Turning Quantum Potential into Strategic Plans

Overview

Government, business and innovation have always been intertwined and quantum tech is no exception. In this episode of The Quantum Spin by HKA, Petra Soderling, CEO of Petra Soderling and Company, explains how government investments in deep tech pay off for private companies that commercialize the inventions. Petra also shares the details of her unique career, from working at Nokia to launching her own startups to drafting quantum strategies for the EU. This episode covers the intricacies of quantum policy, the importance of standards in technology, and the role of government in fostering innovation.

00:00 Introduction to Quantum Spin Podcast
00:34 Meet Petra Soderling: A Journey Through Quantum
00:56 Drafting the EU Quantum Strategy
03:14 The Importance of Standardization in Quantum
05:51 EU Quantum Strategy: Communication Networks and Grand Challenges
09:16 Government’s Role in Innovation
18:04 Petra’s Entrepreneurial Ventures
21:31 The Future of Quantum and Ethical Considerations
24:30 Storytelling in Quantum Technology
27:46 Conclusion and Podcast Information

Petra is a Finnish-American innovator and strategist specializing in government and innovation. She has held executive roles at Nokia, founded two startups, and advised the World Bank and European Investment Bank on deep tech. She serves as Head of Government and Consortium Relations at the Quantum Strategy Institute and is author of Government and Innovation (2023).

Transcript

[00:00:00] Veronica: Hello, and welcome to The Quantum Spin by HKA. I’m Veronica Combs. I’m a writer and an editor here at the agency. I get to talk every day with really smart people working on really fascinating subjects, everything in the Quantum industry, from hardware to software. On our podcast, we focus in on quantum communication, and by that I don’t mean making networks safe from hacking or entangling photons over long distance, but talking about the technology.

[00:00:26] How do you explain these complicated concepts to people who don’t have a background in science and engineering but want to understand all the same? 

[00:00:34] Today I am talking with Petra Soderling, who is the CEO of Petra Soderling and Company. She has a very interesting work history. She’s been an entrepreneur, she’s worked with government organizations. She’s lived, all around the world and now she has landed in the quantum realm, so I’m really excited to talk with her.

[00:00:51] Thanks for joining us today. Petra. 

[00:00:53] Petra: Great to be here, Veronica. Thanks for inviting me. 

[00:00:56] Veronica: So over the last several years 

[00:00:58] countries around the world have come up with quantum strategies. These plans cover investment, workforce development, supply chain issues, all the components needed to build this new ecosystem. I know that you recently drafted the EU’s quantum strategy, and that plan is to make Europe a global leader in quantum by 2030.

[00:01:18] What was that process like?

[00:01:20] Petra: Whether it’s the Office of Technology and Science at the White House or Department of DOE, Department of Commerce, when they write strategies, they get input from all over the place, and then they put that input together.

[00:01:32] So I was invited to draft, take all that input and draft it into a document, right? So I’m not a spokesperson for the European Commission, so I’m not the owner of the strategy. I was merely the pen who drafted it.

[00:01:46] Yes. 

[00:01:46] So you recently drafted this quantum strategy, but throughout your career you’ve been interested in how policy and standards shape industry is that right?

[00:01:56] Petra: Like you alluded, my work history goes from being an entrepreneur, working with the governments. I’ve also worked for a corporate, I was 12 years at Nokia before that, so I’m like at this point in my life where I’m combining all the learnings from the private industry, be it from a corporate environment or being a startup entrepreneur, and then working for the Finnish government for four years and bringing all that together.

[00:02:20] And you know, using these tools and the skill sets and maybe some of the analytical eye that I might have developed over the years to help governments write these strategies where they use the tools that governments can use to spur innovation and then how to best serve the private industry, especially in new technologies such as quantum.

[00:02:43] So it was a lot of fun drafting this strategy. I’m a tech policy buff. I just love tech policy. International relations. I’m a Finnish citizen, and a US citizen, but I live in France, so I see this need for international cooperation. That was a big part of why I was so excited to be drafting this strategy and then especially being European and American.

[00:03:07] Working for the US/EU relations in these deep tech areas is really interesting. I’ve also worked with the Quantum Strategy Institute, so I did write a report together with Brian Lenahan on export controls recently. So anything that has to do with defense, dual use, expert controls, I think it’s really important to get that right.

