Heroes

 Nikesh Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks, Says Data Security Is No Longer Just A Concern For CIOs.

How Cybersecurity Became A Top Priority For Business Leaders

Photo Illustration by Fortune. Photo provided by Palo Alto Networks. 

Welcome to leadership. Next, the podcast about the changing rules of business leadership. I'm Diane Brady. You know, one of the things that's fascinating, the perk you sit and you get into rooms, we don't get to go in terms of talking to CEO S about the vulnerabilities. And I say CEO S deliberately because it feels like this is an issue that has really left just the CIO or the CTO. Give me a sense as to what, what are they thinking about and how, how is the threat environment changing? Because we're right in the middle of this obsession with digital transition. What are you hearing? We can't seem to buy ingest and deploy enough technology today. I mean, you look at what's going on with A I. People are buying GP US. They're trying to put up A I data centers, everybody's in a frenzy. How do I use LL MS in my infrastructure? So you, you think you just sort of just sat down and settled down and say, oh my God, thank God. We've moved to the public cloud and they sit there and say, oh my God, look what's next A I, so I think every CEO has some sort of large technology project on their agenda and the number one risk now slowly and steadily continues to be cyber. And that's what we talked about. The sort of explosion of, you know, tax service, explosion of our connectivity to our customers that's causing that to become a large rift. So it's kind of impossible to get away from a conversation around cyber security at your board, at your management team. It's still a bit of a black box to be honest. But you know, it's like, it's like I know I have a problem, I don't know how to solve it, but I know I have a problem. I need to pay attention. So I think we're at that phase where CEO S are aware, this is a problem. Some of them are hoping it doesn't happen to them because it happened to somebody else in their industry. But they call the cio and technology guys and say, hey, do we have, do we have a solution for this? And you know, like most of the life, we always say, yes, we've got this covered. But the question is how well do you have it covered? You've lived through these, you know, boom and bust cycles. Obviously, we've seen this acceleration of technology innovation, but we talk about A I as if it's some incredibly profound pivot point where now, you know, put on your seat belt, here we go. It's gonna be the most transformative thing since whatever, what do you think? There's that cliche that we always seem to overestimate the short term and underestimate the long term, right? You go back to 1999. You know, if you remember the internet sort of boom where all you needed was a domain name and you were a number of clicks to find your money. The world wasn't a frenzy. You know, the NASDAQ was 5000 at that point in time, it came crashing down to 3000. So there was that sort of exuberance associated with this revolutionary technology called internet. Now, I don't think we were wrong if you go back and say, what did we imagine in 1999 I think any domain you thought you bought actually exists today. There's a business around it. So these real businesses, some of the largest business in the world are driven by the emergence of the internet. So it was just, we were early, I think we're the same, same sort of cycle with A I. There is tremendous amounts of enthusiasm. There is sort of like this notion that if you build it, they will come and we're all busy building it. And I think it's following the same cycle that we saw with the internet first. You need the infrastructure. That's why you're seeing the sort of the, the the infrastructure players in A I are gonna do. Well, in the current term, you look at all the chip manufacturers that people talk about energy, people talk about the need for data centers. So you see the infrastructure part, you know, the the technology is still a little ways from all of us embracing it fully and going and deploying it. But I think uh you know, we feel a little left out because cybersecurity was on the top of mind for CEO S six months ago. It's possibly A I now, right? Because like they all want to talk about A I, they all want to be smarter about it. They're all worried that if I miss the I trend, you know, is there a new Amazon and I become the old Ecommerce company? I'd love to walk through a little bit. The perspective you bring you from T Mobile, you mentioned your time at Google. You were in, I believe almost two years at Softbank. How, how did those experiences? Well, let me just ask some of those pivot points maybe in your career. That kind of took you to where you are now. My first job in the US was a fidelity. It was 1992. Uh and it was uh one of those session moments where it was very hard to get a job. So I had to literally apply to 400 plus places to see like somebody would hire me. And I, I had the funniest experiences and we had a recruiter on the phone saying, oh, can you tell me, we don't know. That course is offered in Northwestern. I'm like, no, I went to Northeast. Oh, excuse me, let me check and boom. Like, so like people, you know, all kinds of stuff happened and I was lucky that I, you know, I applied to Fidelity with seven different people. Thankfully, they had no common hr system at that point in time. So people said no, uh the seventh person didn't know that six. I said no. So they had me come interview and, and I was lucky enough to get hired. And then I ended up going to work at Deutsche Telecom in all places because I've met the CEO by being a telecom analyst and he says you should go work for me. So I did and then a little set up little entrepreneurial roots in there. So I go, I go start a mobile internet company. This is like the before the iphone existed. We used to have these really clunky phones from Nokia, which used to try and give you mobile internet access when people say you crazy. Um I did that and then I worked at Deutsche Telecom and T Mobile for four years in Germany. I used to commute from London to Germany trying to see if I wanted to be an operational executive in a mobile telecom company, which I did. And then I was home and a friend of mine walked up and said, you know what? There's this company from California, which just went public in a very strange reverse dutch auction, which nobody should do. And they're looking for somebody to work in Europe. They have a small 5000 square foot office. And so how it is rented or so was Chief Business Officer. That's not a title, you hear very often. What does that mean? You know, I started in Europe. I was lucky enough that Larry and Sergey were traveling through Europe. Uh Coincidentally they interviewed me there. I had a great boss of me who interviewed me and they decided that uh they'd have me run Google Europe and you know, there was an amazing market. Uh We had lots of great people who worked there. Many of them are still at Google and run large parts of Google. And we were able to make Europe grow and stabilize uh Google's European presence to such a degree that, you know, they uh asked me to come from the rest of the world and including Europe from here because when my peers were Tim Armstrong and Cheryl went on to have amazing careers in different places and maybe I was the last man standing. So here I was, uh I came to California in 2009 and I spent five years doing anything but products because, you know, it's like Eric was my boss for a while and Larry was my boss for a while. And Larry wanted to focus on the technology part. So go go take care of the business stuff. We had a great CFO great have legal and I kind of did everything that wasn't product. So it was sales marketing, customer support, business development deals. I was lucky I was blessed because you know, here I was working for an amazing technology company going to perhaps the biggest growth phase and, and I had, I had sort of the privilege of observing from that lens how the world was accepting technology, accepting the emergence of big tech, I guess at that point in time, it is great.

