Anastasia Volkova believes the world can be a better place if we make smarter decisions. She’s an Emelia Earhart Fellow, one of MIT’s Technology Review Innovators 20 under 35, with three degrees and a doctorate thesis on autonomous navigation systems. As CEO and Co-Founder of Flurosat, Anastasia’s passion is earth observation, automation and efficiency. She wants more young women to take on STEM roles and is passionate about the power of persistence to change the world. Anastasia has led a team of 370 people for the European Football Association, managed software development teams for American and European companies, started her own web development company and co-founded a successful event management start up.
In this episode we discuss:
- Creating an impressive CV by choosing a fun, meaningful life.
- Taking risks and taking action with imperfect products.
- The scary but doable step of taking a product to market.
- Using market feedback to determine what best serves customers.
- What Flurosat do, and how Anastasia came to found it.
- Her first taste of entrepreneurship, and being paid to solve a problem
- Flurosat using remote sensors to provide crop and land information to agronomists.
- That we are deciding where to stop in every decision we make.
- The power of persistence in giving you the ability to take on the whole world.
- That things are constantly changing and you never know what will come from saying yes.
- Anastasia’s largely positive experience working in male-dominated environments.
- Attracting women to STEMM careers, and changing perceptions.
- The difficulty in hiring women engineers despite demand from companies.
- The questions it’s important to ask during the interview process to determine company culture.
- MIT’s Technology Review 20 Innovators Under 35 Award.
- Anastasia’s advice to believe in yourself and continuing in the face of doubt.