The New Growth Playbook: AI, Partnerships, and Executive Performance - S3 E14

On this week's episode of Silicon Valley Impact, we bring together three exceptional leaders at the forefront of sales, partnerships, growth, AI, and executive performance. Nicole Ward is Senior Vice President of Sales at Aon, founder of the Executive Athlete platform, author of Biohacking for the Sales Athlete, and host of both the Aon at the Top and Executive Athlete podcasts. Nicole helps executives, board members, and C-suite leaders optimize their performance by exploring the intersection of leadership, physiology, and resilience. Her work challenges traditional thinking by positioning the body as a critical component of strategy, decision-making, and sustained executive success. Gayathri Padmanabhan leads North America Partnerships at ElevenLabs, one of the world's fastest-growing AI companies. With more than a decade of experience building and scaling strategic partner ecosystems at organizations including Freshworks and Intercom, Gayathri has consistently transformed partnerships into powerful growth engines, helping companies accelerate adoption, revenue, and market expansion. Danilo Campisi is an investor, growth strategist, and Senior Strategic Enterprise Partnerships leader at Uber, where he works with some of the world's largest Fortune 500 companies. With more than 15 years of experience spanning technology, AI, marketing, and business growth, Danilo has helped scale organizations from startup to global enterprise. A member of the founding team at AirHelp, he later held leadership roles at Kiwi.com and Meta, where he advised major brands on digital transformation and AI-powered growth strategies. He also serves on the advisory board of the University of San Francisco's Strategic AI Program. Join us for a dynamic conversation covering leadership, artificial intelligence, strategic partnerships, performance optimization, innovation, and what it takes to build and scale organizations in today's rapidly evolving business environment. And don't miss our spontaneous exercise: "Launch the Water Company." Tune in as Nicole, Gayathri, Danilo and Brian Sparkes take on the challenge of going to market from three completely different perspectives—Sales, Partnerships, and Go-to-Market Strategy—revealing how world-class operators think about turning a simple product into a scalable business. This and much more on Silicon Valley Impact!   Follow us on and listen to all our episodes on: 🎙️Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/68L4RPfMizjxnKBsmcFb1J 🍎Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/silicon-valley-impact/id1776876823 📺 Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@siliconvalleyimpact Silicon Valley Venture, LLC, the parent company of Silicon Valley Impact, is a proud global venture partner to great companies, MoralesHR and STAK Ventures, and 1900 Broadway Tower - Oakland. Check out https://moraleshr.com/ and https://stakspace.com/ to gain access to the worlds largest full stack venture ecosystem. It's over 1.2 million square feet of Live, Work,