The World Wide Technology CEO Talks About What He Learned As A Soccer Player That Helped Him In His Career.

How Jim Kavanaugh Went From Olympian To CEO

Photo Illustration by Fortune. Photo provided by World Wide Technology. 

Welcome to leadership. Next, the podcast about the changing rules of business leadership. I'm Diane Brady being called a systems integrator, you know, is, is fine. But uh I would say the some same time different people describe us different ways because we do cover a lot of ground. You know, on one hand, we're a value added reseller of technology equipment has been working with Cisco for almost 30 years now, worked with John when he was the CEO and now Chuck with him being the CEO worldwide has evolved from what I would say is a fairly simple value-added reseller to literally being a value-added reseller growing, not just locally here in growing domestically growing globally, but adding services in the first services sector that we added was around networking. But then from there, we we expanded that portfolio in a pretty significant way. Uh adding voice video networking, compute storage, cyber, software development, uh consulting advisory services uh along with now A I uh digital transformation that you know, is, is relevant to just about every company in the world. People forget that Cisco was once the most valuable company on the planet at that point, right. By market cap and then, then it wasn't, I think it lost probably about 90% of its value. So I, we all talk about bubbles now and we talk about bubbles. We often refer to the.com bubble as the bubble that uh you know, everybody fears will happen again. What does that teach you? Well, I would say that uh being willing to understand that there will be tough times and you need to roll up your sleeves. And depending on where you are in the life cycle of your company, you want to try to create a balance sheet or a structure that you don't put everything at risk every day that if a domino falls the wrong way, it literally can put you out of business. So as much as you can, you want to create, I would say some reserves and some capacity. But when you're in the early stages of growing a business, sometimes you don't have that luxury when you glossed over very quickly. Um that you were an Olympian, you played pro soccer for a few years. I I want, let's pause a second there because that is incredibly cool, obviously incredible discipline you get as an athlete. But can you tell me some of your favorite moments? I mean, this is an Olympics here. I'm talking to a former Olympian here. What is it like to compete at that level? Yeah, the competition is it is uh eye opening. Uh you know, and, and as you move from every level and you play, you know, and compete with, with people at different levels. It, it was such a, it was such a great experience. I grew up, my dad was a bricklayer. Uh my mom, you know, really, uh was a stay at home mom for most, most of our upbringing. So we came from a, a pretty modest upbringing. Uh And then, you know, making the, uh the Pan Am an Olympic team back in 83. And telling me, OK, for that point, I traveled with the team for almost 15 months and the experience was just amazing considering I've never really traveled out of Saint Louis. And at that point, now I'm traveling all over the world. The first tournament we played in was in Seoul, Korea. You know, that was the President's Cup. We had another tournament in Beijing, you know, a great wall cup in China and then all over Europe, Central America, Pan Am Games in Caracas. So it was such a great experience of one, just the people on the team, meeting different people, but then meeting people and competing with just really world class players around the world. How do you lead? Um Now versus when you started, I know there is a size component, but maybe in essence, that what I'm really asking is, where do you get the most joy from your job? You know, the strength that you play to? Because you, you go deep, but at the same time, you have to take that big view and connect the dots for a leader to be able to go deep and really understand what your business does and really how the sausage is made. I think it's very important. But at the same time, it's not your job as a leader to stay in the detail. It's to understand what you do have an appreciation for that. But then you need to rise up to the 30,000 ft level and make sure that you're setting the right vision and mission and direction for the organization. So I think there's this uh ability I believe for leaders is to be able to set that vision, that mission and the direction, but also have a, a true understanding, an authentic understanding of the work that needs to be done to drive the execution because vision and mission with no execution is nothing and, and you need to be able to bring those together. And from my perspective when you do that and you do that with, you know, ambitious, passionate people. Uh That's where the real excitement, that's where I get inspired when I see the, the amazing teams and the people coming together to do amazing things.

