Your AI Roadmap

AI in Manufacturing and Compliance with Chief Innovation Officer, Kristina Kristina Hloptsidis, of Signify

• Dr. Joan Palmiter Bajorek • Season 2 • Episode 27

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In this conversation, Kristina Hloptsidis, Chief Innovation Officer at Signify, discusses the challenges of compliance management in heavily regulated industries, particularly manufacturing, with Dr. Joan Palmiter Bajorek. She emphasizes the role of AI in transforming compliance processes, making them more efficient and strategic. 

Sound Bites
"Regulation and compliance can be fun!"
"Never know if you don't try!"
"Failure is part of the journey."

🔍 Compliance: Signify is focused on compliance management for manufacturing.
🤖 Efficiency: AI can significantly reduce the time needed for compliance processes.
🧠 Strategy: Regulatory professionals can become strategic partners in product development.
👥 Humanity: The human element is crucial in compliance, even with AI assistance.
🌐 Networking: Networking is key to career transitions and opportunities.

Bio:

Kristina Hloptsidis brings over a decade of experience in space and SaaS startups, excelling in regulatory, compliance, operations, and risk management roles. As the Chief Innovation Officer at Signify, she is passionate about leveraging GenerativeAI to help manufacturers bring the best and safest products to market.  See full bio on guest link

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Who is Joan?

Ranked the #4⁠⁠ in Voice AI Influencer, ⁠⁠Dr. Joan Palmiter Bajorek⁠⁠ is the CEO of ⁠⁠Clarity AI⁠⁠, Founder of ⁠⁠Women in Voice⁠⁠, & Host of ⁠⁠Your AI Roadmap⁠⁠. With a decade in software & AI, she has worked at Nuance, VERSA Agency, & OneReach.ai in data & analysis, product, & digital transformation. She's an investor & technical advisor to startup & enterprise. A CES & VentureBeat speaker & Harvard Business Review published author, she has a PhD & is based in Seattle.

Disclaimer: Our links may have affiliate codes. This is an educational podcast and not intended as legal, career, or financial advice. Seek professional gu...

