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Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders (ETL)

Aicha Evans (Zoox) - Driving Innovation [ETL Looks Back]

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders (ETL)

Stanford eCorner

Journey, Startups, Education, Stanford, Culture, Strategy, Stanford University, Entrepreneurship, Business, Life Lessons, Thought Leadership, Creativity, Etl, Challenges, Leadership, Innovation, Founders

4.4739 Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As autonomous vehicles continue to evolve, we’re revisiting our 2021 conversation with Aicha Evans, CEO of Zoox. At the time, Zoox had recently been acquired by Amazon, and Evans was leading the charge in developing fully autonomous, purpose-built robotaxis. In this discussion with Stanford adjunct lecturer and former Zoox board member Heidi Roizen, Evans shares insights on innovation in a competitive market, overcoming skepticism, and leading a team at the forefront of autonomous mobility. With Zoox now making strides toward real-world deployment, this conversation remains as relevant as ever.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Who you are defines how you build.

0:07.0

This is the Entrepreneurial Thought Leader series.

0:11.0

Brought you by Stanford E-Corner.

0:14.0

Today we are very excited to welcome Aisha Evans, the CEO of Zuchs, to the Entrepreneurial Thought

0:20.7

Leader seminar, to introduce Aisha Evans, the CEO of Zooks, to the Entrepreneurial Thought Leader seminar.

0:21.6

To introduce Aisha and to facilitate this session's ETL, I'm going to hand the baton over to Heidi Roizen, who I get to introduce to you now.

0:30.6

Heidi is no stranger to ETL. She is one of the rare few people who's actually been a keynote at ETL twice. So she's an icon in her own right.

0:42.3

She's also part of the Stanford teaching team. She's an adjunct lecture in the management,

0:47.4

science and engineering department at Stanford. And she also got her bachelor's degree in English from Stanford and her MBA from Stanford.

0:56.6

And as if that doesn't prove that she bleeds cardinal enough, she also directs the Stanford

1:00.9

the Stanford Threshold Ventures Fellows Program, which is named after the fund where she's

1:07.0

a partner threshold ventures. And on behalf of whom she served on the board of Zooks.

1:12.2

So this is not just an interviewer, interviewee dynamic.

1:15.4

It's also a board member CEO dynamic,

1:18.1

which we think will make an especially interesting ETL.

1:21.0

Heidi's worn several hats more than I can name,

1:24.8

just given our time right now,

1:26.3

but among them they include being the former VP

1:29.0

of Worldwide Developer Relations at Apple and the CEO of her own venture-backed company Teemaker,

1:34.6

which she was the CEO of for over a decade, and she currently serves on the boards of a bunch

1:39.0

of public, private companies, and other organizations. So without further ado, I'm going to hand over the

1:44.7

baton now to Heidi to take it from here. All right. And I'm also another title I have that

...

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