What does it take to turn personal adversity into a transformative entrepreneurial vision? On this episode of The Angel Next Door Podcast, Marcia Dawood sits down with Kristin Thomas, founder of the Marble Collective, to explore the intersection of personal legacy, financial empowerment, and the urgency of creating spaces for women leaders to shine. This conversation sparks essential questions about how our life experiences shape the opportunities we pursue—and the lasting impact we hope to leave. Kristin Thomas brings a remarkable mix of personal resilience and professional drive to the table. With a background in psychology, real estate investing, and brokerage, her journey is deeply rooted in learning, adapting, and overcoming setbacks—including profound financial loss early in her life. These formative moments ultimately inspired her to launch Marble Collective, an AI-powered platform designed to capture, amplify, and preserve the digital legacy of women leaders, making their wisdom and achievements accessible to future generations. In this inspiring episode, listeners are invited behind the scenes of Marble Collective's mission to unlock and scale the influence of women role models, redefine digital legacy, and disrupt traditional social platforms. Kristin Thomas reveals how Marble stands apart from networks like LinkedIn, automating the creation of rich media portfolios and personalized learning experiences that foster authentic dialogue, not just self-promotion. This episode is a must-listen for anyone passionate about empowering women, building lasting community, and leveraging technology to amplify voices that have historically been marginalized. If you believe in the power of legacy and innovation, you won't want to miss this conversation.
What does it take to turn personal adversity into a transformative entrepreneurial vision? On this episode of The Angel Next Door Podcast, Marcia Dawood sits down with Kristin Thomas, founder of the Marble Collective, to explore the intersection of personal legacy, financial empowerment, and the urgency of creating spaces for women leaders to shine. This conversation sparks essential questions about how our life experiences shape the opportunities we pursue—and the lasting impact we hope to leave.
Kristin Thomas brings a remarkable mix of personal resilience and professional drive to the table. With a background in psychology, real estate investing, and brokerage, her journey is deeply rooted in learning, adapting, and overcoming setbacks—including profound financial loss early in her life. These formative moments ultimately inspired her to launch Marble Collective, an AI-powered platform designed to capture, amplify, and preserve the digital legacy of women leaders, making their wisdom and achievements accessible to future generations.
In this inspiring episode, listeners are invited behind the scenes of Marble Collective's mission to unlock and scale the influence of women role models, redefine digital legacy, and disrupt traditional social platforms. Kristin Thomas reveals how Marble stands apart from networks like LinkedIn, automating the creation of rich media portfolios and personalized learning experiences that foster authentic dialogue, not just self-promotion. This episode is a must-listen for anyone passionate about empowering women, building lasting community, and leveraging technology to amplify voices that have historically been marginalized. If you believe in the power of legacy and innovation, you won't want to miss this conversation.
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https://www.marblecollective.com/
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Marcia Dawood [00:00:02 - 00:00:04]:
Kristin, welcome to the Angel Next Door podcast.
Kristen Thomas [00:00:05 - 00:00:08]:
Hi, Marcia. I'm so excited to be here.
Marcia Dawood [00:00:08 - 00:00:20]:
I'm so excited to have you. You're building such an amazing thing, the Marble Collective. Start off, just tell our listeners a little bit about you and how you came up with this amazing idea.
Kristen Thomas [00:00:20 - 00:00:45]:
Thank you. Marble Collective. We've been in beta for about two and a half years, and we're just coming to market now. Marble is a platform that connects and amplifies remarkable women leaders so they can role model at scale, collaborate and get booked and funded and connected and share information much more efficiently than what's available today.
Marcia Dawood [00:00:47 - 00:00:52]:
Great. So what's your background? How did you even come up with this idea?
Kristen Thomas [00:00:52 - 00:01:24]:
So I'll go back a long time. I started out interested in psychology. I went to school for psychology. I loved learning about people. I loved reading autobiographies. I still do. And my story ties very much into this podcast around money and my money story. So my mom went through a divorce when I was in college, and she was actually an heir to Avon Cosmetics.
