This episode features Justin Gammage, co-founder of Illuminex AI, an airfield inspection startup, and Director of Partnerships at the University of Miami's Frost Institute for Data Science and Computing. He came up as a material science PhD and spent his early career at General Motors before pivoting into the partnership-building work he does today.
On this episode, we cover:
- How Justin went from troubleshooting problems on the GM assembly plant floor to running research collaborations with universities, and what he had to unlearn to shift from manufacturing certainty to research "what-ifs."
- Why selling into airports is slow: 18–24 month sales cycles, unpaid pilots, and a decision chain that can run 10 people deep at a major hub.
- The mindset that runs through everything he does: you're never selling to "Toronto Pearson," you're selling to one person whose mortgage and next raise ride on your project delivering.
- Networking tips from a self-described introvert who finds it genuinely hard to walk up to strangers, including his two go-to moves for surviving a conference room full of people he doesn't know.
- The 2008 financial crisis wake-up call that reshaped how he thinks about his career, plus the mentor "aha moment" that taught him partnerships live or die on whether people actually like working together.
Justin’s Links
Andrew’s links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmcburney22/
https://elderado.ca
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What is Impact Ladder?
The Impact Ladder is a conversational career podcast for technical people who want to grow their business impact.
Each episode, we sit down with someone who influences commercial outcomes in tech companies, startups, or technical ecosystems. Through the conversation, we trace their climb: the roles, the inflection points, and crucially, the skills and habits they deliberately built along the way. Because nobody moves up the ladder by accident.
The through-line: as you became more impactful in your career, what did you have to change in yourself?
Our goal of the podcast is to extract the hard won lessons learned by our guests that can help the next generation of people up-and-coming in their career in tech-oriented companies.