<p>So, so let me take one step back. I'll address the overall business agenda. But first, let me address Silicon Valley. I mean, I do live in San Francisco and I've lived in California for 40 years or more. And people love to write about people in Silicon Valley who are actually Republicans and support Mr Trump. It's sort of a man bites, dog bites, dog story. Andre and Horowitz came out too, right? And so, but to a very large extent, the Valley remains what I would consider it. Moderate Democrats, very business oriented, very data driven, very liberal, socially and overwhelmingly in my mind, still supportive of Kamala Harris for the next president. Welcome to leadership. Next, the podcast about the changing rules of business leadership. I'm Diane Brady. Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us. I'm here with Tom Steyer. Tom. Thank you for being here, Diane. It's great to be here with you. You built this massive hedge fund, would it go from 6 million to more than 20 billion, I think in 25 years? So kudos to you for that talk a little bit about the role of government because let's, I don't want you know, I know that you ran obviously to be the Democratic candidate in the last election. Um The Inflation Reduction Act, the Chips Act, clearly those have been factors potentially as catalysts towards the green economy. How important is it that we get a certain regime in? Because business is moving in this direction anyway, I mean, I wrote a book basically making the point that this is an economic opportunity and the only way it's gonna happen is by winning in the marketplace. So I'm an absolute believer in business and absolute believer in capitalism. But having said that this has to be a public, private partnership. So if we can take a step back and talk about why we're talking about this at all, why are we going, do we need to talk about an energy transition? Why is this not just something that happens in the world of commerce without any conversation or poli politization, very simply the world has run on fossil fuels for a long time and they use of fossil fuels is very highly correlated with an increase in incomes for the people in those countries. So you can go back and see that we've gotten a lot richer as a people, not just in the United States, but around the world. As we've used fossil fuels. There was no intention to emit CO2. There was no intention to create global warming. There was no intention to have un you know, vast unintended consequences but we did. So the real issue here is we have a, a huge industry polluting in a very destructive way which they never intended to do but which they're not paying for and they love it and who wouldn't? So it's like, of course they do. But the issue is when we talk about government. Ok. What is the IRA? It was basically subsidies for clean industries. So instead of taxing polluters, they're paying people to produce things that don't pollute. It's kind of a tax on its head, a subsidy for non polluters because a straight marketplace won't work. One thing. One quote I like from your book that um you're skeptical of any solution that requires humanity's collective heart to grow three sizes, nice solution to the grinch there. But, but talk is our instinct to, to do the right thing. Is it just inertia? I mean, well, let me say this and I'll give you an example because this actually is happening. The the statistic I think I like to use the most. Is this one in last year, 2023 of new electricity generation globally, 86% of it was renewable. 14% of it was fossil fuels. So the business case is compelling and the reason people did that no one did that to be nice. Abs there was no person who said I'm willing to pay higher for clean energy. It, it turns out that solar and wind are much, much much cheaper than natural gas. And that is a, that is a disparity that is only gonna widen if you look at the co you know, as we all know, there is a $14,000 Chinese plug in hybrid that will go 1200 from byd. My point being look, technology beats dead dinosaurs. And that is a spread batteries got 80% cheaper in the last decade. They'll get 80% cheaper. Again, this decade, solar costs are down to a penny per kilowatt hour. Are they gonna go lower? Yes. So that's the power of innovation and that's the power of business and commerce and you know, intentionality. Yes, that's gonna, but there's a lot more to it than that. And the question is, how fast do we deploy the existing technologies? How do we create and deploy the new technologies in the problems that haven't been? So, can I go back to when you were because you started on Wall Street and you know, it, you put it that way, but would you have been able to make money through the nineties through the early in, in any kind of investment or is it really that this moment in time? Because gal and I started in 2021 was putting solar panels on the roof of the White House in the 19 seventies. That energy was far more expensive than fossil fuel energy. He was and he was doing it for different reasons. He was doing it because of the oil embargo. Nowadays, it's much cheaper. I mean, what's happened is the costs have crossed in new technologies. There's a thing called the S curve. So it's like you go along trying to get better than the existing technology and when the cost curves and the efficiencies cross, so now the new technology is better, it goes up like almost in a straight line and it levels out about 80%. And that's going back to, you know, replacing quail oil in the 18 forties. I want to pause because you are in San Francisco, you know, so not necessarily of Silicon Valley but around there. And Silicon Valley has had um been lukewarm at best to the Democrats, not because of the climate issues, but more because of antitrust and other regulatory issues. Uh I know you're not in the government. I don't want to make you a spokesperson for government, but how do you think about the overall business agenda? So, so let me take one step back, I'll address the overall business agenda. But first let me address Silicon Valley. I mean, I do live in San Francisco and I've lived in California for 40 years or more and people love to write about people in Silicon Valley who are actually Republicans and support Mr Trump. It's sort of a man bites, dog bites, dog story and, and Horowitz came out too, right? And so, but to a very large extent, the Valley remains what I would consider it. Moderate democrats, very business oriented, very data driven, very liberal, socially and overwhelmingly in my mind, still supportive of Kamala Harris for the next president. There are a group of people, many of whom have actually left Silicon Valley and now live in Austin or Miami who are, who don't like the way California is run, who don't like high taxes and who are, as you said, worried about antitrust. Having said that when I look back at what is, you know, creates business success in my mind, the times when America was growing the fastest, we had very, very high marginal tax rates, very high, much higher than today, maybe double today during Eisenhower, during Kennedy during LBJ, we had really high marginal tax rates in this country. We didn't have the disparity in income. If you look at the simple, how much does the CEO of a company make compared to how much does the lowest worker in that company make? Three or 400 times? It, it was a fraction of that, it was a much more equal society in multiple ways. So I'm confident that this idea of low taxes, low government, everybody get out of the way. I mean, it just doesn't work. That is not the means for a successful society. If you look state by state, how people have done? Look, I mean, people are very mad at California who don't live in California, but California has a really high, we're the fifth biggest economy in the world. We have incredibly successful businesses. You know. So to me, the, the, this whole idea that cut taxes, cut, government cut taxes, cut government cut support, get rid of education, that can't help get rid of, you know, eee everything. I don't think that makes any sense and, and so it, it has never worked. That's not what the data says. But if you have an income stream of X dollars and you can either tax it at 50% or 25 people are like, I much prefer 25. That's much better. Exactly. Human nature comes into play one thing that maybe it's a symptom of the polarized times we're in. But business leaders are often remarkably silent on political issues with one because you get very attacked. Now it's quite transparent, you know, things go viral. I was speaking to Steve Baller the other day about his USA facts that he's trying to get out there to correct misinformation. I'd love to get your thoughts. Obviously, I know you've been in the political arena, but what is the role of business leaders in speaking up about these topics, climate change or otherwise? Well, let me say what I would like my role to be and how I perceive as a professional investor and professional business person, how, how I would like to and of course, I have my opinions just like the other 330 million Americans. But what I would like to do is have enough granular information that I can share accurately with elected officials and people in government so they can make better decisions. So if we, you know, I'm obviously focused on the energy transition and on climate. And I want, I know that people in Washington DC can't go to venture capital meetings on Sand Hill Road, but I can't but are facts. What drive decision making in Washington? Not always I take your point, but I want the people who are making decisions to know the facts and it's, it's, they can't get them on their own that they just 24 hours in the day, they have a full time job, they can't do it. I view what I would like to do