Heads & Tales

Mother-daughter duo Rebecca Bender and Deshae Wise share their stories of surviving nearly six years living in human trafficking. Rebecca shares with us her story of surviving human sex trafficking and how her experiences have allowed her to become an advocate, activist, and one of the foremost authorities on human sex trafficking. Rebecca has trained over 100,000 professionals, including FBI, Homeland Security, regional law enforcement, and medical personnel.  She also runs Elevate Academy, the largest online school for survivors of human trafficking. Deshae is an utter force of nature. She shares with us her journey about her personal relationship with her own identity and her unique journey to becoming a star student at Berkeley and a first-rate NCAA track athlete. 

Romanian-born supermodel Andreea Diaconu joins us to discuss the realities of modeling in the digital age and the importance of trusting her intuition and allowing her moral compass to guide her to find inner peace. 

From Toothpaste to Panties: How Lida Orzeck’s innate entrepreneurial mindset led her to create “the worlds’ most comfortable thong,” made by women for women. From selling a thong a second to keeping production made in the USA, Hanky Panky’s Lida Orzeck explains how her empire came to be. 

Trend forecasting: Maggie dives into her journey with turning an Instagram page into a business and the process of monetizing Claude Home, which started as a passion project and quickly turned into an interior design sensation. We discuss the Summer of 2020 and how being a part of the uprising of the Black Lives Matter movement in New York City moved her to publicly take a stance on her platform and inspire change among her community. 

“The heart of a nonprofit but the head of a business:” Co-founder Ally Svenson explains the success in MOD Pizza’s achievement of conscious capitalism. From a $72 Million acquisition by Starbucks to employing those who need it most at MOD Pizza, we discuss Ally’s 20+ year-long entrepreneurial escapades.