Anton Pleshivtsev spent over eight years at Bravado, climbing from Head of Engineering to VP, before stepping into a new chapter as Director of Engineering at Sendblue in the San Francisco Bay Area. He talks about the pivot from hands-on engineer to engineering leadership, what it's like to join a small, fast-moving startup after a long tenure at one company, and how he scaled, coached, and developed engineering teams as Bravado grew.

His technical roots are in Python, Django, Redis, and high-load systems, and the conversation traces what changes when an individual contributor becomes a leader, and what keeps external vendor relationships from breaking down.

What we covered:

• The pivot from hands-on engineer (Python, Django, Redis, high-load systems) to engineering leadership, and the shift in mindset that move requires.
• What it's like to join a small, fast-moving startup after a long tenure at one company, and the value of in-person team interactions.
• How he scaled, coached, and developed engineering teams as Bravado grew, building trust and relationships along the way.
• Navigating the challenges of management, and how he thinks about the engineering versus management career tracks.
• How he thinks about external vendors and contractors, what makes those relationships break down, and what makes them stick.
• The role of AI in engineering and management, interviewing for new engineering roles, the evolving role of product managers, and creating context for engineering tasks.

Episode 159 of the PreVetted Podcast.

Jonathan Hernandez is an Information Security and Risk professional at Nationwide Children's Hospital and a CISSP-certified cybersecurity expert with experience across governance, risk, compliance, and ethical hacking. He is also a public speaker and a Master of Divinity student at Southern Seminary, and in this episode he shares the story behind the credentials, starting with the day he arrived from the Philippines at nineteen, looking for Disneyland and touching snow for the first time, and the loneliness and identity loss that followed.

Jonathan talks about why he walked away from a booming tech career in Columbus to study theology full time while working full time, and how he came to believe that career change is not about money but about purpose. He explains how his faith became a real anchor during rejection, visa delays, and starting over from scratch, and why he refuses to let a title or a paycheck define his worth.

We get into the place where his two worlds meet: ethics in cybersecurity. Jonathan shares how an ethical hacking professor's warning shaped him, why he grounds his ethics beyond just not getting caught, and how he uses his skills to protect churches, nonprofits, and everyday people who cannot afford enterprise grade security.

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Jonathan Hernandez
02:01 Journey from the Philippines to the U.S.
04:58 Navigating Loneliness and Identity
10:00 The Intersection of Faith and Career
14:58 Redefining Success and Purpose
20:04 Living Out Faith in Technology
24:59 Protecting Human Dignity in an AI World
40:00 Final Thoughts and Reflections

LinkedIn · Website

Episode 158 of the PreVetted Podcast.

Adrian Ferrero is the Co-Founder and CEO of Biome Makers, where for eleven years he has used DNA sequencing to read the communities of microbes living in soil and turn them into a functional picture of soil health. An economist by training who calls himself an innovator, Adrian sold an earlier DNA diagnostics company with his childhood friend Alberto Acedo, then reinvested everything to bring the personalized medicine concept into agriculture.

In this episode, Adrian explains how Biome Makers profiles the bacteria and fungi in soil samples, why organic and conventional apples carry very different microbial loads, and how thinking about soil at a functional level rather than a taxonomic one let the company compare farms across 56 countries. He breaks down nutrient use efficiency, why nitrous oxide is hundreds of times more potent than carbon dioxide, and how better soil data helps farmers use less fertilizer while polluting less.

The conversation also goes deep on the human side of building a company. Adrian shares why growing the team from two people to 55 was his hardest challenge, how he leads a remote and multicultural company across the US, Europe, Asia, and Latin America, and why he tries to keep business fun even in serious negotiations. He closes with a reminder not to underestimate our impact on the soil, and advice to build your own expectations and be brave enough to try.

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Biome Makers and Adrian Ferrero
03:21 The Role of Microbes in Agriculture
11:11 Understanding Soil Health and Nutrient Efficiency
16:22 Clients and Services of Biome Makers
21:05 Establishing Standards in Soil Health Technology
25:29 Functional Diversity of Soil Microbes
28:35 Understanding Soil Microbial Communities
30:44 Challenges of Team Building in Startups
35:47 Cultural Dynamics in Global Business
46:10 The Importance of Soil and Entrepreneurship

LinkedIn · Website

Episode 157 of the PreVetted Podcast.