is to be able to say this is what we're seeing. These are the actual numbers. You should know this is what solar costs, this is where it's going, these are where batteries are going. You're, you're looking at this technology for direct air capture. This is what we see in terms of the cost per ton of sequestration. This is what we see in terms of scalability. You can believe it or not, you can get your own experts. But we've looked at this seriously. We're putting, you know, we're investing basis on our research. That's what we see. You should, you know, it's interesting, we always talk about what the private sector can bring to the public sector, you know, efficiency, facts, getting things done. We rarely talk about what the public sector can bring to the private sector in terms of how you get things done. I'm curious even your time on the campaign trail, were there any lessons gleaned from that, that you've taken into the world of business? And you can see this very granularly this year, the people who are running corporations, particularly public corporations believe that their career success, their jobs, their pay and their integrity, very importantly is based on increasing earnings for their shareholders. And so any time they're telling you that there's something more important to them than increasing earnings for their shareholders. I would check my, you know, watch to see if they lifted it. They have a job to do with an integrity and responsibility to take seriously. Those are not people who should be setting the agenda for this country. They should be setting the facts, they should be implementing, they should be working within the framework that elected officials who are the embodiment of the people set. And so look, elected officials have a different responsibility, their job, their integrity, their success, their reputation involves getting re elected or elected in the first place, which means satisfying people that they're representing in a significant way. That's their job. And so I don't, I try not to mix up those two different things. And I think that any time you see someone in one of those spheres, talking about how they're really concerned about the other sphere. Decision making is different too, right? So different. And so I, I view it as it's gotta be the way the United States has traditionally worked is we're a democratic society, the will of the people rules, they set the rules, they should set the rules. That's our morality and integrity. And within that box business people work. So you call yourself an optimist. Let's let's drill down on that a little bit. Let's talk about the optimistic investor. Where are you putting, where are your biggest bets? Right now? My old friend and partner Katie and I Katie Hall and I started a multi strategy investment firm to invest into the energy transition in multiple strategies. So that includes venture and growth and includes real estate buying buildings and turning them to net zero. But you know, it involves public stocks, but it we have plans to do many strategies because we believe this transition, as I said, inevitably has to happen is happening very fast that it's a huge tailwind to investing so that there is a strong commercial argument. This is a place where people, professional investors with great experience can marry that to domain expertise, specific knowledge of these markets and get very good returns and also have great impact as a citizen, I suppose. Are you worried about the state of democracy right now? We obviously from my standpoint, we have someone who has a real chance to be president who has said, who tried to overturn the last election. You paid $10 million I think to try. And with the impeachment battle, I remember that I, who I think is, you know, who has been convicted of 34 felonies, who has made multiple statements about what he would do in terms of the law and in terms of future elections, if he's elected, it's a little hard to read between all the very confusing statements, but clearly somebody who, you know, it's not someone who loves elections, not someone who loves democracy and not someone who respects it. So am I worried about that? I think that that would be, you know, a big threat to democracy. Do I believe that the American people will get back their democracy if we ever lose it? Yes, I believe it's built into us in a very deep way. It is built into me in a very deep way and I'd be willing to go very far piece to try and make sure we secure it. But is there someone running for president who has said things that are profoundly undemocratic and has made threats to our democracy repeatedly and said, you know, talked about things who's going and then has lived up to it in the past. I think we all know that it's true. So that's scary. Is there anything else on your radar right now? You want to put on ours. So I would say this, I do think the technology is better than people understand in terms of climate, our ability to solve these problems is much better than people understand. It's also true that the news from the natural world which I follow obsessively is worse than people understand. And in some cases, far worse and far scarier than people understand. Adaptability is as much as fighting climate change. So I know this is a real race between what's going, the deterioration of the natural world that we all rely on and the incredible progress in the technological world. But if we win that race and you step back and think about where we're going to be as a hu as human beings, as Americans, we will be able to create a much better world than we've ever imagined. You know, in terms of health, in terms of education, in terms of equality, in terms of all the important parts about life, you're gonna have an ability given the other advances that we're making, which are incredible to really provide a way of living for the people in America and including people all over the world. That is really almost better than we can imagine. And that's why I'm so focused on trying to make sure that we have a sustainable natural world because we do depend on it. And if we don't, then all we're not going to have time to focus on this because we're going to live in a chaotic, dangerous, unhealthy and scary world living to 100 doesn't make much difference if you can't go outside and, and I'll give you 11 small example. I mean, one of the things that the UN projects is that on the course we are going, we will have 20 to 25 million climate refugees per year. Syria had 5 million refugees partly related to climate and that completely roiled Europe as they moved into different countries in Europe, 20 to 25 million refugees a year every year. That is something that is a profound threat to the security of our political systems around the world. So let's drill down a little on the actual technologies that you're investing in that you think are exciting right now. So let me say this, we are deploying a lot of existing technologies like wind and solar and evs and batteries that everybody knows about that are getting much better. But we all know that what people don't know is that there are literally hundreds of new technologies being developed, not only to see if they work, but to see if they work at a price that works for customers. And you know, that is a real difference. So for instance, one of the things that I find fascinating is for a long time, we've had what's called geothermal energy that's basically hot water under the earth. So if you think about old faithful and Yellowstone, the water comes up, it's hot, it's energy you can use it. You know, just the way you can use natural gas or wind or solar. What's changed is people are now using basically techniques from oil and gas to go down 5000 ft, not 500 ft, but 5000 ft. And they're able to get completely clean, baseload energy. So there's no question about when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine. It's always there. Baseload energy that is completely clean emits no CO2 and which is commercial so it can be done at a price that competes. Now, there's a real question about how big this can be, but this is one of 100 technologies where you go like, oh God breaking down plastic. I've seen a lot of those as well. There is there, I've seen techniques on plastics that are amazing. We know there's plastic pollution. We recycle only 6% of plastics, only 6% to 94% does not get recycled. So the question is gonna be, how are we, first of all going to pick it out, sort it and reuse it. There are amazing technologies going on in that involving all kinds of different, you know, skills and really incredible new machines. So as we see this, it's exciting to know that there's a machine that can look at this and pick out 10,000 different items. It's in humans can't do that. That's incredible. So let me clar you invest in. So you're not investing seed capital. First of all, you're, you're investing in these companies. Are you helping them to replicate its scale? Is that part of what we're doing? Multi strategy? So we do do seed, we do do venture and growth, we do do real estate. I mean, what, what we're trying to do is figure out strategies where basically we can be really profitable in decarbonization. We're not concessionary. We never, we're not asking people not to get good returns. We're not at all concessionary. In fact, we believe this transition is a tail wind that has to happen, doesn't mean every company will succeed. You still have to be a professional investor. You have to have domain expertise in this area, you have to marry the two and that's the structure and doing good doesn't mean you can't make a good return. If you're not getting a good return, you're not going to get a chance to do good for us. Thank you so much for having me.</p>

