At 19, Kentarou Siejak is already testing what can happen when students are given real responsibility instead of simulated experience. As president of Elevate at ASU, organizer of TEDx ASU, and a Venture Cafe Phoenix ambassador, he is building opportunities for students to work on ambitious projects, develop professional relationships, raise capital, and learn by actually doing the work.

That approach was tested early. When TEDx ASU lost its venue with only three weeks remaining, Kentarou and his team had to rebuild sponsorships, secure a new location, and begin marketing almost from scratch. The resulting event brought together hundreds of attendees and a team of roughly 80 students—an experience Kentarou now sees as training for much bigger projects ahead.

Throughout the conversation, Kentarou returns to one skill: resourcefulness. Whether he is finding sponsors, connecting experts, building partnerships, or helping students find mentors, his instinct is to ask who needs to be in the room and how to reach them. His larger goal for Elevate isn't simply helping students build résumés. It's helping them develop enough confidence, experience, and relationships to eventually build things of their own.

For Arizona's innovation ecosystem, Kentarou represents something worth paying attention to: a generation of students who don't necessarily want to wait until graduation to participate. His vision stretches from Arizona campuses to global—and even interplanetary—problems, but the starting point remains local: give young people meaningful work, connect them with people who can help, and create enough momentum for them to eventually create opportunities for others.

• Why Kentarou believes resourcefulness is one of the most important skills for innovation
• How the TEDx ASU team responded when its venue disappeared three weeks before the event
• How students can turn college organizations into laboratories for real-world experience
• Kentarou's approach to sponsorships, partnerships, and aligning incentives
• Why understanding psychology and sociology can make someone a better salesperson and leader
• How mentors can expand what young entrepreneurs and innovators believe is possible
• Why Kentarou wants students to eventually leave Elevate and build something of their own
• What changes when leaders begin planning in decades—or even centuries—instead of quarters

Kentarou Siejak is an Arizona State University student, president of Elevate at ASU, organizer of TEDx ASU, keynote speaker, and ambassador for Venture Cafe Phoenix. His work centers on connecting students with real-world projects, mentors, partnerships, and opportunities that allow them to develop as builders and leaders while they are still in school.

Venture Cafe Phoenix: An Extraordinary Podcast explores the people, stories, and relationships shaping Arizona's innovation ecosystem.

Hosted by Alex Koupal, the podcast features conversations with founders, innovators, investors, educators, executives, policymakers, researchers, and community leaders working to make Arizona a place where ideas grow, businesses thrive, and meaningful connections happen.

Powered by CEI (Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation), Legacy Sponsor the City of Phoenix, and produced by Extraordinary.

Whitney Slightham didn’t set out to become a medical device founder. After more than 16 years working in science and technical communications, she moved to Flagstaff, built a practice serving life sciences companies, and became immersed in Arizona’s medtech community. Then her surgeon husband came home with an idea for helping reinflate collapsed lung segments in ventilated patients. A year later, that idea has become Ateleva, Inc., a medical device startup with patents pending and a growing network of physicians, engineers, manufacturers, and advisors behind it.

For Whitney, the problem is also personal. Her father spent significant time on a ventilator while she was his primary caregiver, and her son spent time in the ICU as a baby. Those experiences shape how she thinks about the people behind the technology—the patients, families, physicians, and hospitals trying to navigate some of the most difficult moments in healthcare.

This conversation is also a practical look at what it takes to build a medtech company when there is no simple roadmap. Whitney shares the realities of bootstrapping, early-stage funding, regulatory complexity, physician interviews, market validation, and the danger of developing a technically successful product without first understanding whether hospitals and clinicians will actually adopt it.

Her journey reveals something larger about Arizona’s innovation ecosystem. From Flagstaff manufacturers and former Gore Medical experts to FemTech AZ, Venture Cafe Phoenix, engineering groups, advisors, and healthcare leaders across the state, Whitney has built Ateleva, Inc. by connecting expertise that already exists here. Her experience is a reminder that innovation rarely happens in isolation—and that sometimes the most valuable infrastructure an ecosystem can provide is helping the right people find one another.