Rich Thomson is the Founder and CEO of Dreamliner Luxury Coaches and Caprice Capital Partners. He spent 20 years in banking and lending at GE Capital, Citibank, and Brightwood Capital before making a pivotal decision: to stop financing other people's companies and start building his own.

In this episode, Rich shares what it actually takes to run two very different businesses at the same time, a luxury transportation company serving music tours, NFL, NBA, PGA, and NASCAR, and an alternative lending firm that has deployed over $700 million into founder-owned companies. He talks about why founders often misunderstand what private equity is really selling, and what a better capital partnership looks like.

We also get into the human side of Rich's journey: the hardest lessons from year one of Dreamliner, how he hires people he can trust to run things without him, and why someone with his background still feels the pull to build rather than just invest.

If you are a professional who has spent years working for others and is wondering whether to bet on yourself, this conversation is for you.

About Rich Thomson

🚌 Founder and CEO of Dreamliner Luxury Coaches and Caprice Capital Partners

- 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/richthomson

- 🌐 https://dreamlinercoaches.com

- 🌐 https://capricecapital.com

About Federico Ramallo ✨👨‍💻🌎

🚀 Software Engineering Manager | 🛠 Founder of DensityLabs.io & PreVetted.ai | 🤝 Connecting 🇺🇸 U.S. teams with top nearshore 🌎 LATAM engineers

- 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/

- 🌐 https://densitylabs.io

- ✅ https://prevetted.ai

🎙 PreVetted Podcast 🎧📡

- 🎯 https://prevetted.ai/podcast

- 🐦 https://x.com/PrevettedPod

- 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcast

00:00 Introduction to Rich Thompson and Dreamliner Luxury Coaches

03:01 The Logistics of Live Event Transportation

06:02 Transitioning from Banking to Entrepreneurship

08:54 Lessons from 20 Years in Lending

11:55 What Sets Dreamliner Apart from Rental Services

15:02 The Importance of Professional Drivers

18:09 The Unique Experience of Bus Travel

20:55 The Art of Custom Bus Building

24:03 Caprice Capital: Supporting Founders Differently

28:17 Innovative Financing Solutions for Entrepreneurs

30:52 The Importance of Alignment in Business

32:54 Evaluating Founders: The People Factor

35:57 Building a Supportive Company Culture

39:13 Learning from Mistakes and Bad Hires

40:24 The Balance of Optimism and Realism in Business

45:33 Navigating Outside Capital: Terms vs. Relationships

50:28 Advice for Aspiring Founders: Go All In

Kirk Welsh is a licensed architect turned entrepreneur and coach based in Detroit. After more than 12 years in architecture and over 150 million dollars in constructed projects, he walked away from corporate life to build HouseWarming, a commercial flooring company, and then went deeper to create the Architect of Alignment, a framework that helps high performing professionals build the internal structure they need before chasing external success.

In this episode, Kirk shares the exact moment he knew he had to leave: a four hour meeting on his son's first birthday, in the middle of a 40 million dollar school project he could not own, for the same Detroit Public Schools system he had grown up in. He talks about how the pain of staying eventually became greater than the risk of leaving, and what he wishes someone had told him about the gap between deciding to go and actually being ready.

Kirk lays out the five areas that have to be aligned before any business plan works: Spiritual, Mental, Physical, Financial, and Relational. He explains why internal alignment is non negotiable for founders, the difference between an employee mindset and an owner mindset, and how he builds a six to twelve month bridge for the people he coaches so they can leave corporate without burning their lives down.

The conversation also detours into teaching at the University of Detroit Mercy, completing a master's degree in Spanish at the University of Puerto Rico, learning the language from an eight year old at a laundromat, and the daily habits that quietly compound into a different decade. If you have decided to leave but are still waiting for the right moment, this one is for you.

