Remembering Ayanna, our Executive Producer
It is with profound sadness that I’m writing of the passing of Ayanna Monteverdi (1955-2025), co-founder and Executive Producer at Mendelspod. Ayanna dedicated her life to coaching and personal training, working with professionals from all walks of life—from musicians to corporate executives. In late 2010, she and I founded Mendelspod with a Plantronics headset from Radio Shack and a vision to “advance life science by connecting people and ideas.”
Prior to Mendelspod, Ayanna (formerly known as Maria Ganea) worked as a producer in community television in Pasadena, CA, where she hosted her own talk show, Voyages. In her twenties, she was deeply influenced by German psychologist Eric Blumental, who instilled in her the principles of behavioral psychology. She believed in the power of small, practical behavioral changes to create significant life transformations—an approach that ultimately led to the founding of Mendelspod, just as podcasting was becoming a thing.
In addition, soon after we met, we discovered that we had both studied the Theory of Constraints and the work of Israeli business guru, Eli Goldratt. His thinking tools became the foundation of our work together and provided a common language from which neither of us ever strayed. This shared intellectual framework shaped the way we approached problem-solving, storytelling, and the evolution of Mendelspod.
Ayanna often liked to pose the question: What if Darwin had been able to listen to a podcast featuring Mendel? She was passionate about communication as one of the foundations of life and civilization. "There’s what you say, but then there’s what people hear,” she would often say. Though a behavioralist, she was not a relativist; she held strong convictions about equal rights and universal values. She was one of the founding members of the Green Party of her home country, Austria.
A voracious reader, Ayanna consumed everything from food labels to Der Spiegel—with one exception, philosophy. I say this mostly as a joke. She became more and more leery of armchair rationalism and found the history of western philosophy to be seriously lacking in the views of women and colored people. In later years, she did take an interest in a blog promoting Stoicism. She never sought public recognition, preferring to work behind the scenes. "Each interview we publish is my business card," she would say—no need to mention me in the credits. Her research was exhaustive, ranging from biographies of Craig Venter and Lee Hood to following hundreds of biologists on social media. Over time, biology became one of her true great loves. Alas, she was an empiricist.
In 2015, Ayanna was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. It turns out that covering the field of cancer as a journalist does not inoculate you from it. She directly benefited from precision medicine and genetic testing. She often urged me to personally thank the oncologists interviewed on Mendelspod and tell them her story. She loved engaging with scientists and entrepreneurs, eagerly attending conferences and exploring the latest breakthroughs in life sciences.
Her other great passion was classical music, which harmonized well with my early background as a symphonic conductor. Our discussions about interviews and the future of Mendelspod would often lead back to music and philosophy. Though she never studied music formally, musicality emanated from her very being. This seemed to come simply from that fact that she was Austrian and grew up in Salzburg. She edited most of my work and reviewed interview questions. She often took the edge off my tone and brought humor to the everyday work environment. She had an uncanny ability to get at a person’s core message.
Despite her talent for coaching others, she could struggle to identify and describe her own journey. After her diagnosis, she spoke openly about her passing and made her wishes clear: she did not want a funeral or a memorial service. "Mendelspod is my legacy. Just keep on," she said.
In loving memory to a dear friend and mentor,
Theral Timpson
Here’s a link to a Memorial Fund I’m raising to support a local art center in Southern Utah where Ayanna spent most weekends. If you knew her and would like to support, her friends and I are grateful.
Ayanna Monteverdi Memorial Fund (GoFundMe)