Tech Roundtable Head & Creating Website Accessibility W/ Returning Member, Nikki Kuhn

Subscribe to meet more of our members on People at Pyramid: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdd93VlJAwBR_m7jDhPxq3agoS8iLuT4GWhat happens when a grumpy, colorblind pirate reviews your website for accessibility? That's the idea behind a new AI tool our member Nikki Kuhn has been building, and this week she's back on People at Pyramid to tell us about it.Nikki is a user experience designer with Sca11ywag, and her focus is web accessibility, all day, every day. Her last visit to the show was about a year and a half ago, and a lot has happened at the Club since then.The biggest change is Business Strategy Day. Nikki walks us through the new Wednesday format, which pulls three of our roundtables into one day: Leadership Unlocked at 8 a.m. with Bob Zecca, the sales roundtable at 10, and the Technology Roundtable at 1, with snacks along the way and Whiskey Flight Wednesday to close it out. It borrows from what worked with Entrepreneurship Day, and you can feel the extra energy around the Club.That Technology Roundtable has had one topic on its mind lately, and no one will be surprised that it's AI. The group has heard from a lawyer on AI liability, from a security expert, and from developers here in Philadelphia. Vince and Nikki agree on the best use case, which is cutting out repetitive work, and on the ground rule that client data still needs protecting.Meet Nikki Kuhn on this week's episode.CHAPTERS:0:00 - Business Strategy Day at the Club3:10 - AI at the Technology Roundtable5:49 - Meet Smudge, the Accessibility Roaster8:08 - Accessible E-Commerce, End to EndGUEST LINKS:Connect with Nikki on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikki-kuhn/Sca11ywag: https://sca11ywag.com [verify]ABOUT PEOPLE AT PYRAMID:People at Pyramid is the Pyramid Club's member-spotlight podcast, hosted by Vince Quinn. Every episode, we sit down with one of our members to hear who they are, what they do, and what makes them worth knowing. It is a look inside a community built on the people who make it what it is.SUBSCRIBE for new episodes every two weeks.CONNECT:Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/people-at-pyramid/id1784545290Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7alEumoeEpbqgHzaugBPLZHost: https://linkedin.com/in/vincequinnShow website: https://feeds.transistor.fm/people-at-pyramid---Interested in being featured on People at Pyramid? Register here: https://sbxproductions.com/people-at-pyramid/Want help with your podcast? E-mail Vince Quinn at [email protected] to learn about Pyramid Club Membership? https://www.invitedclubs.com/clubs/pyramid-club/contact-us?contactType=membershipInterested in being featured on People at Pyramid? Register hereWant help with your podcast? E-mail Vince Quinn [email protected] to learn about Pyramid Club Membership? Click here.

Listen to the full conversation: https://t-sml.mtrbio.com/public/smartlink/pyramid-clubJean Codio co-founded an AI property management platform and estimates the technology gives him back three to five hours every day. Here is how he uses it, and where he thinks it goes next.Jean has been coming to the Pyramid Club since 2018 and a member for about a year and a half. He works as a real estate advisor with Source Real Estate alongside Martino Picarilo, and he co-founded Oakwood PMS, an AI property management platform built for landlords who manage their own buildings. The platform collects rent, handles maintenance requests, and routes a tenant's problem to whoever on the owner's team can fix it.That kind of automation is where Jean thinks all of it is headed. He describes a near future running closer to autopilot, where the technology knows you well enough that a property mostly takes care of the person living in it. His frame for AI is tools: people have built them across every civilization, and this one is no different except in how close it sits to us.Closeness is the part he keeps returning to. Jean and Vince trade notes on what that looks like day to day, from smart lights and voice assistants at home, to Vince building himself a voice to text app, to the meetings where the note takers now outnumber the people. For Jean the payoff is measurable. He puts the savings at three to five hours a day, most of it in the MLS, where analyzing a multifamily property used to mean hours of manual work and now means setting the guardrails and letting the tool run the math.Those hours are what he calls better than time travel. As a co-founder, an advisor and an investor, he can be in several rooms at the same time, including the ones he never walks into. He is also candid that the habit cuts both ways, and that family and friends notice he is always working.The conversation closes on where this leaves everyone else. Jean's read is that AI takes the repetitive work, which puts starting a business in reach of far more people, and that whoever is best at what they do keeps their market share either way. He points to a post arguing that a hundred years out the top actors will