[00:03:30] Also standard is, I mean, this all sounds so boring, but they’re really close to my heart. I did a lot of standardization work during my time at Nokia. So just in general, get this arch from publicly funded research to privately operating profitable companies, how to do that with new technologies.

[00:03:50] So that really excites me. 

[00:03:52] Veronica: Is there an element of quantum or of the report that you drafted that really just was your favorite or that you particularly wanted to read more about when you were finished with the draft?

[00:04:01] Petra: The couple maybe that I mentioned: the defense side of it, the regulation. What is the government’s role in making sure that when we create these technologies, that they’re being used for the citizens and the taxpayers who are paying for some of this stuff.

[00:04:16] And then I also have this curious history with standardization I, I went to work at Nokia in year 2000 when mobile phones were just coming out, and those were the kind of the inaugural years for the mobile phone technologies similar to what we’re experiencing with quantum today.

[00:04:35] And I did represent Nokia at some of these standardization forums. Where we worked together with Ericsson and some other companies and created the essential patents that went into the standards. Wow. And what I learned was that even though these companies, Nokia and Ericsson, for example they make cellular networks.

[00:04:54] So they are network providers in the telecommunications industry. They don’t make mobile phones anymore like they used to, but they were early innovators, even on the mobile phone side. So they have the essential patents for mobile phones. So the people who come after them, Apple, Samsung, they have to use the standards because the 3G 4G 5G standards are owned by these companies who came before them. So actually Nokia and Ericsson are getting a lot of licensing money from Apple and Samsung even today. 

[00:05:27] Veronica: Wow. 

[00:05:28] Petra: So for that reason, I think it’s really important that quantum companies understand that they have to go into standardization and if they want to get their technologies, their patents into the standards, this is the time to do it.

[00:05:42] Veronica: This is exactly why I wanted to speak with you, that history of seeing these technological changes and learning the lessons and applying the lessons, sometimes we forget that part, but yeah, it’s so true. So the one thing that really caught my eye in the quantum strategy was the plans for communications network because here, at HKA, we’re always trying to give examples and give use cases, and this is how quantum technology might be applied.

[00:06:05] And so there’s a plan to build a network in, in nodes or hubs across Europe and that seemed like the perfect way to sort of literally and figuratively tie everyone together with a shared sort of goal. Is that, what do you think about the, do you see it that way or no?

[00:06:20] Petra: It’s a very important part, but it’s not the way, it’s one of the ways. So if you. Look at the EU strategy. It’s it’s all about industrial competitiveness and technological sovereignty. So it’s everything. EU has more than 450 million people, has over 30 million companies it’s same size or bigger than the US.

[00:06:41] Why would they choose to just work with part of the picture? They wanna go all in. So they wanna work on quantum computers and communications and sensing talent building building companies, building the economic impact ,building also the security aspect of it. But you’re right, the communications part is very exciting.

[00:07:02] It’s already happening, so it’s not a plan. They’ve been building the, the fiber optic part of it for some time. Also, the satellite part is being built, although probably not launched, I’m not sure. But yeah it’s one of the more, more exciting projects. Also because I do want to study the role of government in all of this,

[00:07:22] this is where government is very closely related because it’s a lot of these super big projects need to be funded partly with public money, but also the beneficiaries are going to be the citizens of the EU who can then use trusted banking services and they can trust that their privacy is being taken care of and, the national securities are being looked after.

[00:07:46] Veronica: Right, right, 

[00:07:47] Exactly. 

[00:07:48] Particularly with everyone saying 2030 is really the deadline for this post-quantum encryption change. Part of the EU quantum strategy is a couple grand challenges. And I also have been writing about in tracking technology for a while, and it strikes me a little bit like a hackathon and some of the DARPA competitions.

[00:08:09] Why do you like the Grand Challenges approach?

[00:08:11] Petra: Yeah, DARPA hackathons, it’s a good comparison, except the EU is not a country, it’s 27 countries. So that’s why I like the grand challenges that it allows for the 27 countries to, for a moment, pretend we’re all just one country.

[00:08:26] So this is the way for the European Commission, the European Union, to emulate the DARPA challenge. Got it. So, So that’s one thing. It’s it’s across Europe. It’s large. So the attempt is to solve the big problems.