• Why Whitney moved from science communications into medical device entrepreneurship
• How a respiratory device concept went from a sketch on a toddler’s chalkboard to a medtech startup
• Why personal experiences with the ICU influence Whitney’s approach to healthcare innovation
• The funding and regulatory challenges facing early-stage medical device companies
• Why Whitney prioritizes physician interviews and market validation before commercialization
• How Arizona manufacturers, engineers, healthcare experts, and advisors have helped accelerate Ateleva, Inc.
• Why founders move faster when they build relationships outside their immediate circles
• How communities like FemTech AZ and Venture Cafe Phoenix create connective tissue across Arizona’s innovation ecosystem

Whitney Slightham is the co-founder of Ateleva, Inc., an Arizona medical device startup developing respiratory solutions designed to address lung collapse and related clinical challenges. Based in Flagstaff, she brings more than 16 years of experience in science and technical communications and is building Ateleva, Inc. through collaboration with physicians, engineers, manufacturers, advisors, and medtech leaders across Arizona.

Venture Cafe Phoenix: An Extraordinary Podcast explores the people, stories, and relationships shaping Arizona's innovation ecosystem.

Hosted by Alex Koupal, the podcast features conversations with founders, innovators, investors, educators, executives, policymakers, researchers, and community leaders working to make Arizona a place where ideas grow, businesses thrive, and meaningful connections happen.

Powered by CEI (Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation), Legacy Sponsor the City of Phoenix, and produced by Extraordinary.

Episode Description

Aaron Bare has spent years helping build the connective tissue behind Arizona’s innovation ecosystem. An entrepreneur, author, technologist, and longtime community builder, Aaron was involved in the early formation of Venture Cafe Phoenix and helped bring together the people, partners, and support needed to turn the idea into a weekly gathering for the region’s entrepreneurial community.

In this conversation, Aaron reflects on what happens when leaders stop trying to control everything. His perspective was shaped by both success and failure: after building and selling companies, working across technology and education, and helping launch community initiatives, he came to see leadership less as having all the answers and more as creating the conditions for other people to contribute.

Aaron and Alex explore why founders can suffocate organizations by staying too close to every decision, why the people closest to a problem are often best equipped to solve it, and why subtraction can matter more than constantly adding more. They also discuss AI, incentives, intuition, failure, and Aaron’s belief that the next era of technology may actually require people to become more human.

At the center of the episode is a lesson that has helped shape Venture Cafe Phoenix itself: strong ecosystems are built by people who give first, create connections, and then get out of the way. For Arizona, that means building more places where entrepreneurs, researchers, investors, students, executives, and unexpected collaborators can keep finding one another.

What You'll Learn

• Why Aaron believes leaders should make fewer decisions, not more
• How founders can empower the people closest to a problem
• Why failure can be a better teacher than success
• How subtraction and letting go can create room for opportunity
• Why Aaron believes incentives shape organizations, communities, and behavior
• How AI could push people toward more human forms of work and connection
• What Aaron learned from helping launch Venture Cafe Phoenix
• Why giving first can completely change the experience of networking
• How diverse, recurring communities create unexpected collaboration
• Why strong innovation ecosystems depend on people creating platforms others can build upon

About Aaron Bare

Aaron Bare is an entrepreneur, author, technologist, speaker, and community builder whose work has crossed startups, education, technology, leadership, and ecosystem development. He helped lay the early foundation for Venture Cafe Phoenix and has continued working to create stronger networks, better incentives, and more meaningful collaboration among entrepreneurs and leaders.

About Venture Cafe Phoenix

Venture Cafe Phoenix: An Extraordinary Podcast explores the people, stories, and relationships shaping Arizona's innovation ecosystem.

Hosted by Alex Koupal, the podcast features conversations with founders, innovators, investors, educators, executives, policymakers, researchers, and community leaders working to make Arizona a place where ideas grow, businesses thrive, and meaningful connections happen.

Powered by CEI (Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation), Legacy Sponsor the City of Phoenix, and produced by Extraordinary.