Host Karla Cohen interviews top clients, faculty mentors, and inspiring friends.
Conversations with M7 alumni, faculty mentors, and rising leaders who are honest about how things actually unfold. We talk ambition, resilience, and the decisions that led to (setbacks and) success.
These are candid, unscripted conversations about bold ideas, wrong turns, self-doubt, rebounding, and the moments when everything shifts. Sometimes serious. Sometimes funny. Always eye opening .
You’ll hear what people don’t usually say out loud, what surprised them, what humbled them, and what they’d do differently if offered the chance. Thoughtful, occasionally raw, but always worth a listen.
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Real, Honest, Inspiring stories
from the world’s most interesting people you don’t know you need to know (yet).
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Dillon is a strategic partnerships leader shaping the future of streaming at the intersection of content, technology, and audience behavior. He currently leads Strategic Partner Development for YouTube TV, managing high-impact relationships that influence how millions of viewers access live sports and entertainment. Prior to YouTube, he built and negotiated content acquisition strategies at Hulu and supported global business initiatives at Disney and Box, where he led teams across London, Tokyo, and the U.S. Dillon began his career in finance and analytics at Deloitte, grounding his work in disciplined, data-driven decision-making.
Karla met Dillon through mutual friend, Kevin Durkin, another guest on the M7 podcast, while working at Box in London. Dillon wanted to break into the streaming industry and chose to pursue his MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management for its connections to that space. Dillon had worked for Deloitte after receiving a B.S. in Accounting and Spanish from the University of Washington. Throughout his career, Dillon’s sense of humor and sharp wit make him a great storyteller and guest. His affability and warmth make him impossible not to like. Even more, his kindness, wisdom, and integrity make him a leader you will want to follow.
Karla is the host of the M7 and Beyond podcast and Managing Partner of TAA Consulting. A former admissions executive at INSEAD, Harvard Business School, and Stanford GSB, she brings more than 16 years of frontline MBA admissions experience to her work with leaders across industries. At HBS, she served as Associate Director of Doctoral Programs and sat on the MBA interview board, giving her a rare, insider view into how the world’s most selective institutions evaluate talent and potential. She uses narrative intuition, helping candidates articulate not just what they’ve done, but who they are and where they’re going.
Alongside her advisory work, Karla is a screenwriter, working with Netflix on an original series slated for release in Q2 2027, as well as a fashion model and visual artist.
Karla studied International Relations, Political Science, and French at Emory University, completed coursework in international marketing at INSEAD, and pursued art history and art management at Harvard. She is the mother of two teenagers, Daniel and Juliana, and brings the same depth, empathy, and clarity she uses at home into her work with emerging and established leaders.
Omar is the Founder and CEO of Please Platforms (formerly MultiOn), an AI company building a radically new category of consumer AI designed to transform how people navigate digital life. His work centers on developing an AI assistant capable of understanding human intent and executing complex tasks across the web — a vision he has been refining for more than a decade across roles in product, research, and applied machine learning.
Before launching Please Platforms, Omar led product management for Core Product Ranking at Meta, where he shaped the algorithms influencing billions of user interactions across Facebook’s ecosystem. At Microsoft, he worked on the Search, Assistant, and Intelligence team, contributing to foundational advancements in query understanding, natural language interaction, and intelligent agent behavior. Earlier in his career, he held product roles at Crealytics and LiquidM, focused on ad-tech optimization, predictive modeling, and large-scale decision systems.
Born in Syria, Omar brings a global, cross-cultural perspective along with his artistic talents as an accomplished classical guitarist he has built a life of purpose supporting development initiatives for young people navigating circumstances he understands firsthand.
EJ Borg is the Vice President of Strategy & Business Development at Illumination, where he helps shape the global vision behind some of the world’s most successful animated franchises, including Despicable Me, Minions, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and Sing. His remit spans content strategy, marketing strategy, and the expansion of Illumination’s worlds across consumer products, theme parks, and interactive games—work that sits at the intersection of creativity and commercial scale.
Before joining Illumination, EJ led content strategy for original series at Amazon Studios, influencing development decisions for titles such as Fallout, The Boys, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. He began his entertainment career at 20th Century Fox Film and later advised studios across Los Angeles and London as a virtual production consultant, helping teams adopt emerging technologies long before they became industry standard.