About Kirk Welsh 🏛️🪜🎯

🏛️ Licensed Architect | 🪜 Founder of HouseWarming | 🎯 Architect of Alignment Coach | 👨‍🏫 Adjunct Professor at U of Detroit Mercy

- 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirkwelsh-81383428

- 🌐 https://meethousewarming.com

About Federico Ramallo ✨👨‍💻🌎

🚀 Software Engineering Manager | 🛠 Founder of DensityLabs.io & PreVetted.ai | 🤝 Connecting 🇺🇸 U.S. teams with top nearshore 🌎 LATAM engineers

- 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/

- 🌐 https://densitylabs.io

- ✅ https://prevetted.ai

🎙 PreVetted Podcast 🎧📡

- 🎯 https://prevetted.ai/podcast

- 🐦 https://x.com/PrevettedPod

- 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcast

00:00 Introduction to Kirk Welsh and His Journey

05:52 The Aha Moment: Realizing the Need for Change

12:46 Taking the Leap: Pain vs. Risk

20:13 The Importance of an Exit Plan

26:22 Helping High Performers Transition to Entrepreneurship

29:41 The Impact of Teaching on Personal Growth

40:24 Understanding Alignment: Clarity and Consistency

45:31 Overcoming Doubt and Making Decisions

51:12 Finding Purpose and Building Alignment

Leslie Espinola has spent more than 35 years in the dental industry, but that was never the plan. She studied forensic science and wanted to join the FBI, then took a job in her father's dental practice while she figured out her life, and never left. Today she is a Dental Executive Coach, Fractional COO, and founder of High Peak Dental Advisors, helping practices grow through better leadership, healthier culture, and smarter operations.

In this episode, Leslie explains what a Fractional COO actually does, why she travels to client offices three and a half weeks a month, and the leap of faith she took last year to start her own company after a career inside large organizations. She is candid about the difference between a manager and a leader, and the trap office managers fall into when they get promoted but stay stuck in the day to day.

Leslie shares the operational truths most practice owners miss: why good leadership is always about people, how culture prevents turnover, why so many owners stay disconnected from their numbers, and the sobering reality that a large share of dental offices are stolen from by a team member. She also makes a clear-eyed case for AI in dentistry, where it removes unproductive work so teams can stay patient facing, and why she has not seen it take a single job in the industry.

The conversation closes on the win she is most proud of: an office manager who was weeks from being let go and, after one hard conversation and six months of mentoring, became one of the best leaders Leslie has ever worked with. If you lead a team or run a practice, this one is full of practical, people first wisdom.

About Leslie Espinola 🦷🏔️

🦷 Dental Executive Coach | 🧭 Fractional COO | 🏔️ Founder of High Peak Dental Advisors | 🤝 Coach at the Dentist Entrepreneur Organization

- 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslieespinola/

- 🌐 https://deodentalgroup.com

About Federico Ramallo ✨👨‍💻🌎

🚀 Software Engineering Manager | 🛠 Founder of DensityLabs.io & PreVetted.ai | 🤝 Connecting 🇺🇸 U.S. teams with top nearshore 🌎 LATAM engineers

- 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/

- 🌐 https://densitylabs.io

- ✅ https://prevetted.ai

🎙 PreVetted Podcast 🎧📡

- 🎯 https://prevetted.ai/podcast

- 🐦 https://x.com/PrevettedPod

- 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcast

00:00 Introduction to Leslie Espinola

02:47 Journey from Dental Assistant to Executive Coach

05:52 Understanding the Role of a Fractional COO

08:57 The Importance of Leadership in Dental Practices

11:58 Embracing Imperfection and Continuous Learning

14:59 The Role of Coaching and Collaboration

17:55 Starting High Peak Dental Advisors

20:53 The Dentist Entrepreneur Organization (DEO) Explained

24:02 Shifting from Chairside to Executive Leadership

25:42 The Essence of Leadership in Dental Practices

29:05 Navigating Change: Embracing AI in Dentistry

35:52 Understanding Numbers: The Key to Practice Success

45:29 Transformative Leadership: A Personal Success Story

Brent Hagan is the Chief Supply Chain Officer at Lob, the direct mail automation platform whose tech-enabled network delivers hundreds of millions of personalized mailpieces every year at 99% on-time reliability. In this episode, Brent joins Federico Ramallo to explain how he built that logistics engine from the ground up using entirely third-party manufacturing and fulfillment, with no fixed manufacturing cost, and how AI now sits in the middle helping orchestrate critical decisions.

Brent traces his path from manufacturing and operations engineering to the C-suite, and what hands-on time on the factory floor taught him about respecting constraints, building credibility, and why the best-laid plans on paper rarely survive contact with reality. He shares the story of figuring out an entire materials-planning role in two hours a day as a young plant manager, how he gives frontline leaders autonomy under a simple 'what went right, what went wrong, what did we learn' cadence, and why a single mistake in a physical operation can multiply catastrophically fast.