Tom Steyer, longtime Democratic fundraiser, has now set his sights on investing in companies with climate impact.

Meet The Hedge Fund Founder Now Taking On Climate Change

Photo illustration by Fortune. Photo provided by Galvanize Climate Solutions. 

Tom Steyer has now set his sights on investing in companies with climate impact.

So, so let me take one step back. I'll address the overall business agenda. But first, let me address Silicon Valley. I mean, I do live in San Francisco and I've lived in California for 40 years or more. And people love to write about people in Silicon Valley who are actually Republicans and support Mr Trump. It's sort of a man bites, dog bites, dog story. Andre and Horowitz came out too, right? And so, but to a very large extent, the Valley remains what I would consider it. Moderate Democrats, very business oriented, very data driven, very liberal, socially and overwhelmingly in my mind, still supportive of Kamala Harris for the next president. Welcome to leadership. Next, the podcast about the changing rules of business leadership. I'm Diane Brady. Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us. I'm here with Tom Steyer. Tom. Thank you for being here, Diane. It's great to be here with you. You built this massive hedge fund, would it go from 6 million to more than 20 billion, I think in 25 years? So kudos to you for that talk a little bit about the role of government because let's, I don't want you know, I know that you ran obviously to be the Democratic candidate in the last election. Um The Inflation Reduction Act, the Chips Act, clearly those have been factors potentially as catalysts towards the green economy. How important is it that we get a certain regime in? Because business is moving in this direction anyway, I mean, I wrote a book basically making the point that this is an economic opportunity and the only way it's gonna happen is by winning in the marketplace. So I'm an absolute believer in business and absolute believer in capitalism. But having said that this has to be a public, private partnership. So if we can take a step back and talk about why we're talking about this at all, why are we going, do we need to talk about an energy transition? Why is this not just something that happens in the world of commerce without any conversation or poli politization, very simply the world has run on fossil fuels for a long time and they use of fossil fuels is very highly correlated with an increase in incomes for the people in those countries. So you can go back and see that we've gotten a lot richer as a people, not just in the United States, but around the world. As we've used fossil fuels. There was no intention to emit CO2. There was no intention to create global warming. There was no intention to have un you know, vast unintended consequences but we did. So the real issue here is we have a, a huge industry polluting in a very destructive way which they never intended to do but which they're not paying for and they love it and who wouldn't? So it's like, of course they do. But the issue is when we talk about government. Ok. What is the IRA? It was basically subsidies for clean industries. So instead of taxing polluters, they're paying people to produce things that don't pollute. It's kind of a tax on its head, a subsidy for non polluters because a straight marketplace won't work. One thing. One quote I like from your book that um you're skeptical of any solution that requires humanity's collective heart to grow three sizes, nice solution to the grinch there. But, but talk is our instinct to, to do the right thing. Is it just inertia? I mean, well, let me say this and I'll give you an example because this actually is happening. The the statistic I think I like to use the most. Is this one in last year, 2023 of new electricity generation globally, 86% of it was renewable. 14% of it was fossil fuels. So the business case is compelling and the reason people did that no one did that to be nice. Abs there was no person who said I'm willing to pay higher for clean energy. It, it turns out that solar and wind are much, much much cheaper than natural gas. And that is a, that is a disparity that is only gonna widen if you look at the co you know, as we all know, there is a $14,000 Chinese plug in hybrid that will go 1200 from byd. My point being look, technology beats dead dinosaurs. And that is a spread batteries got 80% cheaper in the last decade. They'll get 80% cheaper. Again, this decade, solar costs are down to a penny per kilowatt hour. Are they gonna go lower? Yes. So that's the power of innovation and that's the power of business and commerce and you know, intentionality. Yes, that's gonna, but there's a lot more to it than that. And the question is, how fast do we deploy the existing technologies? How do we create and deploy the new technologies in the problems that haven't been? So, can I go back to when you were because you started on Wall Street and you know, it, you put it that way, but would you have been able to make money through the nineties through the early in, in any kind of investment or is it really that this moment in time? Because gal and I started in 2021 was putting solar panels on the roof of the White House in the 19 seventies. That energy was far more expensive than fossil fuel energy. He was and he was doing it for different reasons. He was doing it because of the oil embargo. Nowadays, it's much cheaper. I mean, what's happened is the costs have crossed in new technologies. There's a thing called the S curve. So it's like you go along trying to get better than the existing technology and when the cost curves and the efficiencies cross, so now the new technology is better, it goes up like almost in a straight line and it levels out about 80%. And that's going back to, you know, replacing quail oil in the 18 forties. I want to pause because you are in San Francisco, you know, so not necessarily of Silicon Valley but around there. And Silicon Valley has had um been lukewarm at best to the Democrats, not because of the climate issues, but more because of antitrust and other regulatory issues. Uh I know you're not in the government. I don't want to make you a spokesperson for government, but how do you think about the overall business agenda? So, so let me take one step back, I'll address the overall business agenda. But first let me address Silicon Valley. I mean, I do live in San Francisco and I've lived in California for 40 years or more and people love to write about people in Silicon Valley who are actually Republicans and support Mr Trump. It's sort of a man bites, dog bites, dog story and, and Horowitz came out too, right? And so, but to a very large extent, the Valley remains what I would consider it. Moderate democrats, very business oriented, very data driven, very liberal, socially and overwhelmingly in my mind, still supportive of Kamala Harris for the next president. There are a group of people, many of whom have actually left Silicon Valley and now live in Austin or Miami who are, who don't like the way California is run, who don't like high taxes and who are, as you said, worried about antitrust. Having said that when I look back at what is, you know, creates business success in my mind, the times when America was growing the fastest, we had very, very high marginal tax rates, very high, much higher than today, maybe double today during Eisenhower, during Kennedy during LBJ, we had really high marginal tax rates in this country. We didn't have the disparity in income. If you look at the simple, how much does the CEO of a company make compared to how much does the lowest worker in that company make? Three or 400 times? It, it was a fraction of that, it was a much more equal society in multiple ways. So I'm confident that this idea of low taxes, low government, everybody get out of the way. I mean, it just doesn't work. That is not the means for a successful society. If you look state by state, how people have done? Look, I mean, people are very mad at California who don't live in California, but California has a really high, we're the fifth biggest economy in the world. We have incredibly successful businesses. You know. So to me, the, the, this whole idea that cut taxes, cut, government cut taxes, cut government cut support, get rid of education, that can't help get rid of, you know, eee everything. I don't think that makes any sense and, and so it, it has never worked. That's not what the data says. But if you have an income stream of X dollars and you can either tax it at 50% or 25 people are like, I much prefer 25. That's much better. Exactly. Human nature comes into play one thing that maybe it's a symptom of the polarized times we're in. But business leaders are often remarkably silent on political issues with one because you get very attacked. Now it's quite transparent, you know, things go viral. I was speaking to Steve Baller the other day about his USA facts that he's trying to get out there to correct misinformation. I'd love to get your thoughts. Obviously, I know you've been in the political arena, but what is the role of business leaders in speaking up about these topics, climate change or otherwise? Well, let me say what I would like my role to be and how I perceive as a professional investor and professional business person, how, how I would like to and of course, I have my opinions just like the other 330 million Americans. But what I would like to do is have enough granular information that I can share accurately with elected officials and people in government so they can make better decisions. So if we, you know, I'm obviously focused on the energy transition and on climate. And I want, I know that people in Washington DC can't go to venture capital meetings on Sand Hill Road, but I can't but are facts. What drive decision making in Washington? Not always I take your point, but I want the people who are making decisions to know