Meet the Peeps Behind PeopleTok Part I

Hierarchy is for corporate dinosaurs who love red tape and pointless meetings that could have been emails. We do things differently. Meet the team (minus dev crew, because they're next)!

A lot can happen in a few weeks.

We’re 17,000 strong behind the vision for a decentralized, collectively owned and governed, unfuckwithable TikTok alternative. We also have a core team of volunteers emerging.

You’ll hear me say this a million times: I am humbled and grateful that I managed to say enough of the right things to attract talent of this caliber to the build. Today, it is my deep honor to introduce you to some of our powerhouse team.

Developers will be next, but there’s too many to fit into this email and that team is still shaking out.

We’re a little non-hierarchical as you might notice.

Because hierarchy is for corporate dinosaurs who love red tape and pointless meetings that could have been emails.

Non-hierarchy is for people who actually want to get sh*t done. That doesn’t mean chaos mind you. That doesn’t mean having no structure, rhyme, or reason.

But it does mean that we acknowledge good ideas come from anywhere, and so intelligent leadership ought to be fluid. Think of Navy SEALs—no one’s waiting for permission to act. Whoever’s best positioned for the job takes the lead. (They call it dynamic subordination and it’s why they move like a lethal hivemind.)

In other words, we’re less chain of command, more brain of command. So in the spirit of what we’re building we do not have a C-Suite.

And this is in order of when peeps sent their bios in ;p

• Kasey Lammers, Financial Steward

• Adam Young, Technical Steward

• Kasarra, UX

• Mafe Perdomo, Design

• Katie Meade, Design Steward

• Ksenia Ivanova, Design

• Patrick Queiroz, Design

• Ally Madrone, Trust & Safety

• Chiara, Steward

Kasey Lammers, Financial Steward

With over 14 years of experience in financial leadership, Kasey Lammers has built a career ensuring financial transparency, compliance, and operational efficiency across multiple industries. As a CFO and financial architect, she has led large-scale financial transformations, designed governance frameworks, and implemented financial reporting structures that align with regulatory best practices, including GAAP compliance, SOX controls, and strategic audit oversight.

Kasey’s expertise spans treasury management, financial modeling, and risk mitigation, ensuring that every financial decision supports long-term sustainability without compromising ethical or mission-driven objectives. She has successfully optimized multi-million-dollar budgets, structured incentive programs, and led complex integrations of financial systems to enhance real-time transparency and accountability.

Now, as the financial steward for this initiative, Kasey is designing a financial framework that prioritizes fair contributor compensation, decentralized governance, and sustainable growth, ensuring that the platform remains mission-driven, community-owned, and free from external financial influence. Her goal is to create a transparent, resilient economic model that rewards participation while maintaining financial integrity.

Adam Young, Technical Steward

With a degree in Archaeology and Anthropology, Adam hoped to discover dinosaurs and ancient villages. Instead, he found himself surveying landfills in Florida. Struggling financially and hating the stench, he joined the U.S. Air Force, took a seat in a department he wasn’t supposed to be in, and discovered a passion for technology, problem-solving, and leadership.

Now the CTO at CloudCosmos, Adam thrives on collaboration, innovation, and solving complex problems. At GPM Corp, he mentored a struggling team coaching them in working toward “yes”, helping them to develop the company’s second ever revenue-generating product and successfully navigating the company through an acquisition.

At LexisNexis, he saved an at-risk $4 million /yr contract by optimizing performance and reducing costs. At Funcom, a gaming startup, he expanded the U.S. and Canadian divisions into a 178-person team, overseeing large-scale initiatives while promoting operational efficiency and fostering an inclusive culture.

Adam is a strong advocate for diverse, global teams. He has worked with women-led companies, cross-cultural development teams, and inclusive workplaces spanning North America, Asia, and Europe. His goal is mentoring the next generation of tech leaders, believing that diversity drives innovation.

Outside of work, Adam is an avid long distance backpacker, having completed long section hikes of the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and The Vermont Long Trail. Living, working and traveling throughout Europe, he’s embraced new cultures and perspectives. His journey—from dinosaurs and ancient villages to technology—is testament that adaptability, resilience, and an open mind lead to success.

Kasarra, UX

Kasarra is a Senior UX Researcher, worked in tech for years from Bird to Theragun and beyond. She is currently working to open her first business, a co-working space for artists and creatives. She is an activist in her community and fosters kittens in her free time. She's proud to support this movement because she believes that all social media applications should work ethically and responsibly.

Mafe Perdomo, Design

Mafe is a Senior Product Designer who thrives on innovation, problem-solving, and pushing boundaries. With over 13 years of experience helping startups bring their ideas to life—especially in the wellness and health industries—Mafe is passionate about using design, creative thinking, and AI to improve lives.