Kristen Thomas [00:01:24 - 00:02:19]:
So she had money in her role then. She never really touched it, even looked at it, or even learned about money until one day after the divorce when a fraudulent stockbroker showed up on her doorstep. And within, within a year, 80% of her money had vanished, was gone, and there was really no recourse and unfortunately, trust that had been built by my grandfather on my dad's side. He was very entrepreneurial. He built a big career in voiceover narration. He started with nothing, and he became one of the most illustrious and prolific voiceover narrators of his time. He was very much a role model to me, and he was so proud of this money that he had earned and given to his grandkids. And before I even knew the value of money, it was gone.
Kristen Thomas [00:02:20 - 00:03:04]:
So at that moment, I was. I was in school for psychology. I was very excited about this, but my whole perspective on life pivoted at that moment. And it went from being interested in psychology and thinking about that career to how can I recreate this? The wealth that was given to me and is now gone. And it really lit a fire underneath me that didn't exist before. And I went right into real estate. I read all the books about real estate investing. By the time I was 30, I had built a portfolio of investment properties along the way.
Kristen Thomas [00:03:04 - 00:03:23]:
And then the 2008 crash happened, and that was another loss for me. And. But I was very. I was. I'd educated myself in real estate. I really loved it. And I moved into being A broker. I built a brokerage that was acquired by a larger firm.
Kristen Thomas [00:03:23 - 00:04:17]:
And I, I just loved the art of the deal. And I loved building these relationships with high profile people in New York City and really gaining trust quickly in one of the most important and often largest transactions of their life. But as my career evolved, I became a mom of two boys and I started thinking about the meaning of life and what I wanted to be for them. And while real estate was a way to make money, it felt empty to me and it didn't light me up in the way I wanted my career to be lit up. And I started thinking about the legacy of my grandfather who passed away. And when he passed away, he was such a role model to me. He was always in my life. He would read me books and tell me stories about World War II.
Kristen Thomas [00:04:17 - 00:05:04]:
He was a masterful storyteller. And when he died, his voice that was captured across the Internet began to fade. And I would find these links and videos of him that I had never heard and listened to them. And I just felt such a loss that he was no longer there. And I just felt like this incredible career that he built was fading away and my kids probably weren't even going to really know him in the same way that I did. And that was the seed of Marvel Collective. Marvel Collective, what it does, it's an AI powered platform that, that captures the digital legacy of women leaders. And I'll tell you why women leaders in a little bit.
Kristen Thomas [00:05:04 - 00:05:24]:
But it gathers all of their books and podcasts and press and lectures and interviews and centralizes them into one place and tracks them automatically so that people like myself can find role models and really follow them as human beings in their big careers.
Marcia Dawood [00:05:25 - 00:05:31]:
Amazing. So tell me how it's different than like a LinkedIn or something like that.
Kristen Thomas [00:05:32 - 00:06:19]:
LinkedIn is great. I'm on it all the time. LinkedIn I see as a high level resume. You go to LinkedIn, you can see a snapshot of somebody's career based on their work history. You, your eye typically goes to the number of followers and it's very content creation focused. It's a feed where you can follow anybody in the world, but it's one single feed. The difference with Marble is that it enables you to get plugged into women leaders that inspire you and follow their media trail without them having to post anything. So it allows you to, to get plugged into somebody like yourself.
Kristen Thomas [00:06:19 - 00:06:47]:
Thank you for being one of our investors and founding members and the women leaders that we're featuring and know when you're in A podcast interview or you release a new podcast when you're going to be on stage for a panel discussion or if you put out a blog or an article or there's a press release about you. So it enables the world to get plugged into role models without missing any appearances or any media that's put out about you.