the facts and it's, it's, they can't get them on their own that they just 24 hours in the day, they have a full time job, they can't do it. I view what I would like to do is to be able to say this is what we're seeing. These are the actual numbers. You should know this is what solar costs, this is where it's going, these are where batteries are going. You're, you're looking at this technology for direct air capture. This is what we see in terms of the cost per ton of sequestration. This is what we see in terms of scalability. You can believe it or not, you can get your own experts. But we've looked at this seriously. We're putting, you know, we're investing basis on our research. That's what we see. You should, you know, it's interesting, we always talk about what the private sector can bring to the public sector, you know, efficiency, facts, getting things done. We rarely talk about what the public sector can bring to the private sector in terms of how you get things done. I'm curious even your time on the campaign trail, were there any lessons gleaned from that, that you've taken into the world of business? And you can see this very granularly this year, the people who are running corporations, particularly public corporations believe that their career success, their jobs, their pay and their integrity, very importantly is based on increasing earnings for their shareholders. And so any time they're telling you that there's something more important to them than increasing earnings for their shareholders. I would check my, you know, watch to see if they lifted it. They have a job to do with an integrity and responsibility to take seriously. Those are not people who should be setting the agenda for this country. They should be setting the facts, they should be implementing, they should be working within the framework that elected officials who are the embodiment of the people set. And so look, elected officials have a different responsibility, their job, their integrity, their success, their reputation involves getting re elected or elected in the first place, which means satisfying people that they're representing in a significant way. That's their job. And so I don't, I try not to mix up those two different things. And I think that any time you see someone in one of those spheres, talking about how they're really concerned about the other sphere. Decision making is different too, right? So different. And so I, I view it as it's gotta be the way the United States has traditionally worked is we're a democratic society, the will of the people rules, they set the rules, they should set the rules. That's our morality and integrity. And within that box business people work. So you call yourself an optimist. Let's let's drill down on that a little bit. Let's talk about the optimistic investor. Where are you putting, where are your biggest bets? Right now? My old friend and partner Katie and I Katie Hall and I started a multi strategy investment firm to invest into the energy transition in multiple strategies. So that includes venture and growth and includes real estate buying buildings and turning them to net zero. But you know, it involves public stocks, but it we have plans to do many strategies because we believe this transition, as I said, inevitably has to happen is happening very fast that it's a huge tailwind to investing so that there is a strong commercial argument. This is a place where people, professional investors with great experience can marry that to domain expertise, specific knowledge of these markets and get very good returns and also have great impact as a citizen, I suppose. Are you worried about the state of democracy right now? We obviously from my standpoint, we have someone who has a real chance to be president who has said, who tried to overturn the last election. You paid $10 million I think to try. And with the impeachment battle, I remember that I, who I think is, you know, who has been convicted of 34 felonies, who has made multiple statements about what he would do in terms of the law and in terms of future elections, if he's elected, it's a little hard to read between all the very confusing statements, but clearly somebody who, you know, it's not someone who loves elections, not someone who loves democracy and not someone who respects it. So am I worried about that? I think that that would be, you know, a big threat to democracy. Do I believe that the American people will get back their democracy if we ever lose it? Yes, I believe it's built into us in a very deep way. It is built into me in a very deep way and I'd be willing to go very far piece to try and make sure we secure it. But is there someone running for president who has said things that are profoundly undemocratic and has made threats to our democracy repeatedly and said, you know, talked about things who's going and then has lived up to it in the past. I think we all know that it's true. So that's scary. Is there anything else on your radar right now? You want to put on ours. So I would say this, I do think the technology is better than people understand in terms of climate, our ability to solve these problems is much better than people understand. It's also true that the news from the natural world which I follow obsessively is worse than people understand. And in some cases, far worse and far scarier than people understand. Adaptability is as much as fighting climate change. So I know this is a real race between what's going, the deterioration of the natural world that we all rely on and the incredible progress in the technological world. But if we win that race and you step back and think about where we're going to be as a hu as human beings, as Americans, we will be able to create a much better world than we've ever imagined. You know, in terms of health, in terms of education, in terms of equality, in terms of all the important parts about life, you're gonna have an ability given the other advances that we're making, which are incredible to really provide a way of living for the people in America and including people all over the world. That is really almost better than we can imagine. And that's why I'm so focused on trying to make sure that we have a sustainable natural world because we do depend on it. And if we don't, then all we're not going to have time to focus on this because we're going to live in a chaotic, dangerous, unhealthy and scary world living to 100 doesn't make much difference if you can't go outside and, and I'll give you 11 small example. I mean, one of the things that the UN projects is that on the course we are going, we will have 20 to 25 million climate refugees per year. Syria had 5 million refugees partly related to climate and that completely roiled Europe as they moved into different countries in Europe, 20 to 25 million refugees a year every year. That is something that is a profound threat to the security of our political systems around the world. So let's drill down a little on the actual technologies that you're investing in that you think are exciting right now. So let me say this, we are deploying a lot of existing technologies like wind and solar and evs and batteries that everybody knows about that are getting much better. But we all know that what people don't know is that there are literally hundreds of new technologies being developed, not only to see if they work, but to see if they work at a price that works for customers. And you know, that is a real difference. So for instance, one of the things that I find fascinating is for a long time, we've had what's called geothermal energy that's basically hot water under the earth. So if you think about old faithful and Yellowstone, the water comes up, it's hot, it's energy you can use it. You know, just the way you can use natural gas or wind or solar. What's changed is people are now using basically techniques from oil and gas to go down 5000 ft, not 500 ft, but 5000 ft. And they're able to get completely clean, baseload energy. So there's no question about when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine. It's always there. Baseload energy that is completely clean emits no CO2 and which is commercial so it can be done at a price that competes. Now, there's a real question about how big this can be, but this is one of 100 technologies where you go like, oh God breaking down plastic. I've seen a lot of those as well. There is there, I've seen techniques on plastics that are amazing. We know there's plastic pollution. We recycle only 6% of plastics, only 6% to 94% does not get recycled. So the question is gonna be, how are we, first of all going to pick it out, sort it and reuse it. There are amazing technologies going on in that involving all kinds of different, you know, skills and really incredible new machines. So as we see this, it's exciting to know that there's a machine that can look at this and pick out 10,000 different items. It's in humans can't do that. That's incredible. So let me clar you invest in. So you're not investing seed capital. First of all, you're, you're investing in these companies. Are you helping them to replicate its scale? Is that part of what we're doing? Multi strategy? So we do do seed, we do do venture and growth, we do do real estate. I mean, what, what we're trying to do is figure out strategies where basically we can be really profitable in decarbonization. We're not concessionary. We never, we're not asking people not to get good returns. We're not at all concessionary. In fact, we believe this transition is a tail wind that has to happen, doesn't mean every company will succeed. You still have to be a professional investor. You have to have domain expertise in this area, you have to marry the two and that's the structure and doing good doesn't mean you can't make a good return. If you're not getting a good return, you're not going to get a chance to do good for us. Thank you so much for having me.