earn more than ever, because by then a person will be the rare thing.CHAPTERS:0:00 - Meet Jean Codio2:40 - Smart Homes and Smarter Systems5:36 - Saving Five Hours a Day8:39 - Being in Several Rooms at Once11:04 - Working Now So You Can Later13:38 - Why AI Rewards the BestGUEST LINKS:Oakwood PMS: https://oakwoodpms.comOakwood PMS on Instagram and X: @oakwoodpms [VERIFY HANDLE]Source Real Estate, with Martino [email protected] PEOPLE AT PYRAMID:People at Pyramid is the Pyramid Club's member spotlight podcast. Every episode, host Vince Quinn sits down with one of our members to find out who they are, what they do, and what makes them worth knowing. Business, service, second acts, and the occasional story nobody saw coming.SUBSCRIBE for new episodes every other week.CONNECT:Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/people-at-pyramid/id1784545290Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7alEumoeEpbqgHzaugBPLZWatch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdd93VlJAwBR_m7jDhPxq3agoS8iLuT4GVince Quinn on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/vincequinnShow feed: https://feeds.transistor.fm/people-at-pyramidInterested in being featured on People at Pyramid? Register hereWant help with your podcast? E-mail Vince Quinn [email protected] to learn about Pyramid Club Membership? Click here.

Listen to the full conversation: https://t-sml.mtrbio.com/public/smartlink/pyramid-clubAndrew Bogert spent his Air Force career keeping wounded troops alive on cargo jets. Today he runs a pet and home concierge business and chairs the Pyramid Club LGBTQ+ committee.Andrew joined the Pyramid Club in October 2015. Before that he served in the Air Force Reserve as a flight combat medic, flying into Baghdad and Balad after Operation Iraqi Freedom kicked off and into Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. His job was to pick up wounded troops from every branch of the service, plus civilians moving through the State Department, and keep them alive on the run to Ramstein Air Base.That career started almost by accident. Andrew wanted to be a flight attendant and washed out of the American Airlines process on a height requirement, a quarter of an inch too tall. A friend in the Army pointed him toward Aeromed, and three years of training later he was fully qualified on the aircraft, lifting patients into the top litter tier of what amounted to a flying hospital carrying up to 100 people at a time.The instinct behind all of it came from his mother, Joan Marie Bogert, a nurse for 60 years who fostered 32 children over 12 years with his father in an emergency placement home outside Allentown. Andrew is the youngest of five. He tells Vince he would think of her before treating an injury he had never seen before.Caretaking is also what brought him to horses. After retiring in 2011 he found Shamrock Reins at a table outside a courthouse during jury duty, met founder Janet Brennan, and spent five years in intensive equine therapy at the farm in Pipersville. He is certified to work with horses now, and he walks through what a session looks like, from grooming and anatomy to lunging on a long lead to the moment you breathe into a horse's nostrils so it learns your scent. Dogs came next, which is how Drew's Doggy Days started. He takes care of dogs, cats, horses, chickens, goats, homes and pools, whatever the client needs.At the Club, Andrew chairs the committee Maureen Coyle asked him to join in 2015, back when it was called the LGBT committee and four people sat around one table. It is the LGBTQ+ committee now, more than twenty members strong, and it fills the room on the third Thursday of most months with a rotating cast of partner organizations. Penn Medicine, Jefferson, the Philadelphia Police, the Fire Department, Aramark. Andrew served during Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and he is direct about why a conversation like this one matters.CHAPTERS:0:00 - Meet Andrew Bogert2:34 - Becoming a Flight Combat Medic4:41 - The Nurse Who Raised Him7:49 - Equine Therapy After Service11:40 - From Horses to Doggy Days13:52 - Inside the LGBTQ+ CommitteeGUEST LINKS:Drew's Doggy Days on Instagram: @[email protected] PEOPLE AT PYRAMID:People at Pyramid is the Pyramid Club's member spotlight podcast. Every episode, host Vince Quinn sits down with one of our members to find out who they are, what they do, and what makes them worth knowing. Business, service, second acts, and the occasional story nobody saw coming.SUBSCRIBE for new episodes every other week.CONNECT:Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/people-at-pyramid/id1784545290Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7alEumoeEpbqgHzaugBPLZWatch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdd93VlJAwBR_m7jDhPxq3agoS8iLuT4GVince Quinn on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/vincequinnShow feed: https://feeds.transistor.fm/people-at-pyramidInterested in being featured on People at Pyramid? Register hereWant help with your podcast? E-mail Vince Quinn [email protected] to learn about Pyramid Club Membership? Click here.

