Life as a Fun-loving Disco Ball Inside of Kaleidoscope

Stephanie LaFlora is a disco ball inside of a kaleidoscope.

On one hand, she’s a mom and a wife, she’s got a house in the burbs and a 9-5pm. She’s admittedly scattered, prone to quitting when things get painful and encounters impostor syndrome. She’s even got a 401k.

On the other hand, Stephanie is black female in tech who has sang with Hillsong at the Staples Center, and been on the TV show Chicago Fire, and started the following ventures:

• SwimXL—a plus-size women swimsuit line 
• CrownHunt—a tool to connect textured hair dressers
• The Pep Talk Hotline—the place to go when you need a pick up

A disco ball inside of a kaleidoscope.

What you notice about Steph LaFlora at first—and this is clear in the conversations we were lucky to have with her—is that she clearly lives her life with some charming but intense I-can’t-sit-still wigglyness. 

Amidst this chaos, she lives her everyday life with the wisdom of a sage philosopher. She lives her life by some simple mantras for the here-and-now (“There are no trophies in the end, so life better be fun”); at the same time she carries a generational perspective about what it means to be Black in America. 

In this conversation, you’ll hear Steph take on tech for not being as woke as it thinks it is, fragile white people for getting so offended all of the time, and everyone who takes life too seriously. Buckle up!

You can find the transcript for this episode here. Find transcripts for all episodes here.