you make sure that the company can continue to sustain itself? You know, how do you model in fundraises, right? Like when's the right time to fundraise? How much should you fundraise? From whom should you fundraise? What should the valuation of your fundraise be? What are the KPIs and milestones you need to hit along the way to warrant a fundraise? So there's so many different pieces of the puzzle that come together all related to the financial side. And so, our lead operating partner, who's also on our investment committee, Sumit Singh, uh, is in charge of that work, and he and I, you know, work really closely together as well, but he's kind of our our numbers guy, um, in a de facto kind of a fractional CFO. So, we see those areas initially as areas of support that founders most often need, and then for myself, a lot of what I, you know, I'm a generalist, so I touch a lot of different things, but a lot of like leadership development as well, helping founders kind of put a mirror up, um, understand how they're, uh, coming across internally, externally, um, how to strengthen their own narratives and ensure that they're able to get their goals achieved. And communication is just so critically part of that, and also just how you lead and manage all these different stakeholder groups, not just employees, but your customers. If your customer has a frustrating experience, you know, how are you or how are you coaching your team and how to respond to that? So many different examples like that, right? Like board communications and management, um, and sort of generating positive results from, you know, board engagement is another, you know, really common topic that I find myself supporting founders on. So, those are kind of the initial areas, and then we have—I mentioned a couple of our operating partners, but essentially, our model is that we have seven operating partners outside of myself, each of whom have gone through—most of them were on my former executive team, as I vanished before, so we've got a really great track record of working together, and most of them had served in some capacity in leadership through at least one other acquisition across the sector, if not two or three in some cases. Really just like an incredibly seasoned, um, and active operating team, not people who retired 10 years ago and are sort of, you know, meeting with founders like ad hoc once a month. Like, we're meeting with founders usually at least once a week in some capacity, um, when we're working with them, and sometimes more often than that, sort of really roll up our sleeves and supporting them. Our model is typically that pre-investment, we work with founders in what we call our, um, sort of a Phase 1, like more of an advisory capacity. We're getting to know founders, getting to know their businesses. They're also getting to know us and ensuring that they feel that there's strong value-add. And our goal is to come to a decision typically in, you know, ranges in terms of the time frame, but anywhere between like three and six months on average as to whether it makes sense to invest or not. And again, also opening that door to the founder, their self, to make sure they feel that we're a good fit before we get into a long-term relationship, which is what making an investment ends up being. And then post-investment, we usually invest at the seed stage, so typically when companies are like half a million to wiki 3 million in annual revenue, sort of how we define that on a very simple, simple metrics, uh, revenue metrics basis. Post that round of investment, we'll go even deeper as fractional executives, really helping professionalize the organization, um, with the idea being that we're helping the, you know, each kind of department function clean up a bit, um, prepare to bring in, you know, full-time staff and offboard our own team, and ultimately prepare for their first institutional fundraise, which is the Series A. And then in that Series A, things have gone well, then we'll do follow-on as well and continue to support the business in that way. So, it's a, you know, there's nuance to everything, and there's certainly like an acceleration component to it. People often are like, "Is this an accelerator? Is it a venture studio?" It's neither of those, that's why we've called it this Growth Studio because it's something a little bit different, but it certainly pulls elements from, um, from both of those, really with the goal being to again, sort of help provide that exited founder, exited operator guidance and expertise that many investors just don't have to founders that goes beyond just, you know, providing capital to to the business and, helping them grow.
Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, I would—I could see that sort of support being invaluable. Like, each of those stages is so distinct, and the needs become, I feel like they change almost before your eyes, right? Like, we're just we're just putting this together, it's a startup. Wait a minute, there's this whole other bucket of things we never even thought we'd have to do, and now what do we do? And so I can imagine that your hands-on approach and focus on being a Growth Studio really resonates for a lot of founders because it's like, you don't really know what the challenges are until you're in it, right? Like, um, until you're kind of looking around that corner, you can't always anticipate what the challenges are going to be.
Miriam Altman-Reyes: Absolutely. Yep. That's a big value.
Kaitlin LeMoine: So, Miriam, what's a piece of practical advice or a couple pieces of practical advice that you would offer our listeners, whether they come from more of an investor space or as educators or or entrepreneurs, to help them become forces in navigating labor market shifts or, you know, like you can take it in the direction of navigating changes as you're running an organization, whether it's small or large? I will let you decide where you want to take your reply.