JCPenney CEO Mark Rosen Says Fashion Is Core For The Company.

Inside JCPenney's Recipe For Retail Success

Photo illustration by Fortune. Photo provided by JCPenney

Iranian American immigrant Artemis Patrick’s background shaped her ideas around beauty, which now inform her decisions as Sephora’s North America CEO. Over the years, she’s watched beauty trends change through social media, and hopes to educate younger consumers on making the best choices for their health.

Iranian Immigrant to the C-Suite: How Sephora’s North American CEO Is Shaping the Beauty Industry

Photo illustration by Fortune. Photograph provided by Sephora.

Iranian American immigrant Artemis Patrick’s background shaped her ideas around beauty, which now inform her decisions as Sephora’s North America CEO.

Iranian Immigrant to C-Suite: How Sephora’s North American CEO Is Shaping the Beauty Industry

Isn't that funny? Everything is, I think back to when I was 1314 and going to the mall and I'm dropping my daughter off at the mall. And I remember a few years ago thinking is that ever going to happen again? And it is, and it's happening in, in, in a big way. Welcome to leadership. Next, the podcast about the changing rules of business leadership. I'm Mikal Avram and I'm Diane Brady listeners will be familiar with the Sephora brand, but they may not be familiar with you. So I want to start by actually asking you to tell us a little bit about you. I was born in Iran. So I immigrated to the US in 1979 when I was seven years old. And you know, at that time, I didn't actually speak any English. It was very difficult for my family and I, and then my mom went back to Iran and unfortunately, this was during the Iranian hostage crisis. So she got stuck there and my father was not able to take care of me. So I ended up moving into a group home and then grew up with foster parents since I was 10 years old. And so I really think that very much shaped who I am not just as a person but as a leader. Um, and especially if you think about, you know, the world of beauty and historically, um, how, you know, there was one definition of beauty, especially when I was growing up in the eighties and I certainly did not fit that mold. So, um, it has really, really guided, um how I think about beauty, how I think about um belonging. Uh and I think that that's always sort of been my north, my north star, obviously, Sephora is an incredibly strong brand. Um I have 12 and 14 year old girls, so I, I limit but I'm, I'm curious like, how would you characterize this moment in time in which you stepped into this role? What, what are the, you know, there's been so much uh very fast evolution in the retail space and the ecommerce space with tech over the last few years and different, you know, consumer trends that seem to be evolving so quickly. So how would you characterize where things are today for Sephora? Yeah, I mean, I have a 13 year old girl. So, so I feel you um you know, I would say what's, what's incredible about beauty is uh it's always had this, this tactile um feeling of, you know, connection and belonging and being able to try new things. I, I think the inherent love of beauty among every generation um across all ages has always been there, obviously, what has evolved is access and social media. And I do think this idea and understanding of, of specifically skin care. Uh I, I know that I probably did not take the best care of my skin um when I was younger and I see my daughter packing up her super group in her backpack and, you know, that's, that's exciting and, but that's because of, you know, tiktok and um other forms in youtube and other forms of social media. Um and, and the speed at which things come to light is, is just, you know, it's, it's mind boggling and I have been at before for 18 years. So I've seen different evolutions of this. Certainly, I remember when Instagram first launched and I remember contouring, it was just like I was thinking to myself, how many contour kits do people need? Right. And, and so we, we've seen it before. It, it's not new in that sense, but it is in terms of the speed and the democratization of it all and just the access to all the information around ingredients and a deep understanding of what people are putting on their skin, on their hair, on their body, sticking with the topic of, of kids shopping in Sephora. There has been some concern over what young girls are putting on their faces. Like, do they really need retinol? Do they really need some of the stronger uh, products or anti-aging stuff like that. What do you, what's Sephora's response to that? And what do you see as your responsibility for educating younger shoppers? Well, I believe we have a huge responsibility as well as our hundreds of brands to educate the consumer on what is right for, for their skin, regardless of their age. And where I think that we have a competitive advantage is our beauty advisors. We have 25,000, incredibly well trained, unbiased noncom commissioned uh beauty advisors. So it's actually been a really easy pivot for us to focus those educational moments of which we have many um specifically on skin care and skincare ingredients. So that is where we are seeing um you know, a lot of the chatter and the noise and making sure that they know, yes, you need, you know, at a certain age, you need to wash your face, you need sunscreen and you need some moisturizer. But no, you don't need retinol. Um and making sure that, that we share that information. Um you know, at the end of the day, there is only so much, you know, a sales person can do, we can educate and then beyond that, um it really is the responsibility of the consumer. But I feel that we are very well placed to at least be able to share our knowledge on that and make sure that they understand what, what they are buying, what kind of technology do you think has really moved the needle in the store to create a better shopping experience? One of the the core tenants of everything we always do from a tech perspective is that it has to enhance the consumer experience. So I'll give you an example of that is our proprietary skin scan where we do almost 100,000 scans a week, the 70% conversion rate. So what happens is the consumer can come in and we have this proprietary tool and it essentially looks at the scan and it will make a foundation match. Um At the same time, it also goes through a skin diagnostic and tells you whether your skin is oily or dry and makes product recommendations. So that is not something a consumer will do on their own. That is a conversation starter between our beauty advisor and the client and that to us is what is really exciting about technology. Um So that's how we really think about it. How do you enhance the consumer experience? How do you make it easier for our beauty advisors to have those conversations and create that really human connection? So it's digital for the sake of human the way I sort of think about it.