[00:08:41] The two first ones that they’ve announced is one is the fault tolerant quantum computing systems. And that would be done together with industry. So industry will offer the grand problems to be solved. And the second one is positioning, navigation and timing. And, it’s not explicitly written out, but the idea is to create secure positioning systems, but also I think it’s not a secret that Europe wants to see an alternative to the GPS system.

[00:09:09] Veronica: Yes. That’s becomes clearer and clearer every day that we need a backup or an alternative or both. Yeah, sadly. One thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately in terms of, as you mentioned, government funding and government guidance and support for these innovations is, DARPA was central to the start of the internet and the building blocks, and I thought imagine if a commercial company had

[00:09:32] started the internet, like

[00:09:34] no, you wouldn’t have the common access. It’s not possible access it’s, yeah, the collaboration and the infrastructure. And I just thought, we need to remember that the government governments do good things.

[00:09:43] Petra: I wrote a whole book about this. Yes. 

[00:09:44] This is called “Government and Innovation:

[00:09:46] The Economic Developers Guide to our Future”, and I have so many examples. Many of them are from the post World War II era. You know, you have their nuclear energy, vaccines, radar. Just things that you had to build and you had all this capacity from the war, right? But then also the other part that I, looked at really carefully is which countries are most innovative countries and what kinds of political systems they have. And, WIPO the World Intellectual Property Organization, they announced the top 10 list of the most, the world’s most innovative countries. And I’m gonna read you.

[00:10:24] The latest, which is from 24. So from number one to number 20, there’s Switzerland, Sweden, the US, Singapore, UK, Republic of Korea, Finland, Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark. And in my book, while it’s from 2023, I looked at the commonalities of these countries and their systems, and one of the things is the predictability of your political and economic system.

[00:10:50] Ronald Reagan call the, the worst words: I’m from the government, I’m here to help, or the government should get out of way. That is not correct because we would not be having these technologies if it wasn’t for the deep pockets of the taxpayer who can take these big risks,

[00:11:06] and allow then private companies to build products and profits and offer jobs and, create prosperity for all. So it’s not a competition between the government and the private sector. It’s a collaboration. One couldn’t exist without the other. 

[00:11:21] Veronica: Right, right.

[00:11:21] Exactly. And the research dollars that go into like the scientific research that the US government was funding for every dollar spent, the community gets like $2.38 back.

[00:11:33] And it’s that forward vision and the space for scientists to read and learn. I was talking to someone else the other day and they said, yeah, this one group that was fundamental to some of the quantum tech that we’re using would go on skiing. They would take skiing breaks in the afternoon because they’d work on science early in the morning and

[00:11:48] and then when they would go for a walk or go for a ski or whatever. So that freedom to think and get through these big problems.

[00:11:55] So I think one thing that some entrepreneurs get frustrated with in the government is like the meetings and the structures and the bureaucratic side of it.

[00:12:05] I think that we’ve learned, painfully that move fast and break things is not the right approach to anything, technology or government or anything. But I’m curious how your sort of entrepreneurial side informs your governmental work and there’s a high level advisory board as part of the quantum strategy and a cooperation framework.

[00:12:22] Which intellectually, you need, but I’m curious how you implement those and keep the excitement moving forward. 

[00:12:27] Petra: I also have a podcast of my own, and when the EU announced their AI regulation package, I interviewed some of the European AI companies. And their message was that it having all that regulation, like a long-term commitment to a vision and a direction by the government.

[00:12:47] It’s helpful because it helps them plan. So if the government moves fast and breaks things, how will the companies ever be able to plan ahead and trust that? Okay. If for example, this is the interest rate, this is the fed interest rate today. It’s not gonna be different tomorrow or dramatically, even if it’s

[00:13:05] it’s different six months from now, it’s not gonna be dramatically different. Or tariffs. My husband is making wine here in France and we really want to export to the US but we’ve been waiting for the tariff conversation to stabilize. So we haven’t been able to invest into importing French wine yet because, the tariff is not predictable.

[00:13:26] We don’t have trust in the process right now in terms of US/EU tariffs. Just one example. I am also today preparing for a podcast recording in my own podcast, “Deep Pockets”. I’m gonna interview a person named Chris McClean and he’s doing PhD work on looking at the risks and benefits of trusting relationships and what he says, the moral obligations we carry when placing our trust in parties in position of power.