Be a guest on People at Pyramid: https://feeds.transistor.fm/people-at-pyramidFive decades of chemical engineering, the plants he was called in to rescue, and why he reads history to understand the AI boom, with our member Joel Shertok.This week on People at Pyramid, we're spotlighting our member Joel Shertok, a chemical engineer and the president of Process Industries Consultants in Newark, Delaware. Joel has spent 50 years in the field, and he has the stories to prove it.His work has always come down to two jobs: take a process a chemist developed and scale it up to commercial production, or walk into a plant that has started misbehaving and figure out why. He tells us about a membrane-filter line that suddenly began turning out unusable product. The culprit turned out to be a supplier that had changed a raw material to get around a patent fight and decided it was too small a detail to mention. That small detail cost tens of millions of dollars to engineer around. Then the supplier switched back.Joel's career spans petrochemicals, advanced composites, carbon fiber, biotech, and filtration, and clients from zero-revenue startups to companies worth $100 million. He got into the field after reading a book called So You Want to Be a Chemical Engineer, comparing starting salaries, and making a very practical decision. Decades later, when his company told him it was time to retire, he simply started consulting, and the clients called him. No marketing, no sales.Away from the lab, Joel is a history buff, and he reads about the end of the Weimar Republic and the crash of 1873 with a clear eye on the present. Ask him about today's AI boom and he will tell you how he thinks it ends.Meet Joel, and hear five decades of the chemical industry in one conversation.CHAPTERS:0:00 - Meet Joel Shertok, Chemical Engineer1:10 - When a Good Process Starts Making Garbage4:30 - Consulting From Startups to $100M Firms7:00 - History, Bubbles, and the AI BoomGUEST LINKS:Process Industries Consultants: https://processindconsultants.comJoel Shertok on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelshertok/ABOUT PEOPLE AT PYRAMID:People at Pyramid is the Pyramid Club's member spotlight podcast. Every episode, we sit down with one of our members to hear what they do, what drives them, and the stories that make them worth knowing. Hosted by Vince Quinn.SUBSCRIBE for a new member spotlight every other week.CONNECT:Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/people-at-pyramid/id1784545290Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7alEumoeEpbqgHzaugBPLZWatch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdd93VlJAwBR_m7jDhPxq3agoS8iLuT4GPeople at Pyramid: https://feeds.transistor.fm/people-at-pyramidVince Quinn on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/vincequinnInterested in being featured on People at Pyramid? Register hereWant help with your podcast? E-mail Vince Quinn [email protected] to learn about Pyramid Club Membership? Click here.

