Tal Zlotnitsky, Inaugural Episode

Co-host PJ Benoit interviews his colleague and Braving Business Podcast host, the serial entrepreneur, consultant, activist and keynote speaker Tal Zlotnitsky, about his remarkable life and the motivation for launching the podcast. Born in Israel, where he was a television star as a child, Tal came to the U.S. at the age of 12 and for a time he and his parents were undocumented immigrants. Tal began his entrepreneurial journey with a spectacularly failed painting franchise as a college sophomore, but parlayed that failure into a career where he has built one after another ground-breaking business. He was the co-founder and CEO of mobile parking payment pioneer iControl Mobile, sold to RingGo, and now known as ParkMobile. Tal also Co-founded and was the CEO of iControl Data, a financial technology firm which was an early pioneer of a process called Pay on Scan to speed up and improve the accuracy of transaction settlement between merchants and their vendors. Now backed by Goldman Sachs, which Tal facilitated in 2015, iControl today processes billions of dollars in payments each year for tens of thousands of customers. Tal remains a major shareholder and serves on the board of iControl Data, and has also been an investor and board member of more than a dozen other startups, including of what became one of the world’s most highly rated travel pillows, JetComfy, co-created by his brother Ephi Zlotnitsky.Currently, Tal is a senior principal for global tech consulting firm, Infosys, where he is a strategic transformation advisor to Fortune 500 clients. He is also Chairman of his most recent startup, Our Love Company, and founder & CEO of a still-in-stealth-mode generative AI startup, Breez. Beyond his professional career, Tal has been involved in causes he is passionate about, from immigration, to the rights of gays and minorities, to tax reform. He was selected as a member of President Barack Obama's Presidential Partners in 2009, and spoke on behalf of the president on business and tax policies, including to the White House press on the West Lawn of the White House. He was on the policy and steering committee of the presidential campaign of Pete Buttigieg, and he sits on the advisory board of the Muma (Moo-Mah) school of business at the University of South Florida, based in his home town of Tampa. Tal has also spoken at numerous rallies, conferences and events on the topics of equal pay, a higher minimum wage, tax reform, leadership, entrepreneurship, innovation, leading with courage and purpose, and overcoming adversity.