Hello, hello. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Would you mind introducing yourself? Yeah, hi, I'm Kristina Clipsides and I am the Chief Innovation Officer at Signify. Signify. All right, what are y 'all doing over there at Signify? So we're building a compliance management system for heavily regulated industry and in our case is manufacturing. So we feel technology is totally advancing on the manufacturing floor and there's a lot of amazing technological advances happening, but the backend and the systems that support the people. tend to be a little bit antiquated generally. So we're trying to use AI and our compliance management system to solve what we've observed, Signify has observed to be a challenge for manufacturing companies. And that's dealing with tons and tons of regulation and compliance. I don't often get that reaction on regulatory or compliance. Fun. I don't go together in the same sentence. Regulation, manufacturing. Well, I'd to hear more like ideas about, nuts and bolts. Cause I think when people think of manufacturing, honestly, I thought of like soup cans first. I doubt that. But can you give us examples of, is it all manufacturing? Is it certain parts of manufacturing? Can you share some examples? Yeah, absolutely. So great question. We're really industry and regulation agnostic, right? So I think one of the things that I found, so I have a background in aerospace and defense, and I can talk to people who maybe manufacture soup cans, although I haven't talked to that industry specifically, but folks in automotive, medical devices, food, right? There are very thematic challenges when it comes to complying. with the regulation. So kind of the same processes, the same workflows for the job to be done. So we were really, you could be a manufacturer from any industry with any type of regulation or standard. We're able to kind of utilize Signify to work through that quickly. That makes sense. Well, and as far as the regulation base, or least different customers I work with, regulation can sometimes be a carrot or a stick as far as like, let's make sure to get that bonus versus, I don't want the IRS to come nab me in the night. Do you feel like there are different levers for customers as they're thinking about how they conceptualize regulation? I think so. again, with my background, always, I think, when I talk to people, I always think they're going to come up with a fear based response of like regulation is fear because it is scary, right? The cost of non -compliance is great. But I think what we're trying to do is that regulatory or compliance person or role, we want to give them more time and the ability to be a strategic business partner and focus more on product development. And a lot of these heavily regulated industries, know, R &D compliance comes in upfront. Like if you're bringing in your compliance person at the onset, they can make a real impact on make or break for compliance when you get to the end, because of course, regulation and compliance matters at the end when you're ready to bring a product to market. So the way that I'm looking at it is really more of a strategic advantage to bring more products to market more quickly. And you know, we're really passionate about making sure we can help manufacturers bring the best and safest products to market. That sense. Yeah. Well, and I've only done, I think one large scale medical project in my history of these types of things. And I was shocked that like of the number of people in the room and the teams, a third were on the regulation for that field, like by numbers. And I was just like, wait, wait, wait. I thought as product data people were like the cool thing. I just, when you think about those big bets that are being made in different arenas, as you mentioned, if it doesn't, fit those regulatory hurdles, you're dead in the water. Like it's just not viable. So that's super cool. Well, and when you think about your team it sounds like you're relatively early in these product stages, or I'd love to hear, I guess, the stage of the company and how you interact in the team. Sure, yeah, so we're super early. So I think we've been around for just a couple months. So we incubated out of the AI2 incubator, that's the Paul Allen Research Institute in Seattle. So, you know, team's really small, nimble and small. There's four of us. And I kind of come with the background of, you know, somebody who's been the regulatory and compliance person. So I've felt the pain. I've seen the way that things have been done the past. And so kind of my approach to work with the team is how can we make this better? How can we give regulatory and compliance professionals, that strategic advantage and that team behind them and that kind of back check when it comes to regulatory and compliance. You know, the regulations in any given industry is thousands and thousands of pages of documents. And I use this visual that's seems to be pretty impactful with regulatory folks, which is kind of a vision of a sheet, could be a Google sheet or an Excel sheet. And on one side, you have all of the requirements that you need to meet. And then there's various columns with, you compliant? What other product document do you need to look at? And where have you checked? And have you checked with legal? Have you checked with these stakeholders? And so many people are still doing compliance in that way. And it requires a human to spend hours, if not months parsing through a corpus of documentation just to bring a product to market. And that can take a very, very, very long time. In some cases, know, months to two, two months, three months to six months, depending on how complex everything is and the state of your documentation. So what's really exciting is we've taken that process of going through the corpus of documentation and we've taken it from weeks, months to hours, which is for, know, when I saw it, I was like, yeah, I need this. I need this. Yeah, yeah. And I think you know, as we think about AI and digital transformation, paperwork, like the wild amount of manual or like, my team has built things where like people are still doing this. People are still