In this season two finale, I’m closing out the year with a story that pulls together tech, discipline, and modern leadership.

This episode spotlights Luana Lopes Lara, the youngest self-made woman billionaire in the world and co-founder of Kalshi, the regulated prediction market changing how people think about future events.

Before fintech, before MIT, and long before building an eleven-billion-dollar exchange, Luana was training as a professional ballerina. Years at the barre built the discipline, focus, and patience that later became the foundation for one of the most ambitious infrastructure companies in modern finance.

We break down what prediction markets actually are, why regulation became Kalshi’s differentiator, and how the company fought and won a historic legal battle to offer the first legal U.S. election markets in over a century.

At its core, this episode is about trusting the process. Doing the work long before the outcome is obvious, sticking with it when progress feels slow, and letting consistency quietly do its thing.

Thank you so much for listening this season. I’ll see you back here in February 2026 for season three!

Can a background in broadcast journalism make you a stronger product designer? In this episode of patch, I sit down with Grace Donoso, Managing Director of Content at BlackBerry and former UX designer, to explore her non-linear career path from the arts to the fast-paced world of cybersecurity.

Together, we talk about the art of User Experience (UX): why the best-designed apps feel so intuitive and how thoughtful content design can lead the charge in building better products. Grace shares her methods for writing simply about complex tech, introducing the idea of “invisible value,” or how to inspire trust and urgency without overwhelming users. She also reveals her outlining process that keeps her authentic in the age of AI.

In the lifestyle segment, we chat about her go-to West Coast athleisure staples (lulu, Nike + Beyond Yoga) for trail runs that keep her grounded in Seattle.

In this episode, we take a step back from the AI buzz to ask one of the biggest questions making headlines right now: is there an AI bubble?

AI is here to stay, but when hype and investment start moving faster than real progress, things can get shaky. Looking back at the dot-com era, we dig into what people actually mean when they talk about an “AI bubble,” why the real bottlenecks are infrastructure and energy, and how today’s boom compares to past tech cycles that changed the global economy.

In the lifestyle segment, Kirin shares her first patchperfect holiday work gift guide, a curated list of thoughtful, elevated picks for your family, friends, coworkers, and yes, a little something for yourself too.

patchperfect gift guide:

Frank Green Ceramic Water Bottle

Belkin BoostCharge Pro 3-in-1 Station

Papier Foiled Planner

Smythson Personalized Stationery

Slip Pure Silk Sleep Mask

Caudalie Beauty Elixir

Supergoop! Unseen Sunscreen

patchperfect is officially at episode 21 and legal. Today we dive into the tech landscape shaping 2026, guided by futurist and Forbes columnist Bernard Marr, whose work I genuinely love. We walk through his biggest predictions for the year including AI’s growing energy crisis, the shift to practical quantum computing, and how agentic AI is about to reshape the way we work. We also explore why human nuance, taste and emotional intelligence become real competitive advantages as AI moves from reaction to reinvention.

In the lifestyle segment, we look ahead to 2026 with my friend Liz Cox, a postdoctoral research scientist at Harvard Medical School. We break down the key workwear and wellness trends we expect to see next year and how to stay grounded, stylish and confident heading into January.

A futurist guided tech deep dive, a 2026 lifestyle preview and a full new year glow up in one episode.

This week on patch we kick it off with the 2025 Spotify Wrapped drop. Then, a spotlight on Mira Murati, former OpenAI CTO and now founder of Thinking Machines Lab. Raised in post-communist Albania, she found stability in math and physics before building a career across Goldman Sachs Tokyo, Tesla’s Model X and Autopilot, Leap Motion, and ultimately OpenAI, where she helped shape dialogue-based interfaces like ChatGPT’s. Her new startup’s tool, Tinker, makes fine-tuning models like Llama surprisingly simple, even with minimal code.

In the lifestyle segment, we peek at her crisp personal style, including that clean, minimalist 2024 Met Gala look... to get the human side of one of AI’s most influential builders.

This week on patch: a quick AI update on Google’s “Nano Banana Pro” (thinking partner > pretty pics), then a primer on privacy in 2025 with Canadian lawyer & privacy pro Neil Proudfoot (views expressed on this show are his own).

In this episode, Neil explains what privacy truly means in 2025, how AI systems collect and learn from personal data, and why global regulation is splitting into two competing philosophies: Europe’s rights-first model and America’s innovation-first approach. We also unpack Law 25, Canada’s strongest privacy law to date, and what Canadians should know before trusting any AI tool with their data. Plus Neil's A-D-S checklist: Autonomy, Dignity, Safety. In the lifestyle segment we chat with Neil about how he’s staying grounded as a new dad.

Zoe Seguev did not follow a traditional path into crypto, and that is exactly what makes her perspective so rare. With an MSc in anthropology from the London School of Economics, her career has always focused on understanding people, systems, and the mechanics of trust. That lens carried her through consulting, operations, fintech, and eventually into one of the most demanding areas of modern finance: crypto compliance.

Today she is the Chief Compliance Officer at Tetra Trust, Canada’s first qualified digital asset custodian and the regulated vault responsible for keeping billions in digital assets safe from hacks, loss, or misuse. In this episode Zoe explains what crypto actually means in 2025, why custody sits at the foundation of digital finance, and how stablecoins are quickly becoming the quiet infrastructure behind a new global money system. She brings clarity to a space that often feels chaotic and shows how governance, oversight, and well-designed controls matter far more than hype cycles or price swings.

We also cover what people most misunderstand about regulation, how institutions are driving adoption, and why compliance remains the invisible layer that prevents collapse in an industry defined by speed and risk.

In our lifestyle segment we get Zoe’s take on showing up well at work, including the wardrobe pieces she relies on to stay polished in the C-suite. We also talk about Tetra Digital Group’s recent ten million dollar raise to build a Canadian dollar stablecoin backed by banks, fintechs, and major technology companies. It is a clear signal that stablecoins are moving from the fringe into mainstream financial infrastructure and that Canada is ready to step into the global conversation.

With childhood dreams of becoming an FBI agent, our guest this week, Anuj Soni eventually landed on something just as heroic: fighting cyber threats from behind the screen. He’s a reverse engineer, cybersecurity expert, YouTube creator, and the founder and lead instructor of The Malware Lab at Breakpoint Cybersecurity, where he teaches people how to take apart cyber threats for a living.

We explore how malware actually works, the difference between viruses, worms, Trojans, ransomware, and phishing, how attacks sneak onto your device, what really happens when systems get hit, and why reverse engineering is one of the most powerful tools in modern defense.

Patches you’ll learn to make you patchperfect:

• Spot red flags of an infected device (and what to do first)
• Understand the major malware types in plain English
• See how phishing turns into real compromise (email, SMS, voice)
• Learn how reverse engineering powers better threat intel and products
• Career patch: how to prove skills without "required experience"

And because we always end on a lifestyle note, Anuj walks us through the reverse engineer’s uniform, from functional work-from-home staples to his go-to Nike sneakers.

Plus, a quick headline on Project Concord, South Korea’s upcoming AI-run data center, and why letting AI manage power, water, and workloads could change how we build and run the world’s digital infrastructure.