The Kismet Podcast
by Carina Waye
Welcome to The Kismet Podcast - honest conversations about careers, growth, and the unexpected paths that shape our lives.Hosted by Carina Waye, each episode shares real stories from the people behind Kismet; exploring career pivots, ambition, personal goals, and the moments of fate that quietly change everything.These conversations go beyond job titles, diving into the human side of work, values, and the lessons learned along the way.If you’re navigating your career, building something of your own, or curious about how great people think, grow, and take leaps, you’re in the right place.
Episodes
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Kristy Mone | Sliding Doors
Kristy Mone does not believe in luck. She believes in kismet and sliding door moments, which feels about right for someone planning to get the word Kismet and a love heart tattooed on her wrist. Kristy is the Performance and Coaching Manager at Kismet and she flew in from Perth for this record.…
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Daniel Chu | The Only Waye to Chu the Fat
Dan Chu is the Head of Finance at Kismet. This is the fifthtime Carina tried to get him into the studio. He promised a tight twenty and fortunately for all of us, stayed longer. Dan has been at Kismet for two and a half years, was one of the O.G Xplor employees, has three kiddos, a Japanese Spitz...
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Lauren Button | Friendship is a Hobby
Lauren Button is five months into her role as CX Operations Enablement at Kismet. She and Carina were unintentionally wearing matching jackets. Witchery, call us. This episode goes a lot of places. Lauren grew up in Sydney as the eldest of four daughters, her mum left a career in IT to buy 180...
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Sunith de Fonseka | Lay the Foundation
Sunith de Fonseka is the Integrations Director at Kismet. He arrived in the UK at 21 with two suitcases and a plan to finish an aerospace engineering degree and go home to become a commercial pilot in Sri Lanka. That plan became Cambridge research, then twelve years in the Royal Air Force as an...
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Natasha | Leave the World Better
Natasha is a Customer Experience Officer at Kismet.Before she got here, she started a petition that got over 2,000 signatures, lobbied both sides of state government, formed the Plenty Valley Clubhouse supporting over 200 families, and was part of a group that successfully pushed for mandatory...
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Caleb | That Movie Guy
Caleb does not do movie franchises. He is a lock in for a couple of hours kind of guy. Except when it comes to Breaking Bad, which he is rewatching. All sixty-two episodes... He's aware of the contradiction. Caleb is a member of the Customer Experience team at Kismet. He has three cats and a dog,...
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Denise Elgin | If You Know You Know
Denise Elgin is the Events Coordinator at Kismet and, as fans of Episode 4 will know, the woman beside the man. She grew up in Elwood with her mum and two sisters, spent her late teens and early twenties in the St Kilda club scene, and had been going to Joey's Nightclub for months before she...
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Michael Connerley | Fine as a Frog's Hair
Michael Connerley grew up in Mississippi, became a financial advisor just before the GFC, heard a colleague mention Australia and bought a ticket to leave two weeks later. He spent seven months in a Darlinghurst hostel, got into software onboarding, went through Xplor from 20 people to 80, and...
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Matt Clements | She'll Be Right
Matt Clements is the Chief Revenue Officer at Kismet. He's had Christmas dinner with Mark Woodland every year since leaving Xplor, and when Mark incorporated the business he tattooed the Kismet heart on his ankle. He wasn't working here yet, but he knew he would be back. This week he is. It's his...
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Rex Validakis-Betar | I'm Not Crazy, I'm Just Irish
Rex Validakis-Betar grew up in a housing commission house in Tweed Heads. He was the first in his family to graduate high school, was told by his careers counsellor not to aim too high, went to UNSW anyway, then Belfast and Galway for a Masters in Human Rights Law, then Oxford for an MBA after...
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Kellie Puxty | Be Your Authentic Self
Kellie Puxty went to uni with no plan beyond loving sport. She ended up on placement at Wheelchair Sports NSW, loved it so much she ditched A-grade tennis to drive an hour west to play wheelchair basketball once a week, then spent five years driving a station wagon full of wheelchairs around New...
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Jaylea | Roll With It
Jaylea left school at 17 for a pharmacy job in Castlemaine, quit four years later to travel, came back and worked through banking and COVID relief, stumbled into NDIS with zero knowledge, and signed her Kismet contract on her five-year anniversary in the sector. She is now the Escalations Lead at...
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Lauren Grimes | A Little Bit Of Magic
Lauren Grimes is the co-founder and Experience Manager at Kismet. Mark came up with an idea one day and she said sure, let's go. That is still, she says, essentially how it works. Lauren talks about a decade in mobile development, what it means to build technology that is genuinely inclusive…
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Mariesa Ferraro | London Calling
Mariesa Ferraro went to London for a six-month working holiday. She stayed for nearly twenty years. In between: a Kensington salon full of Aussies, London Fashion Week, a global beauty education role, an O-1 visa that required six months of paperwork, a 3am green room with Kris Kardashian, a...