manually copying and pasting or whatnot, or reading through a hundred thousand page documents, checking the repo. I mean, personally, it doesn't even sound like a fun job. Like I honestly, maybe people love those roles, but. getting it down to hours. That's wild. Yeah. It's incredible. And I think one of the other powerful visuals I have, just to kind of give you that vision, we're working on a use case for labeling validation right now. So if you are selling a product, whether you're shipping or exporting out of country, or even across like state lines, depending on the product, there's not only federal requirements, but state requirements for just what the label on the thing, like whether it's the label on the product or the label on the packaging has to say. right? And we've actually talked with, you know, design partners about this problem. They've had millions of dollars of inventory held up in customs and they weren't able to get to their customer because of a simple, you know, error on a label. So what I try to help people remember is sometimes that labeling on the floor is still like... binders and pieces of paper taped to the wall where somebody is looking at the Washington requirement versus the Oregon requirement for the font size, the, what, you know, what does it, what context has to be, right? It's, it is crazy to me. So, you know, again, we're, looking at that use case to, really support and help, help people make that a little bit easier. I guess I do want to add, we want to be really pragmatic about it though, right? We're very passionate about when you're running conformity assessments or gap assessments or you're working on a label, we still absolutely need the human in the loop because AI is not at a place to understand your product or your operation more than you are. So it's really, really important for that human in the loop to stay plugged in. And that's what we're trying to do is really just be a support, not a replacement. That makes sense. Well, and as you talk about kind of wild efficiencies, Months to hours, know, what used to be or maybe still is, like eye check, font size, this, this, this. I hear a lot of humans, right? I hear a lot of people doing manual labor. And I think certainly, you and I mentioned this a little bit early before the call, but thinking about how many humans are needed and like, is AI... I think of it as an assistant, augmentation, opportunity, but a lot of people are like, wait a minute, that, how many jobs is that eliminating? Like how many people on the floor, poof, their job is not necessary anymore or otherwise. Do you want to maybe speak to the fear or, I think it's just transformation. I don't know that, yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Yeah, no, thank you. think that's something I face a lot, quite a bit, right? And especially, like you said, you described the room. A third of the room is regulatory and compliance folks, right? Like I can see where there's maybe a fear and I think there's maybe not a misconception, but I think there definitely is a fear of replacement. But the way that I think about it and the way that I want people to think about it is the same way we think about email or the internet, right? fundamentally changed when those technologies came through. I can't imagine handwriting notes in a meeting anymore and then folding it up and mailing it to a customer on the other side who's on the phone, right? So I think we need to approach AI as not a replacement, but it's just fundamentally going to change how we work. And thinking about how the use cases, what problems we can solve, what workflows we can disrupt, how we can bring efficiency is, it's just a change. It's not a replacement. So, you you're going to change how you do things, but the human in the loop is still needed, right? Like, I don't want to minimize the amount of work it takes. And especially if you have to talk to a regulator or deal with other humans on the other side of the regulation, I'm very familiar with that. So outside of the workflows that require reading various pages of regulation in the awful columns, I know everyone can picture that, there's still, there's so much for the human in the loop to do. And I think giving that human more time, so taking away that kind of antiquated way and that kind of burdensome task gives them the opportunity to be a strategic partner in the business. So it takes them out of being like the scary, compliance person in the corner who's reacting to a proactive partner in the business. So I'm really, I'm very passionate about that and making sure that those people who do those jobs, they're very important, but I'm giving you a team to back you now. So if you're by yourself or you have this huge burdensome task of reading through, you know, volume 70 of the CFR and you've got thousands of pages to read and compare to your product document, I want to give you more time back and really highlight for you. Yes, this is compliant. Hey, maybe this one needs to be checked and we're not sure partially compliant or hey, this is totally outside of the requirements language and you need to go take a look at that. That's really what we're doing is short cutting that review. That makes sense. this parallels very clearly a startup, I think I saw at Techstars Seattle that was doing medical or like getting medical reviews through the pharma system apparently also takes a wild amount of time and like highlighting, or at least that's my visualization in my head, like highlighting like here's where it matches and here's where it doesn't. Or like this language needs to match this template, know, flag is not working or like passes easily. for medical contexts, but I love this for manufacturing. I think, or I think you could really help a lot of people's jobs be a lot easier and better, which is so fantastic. I guess, how did you, it seems like you've been in a part of this space for a while. You're the domain expert on your team. Is it a surprise to you or like, as you think about kind of the evolution of your part of the field? Do you think people have always seen around you the need for more sophisticated tooling or how do you see that