Listen to People at Pyramid wherever you get your podcasts: https://t-sml.mtrbio.com/public/smartlink/pyramid-clubFeeding the homeless in Philadelphia started for Darryl Johnson with one bag of sandwiches and a man who knew his name.Our member Darryl Johnson was handing out sandwiches in Center City about twenty years ago when a man pulled back a blanket and said hello by name. They had gone to school together. Darryl's son was standing right next to him.That night is why Beloved Brothers Inc. exists. Darryl and his friends had gone out once, as a church thing, and by the end of it none of them wanted it to be a one-time trip. They started going back every quarter.Going back every quarter is not the same as running a nonprofit, and the paperwork came later. Every time Darryl went to a council member for grant money he heard the same answer: get your 501(c)(3) first. He got it done in 2016, which makes this the organization's tenth year.The financial side of running one was familiar ground for him. Darryl spent his career as finance director for the Child Care Information Services program across Philadelphia with Caring People Alliance. What he had to learn was how to walk into a room and get people to see a vision well enough to fund it.The vision he is proudest of came out of a walk through the City Hall courtyard. Now in its fifth year, the annual dinner seats guests at tables, hands them menus, and has volunteers in black serving the plates. There are donated clothes, a barber cutting hair, and city homelessness offices set up with tables to connect people to services.By the third year of that dinner, the name of the work changed. A man came up to shake Darryl's hand and told him he was no longer homeless but was still hungry, because his budget ran short after medication. Darryl started saying homeless and hungry after that.That dinner is also where Darryl brings the next generation in. The youth who come out serve plates rather than watch. As Darryl puts it, the people the city walks past are the invisible people, and for one day they are told they are seen.CHAPTERS:0:00 - Meet Darryl Johnson3:04 - From One Night to a Nonprofit7:08 - Feeding the Homeless at City Hall11:03 - Not Homeless, But HungryGUEST LINKS:Beloved Brothers Inc.: https://www.belovedbrosinc.org/Email Darryl: [email protected] PEOPLE AT PYRAMID:People at Pyramid is the Pyramid Club's member spotlight podcast. Every episode, host Vince Quinn sits down with one of our members to find out who they are, what they build, and what makes them worth knowing. Stories worth telling, from the people who make up this place.SUBSCRIBE for new episodes every other week.CONNECT:Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/people-at-pyramid/id1784545290Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7alEumoeEpbqgHzaugBPLZWatch every episode: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdd93VlJAwBR_m7jDhPxq3agoS8iLuT4GVince Quinn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincequinnInterested in being featured on People at Pyramid? Register hereWant help with your podcast? E-mail Vince Quinn [email protected] to learn about Pyramid Club Membership? Click here.

Be a guest on People at Pyramid: https://feeds.transistor.fm/people-at-pyramidProcess improvement, Lean Six Sigma, and the planning that decides a project before the work even starts, with our member Elena Varela.This week on People at Pyramid, we're spotlighting our member Elena Varela, a business manager at Drexel University who spends her days making complicated projects run smoothly. If you have ever watched a big initiative stall, drift, or collapse under its own weight, this conversation is for you.Elena works in process improvement, and she is a believer in the Lean Six Sigma approach and the DMAIC framework: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control. But the heart of what she does is simpler than the terminology sounds. Before any project starts, she gets the requirements clear and builds a charter everyone can agree on. Skip that planning, she says, and it always comes back later as bloat, rework, and a timeline nobody signed up for.She also talks about the human side of the job. A big part of managing projects is managing people: getting experts in a room, keeping them pointed in the same direction, and building the trust that keeps the work moving. Elena calls it herding cats, and she clearly loves it.We get into where AI tools fit, too. Elena and Vince trade stories about using them for the parts of the work nobody wants to do, and about what happens when you hand them the hard part instead. Then the conversation turns to something closer to Elena's heart: movies, storytelling, and why she is drawn to stories about human connection.Meet Elena, and hear why she is the kind of member who makes this community what it is.CHAPTERS:0:00 - Meet Elena Varela, Business Manager at Drexel3:00 - Project Management Best Practices7:40 - Movies, Storytelling, and Human Connection10:30 - A Show Recommendation and How to ConnectGUEST LINKS:Elena Varela on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenajvarela/ABOUT PEOPLE AT PYRAMID:People at Pyramid is the Pyramid Club's member spotlight podcast. Every episode, we sit down with one of our members to hear what they do, what drives them, and the stories that make them worth knowing. Hosted by Vince Quinn.SUBSCRIBE for a new member spotlight every other week.CONNECT:Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/people-at-pyramid/id1784545290Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7alEumoeEpbqgHzaugBPLZWatch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdd93VlJAwBR_m7jDhPxq3agoS8iLuT4GPeople at Pyramid: https://feeds.transistor.fm/people-at-pyramidVince Quinn on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/vincequinnInterested in being featured on People at Pyramid? Register hereWant help with your podcast? E-mail Vince Quinn [email protected] to learn about Pyramid Club Membership? Click here.