Marcia Dawood [00:06:48 - 00:07:23]:
So I know I spend a lot of time and energy on getting my website to be to have all the things on it, but I don't know how many people ever come to my website. I tell people that things are there. Sometimes people will come look for it. But when I think about Marvel Collective, I think about it as a way to have your your own personal webpage, your own branding, but within a community where people can look at each other's and be able to get a lot of information about a lot of different people. Would that be accurate?
Kristen Thomas [00:07:24 - 00:08:23]:
Yeah, the personal website is, I'd say, part of our inspiration. They're musts to have for individuals who do a lot of big things in the world that they're siloed and disconnected from the people who you want to see it. So you might update your personal website or add one of your podcast episodes to it or a resource, but there's nobody there to know it's been updated. There's no notifications. People might visit your website once, but unless there's a reason, they may be unlikely to come back and see the updates that you've added. So we're looking at Marble as a more automated, AI powered resource of everything you. We're going to track all of the new events and articles and interviews and lectures that are put out into the world about you. But what's also really interesting is what media are you spending your time on consuming and finding value that's informing the work that you're doing.
Kristen Thomas [00:08:24 - 00:09:39]:
So we're going to be soon launching a library tool that lets you create your own Oprah's Book Club of all media that you're consuming. So what books are you reading, what articles are you finding interesting? What podcasts are you listening to in addition to the ones that you're creating? And for everybody in your world who reads your books, who is in your audiences, or who is interested in the work that you're doing can get plugged into your own media trail and media recommendation list, which I think is equally as valuable. And when you put a collective of women who are out there building inspiring projects and initiatives and who have done really remarkable work, that comes with a tremendous amount of wisdom. Put them all in one space together and everybody contributes and adds media that they're recommending and consuming. You have this incredible library of highly curated, high quality media by these women and recommended by these women. That's a great alternative to the ad driven social media feeds that we're all addicted to and that don't always serve our best interests.
Marcia Dawood [00:09:40 - 00:09:44]:
Yes, yeah, I completely agree with that. How do we stop that?
Kristen Thomas [00:09:46 - 00:10:34]:
I think that, I think the issue is the model that they were founded upon and they've been in our lives for a very long time. We're all on them, we all use them in many ways. We see them as free exposure and publicity and we pay them with our time and our attention and our content. But they're all free services. They're very much ad driven. And when you're not paying for a product, you really are the product. So, so our time and our attention is the product that they're selling to advertisers and organizations. And when you have a model that's been built that way, their North Star is get their users on the platform and stay in there as long as possible.
Kristen Thomas [00:10:35 - 00:10:55]:
That's their revenue model. So I think, and my hope is that we're going to start seeing new platforms that like substack, like Marvel Collective, where the model is a pay for service which keeps our values aligned with yours and our service in the best interest of our customers.
Marcia Dawood [00:10:56 - 00:11:15]:
Amazing. So if you're not paying for the product, you are the product. Yes, that's very true. So talk to us about how like the younger generation will be able to participate in marble and learn and grow and do all those great things.
Kristen Thomas [00:11:16 - 00:12:38]:
It's something I'm really excited about and one of the reasons why I wanted to focus on women leaders. Women had been marginal, marginalized very much in history and we are also incredible leaders. We're great entrepreneurs and business experts and we, our minds work in a different way than our counterparts. And I think it's really important and imperative for the next generation of young girls to have role models accessible and centralized so that they can imagine what's possible for them. I love the saying to be it, you have to see it. And while women leaders are out there and scattered, I really wanted to create a place that's centralized and, and easily accessible so that students and ambitious professionals had a place to go to discover inspiring women with big careers who have done remarkable things and get plugged into them as an alternative to the social media feeds that just deliver us content that's going to keep our attention versus focus on Inspiring us, educating us and giving us information that we want. Yes.
Marcia Dawood [00:12:38 - 00:12:43]:
That's awesome. So where are you in the process of launching this?