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Jess Careless | Type A All The Way
Jess Careless is the Community Engagement and Relationship Manager at Kismet, the person with the bell at the Ready Set Connect events, and a Sarah J Maas fan who got Carina deep into Throne of Glass and has been carefully managing spoilers ever since. She also runs annual vision board nights…
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Zoe Cluff | Gelato Queen
Zoe Cluff was 23 when she walked into a job interview for a director role. The centre had cockroaches in the garage and bricks holding up the desk. She thought: we can do better than this. 15 years later she left with a NSW Children's Week Advocacy Award, a finalist spot for the International...
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Tahlya Sleep | In Her Kismet Era
Content note: this episode discusses suicide and mental health. Please look after yourself while listening. If you or someone you know needs support, please call Lifeline on 13 11 14 - they're available 24/7. https://www.lifeline.org.au/ Tahlya Sleep goes by a lot of names. Tahlya, Tals, T…
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Mat Ellis | Say Yes & Figure It Out
Mat Ellis is the CTO and co-founder of Kismet. Mark called him with an idea. Mat said yes. That is still, he says, essentially how their relationship works. In this episode, Mat talks about his dream job at Lockheed Martin, riding motorbikes through Vietnam, a year in Shanghai where his favourite...
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Lachlan Smale | Vest in Show
Lachlan Smale is the Strategy and Investments Manager at Kismet. He is also, according to his colleagues, a mythical creature. Lachie has been quietly one of the most interesting people in the building since he arrived, and this episode finally gets him in the room. He talks about almost (my…
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Sam Armstrong | Fail Upwards
Sam Armstrong is the co-founder and Chief Ecosystems Officer at Kismet. He met Mark for the first time helping carry a very large tree up a lift in South Melbourne. He was the first person hired at Xplor. He was an electrician for 10 years before that, a personal trainer before that, and a...
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Adam Dicker | Organised Chaos
Adam Dicker has been at Kismet for three years - one of the OG's. He's the principal engineer and has the least internet presence of anyone who has sat in this studio. And he would like to keep it that way thank you very much. This episode is a delight. Adam is honest, funny and completely…
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Dylan Verrier | Better Questions, Better Conversations
Meet Dylan Verrier: Kismet's acquisitions specialist, serial community builder, and the person who sat outside his Bondi apartment with a handmade sign that said 'Here to Listen' the day after one of Australia's most devastating events. Dylan talks about the card game he built called Beyond...
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Anna Latussek | Do It For The Plot
Meet Anna Latussek: software engineer at Kismet, freshly minted Australian citizen, and the person who accidentally ended up catering for orcs and hobbits on a mountain in New Zealand at 5:00 AM. Anna left Germany at 19 and hasn't really stopped moving since. She talks about building a life in a...
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Mark Woodland | Goals Need to Be Embarrassing
Seventeen episodes in, it's finally time for the CEO tosit down. Mark Woodland is the CEO and founder of Kismet, and thisconversation goes places most founder interviews don't. He talks about losing his brother Ben and about losing hisson five years ago during COVID and going to work the next…
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Carina Waye | Love Hard and Show Up
The tables have turned. This week, our host Carina Waye takes the guest chair, and Kismet CEO Mark Woodland takes the mic. It turns out Carina has quite the story. Musical theatre degree, rejection from WAAPA at 18, Channel 10, New York, Jim Henson's carriage house, catering for billionaires in…
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Simone Weston | You Have to Feel It to Heal It
Meet Simone Weston, Chief Performance Officer at Kismet,obsessed with the Navy SEALs, powered by a 5am ritual, and one of the most extraordinary people to sit down in the studio yet. Mon's episode covers a lot of ground. Her lived experiencewith domestic violence and the healing journey that...
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Shanti Dhanaraj | Recovering Theatre Kid, Committed Book Girlie
In this episode of The Kismet Podcast, Carina sits down with Shanti Dhanaraj, who looks after Compliance and Systems at Kismet, for one of the most joyful, wide-ranging conversations the pod has had yet. Shanti is a theatre kid turned data nerd turned book obsessive turned flower person, and...
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Nat Kramersh | Back Yourself
In this episode of The Kismet Podcast, Carina sits down with Nat Kramersh, Kismet's Chief Operating Officer and our first exec in the room. Nat's path to COO wasn't exactly direct. After five years at a high-performing consulting firm, she made the deliberate decision to step back, take time off,...