Miriam Altman-Reyes: Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, back to like some of our investment themes, honestly, I think leaders at any type of organization, whether it's a startup or a larger entity or a school or a, you know, a consultancy, whatever your your sort of work is, um, and wherever you are, frankly, in the hierarchy, I think adaptability is so critical and and that social capital is so important. You know, having a network of people that you can, you know, go to to both continue to build relationships, get a, you know, sense of what's going on in the industry from their unique perspectives, um, what are the opportunities, what are the things that you should look out for, um, what are the skills that you should be developing, what experiences that you should be, you know, garnering, etc., for example. I think that that's really, really critical, and so again, just sort of, you know, having that social capital, developing those social-emotional skills, that social capital, um, and being able to be adaptable in, you know, today's market and honestly, I think the market for many years to come is going to be a requirement for people to be successful and continue to kind of stay ahead of what's going on and not be caught flat-footed. So, you know, that just takes, you know, critical thinking skills and problem-solving skills and, you know, having the head space as well to take a step back and sort of understand what's happening both on a micro and a macro level. Um, so, it's a lot of different moving pieces, but I think again, that advice I would give to founders, but I would give to people in a lot of different areas of the economy, frankly, you know. Policy makers as well, I think that's really important. And then, I think the other thing, more from like a team management perspective, is it has never been more important, even though I think it's always been important to find people that are incredibly mission-aligned to whatever it is that you are trying to do, right? What's the end outcome or end goal of what you're working on, what you're building, what you're developing, the policies you're implementing, etc. And ultimately, are the people mission-aligned and truly passionate about the same, you know, solving that challenge because, hopefully again to one of those themes that, you know, we're investing in, you know, as as things change and shift, you know, people will have the opportunity to upskill and reskill, but what you can't teach is passion, right? Ukulele can't teach someone how to care about something. You can give them experiences, but whether it's going to resonate with them or not is not a teachable thing. And so, that's always something that I would suggest, you know, certainly looking for. Um, it's a—it's an exciting time, uh, but it's definitely a time to keep your head on a swivel and, uh, you know, just keep paying attention to, you know, what's going on and try to kind of stay ahead of the curve as much as you can.
Julian Alssid: And do you consult consulting firms? No, just kidding. We're, um, you know, this is like this is our—welcome to our lives. It's it's it's I think, and we know we're not alone because we talk with a lot of people, but it is a world in, you know, it was always challenging starting a business, and I think, you know, this world now is a world in flux.
Miriam Altman-Reyes: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, we get requests, you know, to support lots of different kinds of organizations and entities, frankly, some of which we don't have the ability to say yes to because, you know, it's just a little bit outside of our wheelhouse. But, you know, nonprofits are dealing with, you know, these same challenges, for-profits, early-stage businesses, later-stage businesses, um, you know, PE-owned companies, public—I mean, it's just everyone is trying to figure this out in their own flavor on, and I think like ultimately, the the skills and sort of attributes as as a leader that you need, um, are similar, just how you apply them might be slightly different each context.
Julian Alssid: Yeah, so true. Um, so Miriam, thank- thank you so much for taking the time today. This has been a really great conversation and soaking it all in. Um, how can our listeners continue to follow your work and, you know, your initiatives?
Miriam Altman-Reyes: Yeah, thank you for asking. You know, we're both through Brass Ring Ventures' page, as well as through my own page. We're very active on LinkedIn, also on Instagram. I would say those are the two kind of, um, social channels to where you can find us. Um, so it's brassring.vc is our website, um, can also find more information there on us. And then my name is Miriam Altman-Reyes with a hyphen, uh, where you can find me on LinkedIn, uh, or Instagram like I said. And then for founders, and in particular, who are looking, uh, you know, for potential investment opportunity or support through our Growth Studio, by going to our website, you can find, um, on the upper right corner, um, and throughout the website, access to apply to join our Growth Studio, which is a short, less than 10-minute application, um, and we'll, you know, always review and get back to get back to founders always within a week or less.
Kaitlin LeMoine: That's great. Thank you so much for those very practical next steps for In other practical next steps for our listeners as far as how to continue to follow or become involved, perhaps, with your great work. Really appreciate you taking the time to join us today, Miriam, and for sharing so many thoughts throughout this conversation. And we look forward to remaining in touch.
Miriam Altman-Reyes: Thank you so much. I appreciate the conversation, the opportunity, and I also look forward to staying in touch.
Kaitlin LeMoine: We hope you enjoyed today's conversation and appreciate you tuning in to Work Forces. Thank you to our listeners and guests for their ongoing support, and especially thanks to our producer, Dustin Ramsdell. If you're interested in sponsoring the podcast or want to check out more episodes, please visit workforces.info/podcast. You can also find Work Forces wherever you regularly listen to your favorite podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, like, and share it with your colleagues and friends. And if you're interested in learning more about Work Forces Consulting practice, please visit workforces.info/consulting for more details about our multi-service practice.
