BALL! (Best Advice &
Life Lessons) Podcast

BALL! (Best Advice & Life Lessons) is my podcast about best advice and lessons from world-class performers, builders and leaders from various fields, deconstructing and teasing out their routines, habits, tactics, techniques, hacks, tricks, secrets and the best advice or life lesson they’ve ever received — so that you can use and apply to your own life and work.

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8. RAVI VENKATESAN

Ravi is one of India's best management thinkers. He's the board chair of Global Energy Alliance for People & Planet, a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, founder of Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship, a coalition which aims to create 10M entrepreneurs in India by 2030. He was previously the chairman of Microsoft India, chairman of the board of Bank of Baroda, and co-chairman of the board of Infosys. He is also the UNICEF Special Representative for Young People and Innovation.
Ravi's management ideas, insights on mindset, career, leadership, success and meaningful living are cutting edge and practical. He shares his best advice and lessons from mindset, agency, responsibility, to leadership in the 21st century, crucible experiences, passion economy, career treadmills, and measure of life, success, wealth and happiness.

7. BOB DAVIS

Bob is the Corporate Vice President of the Microsoft 365 Growth & Experience org. Bob joined Microsoft in 1993 after he graduated from UW with a Bachelor’s and from London School of Economics with a Master’s degree. He is a founding member of what became Office 365 and has occupied leadership positions since its inception to becoming a fast-growing multi-billion-dollar business, perhaps the biggest enterprise SaaS business - with millions of customers and hundreds of millions of users.
He is the ultimate “customer leader” at Microsoft long before there were formal roles around customer success and customer engagements.

Bob shares his best advice and lessons "Work to live, not live to work", on growing hyperscale SaaS, leadership, learning from mistakes, first things first and many more inspiring life lessons.

6. LEX GILLETTE

Imagine you're 8 years old slowly losing your eyesight, while many of your friends could be seen riding bicycles, shooting baskets, or frolicking on nearby playgrounds.

Lex Gillette is the best totally blind long and triple jumper in the history of the U.S. Paralympic movement. He is the current world record holder in long jump, a four-time Paralympic medalist, a three-time long jump world champion, and an 18-time national champion. He is an athlete, motivational speaker, and singer song writer.

Lex shares his best advice and lessons "No need for sight, when you have a vision", on courage in the face of extreme adversity, motivation, optimism, being black while blind and many more inspiring life lessons.

Would love to hear what you think.

5. LAN YE

Lan heads #MicrosoftTeams Calling, Meetings and Devices group. She leads a team of world-class product managers and engineers who are obsessed with making workplace communications simpler and more inclusive.
In this extremely insightful podcast Lan shares her best advice & lessons on building and running a hyperscale enterprise service, her career journey from art to computer science, success habits, role models, mentors and her "There's always a way" approach to solving some of the toughest problems.

Jeff leads product & engineering teams for Microsoft 365, including #MicrosoftTeams, #OneDrive, and #SharePoint, that empower more than one billion people around the world to collaborate at work, home, and school.

In this podcast Jeff shares his best advice & lessons from his journey at Microsoft, turning points in his career, building great products, leadership lessons, advice for aspiring software engineers, insights from multibillion dollar product categories like SharePoint and much more. Don't miss his advice on running effective reviews & meetings.

Scott leads a product & engineering org at Microsoft that powers #MicrosoftTeams and #Skype.

In this insightful podcast Scott shares his best advice & lessons on career advice, leadership principles, his journey, what he looks for while hiring & retaining world-class talent, future of #remotework, and insights from industry leaders and much more.

Walt Mossberg is known as the kingmaker of tech products. Yes, we recorded the podcast using #MicrosoftTeams
Walt
pioneered the modern, consumer-focused, technology review and commentary. In this episode he shares his best advice & lessons on how to be entrepreneurial in a big company, doing what you love even in a large company, the power of personal brand, sharp insights from some of the industry leaders like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Hawkins & others.

Brian led the creation of several multi-billion dollar products, product categories and businesses at Microsoft - from Microsoft Project, Outlook to one of the fastest growing business apps - Microsoft Teams.

Brian is often known as the "Father of Microsoft Outlook," and he helped create #MicrosoftTeams by taking a small group of engineers to his fruit plantation in Hawaii.
He shares his insights on product development, how Microsoft Teams and Outlook happened, his favorite books, habits and much more including the best advice he ever received from his mentors Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Qi Lu, Satya Nadella and some life lessons along the way.