Building Personal Resilience in Career and Life
With constant noise in the world, uneven tech job markets, unpredictable funding cycles, and a general spike in uncertainty, being a builder of new things has been hard — even for people who look steady from the outside.
Three regional leaders — Aurora Solar's Mackenzie Siren and Discovery Partners Institute's Karl Putz, in conversation with Intentional Gravity AI Fellow Merredith Lewis — will share honest lessons from navigating career searches and parenthood before opening the conversation to the room.
Big 💡: Building Personal Resilience
Karl Putz, PhD is an innovation executive and systems thinker serving as Associate Director of R&D Programs at Discovery Partners Institute, working across academia, industry, and government to move ambitious ideas forward under real constraints. He pairs strategic thinking with a deeply human approach — most at home solving hard problems with good people.
Mackenzie Siren is Staff Product Manager at Aurora Solar and cofounder of Chicago Climate Connect, a 2,000+ member community of climate-minded Chicagoans. With over a decade of experience building and scaling data-driven products across B2B, B2C, and marketplace businesses, she helped scale Wyzant through its 2021 acquisition and has since focused on climate work — spanning clean energy, data and AI, food systems, and community building. She brings a grounded perspective on resilience shaped by building through change and more than a few "well, that didn't go as planned" moments.
Merredith Lewis (moderator) is a product and technology executive known for building high-performing teams, scalable systems, and customer-centered products inside fast-growing companies. Most recently Chief Product Officer at High Definition Vehicle Insurance (HDVI) and currently an AI Fellow with Intentional Gravity, she has led complex platform, data, and product transformation efforts across startups and growth-stage organizations. She brings a grounded perspective on leadership and resilience shaped by navigating rapid growth, organizational change, and the realities of building ambitious teams in fast-moving environments.
We'll explore what resilience looks like in practice, how perspective helps us keep moving, and how we build momentum toward the things we want to make real.