EJ’s analytical grounding was built early at Merrill Lynch, where he worked as an investment banking analyst before earning his MBA from The Wharton School. That combination—financial fluency, strategic clarity, and deep respect for storytelling—has defined his approach ever since.
EJ has remained a strong advocate of telling stores that matter which is what connected him to Karla when they first met in 2017.
Malika Aubakirova is a Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where she focuses on early-stage investments in AI infrastructure, cybersecurity, and enterprise systems. Born in Kazakhstan she immigrated to the U.S., she’s spoken publicly about her personal journey and how it shaped her mindset toward risk, curiosity, and opportunity.
Her prior career includes engineering roles at Chronicle Security (which became part of Google Cloud) and investing experience at Greylock Partners. She holds a B.S. in Computer Science and a B.A. in Economics from the University of Chicago, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Malika invests in AI infrastructure and cybersecurity platforms, partnering with technical founders building foundational technologies. She partners with founders building next-generation infrastructure and platform companies that power the future of AI and security.
Kevin is Senior Director and Head of Commercial Strategy and Strategic Partnerships for Epic Games where he leads strategic collaborations across entertainment, technology, and interactive experiences.
In his role, Kevin works closely with executive leadership, product, and marketing teams to structure strategic partnerships, evaluate new market opportunities, and translate long-term strategy into operational results. His work spans consumer engagement, league and brand partnerships, and the commercialization of digital and physical sports products.
Kevin earned his MBA from Stanford GSB after also being admitted to Harvard Business School, a distinction shared by only a small handful of applicants. Prior to business school, he graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in accounting and built his analytical foundation in consumer products and finance roles. He currently lives in New York City and has mentored those navigating careers at the intersection of sports, tech, and entertainment.
Lorenzio “Zio” Enriques is a New York–based hedge fund trader with a career that spans investment banking at Lazard, private equity at Cerberus Capital Management, and now trading in public markets. His Italian-Portuguese immigrant background and life trajectory an incredible story of tenacity.
Zio’s MBA from Harvard Business School, led him to his dream job in hedge fund trading, applying rigorous analysis and real-time decision-making in volatile market environments. He has worked with leading investment firms, including Marshall Wace, and focuses on risk management, market structure, and execution.
Originally from San Francisco, Zio now lives in New York City, where he is able to drag Karla for walks on the river to discuss life and what’s next (Zio inspired the podcast over brunch at Saddle’s ). Through Zio Karla also met Jangmi Mikutowicz, another podcast guest and vibrant personality whose tackling health tech while finishing her MBA at London Business School.
Övül is an Associate Professor of Management and Organizations at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. Her research sits at the intersection of behavioral science, ethics, and interpersonal dynamics, examining how people navigate honesty, trust, and reputation in professional and social contexts. She is particularly known for her work on ethical decision-making, dishonesty, self-presentation, and how small moral compromises can escalate into larger ethical failures.
Professor Sezer’s research has been published in leading academic journals including Psychological Science, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and has been widely featured in outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and The Atlantic. Her work is frequently cited for its practical relevance to leadership, organizational culture, and public trust. She received her PhD from Harvard Business School.
Her research has been featured in top journals and widely covered by outlets like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. She has also performed as a stand-up comedian and served as a writer for the Daily Show.
Ethan S. Bernstein is the Edward W. Conard Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School, where he explores how transparency, privacy, and human dynamics shape workplaces and performance. Before academia, he spent five years as a consultant at The Boston Consulting Group and later served in executive leadership roles at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, including as Chief Strategy Officer, helping build the agency from the ground up.
Ethan’s he earned his A.B. in Economics from Amherst College, studied abroad at Doshisha University in Kyoto, then went on to complete a J.D., MBA, and Doctorate in Management, all at Harvard University. This rare combination of legal training, business education, and organizational research grounds his work in real-world complexity and rigorous theory.
His award-winning research, featured in top academic journals and across outlets like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist, has reframed how organizations think about collaboration, innovation, and the hidden behaviors that drive (or derail) execution.