She starts with where and when it launched.

So to set the study area for those individuals listening who don't know the Sea to Sky, it's about 130-kilometer stretch of highway along the southwest coast of British Columbia.

Uh, it's a very beautiful stretch of high- uh, highway, very scenic, and, uh, it has multiple municipalities along it, including Pemberton and Whistler, which many people probably have heard of, and, uh, and Squamish.

And so together with multiple partners last year in the summer of 2025, uh, we launched a mosquito surveillance study.

And I should just mention that our partners included Vancouver Coastal Health, which is the health authority overseeing that region, also the Department of Zoology at University of BC, um, also Lil'wat First Nation, Squamish First Nation, and also I should mention, thanks to funding for, from, uh, University of British Columbia Centre for Disease Control.

So all of us together launched this study in response to a cluster of four encephalitis cases that occurred in the region in the summer of 2024.

[instrumental music] So last year we wanted to go in and get a sense of what, uh, endemic and invasive mosquito species were circulating in the area, uh, and also what viruses they may be carrying, if any, and namely California serogroup viruses and West Nile virus.

Next, Dr. Smith described how the researchers chose mosquito collection sites and how they collected mosquitoes.

love.

So, yeah, so I started with CBD and then the motherhood came and more stress came with it.

And I had my very deep depression modes.

And then he was traveling a lot.

So he suggested for me to take a puff here and there.

So I started here just whenever I felt really, you know, very down.

uh, take a puff and it would lift me up.

What sort of, let's call it a terrain transformations have you heard about from people just using CBD? Just introducing CBD, what sort of conditions have you seen healed?

What do those experiences teach you about how marketplaces work, how they reshape behavior? What are you bringing

to TaskRabbit? When I first started at the first gig economy marketplace, which is really Airbnb, I went to Airbnb because I love travel.

I had worked in travel before.

I was at Expedia, which was super fun.

And I thought that this is why I want to work here.

But what I realized fairly quickly once I got there is I loved actually traveling.

the marketplace aspect of Airbnb just as much and really people's behavior.

AI on the sort of opposite of the customer side, you know, within the organization on your end?

Yes.

That's where a coach usually comes in.

But even if there's not a coach, like can there be technology that doesn't replace a human but just meets you where you're at? So that's what fascinates me is like how can you enhance just the sense of isolation and challenge that people deal with on their own and provide technology like very respectfully but in places that could just make you feel more empowered.

So I'm excited to see where we can kind of brid- well, not bridge, but meet the human and AI connection in that way and just be there every step of the way and share our learnings.

And one last thing if it's okay.

Sure.

I don't think the corporations are gonna go anywhere, right? I think the people are gonna still have, be chasing all the time.

But I think people who are more conscientious will be able to sustain themselves in a more meaningful way.

(laughs)

... we meet three times a year and, and, you know, we set targets together and that's it.

Now, I do work very closely with IKEA in a different way, more in a business sense, where w- there's a lot of opportunity for us to ensure that IKEA customers have access to TaskRabbit.

And, you know, in some sense, um, TaskRabbit customers have access to IKEA, but IKEA has millions of people visiting their apps and their sites and, of course, their big stores, and we wanna make sure that we have access to those customers in the best way possible.

So we've done some great things there.

We, um, just recently in the US, but we had done so, um, elsewhere before, made it so that it's much more seamless for our customers or for IKEA customers to purchase, let's say, a desk at IKEA and assembly all at the same time and pay for it at checkout.... at IKEA, versus having to go separately on a TaskRabbit app, and then try to put in the very fun article name of IKEA furniture names and, and, and try to figure out how to get it assembled.

So that's a great example of how the two companies can really leverage their capabilities.

How do you make decisions? What's your framework?