Be a guest on People at Pyramid: https://feeds.transistor.fm/people-at-pyramidA paralegal, a law student, and a property manager all at once, and a plan built around tax law, with our newest member Emerald Vaughan.This week on People at Pyramid, we're spotlighting our newest member, Emerald Vaughan, who joined the Club just two weeks ago and is already running three careers at once. She is a paralegal by day, a law student by night, and a property manager on the weekends.Emerald walks us through what a paralegal really does, and why the job comes down to being a details person: reading contracts, drafting motions, and catching the small things that keep a client protected. From there she traces her path from debate-team captain to the courtroom-adjacent work she does now, and the moment she asked herself why she was not the attorney in the room. So she went to law school, and she is set on tax law.Her case for tax law is refreshingly practical. She likes finding a deal, and she likes helping people, and reducing what someone owes is one of the most direct ways to do both. For a lot of people, she points out, it is easier to trim expenses than to earn more.Then we get into her weekends. Emerald manages several properties and does much of the renovation work herself, from swapping a faucet to redoing a backsplash. Her advice for anyone intimidated by home projects is to start small and build up, and to remember her golden rule: measure twice, cut once, and if you mess up, call a contractor.Meet Emerald, and see why she is the kind of member you want to know.CHAPTERS: 0:00 - Meet Emerald Vaughan 2:05 - Why Tax Law 4:15 - Real Estate and DIY Renovations 7:00 - Taking On New Projects and How to ConnectGUEST LINKS: Emerald Vaughan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emeraldvaughanABOUT PEOPLE AT PYRAMID: People at Pyramid is the Pyramid Club's member spotlight podcast. Every episode, we sit down with one of our members to hear what they do, what drives them, and the stories that make them worth knowing. Hosted by Vince Quinn.SUBSCRIBE for a new member spotlight every other week.Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/people-at-pyramid/id1784545290 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7alEumoeEpbqgHzaugBPLZ Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdd93VlJAwBR_m7jDhPxq3agoS8iLuT4G People at Pyramid: https://feeds.transistor.fm/people-at-pyramid Vince Quinn on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/vincequinnInterested in being featured on People at Pyramid? Register hereWant help with your podcast? E-mail Vince Quinn [email protected] to learn about Pyramid Club Membership? Click here.

This week we sit down with our member Yola Vital, owner of Recovery Space and founder of Green Girl Era, on how showing up built her business and her community in a brand new city.When Yola moved to Philadelphia, she did not know anyone. She was building a business, but the community was not there yet, and it wore on her. What turned it around was putting herself in the right rooms, the Pyramid Club among them, and letting the connections find her.Out of that came Green Girl Era, the women's golf and social club she launched in 2026. For Yola, golf is a networking engine first and a sport second. She goes for the conversations on the course, the lunches after, and the introductions that travel from Philadelphia to Ghana, Kenya, and beyond.The other side of her work is Recovery Space, the social service agency she owns. It grew from sober homes into transitional and emergency housing, case management, and partnerships with the district attorney's office and private landlords, serving people coming home from incarceration and rebuilding their lives. She talks about learning the business from the ground up, writing her own grants and proposals, and going all in to own her agency.Interested in being featured on People at Pyramid? Register hereWant help with your podcast? E-mail Vince Quinn [email protected] to learn about Pyramid Club Membership? Click here.

