Hello and welcome back to Redirected. My name is Andrew East and this is a show where we sit down with celebrities athletes, entrepreneurs, really anybody who has experienced a pivot or change in life.

We all go through them and so I wanted to sit down with people who have made it through the transitions well to not only glean some wisdom but also hear some pretty good stories.

And today we are continuing our Forbes 30 under 30 series where we sit down with people who are redirecting the future and have big ambitions and visions for what the next decade or so is going to look like.

And today's guest is Nicole Hartson Hurley. She and her co-founder Sargoon Carr co-founded Biteboard to improve the technical interviewing process particularly for women and people of color with identity blind software.

The assesses engineering skills through real world projects. The startup is being incubated within Google's area 120 accelerator but has also signed on customers like lift, betterment and alphabet subsidiary waymo.

So I love the mission and vision behind this company and Nicole as a whole is just an awesome person. I had a really good time talking with her.

And if you want to find out more about Nicole and what she's up to I'll link that information down below. But I think it's important. I mean the whole mission behind Biteboard is to hire people based off their merit and fit for a job what their qualifications are and are they well equipped as opposed to other factors such as their gender or race.

And so I just love what they're up to so we'll link information down below and before we get into it please subscribe to show and give it a rating on whatever platform you're listening on without further do I bring you Nicole Hartson Hurley.

Nicole it's a pleasure to meet you. I'm just going to I'm not going to beat around the bush here. I want to jump in real quick and talk about on your LinkedIn profile. You say that when you're not dancing or jamming to show tunes.

You're working at bite. What are your show tunes that you prefer listening to? Oh my gosh. That's that's I was not expecting my question. That's great.

So I actually do musical theater on the side. So when there isn't a pandemic happening. I usually try and do you know a show a year. So this year I actually did Westside story back in February last year. I did this musical called once on this island.

And so yeah, just like try and find space for that because it's one of the passions. But is Cinderella next because I heard you in actually got stuck on my head 10 minutes ago.

I wait. Did you listen to that on my Instagram? Yeah, it was amazing. I'm a speaker of fine art Nicole. Oh my goodness. That's hilarious. Yeah, that was me in a vocal lesson.

I actually was watching to your I think it was when you're at Stanford, but you directed some play. Oh my goodness. You totally stopped me. I did. I did. No, this is my job. Yeah, I directed a one act actually.

So it's actually my only directing experience while I was in school, but interested in potentially getting back into directing. So we see. So I don't often share this, but one of my favorite things in life is live theater. I love it. I don't like like musical movies or things like that. But live theater.

Oh my gosh, gets me. Yeah, what's your favorite show you see? All right. So the probably actually the most recent. It's been a couple years, but we went to go see Hamilton. And it's just insane. It's funny. My wife, Sean does not like theater. Like doesn't like it. So she kind of, you know, it's expensive tickets, but she sat through it.

But I actually did theater in high school, too. I did shoot. I can't the man. I can't remember this stupid. Huh? Music man. No. Oh, dang it. Now I'm embarrassed.

I'm sorry. Your brother is about. It was like a corporate. It was about a guy trying to get a job, I think. Oh my gosh, he didn't business. Huh? How to succeed in business? No, dang it. I'll let you know what it was after. Anyway, that was besides the point. Yeah, yeah. I did enjoy. Hamilton's amazing. Did Sean like Hamilton?

No, she didn't like Hamilton. She didn't like Hamilton. We went to go see the book of Mormon and wick it and all and she just, yeah, I know. But I geek out over it. So listen, I love to hear about people's foundations that kind of sets the context for why they're interested in what they're doing now. So if you could talk about, you know, what it was like for you growing up, maybe even what your parents did, any indicators that have led you to where you are.

Totally. So I grew up in San Diego. Both of my parents are teachers. I often joke that I'm like the only person in my immediate family who didn't study math or become a teacher. And and it all honestly, I thought I was going to be a math teacher because that's all I knew. My mom's a math teacher and my dad taught math, my sister taught math.

My mom's now a school principal. So I kind of was always surrounded by educators and and so I kind of grew up thinking I was going to kind of take that path because I think you, you often, you know, the things that you see or what you want to do.

And so it wasn't until I was in high school when I went to a camp put on by the rotary club of all things. Wow. Where they basically, yeah, it was very random. I like applied to it my junior year. And it was like a weekend event where they basically got a whole bunch of juniors across San Diego together.

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