In today's episode, we have a very special guest, David Ernst. David is a technologist on the forefront of democracy, and the CEO of Secure Internet Voting & Liquid Democracy Technologies. With over a decade of experience building empowering software across various fields such as social coordination, cryptography, finance, education, and more, David is a true trailblazer. Additionally, he is the creator of the popular meditation app, GoenkaTimer, which is used by thousands of people every day. In 2018, David even ran for the California Statehouse as a digital democracy candidate. We have a lot to discuss with David about how he plans to level up America's and the world's election systems in the coming years, so let's get started!

This is a readout of Gary's first Substack piece "The Foundational Tech Manifesto: What it will take to break through to America 2.0."

Host Gary Sheng chats with Simon Ho, who is a co-founder of 1Core Solution, an impactful childcare tech company which has increasingly started doing work with the US government—namely, the Department of Defense. Simon is a naturalized American citizen who came from Malaysia 40 years ago when he was 18 to enroll in college in Indiana, at Anderson University. We dive deep into Simon’s journey of pursuing a mission that is critical to America’s future: how to support and level up the child care system in America—a backbone of our society.

Why did Elon—one of the world's busiest people—buy Twitter? 🐦 And not just buy it. Step  up to be its CEO,  which is a  full  time  job‼️ There's something EXTREMELY unique about Twitter. But what is it? 🤔 And what does he have to gain? Also, what do we have to gain? I explore these questions in my first ever long-form deep dive video here. ================================== FOLLOW me on social media: ➡️ https://www.youtube.com/c/GaryShengPlus ➡️ https://twitter.com/garysheng ➡️ http://tiktok.com/@garysheng ➡️ https://www.garysheng.com ================================== SUBSCRIBE to the LEVEL UP AMERICA Podcast HERE: ➡️ Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/level-up-america/id1643363400 ➡️ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7w0GAk93Xy2IGciPW11q6K

Host Gary Sheng chats with Thomas Jonas, who is co-Founder and CEO of Nature’s Fynd. What does fungi have to do with saving the planet while keeping you healthy? Nature’s Fynd has an answer. It’s a groundbreaking food tech company born out of NASA-supported research which uses a unique fermentation process to produce a sustainable source of complete fungi-based protein using only a small fraction of the resources required by traditional agriculture. Thomas was born in France and we’re lucky that he came over to the US, now residing in Chicago, after serving as an officer in the French Air Force. We dive deep into Thomas' journey of pursuing a mission that is critical to America’s future: how to feed the world in the most sustainable way possible.

Host Gary Sheng chats with Kevin Owocki, who is a co-founder of Gitcoin, which is an incredibly impactful organization that has moved 70+ million dollars into digital public goods, and who is now leading the web3 venture studio supermodular.xyz, which is devoted to building and supporting web3 organizations that can be building blocks of a more democratic and regenerative future. How can crypto and web3 regenerate the world? A true renaissance man—who is an open source developer, meme crafter, DAO builder, movement builder, father, and more—there isn't anyone who has thought more about this question, or anyone more eager and able to inspire thousands to join him in making regen web3 a reality. We dive deep into Kevin's journey of pursuing a mission that is critical to America’s future: how to fix leverage web3 to regenerate the world.

Host Gary Sheng chats with Dr. Jocelynn Pearl, who is co-founder of Lab DAO, Ultra Rare Bio, Web3 Women in Science and host of the Lady Scientist Podcast. Why is science as we know it broken? There are few people on the planet who have thought more about this question, and how someone eager to make change in the system can do it. There are also few people more qualified: Jocelynn received her PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Washington. And she has spent over a decade working on gene and epigenome engineering, as her web2 dayjob. We dive deep into Jocelynn's journey of pursuing a mission that is critical to America’s future: how to fix what's broken about science.

Host Gary Sheng chats with Christian Peverelli, founder of the startup WeAreNoCode, an online institute for non-technical founders of the future who are committed to learning how to build and launch their online businesses without expensive developers. We dive deep into Christian’s journey of pursuing a mission so critical to transforming America’s landscape so that coding skills are no longer a barrier to launching a modern business.

A quick intro episode by host Gary Sheng, giving a preview of what's to come with LEVEL UP AMERICA.