kind of the field growing, the field shaping up in the future? Yeah, no, I think I come from, know, I kind of came as the as like the customer profile, right? So I think I met Martin, who's Signify's CEO. And we started talking about this idea while I was still actively, you know, doing regulatory and compliance on the ground. And so, you know, I definitely come from the background of somebody who's been regulatory compliance operations, somebody who's kind of worked through those workflows. But to me, this was such a brilliant and elegant use of AI. know generative AI is a big bucket, but this is such a impactful use that actually solves a real challenge that I know my former colleagues face and people I talk to today face still. And it doesn't matter if you're, what industry you're in, it's definitely a challenge that you're gonna face. And it takes time no matter how you slice it or what regulation it is. So yeah, no, I think very lucky to be connected with the team and the co -founders at Signify and really excited to kind of apply my lessons learned and my pain points and the things that I've seen in my past to this new technology, an AI tooling system that we're creating and building. Totally, well, and this reminds me so much of those memes. I don't know if you've seen this, like there's a long limb and they're trying to chop people off the limb of the tree, like there are people. And then of course, like AI trying to chop everybody off the tree. But truly, I think as you mentioned with the human in the loop, those of us who have the tools that are like human enabled by AI, that I believe is the most resilient through all these wild ups and downs. Before we jump into, because I wanna hear more about your career trajectory, you're the first, second person I've met in manufacturing, think, Seattle's so software, heavy a place? I'd really love to think about, seeing these from months to hours, is it the next thing to minutes? Is it quality? Like, when you think about extrapolating out, if you all at Signify hit it well. Your customers are thrilled. I'm sure there's things you can't even get see of what people may want, companies may want. If you could extrapolate out with me, what do you think those next things on the horizon might look like for your part of the field? Yeah, think hours to minutes would be amazing. think you know, eventually maybe understanding a tone like a tonal or a position on something. So if you're looking at a particular requirement, I wonder if it's like, hey, on this, we want to be really risk averse or hey, on this one, you know, we're comfortable kind of being in the gray a little bit. We all know that that regulatory is gray, right? So it's not always black and white. And I think having the ability to maybe put a little bit of a. a company risk profile to some of the requirements, right? Like, where does your company stand on risks when it comes to regulatory and compliance? And how do you wanna apply the approach? I think that that might be kind of the next thing. And of course, more time saved, right? The quicker, the better. as we grow, I expect that to happen, right? Very naturally, but I think that might be a future. Yeah, think understanding a risk profile and being able to apply that to an approach to the regulation would be really interesting to see. That's cool, that's awesome. This is so interesting. I had a conversation earlier this week with a, related to my customer for hemp and legal cannabis production and the amount of stuff she knew about tax codes and changes and which states is it already compliant in and like the amount of knowledge she had in her head about this. was overwhelmed frankly. I don't know much about the hemp and cannabis markets but those changes and apparently Coca -Cola. is coming out with CBD drinks or something like this. And then in Canada, it's already blah, blah, but the US not blah, blah, blah. And then the financials and I was, I mean, that is an industry. Those are whole roles. Like it really blew my mind of the tiny speck I know of her part of the field and her watching and playing in that space. So I think I just, get so lit up hearing that other people's creative adventures through this. Okay. Well, you mentioned, this background, think in aeronautics in manufacturing aerospace, excuse me. Can you tell us a little like your, your journey along the way as far back as you want to go to where you are now? Sure, absolutely. So I had a non -traditional start into the Seattle tech world. So before I jumped into aerospace and defense, I was doing bankruptcy. totally different end of the spectrum. But I've had a career in various aerospace and defense companies, both locally and actually out in Boston, working with launching satellites or building satellites or software systems that support satellite imagery. So that's kind of where I come from. So very heavily regulated industry. So I've seen you know, the gamut of requirements and how something small in your production or something little that you do can kind of bring you back to square one with the regulators. And so I'm kind of able to apply the similar, you know, thematic things that are that happened in aerospace and defense. I'm seeing it with food manufacturers or kind of similar lines with cannabis with somebody who's working cannabis, like one little piece of the product changes and then you're back to square one and you need to go back to your regulator and go through this process again. So I think that, you know, again, that's usually done by a human. For me, it was done by me. So when a change happened with respect to one of our designs, I found out about it in, you know, some kind of a technical review. And then I'd have to go back and say, okay, well, this changes us here with the FCC. This changes us here with export compliance. This changes us here with this various regulator that oversees XYZ. So that happens. That happens quite often and with, technology is advancing, right? So even think of the example of satellites. Satellite designs change. People are creating these new smaller technologies, these payloads. So every time a change happens, there's a counterpart on the