[00:13:56] And Chris and I, we’re gonna talk about this concept of trust in society and in economy. We’re also gonna talk about AI and implementing trust in, in how companies use AI. 

[00:14:07] But trust 

[00:14:08] is the element, and trust is why we need governance, why we need frameworks. We need to enable trust in the private companies for them to innovate and carry out business.

[00:14:21] Veronica: Right, right. Like some of the research funding commitments that stretch over years because that’s how much time you need to do this work.

[00:14:27] Petra: Absolutely. And again, it’s a big risk investment. So when you start to do research, you don’t always know what the outcome is.

[00:14:33] You can’t plan it. It’s not product development, it is scientific research. So you start to study lizard spit or whatever, and out comes Ozempic. You don’t know the outcome until you’re there and you need to take big risks.

[00:14:46] Veronica: In addition to your work drafting the quantum strategy, you also work with the World Bank and the European Investment Bank.

[00:14:52] And I know you were working in the Quantum Finance Lab that also sounds very interesting and important. What was that work like? 

[00:14:59] Petra: Okay, so all of these are assignments through my consulting company. So they’re they’re my clients. They’re assignments, The World Bank is actually, that ended.

[00:15:08] So that ran from 2022 until last year. What I did for the World Bank was. I, on their behalf, I helped the government of Serbia to implement their existing AI strategy.

[00:15:19] Mm-hmm. 

[00:15:20] But I was hired through the World Bank to look into the action plan and carry out the action plan.

[00:15:27] How to implement their strategy in government, how to make sure that all the data is collected in the right way and stored in the right way and can be used for 

[00:15:37] their AI Institute, the Center of Excellence, that it serves the communities and serves the government.

[00:15:42] So that was the World Bank. It’s ended. That was a lot of fun.

[00:15:47] But then the European Investment Bank. There are two separate assignments. One was the Quantum Finance Lab, which also ended earlier this year. So it was a 12 month period where the investment bank looked at how to better fund and finance European quantum companies. We know that there are

[00:16:08] lots of small quantum startups in Europe as there are in the US and it’s fairly easy to get a grant and they can build the minimum viable product. But then when you actually have to start scaling your technology, when you have to start manufacturing on an industrial scale the EIB wants to help the scale up, the quantum scale up in Europe

[00:16:32] to build those manufacturing facilities and other infrastructure and what they need. So that was kind of like a pilot project for quantum. And the other one, the ecosystem one that’s still ongoing. It expanded the same thing, but across seven different technologies.

[00:16:49] So we’re now looking in addition to just quantum, we’ve got AI, cybersecurity, life sciences, space, semiconductors, and the defense industry. Wow. So it’s very exciting. Very interesting. The EIB group itself has three different legs. One is the European Investment Fund, which is a fund of funds. So they work with VC funds help VC funds to collect investment euros into the tech funds.

[00:17:19] Then there’s the European Innovation Council, which works with startups. So it offers like the small business administration offers, grants runs startup accelerators, incubators, that sort of thing. And then the bank part, the European Investment Bank, which offers venture debt, loans and other maybe equity, but more loan based in instruments for scaling and growing these deep tech companies.

[00:17:45] Super exciting work. I really enjoy it. Yes, 

[00:17:49] Veronica: I know Alice and Bob announced a a new production facility or new lab research space in Paris, and it’s so interesting to watch that develop and understand the strategy behind that ’cause that’s the scale up that I think you’re talking about, right?

[00:18:02] Petra: Yes. Yeah. 

[00:18:04] Veronica: You were in startup founder mode for almost 10 years here in the States. I think your work was mostly here in the States. is that right? That’s when you lived here?

[00:18:13] Petra: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Most of it.

[00:18:15] Veronica: So, you really had a range of of work a real estate 3D modeling company, a model app development company.

[00:18:22] Tell me what was your takeaway from all those years of building. 

[00:18:25] Petra: Yeah, I don’t know. It’s been a few years since I got well, I’m a consultant now, so in a way I’m a startup founder. I’m an entrepreneur, yes. But I had been at Nokia, like in different corporate jobs for 12 years.

[00:18:39] Actually, so if your listeners are aware of the history of Nokia. It used to be a large smartphone manufacturer before the iPhone, and then iPhone came and killed the smartphone business. The Nokia mobile phone business was sold off to Microsoft and we were offered

[00:18:55] the chance to go and work for Microsoft, or we could take a severance package and leave the company.

