The Girl Scouts of the USA is launching its first-ever STEM education initiative for middle and high-school students. CEO Sylvia Acevedo joins Cheddar to discuss what the newly-enrolled girls will get to experience when they sign up for the program. It launches nationwide in Fall 2018 and is sponsored by Raytheon.
Then, we learn about a very special photoshoot that saw Girl Scouts honoring their women-in-STEM heroes. Acevedo explains how five NYC-area girls were transformed into the likes of American computer scientist Grace Hopper, systems engineer Margaret Hamilton, and more. One girl even dressed up as Sylvia Acevedo, a former rocket scientist in her own right.
Finally, we ask the CEO to reveal her "Yes I Will" moment where she decided she'd persevere despite the odds. She gives an inspiring answer about her time in the Girl Scouts, and how it allowed her to pursue her dreams and become a rocket scientist. Acevedo hopes girls will follow in her footsteps and chase their own STEM dreams.
Renewable energy company Heliogen has gone public via a SPAC merger with blank check company Athena Technology Acquisition Corp. on the NYSE. Joining Cheddar, founder and CEO Bill Gross went into why he felt the end of 2021 was the best time to get into the public markets. "If you think of the Industrial Revolution and the digital revolution, this renewable revolution is probably going to be as big or larger than that," he said. "So we're going to use this capital to scale our business, to meet more customer demand, to do more projects in parallel, and to scale our research and development to continue to drive down the price to be competitive with fossil fuels."
Carl "The Moon" Runefelt, a Bitcoin investment expert, recently made a hefty purchase of a $2 million Bugatti sports car at a Dubai dealership. The Swedish crypto evangelist joined Cheddar to talk about how he made the big acquisition of a luxury item he had long had his eye on and why he chose the dealership, The Car Vault, to make the unprecedented transaction. "They accepted crypto directly, and that was important to me," he said. "I am not going to go to any car dealership that don't accept crypto, and that's kind of a principle I have today."
2021 proved that crypto currency is here to stay. This year saw more and more adoptions of crypto, from top athletes looking to be paid in bitcoin, to Elon Musk even experimenting with bitcoin and dogecoin payments for a bit over at Tesla. And it wasn't all bitcoin either - other cryptos like Cardano and Solana saw some action in 2021 as well. Patrick McConlogue, CEO of Overline and former Citadel Investment Group Engineer explains why 2021 was such a good year for crypto, and what to expect in 2022.