other end of how are we going to license this, right? How are we going to export this technology? So that happens in other industries as well. So that's, I know you asked my background and I went on a tangent, but you know, I think that having that background has really helped me see that it's not unique to aerospace and defense, it's manufacturing and, you know, heavily regulated manufacturing challenge. And it's often done by a human with an Excel sheet in the background or you know, Wikipedia, what is a confluence page, right? Updating something. It's, it's, it's very much done in an antiquated way. Yeah, well, as you talk about the, my gosh, bankruptcy, aerospace, defense, I'm like, my blood pressure is rising. Like, do you have a stress, I mean, are these environments as stressful as I'm imagining? Like. I think, yes, I think so. do. I'm kind of taking a different approach now and talking to people. I feel so much less stressed than I would talking to a regulator. So I feel very lucky for that. But yes, I mean, they're high stakes positions. I used to say to my colleagues, like, my job doesn't matter until it matters, right? Like, I've got a team of engineers building an amazing satellite, something that they're working quickly to, you know, do something different and advanced technology. And nobody thinks about regulatory until the very end when they say, Okay, Kristina, we need to launch, deploy and operate our satellite. You know, do we have what we need? And if I don't have that for them, I'm blocking, right? They can't go on that rocket if they don't have the ability to do that. So it's, you know, and it's happening, usually in the background, I'm kind of lurking along in the background. talking to the regulators, updating the paperwork. But it kind of is that compliance doesn't matter, or regulation doesn't matter till it matters. And I think that's pretty common with that role in the industry. Is it like a Gantt chart that goes like exactly at the same place or does it loop in later? Like do you feel like is this something that maybe people aren't thinking of but it's constantly going alongside product build? I think yes, and it is a constant, right? It really depends on your industry where if regulatory is a reactive or a proactive part of your business. And I think perhaps some painful lessons have been learned in the situations where you have a regulatory person or a need for a license is in a reactive way because you can't get a license quickly. I mean, no matter what industry you're in, takes time and the regulator needs to review your documentation and make sure that everything is in line with the requirements that they need. So, you know, I think in best case scenario, you're hand in hand, which is again, is why I'm so passionate about Signify and the ability to give those people, you know, a chance to be on the same timeline, like lockstep, what's going on, what changes you make, okay, I'm going to the regulatory implication or impact. you changed this, I'm going to make sure that we don't have to go and get another license because now we're moving from X to Z, right, or whatever it is. So, you know, it's it's really dependent on how a company approaches regulation and, and compliance and how important it is and whether or not maybe they've learned a lesson or they realize, hey, once I get to the finish line, if I don't have this, I'm stuck. Totally, that makes sense. Well, I think just nuts and bolts, I wanna go back to your career stuff though, cause it seems like you had so many cool things in the journey, but one of the goals of this podcast is that people say, whoa, their role is so cool. How do I get there? Or what are the actual, because I will ask you your advice for folks listening, but like it's one thing to say, here's my advice, here's the steps I actually took. Here's what it went on. Did you get undergrad degrees in aeronautical stuff or how did this play out? No, so I was a communications major, believe it or not. And I think I would call it luck plus passion. So I did study astronomy and I remember getting over 100 % because I would go to every extracurricular, go look at the telescope or write something about this. And so I loved space, but as somebody who isn't an engineer and I don't have an engineer brain, I envy those who do, I just didn't ever think it was possible for me, right? So when I was looking at entering the space industry, it was back in 2013, and that was really kind of when space started to blow up and kind of explode into what it is today. For so long, it was kind of a government thing, and we didn't really have commercial space. So I had the opportunity to join a company called Spaceflight, and I... How I did it, I think I was just looking, right? I was ready to get out of bankruptcy and I was like, is there anything that even gets close to this? Like, am I dreaming? And I ended up meeting with the CEO of Space Flight and I think I was maybe employee five there. So it was really exciting. It just happened. I... Wait, wait, wait, wait. This is like a mic drop moment though. You like, you go from bankruptcy and the communications major to meeting the CEO and landing role and employee five. And the job was as a paralegal. it's my legal background that brought me to it. And I very much kind of pivoted away from that as I advanced and I did stay within regulation. regulation and compliance and legal, they usually go hand in hand, but kind of where I started was as a paralegal and come to find out that role kind of exploded into like, hey, can we... get these certifications for our warehouse and can you make sure that we're clean room certified and things just kind of grew as they do at a startup. But again, like I attribute that to luck. And I think the way that I would approach it today if I was somebody in that position is just look, just ask, just apply, find a connection, find something that can bring you to that thing that you're passionate about. But I mean, I do think that it's really unique for somebody to pivot from bankruptcy to aerospace and defense. know that that's kind of a very strange and not a straight line path. Well, it's those people thing. I really recommend a people first approach and excuse me to be so, but like, was it a coffee chat? Did you know this person through another person? Like if people are trying to be like, whoa, I wanna do that. How did you make those connects? it was actually job posting. So I was searching for a combination, paralegal plus, and then was like space, aerospace. Again, living in Seattle, I'm thinking like maybe a Boeing, or maybe one of the manufacturing companies that work right with one of the local companies. And just got connected and that's kind of how it happened. So I feel... very lucky. It was almost one of those like I'm just gonna do this on a whim and just see what's out there. Like what else is out there? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, totally. So it was very exciting and I feel very lucky that that's kind of how it happened for me. And then employee five to I think it got I mean, how big is that work today? They did, they got very large and then they broke up a little bit. So it was space flight industries. I don't know, not very large. I've only worked at startups. So I don't know what my very large number is, but I want to say it was maybe, you know, over 200 -ish employees and then the companies kind of split out. they're actually, don't know that they're, I don't think space flight is still here today, but they were bought out by another aerospace company. So a lot of the talent and there's a ton of talented people there went to another company. Yeah, happens. Yeah, yeah. well and then from there, and so it sounds like building your expertise, expanding into the needs of the business, which is such a startup role, adventure, like whatever's needed is what you're doing. Along the way, well and I guess, from those steps, I can hear your skill set building all these things, to coming to Signify. What was kind of, or can you tell us a few of those milestones in the middle maybe and how. you got to this point to be in this new team. Yeah, think, you know, this was actually just a coffee chat, truly. So this was Martina and I talking and he, you know, I think was looking for people locally who did regulatory compliance operations. So that was my, I mean, LinkedIn profile, right? And he reached out and we literally went to coffee and talked. and we kind of realized, I think at that moment, we're both on the same page on this and I'm super excited about it. And, know, I, I don't know anything about AI, but Hey, I'm going to jump in and I will learn everything that there is that I can get my hands on. and it just, happened just like that. So, you know, got connected with the team. We've, mean, we've been around for months. We're very, very young, but feel super lucky to be a part of the signify team and, and really enjoy the work we're doing and I'm excited about what we're doing. Absolutely. Yeah, one as part of AI2, did you all raise a little bit of capital from them or is there support provided from them? Yeah, we're pre seed. we've got we have a couple I think it's all public of folks who have invested in us pre seed. So AI to founders co op and fuse have all contributed to our pre seed round. Yeah. Thank you. the team is so small. I'm trying to figure out like what are the next steps. Is it product build out more? Is it customer acquisition? Is it all cacophony of one at the same time? do you feel like you know kind of what you think your next few years look like? Yeah, I mean, right now we're working on finding design partners, right? So we've built something. What we need are people who want to help us trial it and test it based on the different regulations and the different documentation that they have. So we're working on onboarding design partners now, and we're continuing to kind of expand and grow the variety of regulation and standards that we're exposed to. And we're in the thick of it, right? early and I think one of the most valuable things to me right now is hearing from people whether or not this is valuable and whether or not it solves a true challenge for them. So a lot of what I'm doing is having conversations with folks in manufacturing, showing them, you know, what we've built and getting a sense from them of like, Hey, does this bring you value? And of course, from there, we'd love to expand our customer base and really get to help many Absolutely. I think it's so obvious but important to double tap on is, does it have impact? If you're building a game, whatever, but if it doesn't move the needle or it's not practically actionable, I think AI has such power. And sometimes people are like, for that? That's so practical. That's so rudimentary. And I'm like, yeah, but if I can change this 10 % for you. What does that look like for your team? You're like, 10 % equals three million, et cetera. So I think those, is it helpful? It's such an excellent question. And even if it's early products and features and so forth. so a lot of people I think are listening to this podcast and thinking about upskilling in AI, learning about different parts of the field, but they're also thinking about their own journey. And if they're, Let's imagine they are thinking about getting into this type of compliance world, AI manufacturing. Maybe they're thinking about like, I have this skillset, but I'd like to translate it. You have great pivot points in having those conversations. What kind of advice might you give to listeners who are like, I'd love to be in Kristina's shoes? well, first of all, talk to me, I'm happy to talk to people, regardless, right, if you want to talk about pivots and networking. I mean, just, you know, I think what I would do, especially because AI is a bucket is so huge right now. I think one of the places to look is within your network and expand your network so simple as like LinkedIn and maybe following some of the venture capital firms and kind of seeing the different ideas that are being invested in. So look at that, look at those companies that are, you know, growing really quickly. And in terms of building your skill set, I think Practice different prompts. A lot of the application today is chats, like a chat function, so you're chatting with AI. But try