[00:19:00] And I always wanted to be an entrepreneur myself, so I took the package and, I actually got a little bit of funding from Nokia as well for my first startup, Oh wow. And for, from the Finnish government. And then I ran off to New York with the Finnish taxpayer money, which is another story. So I put that in my book and deeply apologize to the Finnish people, but I hope I’m bringing them something back by working on the European investment side now, hopefully.

[00:19:26] But yeah, being a founder, being an entrepreneur, it’s just. Always trial and error and you start out by thinking you have a vision and then you start to execute, and then you pivot and then you learn more and then you just end up changing. So what happened with my first company, I was in New York.

[00:19:43] My company was a matchmaking business for companies that needed mobile apps at the time, around 2010, 2011, 2012, there weren’t that many app developers. ’cause the whole app economy was just being built. And then I had 3000 developers in my network. So I offered the app building capability or the capacity of my developers to these American

[00:20:06] companies, and it was hugely successful except I wasn’t making any money. So I got out of that business and moved to New Orleans

[00:20:15] and I started my own 3D modeling company in New Orleans.

[00:20:19] Veronica: Yeah, what a great place to live. I mean, sort of the opposite end of the spectrum from Helsinki. I’m not sure if you’re from Helsinki or not. Yes. But wow. 

[00:20:27] Petra: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And then I was approached by the Finnish government in 2018. They wanted to hire me to do foreign direct investment from US to Finland.

[00:20:37] So that was my four years with the Finnish government. I was trying to attract American companies to set up R&D in Finland, which was really difficult. That’s actually how I discovered quantum. You know, if you are trying to tell an American company that, hey. You should go to the other side of the world, to a country with a different currency and different language and set up your lab there, they would need a really good reason.

[00:21:02] So I had to find those really good reasons. And quantum was one of those reasons where, Finland has a good story. So I could approach the US quantum companies and say, Hey, Finland is building a quantum computer. They have an open bid. Are you interested? And then I started to look into quantum and I’m just like, wow, I had no idea about

[00:21:22] any of this. This is amazing. So I just completely fell in love with quantum then. 

[00:21:28] Veronica: Wow. Wow. That’s such a great story,

[00:21:31] You know, we are at this point where we do need as you mentioned, the industrialization and the scale up and actually making it work outside the lab and, so it seems like the perfect time for an entrepreneur to help quantum companies and governments do that.

[00:21:45] How do you bring that entrepreneurial agility to these quantum organizations? 

[00:21:49] Petra: That’s a tough question. Most of the quantum companies are such early stage. They are building products that don’t even really work that well.

[00:21:58] Yet. If they are making money, they’re making money by selling instruments to other fellow quantum researchers or product builders. I think these people are agile by nature. You don’t go into starting a quantum startup company without being super agile and flexible.

[00:22:15] Right. 

[00:22:15] Veronica: Do you feel when you’re working with governments that it’s the vision that you have to really focus on and prioritize ? 

[00:22:22] Petra: Yeah, I think it’s the vision. I think you nailed it. Those countries that already have, decades old research labs in quantum, they know what they’re doing. But what about the rest of us?

[00:22:34] Like how do governments avoid and countries avoid what happened with AI? Most countries were not doing anything with AI and then along comes open AI and Chat GPT, and everyone’s oh wow, what is this? Maybe we should look into this, and then maybe it’s too late. So don’t make the same mistake with quantum as you made with AI, but start to create your national quantum strategy early on.

[00:22:58] And even countries, even if they don’t have physics labs, if they don’t have quantum talent, they can still come up with a quantum strategy. They don’t need to be maybe building all of these infrastructures and products themselves. But how do they utilize them? How do they make sure that their industries and their citizens will be able to benefit from this technology and not be left out?

[00:23:24] Veronica: Right, right. Yeah. And 

[00:23:26] Petra: have some kind of a long-term vision of what this means for your region and your country. 

[00:23:30] Veronica: I try to bring up the European approach to some of this technology and emphasize safety.

[00:23:36] Mm-hmm. But you can have the promise of the technology with guardrails that keep all of us safe, really.

[00:23:42] Petra: Yeah, exactly.