Kristen Thomas [00:12:44 - 00:13:30]:
So we just launched our website on November 11th. We have 300 founding members who are all inspiring women who have been in my role and introduced to me. And we're going to slowly start onboarding them one by one now and into 2026. And soon after that, we're going to open up access to the world. So from event coordinators to journalists to investors looking to fund women, event coordinators looking to put women leaders on stages. They can come to Marvel to search for, discover and follow women leaders that are industry diverse and geography diverse.
Marcia Dawood [00:13:31 - 00:13:35]:
Nice. And so what does Marble look like a year from now?
Kristen Thomas [00:13:36 - 00:14:28]:
So our hope is that we're going to have our diverse and robust group of women leaders. We already have leaders in Asia and Europe and South America, Australia and Canada. We really want this to grow organically. When you come on as a woman leader, you can nominate others who you think the world should see more of. So this is really a member driven growth. And a year from now we hope to be partnering with universities, organizations who are interested in giving their female employees access to inspiring women to learn from, to grow from, and to find media recommendations from. We see ourselves as a great companion to private communities. And networks were a little bit different from a private community.
Kristen Thomas [00:14:28 - 00:14:51]:
We're more like a glass house where private communities for women leaders, they nourish and support and empower the women leaders within the private community. We're more like a glass house, so we do that too. But we're a great companion to private communities because we also give the outside world access to get plugged into them, learn from them and follow them.
Marcia Dawood [00:14:53 - 00:14:56]:
Amazing. So then what about two years from now?
Kristen Thomas [00:14:58 - 00:15:54]:
Two years from now? I hope that we are known as a companion to women leader events around the world so that when you go to an event, you have marble app in your hand, you can scan the code for every woman leader that you see up on stage, learn about them and then get plugged into them. I love going to, I love seeing women leaders up on stages. I get so inspired just by being in the same room and hearing their stories. But it's hard to follow them afterwards. Social media, but it's never consistent and it requires their posting and self promotion. So what Marvel's going to enable audiences and events to do is to find them, hear them up on stage, and then know every public appearance they're going to be in in the future. Know when a book comes out and follow their media trail and interview trail.
Marcia Dawood [00:15:55 - 00:16:07]:
So some, if someone were on a podcast, let's say, or they wrote an article or something like that, the, the algorithms within the platform are going to pull all of that. It's not something that has to be fed. Like you have to keep posting.
Kristen Thomas [00:16:08 - 00:16:42]:
Yeah. So women leaders as any leader and we're all very busy so we wanted to take the self promotion requirement off of your client. So our AI tracks everything that's put out into the world about you, grabs it and puts it into your public facing searchable portfolio and then your contribution is getting the comments going. We want to focus on inspiring dialogue back and forth between you and your audiences and other women leaders. So it's a focus on conversation over self promotion and posting content.
Marcia Dawood [00:16:43 - 00:17:00]:
Interesting. Yeah, that's great because I know I personally am not very good at being very consistent about posting and about self promotion. I know a lot of women struggle with that. Even if we had all the time in the world, it's just not something we're completely comfortable with.
Kristen Thomas [00:17:01 - 00:17:43]:
I totally agree. And even if we are comfortable and we get out there and do it, for the algorithm to prioritize your content, it has to be a daily, if not every other day thing. And the more you post, the more followers you have, the more content your content is seen versus amplifying you based on the work, your real work you're doing outside of the social platforms in real life. So we're really trying to reposition value on the real world that's being done outside of social platforms versus the volume that you're posting on social platforms. That makes sense.
Marcia Dawood [00:17:43 - 00:17:52]:
Yeah, totally. So then what about down the road? What are some of your big, big dreams for where marble will be five, 10 years from now?