all different kinds of prompting and see the outputs you get. Think about what you're passionate about in your industry and how you can apply what you're doing to the workflows you have and maybe create efficiencies that way. But I do genuinely mean that if somebody wants to talk about pivoting their career, I would be more than happy to reach out to me on LinkedIn because I think I feel that I've been very lucky to have kind of the pivots I've had and the experience and kind of natural growth. I'm very, very much a proponent of people, know, going to startups are amazing, right? Like early startup is an incredible experience where you learn what you want to do and what you don't want to do. And so I think it's just an incredible experience. to have. But yeah, talk to your network, see what's out there, see who's hiring, see what ideas are really, you know, making the news. I frequent Geekwire. I'm always looking at them to see what's going on. So yeah, think networking and kind of reading and understanding what's out there are your best bet. Absolutely. Well, I love that you say luck. hear a whole lot of hard work. I think luck meets preparation perhaps or otherwise putting yourself out there. I will say one of the things I've talked to someone recently who's like, startups are so scary. Like I don't know that I could ever go work at a startup. And it sounds like that's where you spent a lot of your career. What would you say to folks who are maybe scared of going to work at a startup or that concept is out of their comfort zone? How might you respond to someone thinking about those ideas? Totally. Everybody has a different risk profile and kind of what works for them and their family and what kind of risk they can take. I can speak from my experience, I left something that was pretty stable, right? No matter how the economy goes, people are always, their bankruptcy is always prevalent, right? That's something that exists and is always happening regardless of if we're doing, if economy is good or bad. I think it's more the way that I looked at it is, you know, you'll never know if you don't try. So I think in the case of, of signify. It was very early. I mean, we're very, very early. and I decided, you know, I was going to take a bet on myself, right? I'm going to jump into this role and see if I can push myself, push my comfort zone, push my boundaries. I mean, I'm pushing my boundaries today. I'm only. All I ever used to talk to are regulators and here I am talking to you on a podcast, right? Yeah, no, thank you. I think it seems silly, but it almost seems like you, if you're ready, I know that it's uncomfortable, but. If you're ready for that change, you know, deep down, change is hard embrace the suck and just go for it. Right. Like just take that bet and see where you end up and know that, you know, failure is failure can happen. Right. Failure does happen, but that's all part of the journey. And I know that it can be tough, right. To face that. But I think if you have that in you and there's something kind of gnawing at you to go for it and you're interested in it and it's something you're passionate about, like you'll never know unless you try. And that makes a lot of sense. I think also as I think about some younger people that I know in their careers, if you only work at an enterprise thing, or you only work in the nonprofit sector, government, startup, like I think at least trying some different type of workplaces, you will see a wild difference in management style and how your hours are shaped, in satisfaction you might feel or otherwise. So I think a lot of people think about industries rather than the size of workplace or maybe workplace culture is more more common to talk about these days, but I really think that by trying in diversity of places, I've certainly tried corporate and it was not my cup of tea. at least as of today, won't, whatever. You never know what the future may hold, but never say never, never say never, but I was, I loved the built and there's some bureaucracy that I just, the bloat, I could not believe, some weird, weird things that didn't jive with me. So. I think just people expanding their minds to that kind of workplace opportunity as well. Well, it's been a pleasure talking with you. You mentioned that people can reach out to you, bet there will be. Where can people find you online? Sure, yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn and it's just of course my name. It is a Greek last name, so you may think you're spelling it incorrectly, but hopefully it'll pop up and you can see the spelling. But you're welcome to reach out to me, send me a message. I'm happy to talk to people about pivoting their career, life at a startup, AI, compliance, regulatory. I'm totally open to that. I think if you're a manufacturer or you're working in compliance, for a manufacturing company and you're facing some of these workflow challenges, please reach out. Happy to talk to you and you can find Signify at getsignify .com and we're really excited about what we're building and always looking to talk to folks. That's awesome. Well, and I'm just gonna timestamp. This one's coming, or we were recording this in August 2024. So who knows by the time you listen to this podcast, know, check out where Signify is by now. And Kristina will link all those things in the show notes. So I'm sure your last name, you're right. I would not necessarily think that I was spelling it correctly. My last name gets confused all the time. So, Bajorek. Yeah. or ja, but yeah, okay, fantastic. It'd be different, yeah. sure. Well, any last things you want to share? This has been so lovely. No, no, thank you so much for having me and giving me an opportunity to talk about this. And it's been really great. Thank you. Well, thank you for sharing your story and your time, your expertise. It's such a cool space you all are working in and what an awesome story you have. So thank you. Bye. you. Bye.

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Dr. Joan Palmiter Bajorek

Host
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Kristina Hloptsidis

Guest

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