[00:23:43] Although I’m not sure we know what the ethics and safety of quantum is. I’ve been going to the Quantum World Congress since its inception. I think it’s been organized for three or four years now. And last year they had the ethics group for the first time. And I walked into the room and probably many of your listeners were in the same room and it was about 30 people in a room.

[00:24:04] And we just all looked at each other and okay, we should talk about ethics maybe. So what should we think about? And it was very bizarre that all these people really wanna build ethical approaches around quantum, but we’re still figuring out what that actually means. 

[00:24:21] Veronica: And I think in this environment it’s just- even having the conversation is important, right?

[00:24:25] We have to have the conversation and get going, even if we don’t know what the agenda looks like.

[00:24:29] Petra: Absolutely.

[00:24:30] Veronica: As you mentioned, you have a podcast “Deep Pockets with Petra Soderling” and a Substack newsletter, “Government and Innovation”, which is also the name of your book. So whenever I’m getting ready to interview someone, I like to read through all their online presence and see what they’re talking about.

[00:24:44] And, 

[00:24:45] With our podcast we like to talk about storytelling and how do you explain quantum, something that’s very technical to people who don’t have a physics degree and will probably never have a physics degree. So, of course there’s been a lot of debate about hype. Is it good, is it bad? And I really liked one of your posts about it was called “In Defense of Hype”, and you really focused on the good

[00:25:04] parts of hype. Your comment was: how many of our existing inventions exist because someone at some point hyped them, and how many inventions were never turned into products because at that particular time, there was no storyteller present. So it feels like you’re the storyteller for lots of the European governments and in America too as well.

[00:25:25] How do you weave that storytelling into your work? 

[00:25:27] Petra: Ooh. I think that’s a good question. I guess I do it intuitively somehow. I’m just personally really excited about quantum and I think of myself as a rational person, but I also think of myself as someone who gets super excited about things super easily.

[00:25:44] And with quantum it’s just the weirdness of it, like the quantum mechanics and just the quantum phenomena themselves. Okay, we’re building computers and we understand what computers are and we’ve got communications networks. That’s not really exciting. What is really exciting is the actual quantum phenomena.

[00:26:02] So at high school, I got into existentialism because I wanted to find a woman philosophers. I read a lot of Simone de Beauvoir and I read a lot of Jean-Paul Sartre. And in existentialism you have this idea, or the question rather. Does the world exist as we see it, or do we create the world when we see it?

[00:26:21] And then when I realized that this is quantum, that quantum has this same idea that the same question, does the world exist or does this object exist if I’m not looking at it? Or we can create phenomena by observing it, I’m like, wow, this is just so amazing. It’s combining philosophy chemistry, biology, physics,

[00:26:44] technology, and it’s just so super, super futuristic, super forward looking and also natural. It’s how nature is doing things. So finally, I feel like we’re closing the loop in trying to fight nature, trying to build products from plastic and metals and silicone and go into the living organisms and utilize nature’s own way of doing things.

[00:27:11] So that is what really drives me and gets me excited as you can hear. 

[00:27:18] Veronica: Well, that’s, 

[00:27:18] That’s funny. I had the same motivation. I had been writing about quantum for a tech publication and I could see them not wanting to do that anymore. And I just thought, this is too fascinating and too powerful, and there’s too many smart people working in this space to just let it go.

[00:27:32] So that’s why I joined HKA, so I could tell stories and learn more. And it is all that. Just the idea of entanglement and the distance and teleportation and magic states. Even the language of quantum is 

[00:27:43] absolutely, it’s fantastic.

[00:27:45] Otherworldly. 

[00:27:46] So well, thank you so much for joining us today. It’s been really great to speak with you. And again,” Deep Pockets” is your podcast and “Government Innovation”

[00:27:53] Is your book as well. Thanks again for joining us today. I really appreciate it. 

[00:27:57] Petra: Thanks Veronica. It was a lot of fun.

Host Veronica Combs is a quantum tech editor, writer and PR professional. She manages public relations for quantum computing and tech clients as an account manager with HKA Marketing Communications, the #1 agency in quantum tech PR. You can find them on X, formerly known as Twitter, @HKA_PR. Veronica joined HKA from TechRepublic, where she was a senior writer. She has covered technology, healthcare and business strategy for more than 10 years. If you’d like to be on the podcast yourself, you can reach her on LinkedIn, Veronica Combs, or you can go to the HKA website and share your suggestion via the Contact Us page.

October 13, 2025