Kristen Thomas [00:17:53 - 00:18:56]:
So we are an AI powered platform and we're very AI forward. And I think one of the issues with the LLMs in existence now is they're all being trained on the media and history up until now, which is very male dominated. The history books are male dominated, the Internet is very much male dominated. And I think a lot of the stories and the leadership of women and women leaders have been marginalized. And it's not the LLM's fault. It's just the media and information that's out in the world and how this world was formed. So we're uniquely positioned because we're going to have this collective of all the media by about, recommended by and saved by really inspiring women in one place. And when you convert that into an LLM, you have this rich, robust wealth of information about women and women leaders.
Kristen Thomas [00:18:57 - 00:19:32]:
And there's a lot of good that we can do with that. There's a lot of data that we can collect from that for good, to start a new narrative about what's really going on in the women leadership realm. And we hope to. To be a haven for the world to come, to really learn about women leaders, why their leadership style is so strong and effective, and hopefully to start putting them on more stages, hiring them more and. And funding them and their initiatives. More than is happening right now.
Marcia Dawood [00:19:33 - 00:19:57]:
Yes. Yeah, we totally need that. So are you also imagining that eventually the AI will be able to, let's say, instead of talking to me personally, like it could talk to the platform and be able to figure out, like, what I might say or what. Or at least pull information from, like, articles I wrote or podcasts I did and things like that?
Kristen Thomas [00:19:57 - 00:20:49]:
Yes. We're going to have everything that you've said, everything that you've written and everything written about you in one place. And from there, it's really easy to create an LLM that is just Marsha Dala. And when we have an LLM that's automatically trained without you having to manually grab everything out there in the world about you and tracks you going forward and consumes the information that you're hand selecting and validating, like what books you're reading, what podcasts you're listening to, and what articles you're recommending, you're. We're making it very easy to create an LLM that's just yours and just you. So, yes, we're going in that direction. Personal avatars. And that will make it easy for somebody's bringing you on a podcast.
Kristen Thomas [00:20:49 - 00:21:33]:
They can go and have a chat with your LLM and say, what do you like to talk about? What can I learn from you? If it's a student, they can ask you questions for advice because time is valuable and you don't have the time to sit with everybody. You want to mentor every young student that wants a mentorship, but I know you want to. So this will allow you and women leaders like you to. To leverage everything you've worked so hard to put out into the world so that you can go live your life a little bit more than you are right now. And students and ambitious professionals can come to marble to interact with your wisdom and knowledge without having to take any of your time.
Marcia Dawood [00:21:34 - 00:21:44]:
Amazing. And I'd imagine that this could be used like, for people who are looking for advice or advisors for new companies or things like that, too?
Kristen Thomas [00:21:45 - 00:22:24]:
Yeah, absolutely. And this is your knowledge and your wisdom and your work. We do want this to be something, a tool for you to leverage, to continue to generate income and revenue for yourself. This is your asset, your mind, your time. The digital assets that you put out there, those are yours. And because we are a paid service, our goal is to serve you, make it easy to capture, preserve, and amplify this wisdom and knowledge that's yours. And we're exploring ways that we're going to be able to help it continue to give back to you and to others going forward.
Marcia Dawood [00:22:25 - 00:22:26]:
And to monetize it.
Kristen Thomas [00:22:27 - 00:23:11]:
To monetize it. Co Monetize it between you and the other women on the platform. Yeah. There's a lot of really interesting ways we're exploring to be able to empower women leaders to continue to monetize the work that they put into the world and the wisdom that they've gained through that work in perpetuity and also even beyond your own life. So we really want Marble to be a legacy museum for women leaders of today and those in history, so that women in history's legacies are preserved and we can still learn from them and find inspiration from them. Amazing.
Marcia Dawood [00:23:12 - 00:23:18]:
Well, Kristin, I love everything that you're doing. I'm so excited to be a part of Marble Collective. Thanks for coming on the podcast today.
Kristen Thomas [00:23:19 - 00:23:26]:
We are so honored to have you. You've been such a support system, and I'm such a fan of this podcast, so it's really exciting to be here.
Marcia Dawood [00:23:27 - 00:23:28]:
Thank you.