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Nadine | Community, Care & Saying Yes to Everything
Nadine was 20 years old when she took on one of the worst performing stores in OPSM's national network, in the middle of a pandemic, and turned it around in ten months. In Episode 12 of The Kismet Podcast, Carina sits down with Nadine to talk about ambition, community, cultural identity and the...
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Josh Coulson | Data, Distance & the Long Run
Josh Coulson has worked at some of the biggest tech companies in the world. LinkedIn. Deloitte. Atlassian. And then a redundancy opened a door he didn't even know he was knocking on. In Episode 11 of The Kismet Podcast, Carina sits down with Josh to talk about a career that has taken him from a...
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Jack Bennett | Don't Give Up on a Bad Day
Jack Bennett did his job interview from a hostel bunk bed in Sydney. Three days later he got the call. In Episode 10 of The Kismet Podcast, Carina sits down with Jack Bennett, one of Kismet's earliest team members, for a conversation that travels from Zimbabwe to Cork to South Africa to Sydney to...
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Ross Widdows | Craft, Curiosity & the Courage to Change
In this episode of The Kismet Podcast, Carina sits down with Ross Widdows — product designer at Kismet — for a conversation that wanders through art, craft and the kind of creative restlessness that leads someone to build a pool cleaning business, invent a float tank ventilation system, run a...
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Some paths are planned. Others find you. The Kismet Podcast Trailer
The Kismet Podcast is a show about the careers we build, the detours we didn't expect, and the quiet moments of fate that end up changing everything. Hosted by Carina Waye, each episode goes beyond the job title — into the real stories of ambition, pivots, purpose, and the hard-won lessons that...
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Rebecca | Curiosity, Healing & the Things That Make You Different
What does it actually look like to find your own way of healing? In Episode 8 of The Kismet Podcast, Carina sits down with Rebecca from Kismet's customer experience team for a conversation that goes in some wonderfully unexpected directions. Bec came to Kismet via a biotech degree, a COVID-era...
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Nick Upton | Rock Bottom, Radical Ownership & the Attitude That Changed Everything
In this episode of The Kismet Podcast, Carina sits down with Nick Upton - Integrations Manager at Kismet - for one of the most honest and unexpected conversations in the series so far. Nick's journey is anything but linear. From growing up in the Whitsundays running a family hostel, to owning a...
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Vanessa | The Art of Dreamweaving
In Episode 6 of The Kismet Podcast, Carina Waye sits down with Kismet Customer Experience & Onboarding Specialist, Vanessa. Vanessa’s journey has taken her from hospitality and travel to working across SaaS companies and eventually supporting NDIS participants, providers and support coordinators…
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Harry Travers | Cricket, Conspiracy and Code
In this episode of The Kismet Podcast, Carina sits down with software engineer Harry Travers for a conversation that goes everywhere - from mechanical engineering degrees and startup life to AI robots, cricket matches and the quest to learn Danish. Harry’s path into tech wasn’t exactly linear....
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Don Elgin | Performance, Identity, Resilience
Paralympian Don Elgin on Resilience, Identity & the Mindset Behind Elite Performance. In this episode of The Kismet Podcast, Don Elgin shares the full story behind his extraordinary sporting career - from growing up in rural Australia with a disability, to representing Australia across multiple...
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Dan Lombard | The Perfect Idea Doesn't Exist
Most people wait for the perfect idea. Dan Lombard thinks that’s the mistake. In episode 3 of the Kismet Podcast, Dan shares the mindset that helped him move countries, break into tech, and build opportunities from simple curiosity. You’ll hear about: Why most ideas evolve after you start The…
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Matt Trezise | Consistency Over Ego
In Episode 2 of The Kismet Podcast, Carina Waye sits down with Matt Trezise for a candid conversation about service, mental health, and what happens after life in high-pressure environments. Matt reflects on his time in the Australian Army, including his deployment to Afghanistan, and the...
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Justine Cabandong | Eat,Pray, Crochet
Welcome to our first episode! Carina Waye sits down with Justine Cabandong, Product Manager at Kismet, for a thoughtful conversation about identity, career pivots, and trusting your gut. Justine reflects on her upbringing between the Philippines and Australia, her non-linear career journey, and…
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About this show
Welcome to The Kismet Podcast - honest conversations about careers, growth, and the unexpected paths that shape our lives.Hosted by Carina Waye, each episode shares real stories from the people behind Kismet; exploring career pivots, ambition, personal goals, and the moments of fate that quietly change everything.These conversations go beyond job titles, diving into the human side of work, values, and the lessons learned along the way.If you’re navigating your career, building something of your own, or curious about how great people think, grow, and take leaps, you’re in the right place.
Hosted by
Carina Waye
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