She loves tackling challenges, collaborating with teams, and turning blank pages into meaningful products. Always learning, innovating, and working smarter, not harder, Mafe is excited to contribute to the PeopleTalk application and help shape its future.

Katie Meade, Design Steward

Katie Meade is our Design Steward, shaping the visual and experiential identity while aligning Design and Product with our organization's mission to reimagine how people connect, collaborate, and create in digital spaces. At PeopleTok, we believe in flattening hierarchies and empowering individuals, and Katie’s work ensures that our platform reflects those values—prioritizing intuitive design, seamless interaction, and a sense of belonging.

With over 15 years in New York City and a deep network of creative professionals, she brings a research-driven, human-centered approach to design. Her work balances structure and organic evolution, prioritizing user insights, thoughtful execution, and meaningful connection. She channels her lifelong rebellious instinct into constructive reinvention—building digital spaces that foster agency, curiosity, and authentic engagement.

Ksenia Ivanova, Design

Ksenia is a Senior Product Designer that’s passionate about using design and technology to make a positive impact on everyday people’s lives. In her over 6 years of experience she has worked at startups, as a freelancer, and at enterprise level companies where she was able to hone her craft. Working for startups at various stages—seed to post-acquisition—has given her the perspective into how to effectively weigh design resources and impact as well as taking into account strategy for designing for company growth.

She believes in PeepleTalk’s mission, and as a small but passionate book content creator that values community, she has a vested interest in making a platform that is for the people and is owned by the people.

Patrick Queiroz, Design

Hi friends! I’m Patrick Queiroz, a recent college graduate having earned my bachelors in Art & Design: Games & Playable Media at UC Santa Cruz. Community oriented, I often find myself in positions where my main goal is to bring communities together, and encourage authentic communication in new and unconventional ways. As a designer, I strive to create intuitive and accessible designs that can be enjoyed by all.

Ally Madrone, Trust & Safety

I've spent my career swapping lab coats for gardening gloves—and then for chisels. I began as a clinical researcher in healthcare, then got my hands dirty as a horticulture researcher and permaculturist, building a company that created resilient ecosystems in urban jungles, suburban sprawls, and the quiet corners of rural America. These days, I've traded soil for code, diving into tech with startups focused on digital authenticity, trust, and safety. After all, why settle for a system built by a few when the best ideas come from the many?

When I'm not reimagining digital spaces, you'll find me in the workshop: a lifelong woodworker now transitioning to all hand tools because nothing beats the feel of craftsmanship done the old-fashioned way. I lived in a van for 6 years while traveling across North America—proving that freedom and resourcefulness go hand in hand—and I’m currently designing a Skoolie to build in 2025. Let's just say I'm all about crafting systems and spaces that are as decentralized and inclusive as the community we’re building.

Chiara, Steward

Chiara has touched nearly 75 companies in her career—sometimes as a consultant, sometimes as a freelancer, sometimes as the one making sense of chaos in a venture studio’s innovation lab. She’s helped build startups, managed accounts for both scrappy founders and large enterprises, and even co-founded a psychedelic education platform that hit an eight-figure valuation cap.

And it all happened by accident. (Or synchronicity, depending on your lens.)

She started in the arts, graduated college early with an English degree and no roadmap, then promptly moved to Thailand to train in Muay Thai for a year and study Theravada Buddhism. When she returned to the U.S., she launched her first business as a copywriter and brand strategist, crafting stories for brands like Marriott, Hilton, Nobu, and Montage. That was her first taste of entrepreneurship, and she never looked back.

Around 23, she pivoted into revenue operations and business strategy. And she built a lot. Some things worked. Some things didn’t. Some made money. Some…did the opposite.

There was the fantasy & sci-fi armor activewear as a first stint in ecommerce. The indie game writing. The venture studio pipeline she designed to take businesses from doodles on whiteboards to full-fledged startups. The corporate project management, the systems, the operations, the endless building. She also spent years as a strength athlete (still on hiatus after a long illness), proving that brute force and strategy aren’t mutually exclusive.

As an ordained metaphysical minister, speaker, and writer, she’s putting that skill to work to bring together the people the world desperately needs more of: healers, visionaries, builders, lovers, and the ones crazy and brave enough to help steward in the New Earth.

Find her on TikTok.

Up Next

And that’s it for this batch.

There’s an absurd amount of talent circulating in this ecosystem, and more will be pulled in as we go. As Beth Dawson, a member of our collective, astutely observed in her LinkedIn message to me:

“What I know to be true is that there’s a vast underutilized population of brilliant, creative and kind individuals who are more than ready to get to work.”

Given the volunteer nature of this project, we may find that people come and go. But in this email it has been my absolute pleasure to introduce you to some of the early team. Next up is tech (which is still filling out and getting organized, even as initial pieces of the app have been developed).

Stay tuned to meet more of the beautiful human beings behind this mission. 💗

e pluribus unum,
Chiara Scuro
Steward