When I say I only reach outside myself for the best of the best, I mean it. Today, that means a woman who moves through rooms in Abu Dhabi, Lagos, Mexico City, and Wall Street with the same quiet authority, and who, when she opens her mouth, nobody questions.

Meet Nicole Valentine, Senior Director of FinTech at the Milken Institute. She helps shape how governments and markets think about artificial intelligence, digital assets, and who gets left out of the financial system. But that’s not why this conversation stopped me cold.

I asked her where her confidence comes from. That “I am enough” you can feel across a table. What she told me traces back to a relative who fought under George Washington in the Continental Army, and to a mother she calls a force of nature. There’s a reason she walks the world like she owns a piece of it. She does.

Then there’s the story I can’t stop thinking about: a hundred-year-old law firm, a senior lawyer who tried to humble her in front of clients, and the four words her mother whispered behind a closed door for her to say back. It’s the cleanest lesson in grace and power you’ll hear all year.

We do get into the future of money, and she hands the audience something practical about the speed of all this. It took 68 years to get the world onto airplanes. Two months to get onto AI. What she does with that gap is the reason I told people to set a timer for minute 52.

She also names the three habits behind everything she’s built. And she never once mentioned the viral moment where she was standing right next to me and got edited out 🙂

If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. Check out the podcast below, where Nicole shows you how to get to the table.