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Mandy started her career as an M&A attorney. She went to Harvard Law School with her current business partner and believed her path was to become a partner crushing deals, which she did for seven years. Over her time at a prestigious Dallas law firm, she experienced many micro-aggressions and saw how she was treated compared to many of her peers. She came up with the idea to pair diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts with data and technology to drive real change for the world her children would someday inherit.

She shares her story and the inspiration for her company, Kanarys, in episode 2, season 1 of the HubSpot for Startups and LinkedIn documentary series "Spiraling Up: The Journey to Become a Unicorn." Watch her full episode below.

Insight Shorts

There is only so much information you can pack into an episode to keep the audience engaged. Inevitably, when creating a documentary series like this, many nuggets of wisdom are left on the proverbial cutting room floor. But we got you covered. Below you'll find four insights from Mandy's full interview not mentioned in the episode.

The Importance of Co-founders

Mandy shares the importance and benefit of co-founders.

Parental Influence

In this clip from her interview Mandy shares the powerful influence her parents—and her mother in particular—had on her. When deciding to leave the law firm where she worked, it was the voice of her mom echoing in her ears that helped guide her path. "What kind of life do YOU want to build?"

More Johns than Women

In this clip, Mandy shares how there were more men named "John" as CEOs in the Fortune 500 than all Fortune 500 women CEOs.

Unconscious Bias in Funding

In this clip, Mandy shares about dealing with an unconscious bias toward women in the funding process, and prevention-based vs promotion-based questions.

About "Spiraling Up"

HubSpot for Startups and LinkedIn join forces to bring a business documentary series unlike any other. Spanning three seasons, it follows the stories of over a dozen co-founders from ten different companies at varying stages of funding from pre-seed to the coveted "unicorn" status. These are not clever brand commercials for HubSpot or LinkedIn. No talks about their use of either platform. Instead, these are up close and personal, and sometimes provocative stories from a diverse group of founders.

Season 1 premiered online in November 2022 and is streaming now.