Alia Poonawala on Building a Film Like a Startup Raise: A Johns Hopkins Executive, a Sundance Actor, and the Cost of Bifurcating Yourself

Alia Poonawala is the founding executive director of Hire Hopkins at Johns Hopkins University and a Sundance-premiering actor. For years she kept the institutional executive and the artist in separate rooms. Then she raised $50K, hired a production team in Italy, and shot her own short film in two months, running it like the partnership deals she's closed for years at companies like Facebook and Uber. In this Escape Velocity episode, Tracey Halvorsen, CEO of adeo, and Alia get into design thinking as her operating framework, working backwards from the headline, the 80/20 split between business and creative work, and what changes when an autoimmune diagnosis forces a leader to stop overworking. For leaders who are also makers.