Guest Lily Lyman is a General Partner at Underscore VC, a leading Boston venture capital firm known for its Underscore Core Community of proven business builders helping each other succeed. She is also a Board Director for the New England Venture Capital Association, MIT Sandbox Funding Board, and is a leader of the Boston All Raise chapter.

Lyman has a background as a founder, investor, and operator. She came to Underscore VC from Facebook, where she worked in product strategy focused on the international growth of core products including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger.
 
Prior to Facebook, Lyman held a variety of strategy, operational, and entrepreneurial roles. Through it all, she has gained a truly global perspective, having lived and worked in more than 75 countries. 

At Underscore VC, Lyman leads investments on Future of Work, AI/ML, Insuretech, Commerce, and more. With experience that spans the globe, she spends her time identifying investment opportunities and guiding startups that will define new digital categories, reshape industries, and change the world. 

On this episode of Boston Speaks Up, we chat with Lyman about her lessons from the past, her bets today and her predictions for the future.

085: Underscore VC's Lily Lyman

George Deveney is the Chief Advancement Officer at Make-A-Wish Massachusetts and Rhode Island, headquartered in Boston, MA. Make-A-Wish is a non-profit organization on a mission to create life-changing wish experiences for children with critical illnesses. In 2023, Make-A-Wish Massachusetts and Rhode Island celebrate 40 years of providing life changing experiences to kids and families who deserve it the most.

Deveney has dedicated his life to helping others and he has no plans of taking his foot off the gas. Prior to joining Make-A-Wish, Deveney spent the majority of his career at City Year, an education-focused non-profit organization that unites young people from diverse backgrounds for a year of full-time service to keep students in school and on track to high school graduation. At City Year, Deveney led development of the organization and successfully launched regional teams in more than 10 cities including London, Denver and Orlando. 

As a Dorchester native, the return to the Greater Boston area to serve this community he once called home was inevitable. For Deveney, getting the opportunity to lead development for Make-A-Wish, one of the most well-recognized non-profit organizations in the nation, is his own dream come true. And as one could imagine, growing up in the area has left Deveney with strong family ties to Boston and surrounding neighborhoods. This has allowed Deveney to stay in tune with local culture, and more importantly makes this role that much more important to him.

In his role, Deveney is responsible for driving the organization’s growth in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. We unpack his specific efforts to do so in this episode as we also explore Deveney’s career journey, what he finds so special about Boston that brought him back, his passion for helping others through non-profit organizations, and much more.

090: George Deveney of Make-A-Wish

Guest Kiel Servideo is a former Hollywood assistant who’s always found comfort with a pen and a notebook. He moved out to Los Angeles a year after graduating from Boston University where he hustled various temp agency jobs before landing full-time gigs with Hollywood titans such as Jerry Bruckheimer and Shawn Levy. While living in LA, Servideo wrote his first novel -- The Preposterous Dreams of Tucker Adams -- a fiction documenting a modern tale of the pursuit of Manifest Destiny. 

In the Fall of 2019, Servideo and his wife left their life in Los Angeles and each accepted jobs abroad teaching English to grade schoolers in Seville, Spain. Half way through the school year, a global pandemic changed everything. Servideo spent much of 2020 in lockdown with his wife, utilizing Airbnb to see more of Spain while remaining in isolation. 

Servideo is now living in a 300 year old farm house in Umbria, Italy, and he and his wife are working for DTC nail services startup Olive & June. 

As Servideo continues to life hack the pandemic, he’s discovering authors, reading, writing and reflecting on the divisive politics in America from Europe. We’re grateful to begin 2021 catching up with Servideo for all to hear.

056: Author & Former Hollywood Assistant Kiel Servideo

Leaders, entrepreneurs, creators, innovators and artists from all over the globe join Boston Speaks Up to share their stories of inspiration. Recommend a guest: team@valuecreationlabs.co. Learn more and sign up for the newsletter: www.valuecreationlabs.co.

090: George Deveney of Make-A-Wish

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