The conversation digs into the unglamorous economics of operations: the real cost of lean rituals and gemba walks versus the improvements they unlock, why no-meeting days for engineers follow the same logic, and how he thinks about protecting a team's focus. Brent also breaks down what actually makes acquisitions work, the integrate-or-operate-independently decision that can't have a middle ground, and how he uses AI as a context-rich thinking partner without letting it become a crutch. He closes on the hardest problems he has solved at Deliverr and Amazon scale, and why 'lab logistics' is Lob's next frontier in end-to-end supply chain orchestration.

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Brent Hagan and Lob
03:03 When a Single Mistake Multiplies: Lessons from the Factory Floor
06:08 From Operations Engineering to the C-Suite
09:02 Building Credibility and Trust with a Team
12:04 Learning a Whole Role in Two Hours a Day
15:15 Autonomy, Ownership, and What Went Right / What Went Wrong
18:12 The Real Cost of Lean, Gemba, and Protecting Focus
21:08 What Actually Makes Acquisitions Work
27:10 Reviewing Work and Asking Why
30:01 The Original API in Direct Mail
33:10 Orchestrating a Third-Party Manufacturing and Logistics Network
39:09 Where AI Fits: Poking Holes and Increasing Throughput
42:01 AI as a Context-Rich Thinking Partner
45:13 The Hardest Problems at Deliverr and Amazon Scale, and Lab Logistics

Harshit Kohli is a Senior Technical Account Manager at AWS, where he serves as a trusted advisor to enterprise customers on cloud strategy, architecture, and AI adoption. He started his IT career in 2010 at Infosys in India, built his way through Tech Mahindra, HPE, and Cloudera, moved to the US in 2016, and joined AWS in 2022. He is currently completing a PhD in AI, has published over a dozen research papers on mental health prediction, churn forecasting, and healthcare AI, and presented at the MCP Dev Summit on real-time streaming to agents.

In this episode, Harshit explains what a Technical Account Manager actually does: acting as the extended team for enterprise customers, bridging technical depth with strategic advisory across every stage of cloud adoption, from early migration to cost optimization. He breaks down the biggest AI misconceptions he sees in enterprises, including why AI is not a magic wand, why not every problem is AI-fit, and why data readiness is the non-negotiable that most organizations underestimate.

We also talk about model selection, prompt engineering, hallucination, and what it takes to go from lift-and-shift cloud migration to genuinely optimized infrastructure. Harshit shares what he looks for when judging hackathons, from eco-friendly agriculture apps to real-time anomaly detection, and what separates the people who will make it in AI from those still working at the surface.

His advice for engineers in India considering the move: dive deep into fundamentals in your own vertical before chasing the buzzwords, because that depth travels farther than any credential.

About Harshit Kohli

☁️ Sr. Technical Account Manager at AWS | PhD Candidate in AI | Researcher, Speaker, Mentor

- 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/harshit-kohli-99801543/

About Federico Ramallo ✨👨‍💻🌎

🚀 Software Engineering Manager | 🛠 Founder of DensityLabs.io & PreVetted.ai | 🤝 Connecting 🇺🇸 U.S. teams with top nearshore 🌎 LATAM engineers

- 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/

- 🌐 https://densitylabs.io

- ✅ https://prevetted.ai

🎙 PreVetted Podcast 🎧📡

- 🎯 https://prevetted.ai/podcast

- 🐦 https://x.com/PrevettedPod

- 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcast

00:00 Introduction to Harshit Kohli and His Journey

02:50 Transitioning to the U.S. Tech Landscape

05:44 Role of a Technical Account Manager at AWS

08:23 Understanding Customer Needs and Technical Expertise

11:16 Research Contributions in AI and Healthcare

14:18 Machine Learning vs. AI: Understanding the Differences

16:51 The Reality of AI Implementation in Businesses

19:34 Data Quality and Its Impact on AI

22:19 Challenges and Misconceptions in AI Adoption

25:22 Understanding AI Hallucination and Model Optimism

26:52 The Importance of Prompt Engineering

28:00 Model Selection and Optimization Strategies

30:26 Navigating the Variety of AI Models

31:58 Integrating AI into Workflows

34:32 Challenges in Cloud Adoption

37:20 The Future of AI in Hackathons and Innovation

40:54 Validating Ideas in the Age of AI

43:37 Career Advice for Aspiring AI Professionals