What does it take to find purpose once you've already "made it"? This week we sit down with our member Charley Timmins, who has been part of the Pyramid Club for eight years and spends his days helping talented professionals get unstuck and figure out what's next.Charley calls himself the "what's next" guy, and it fits. He works with high achievers who have built careers, companies, and wealth, then reach the moment where they ask, is this all there is? His answer starts with purpose. Not the quota, not the title, but the impact you have beyond yourself.We talked about why community matters more than ever. As Charley put it, the pandemic proved we can't do things alone, and real connection doesn't happen through a screen. We have to be in each other's presence. That belief is a big part of why he values the Club, and why he tells new members to give it a full year before they judge it.The heart of the conversation is a story. Charley walks through how he helped a 62-year-old consultant prove his irreplaceable value to a company that was about to move on without him, using nothing more than a roll of butcher paper and the history of a product only he understood. The outcome changed that man's retirement, and his legacy.It's a warm, generous conversation about purpose, community, and helping people become who they were meant to be. Meet Charley Timmins on this week's episode.GUEST LINKS:Email Charley: [email protected] with Charley on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charleytimmins/ABOUT PEOPLE AT PYRAMID:People at Pyramid is the Pyramid Club's member-spotlight podcast, hosted by Vince Quinn. Every episode, we sit down with one of our members to hear who they are, what they do, and what makes them worth knowing. It is a look inside a community built on the people who make it what it is.SUBSCRIBE for new episodes every two weeks.CONNECT:Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/people-at-pyramid/id1784545290Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7alEumoeEpbqgHzaugBPLZHost: https://linkedin.com/in/vincequinnShow website: https://feeds.transistor.fm/people-at-pyramid

Leadership is the constant that holds steady through AI, economic shifts, and everything else. This week we sit down with our member Stephen Novak, Client Lead at Aiir Consulting, to talk about what that looks like in practice.Stephen spends his days coaching leaders at companies of every shape and size, and he keeps his definition of the job simple: leadership is the act of realizing a clear and compelling vision through others. Everything else is detail.We talked about AI first, because Stephen had just hosted an event on AI and leadership. His take is steady and clear. The tools are changing fast, and good leaders adapt to them. What does not change is that business is still built by people. AI can hold a lot of knowledge, but it does not carry lived experience or judgment, and it only works with the context you feed it. As Stephen put it, your team can tell when a response came from a model instead of from you, because the model does not have your wisdom.From there the conversation turned to sports, home turf for Vince after a decade in sports radio. Stephen, a Pittsburgh guy through and through, drew the parallels between coaching athletes and coaching executives. Even the best in the world keep a coach. Tiger Woods always had one. The demands keep shifting, the game rarely goes to plan, and the ability to adapt in the moment sits at the heart of both sports and leadership.We got into coaching styles and culture, from the burnout that follows a coach who pushes too hard to the patient, culture-first rebuilds that pay off over years. Stephen and Vince talked about coaching trees, the way one strong leader develops people who go on to develop others, and how that compounds across a whole organization.It is a warm, wide-ranging conversation about the parts of leadership that technology cannot touch. Meet Stephen Novak on this week's episode.GUEST LINKS:Email Stephen: [email protected] with Stephen on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-novak/CONNECT:Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/people-at-pyramid/id1784545290Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7alEumoeEpbqgHzaugBPLZHost: https://linkedin.com/in/vincequinnShow website: https://feeds.transistor.fm/people-at-pyramidWatch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdd93VlJAwBR_m7jDhPxq3agoS8iLuT4GFollow People at Pyramid wherever you listen.Interested in being featured on People at Pyramid? Register hereWant to learn about Pyramid Club Membership? Click here.