Barefoot Innovation Podcast

My guests are Christopher Giancarlo, former Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Daniel Gorfine, who previously led the CFTC’s innovation program, LabCFTC. When they left the commission, they teamed up to found the Digital Dollar Project, advocating for why and how the United States needs to join the 80-plus other countries that are planning to issue Central Bank Digital Currency, or CBDC.

January 14, 2021

This is our final show of 2020 and I predict it will be an all-time favorite. It is already a favorite of mine. That’s because of who my guest is -- Scott Cook, the legendary founder of Intuit -- and also because of what he says. In this conversation, Scott takes us with him in thinking about the roots of innovation, the wellsprings of creativity. Where does innovation come from? How do you turn a good idea into a great company? What values should drive the effort? Scott shares his thinking on all this, he does it mainly by telling us stories drawn from his own experience.

December 23, 2020

Today’s guest is Alex Lintner, Group President of Experian Consumer Information Services, which provides credit reporting services to lenders throughout the world. This is Alex’s second time on Barefoot Innovation. The last time, we were talking with LendUp’s Sasha Orloff about credit scoring innovation. In today’s show, we’re talking about credit scoring transformation. 

December 22, 2020

As the 2020 pandemic continues to threaten America’s small businesses, it makes sense to talk with people who are saving them, by serving them through technology. My guests today do just that. They are Ross Buhrdorf, CEO & Founder of ZenBusiness, and his colleague Lamine Zarrad. Lamine, who is SVP of Financial Services, was a guest on Barefoot Innovation last year, when he was CEO of Joust. Joust was acquired by ZenBusiness earlier this year.

December 10, 2020

Today’s guest has her finger on the pulse of global change in the world of payments, including how the COVID pandemic is changing the world. She is Ann Cairns, Executive Vice Chair of Mastercard. I first met Ann at the Paris Fintech Forum last January, just before the virus turned our world upside down. It’s fitting, then, that we started our discussion with the pandemic, and specifically with how it is affecting women. By the time we finished, we had traveled far into the future of payments.

November 24, 2020

In late January, just a few short weeks before COVID shut down the world, I was in Paris (which now seems like a lifetime ago). As I was helping myself to a coffee in the speaker lounge of the Paris Fintech Forum, I ran into Renaud Laplanche. Renaud was one of our earliest guests on Barefoot Innovation when he was CEO of Lending Club, and I’m so happy to have him back today in his new role as CEO and co-founder of Upgrade. I wanted to talk with him about Upgrade, and also to get his thoughts about how the fintech sector has evolved since those days.

November 13, 2020

When I started my senior fellowship at Harvard in 2015, I moved into the Boston “Innovation District,” an old neighborhood where rough brick streets slope down to Boston Harbor. A few blocks from my apartment was one of Boston’s most exciting young fintechs, Circle. Today’s guest, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, was a guest on my podcast show back then. Today, he’s back. And what a world of change has transpired in these five years.

October 30, 2020

Today’s show is a special one because it includes breaking news. My guest is Linda Lacewell, the New York State Superintendent of the Department of Financial Services, and she will not only share her program for innovating in the midst of a pandemic, but will also announce an exciting initiative: the DFS is working with us at AIR to host New York’s first-ever regulatory tech sprint, in partnership with the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS).

October 15, 2020