To celebrate his new book Mastering AI, Fortune AI editor Jeremy Kahn chats with Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell about the promises and perils of artificial intelligence. Kahn offers dramatic predictions of AI’s impact over the next decade, from reshaping our economy and the way we work, learn, and create to unknitting our social fabric, jeopardizing our democracy, and fundamentally altering the way we think.

Do you trust OpenAI? ‘No, and none of us should’

To celebrate his new book Mastering AI, Fortune AI editor Jeremy Kahn chats with editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell about the promises and perils of artificial intelligence.

To celebrate his new book Mastering AI, Fortune AI editor Jeremy Kahn chats with Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell about the promises and perils of artificial intelligence. 

From selling six of his own companies to serving as president of Tesla and COO of Lyft, Jon McNeill, now CEO of DVx Ventures, shares his journey as an entrepreneur and reveals the secrets to his success.

How a former Tesla and Lyft executive is trying to reinvent venture capital

Came from a uh a family without much means. Uh And so that meant that we had to buy our own clothes and shoes, uh Even early on. And so in, in first grade, second grade, I was hustling uh trying to earn money so I could buy clothes and shoes for school. And so I started a little lawn mowing business that grew into a big landscaping business. By the time I was in high school, I paid for my first car and I had employees that I had to pay and marketing. I had to do and billing I had to do. And I actually, I fell in love with business as a kid because it gave me independence. I kept that up. When I was in college. I worked at the trading Exchanges in Chicago. Started a few businesses in college. I fell deeper in love with business. I went to school in Chicago and was one of the first kids hired out of the big 10 to join Bain and company as a consultant and spent two years there. And then they were starting bain capital. They started just a few years before I got there. But they were really starting to ramp it up. So I spent a bunch of time with what is today being ventures and then was encouraged that I was an entrepreneur actually. And so I found a company to start and jumped out and started my first company and we started it literally from our kitchen table and it was a software business. We grew it to, to 40 million in a RR in 18 months. It was a crazy ride and we sold it to a public company. And then I did that five more times in a row. I guess I qualify as a serial entrepreneur. And uh then through a crazy series of events, met Elon Musk and um decided to join the be best practitioner of my craft on the planet uh as an entrepreneur, he's kind of unmatched. Um And so helped grow Tesla from 2 billion in revenue to or 20 billion in revenue and then helped take left public as coo and then jumped out to do something I've been planning on doing or planning for for years. And that is starting a platform to create companies. My granddad had a auto repair shop uh attached to his farming land uh in, in Iowa. And I spent summers there and uh and I learned to fix cars and I loved it actually and I loved it. I loved how tangible it was. Uh And so then as I started to build skills and business. I started to see all the opportunities especially for software in the automotive industry. And so a number of my companies have that be running through it. And I think it comes back to my grandpa's auto shop. So Elon had been talking with a, a dear friend of mine, Sheryl Sandberg about becoming uh president Tesla. And uh she called me one day and said, I'm not the right person for this, but I think you might be. So uh she introduced me to Elon, uh Elon and I uh immediately dove into a couple of challenges he was facing in manufacturing and then sales and as we started to get to know each other, both of us really enjoyed being around each other. I was certainly energized by him. And so I joined Tesla and it was about 1.8 billion in sales. And the biggest challenge was the demand challenge. Actually, they were learning how to produce cars at higher volume but didn't have nearly the demand that they needed to have. And so I dove in and went to stores uh so I could try to figure out what might be happening. I went to eight different stores took eight different test drives and nobody called me back. And so I called the head of uh sales ops. I said, can you tell me why I'm not being called back? I've used a different email addresses and I somehow have they caught up with me. And he said, he said, no, I can't see in the system why you wouldn't be called back. And I said, well, can you just run a report for me real fast? It tells me how many people we've done a test drive for that haven't been called back. And he said, sure, call me back in two hours. And he said, um, I can't believe this. Like, we've done 10,000 test drives in the last month and a half and 10,000 people haven't been called back. And I said, how many cars do you need to sell this quarter? And he said 12,000. And I said, I have a feeling why you think you have a demand problem. So let's shut off any new leads that people get until they call back all their test drives. And we did that within a few hours and sales went up. Uh, and this was before I even worked at Tesla. So I had to call Elon and say, hey, look, I may have overstepped my boundaries here. I don't even work for you yet, but here's what I found and here's what I did. And there was this long silence on the end of the phone, the long silence that Elon is kind of famous for, and I didn't know how to interpret it because I didn't know it very well yet. And after a long silence, he broke in and said, I think you're gonna fit in here just fine. I I didn't have any examples to draw on where you're taking a company from roughly 2 billion in revenue to 20 billion in revenue in 36 months. There wasn't any case studies for that. And so we all had to be super creative and scrappy uh which is what we did together as a team, but it was crazy times too. Uh especially as we got closer and closer to model three production. The balance sheet was super stressed. We were running out of cash and we had to get model three out to replenish the balance sheet and we were operating the company on less than a quarter of cash. It was a balance of absolute euphoria as you're growing a company, but absolute stress too as, as things are highly pressurized, we would fit in the of cars together a lot because he had a, an approach that was kind of a Vulcan mind meld he wanted in his words, if we had the same inputs, he wanted the same decision to come out of both of us. We would riff on business ideas. And uh and so I started to get a little jealous because he was able to go do things like Neuralink and the boring company and said to him, hey, like I'd like to scratch the stitch too. And he said, what do you have in mind? And I said, well, there's a lot of things we could do to change the car business from an episodic sale. We sell to a customer once every four or 5 to 6 years, we could turn that into a recurring run rate or revenue business. So an A RR business and he said, how would you do that? And I said, well, I'd sell insurance embedded in the car. I'd sell infotainment subscriptions, uh uh autonomy subscriptions, et cetera. So he gave me the chance to be an entrepreneur inside of Tesla. We grew a pretty significant insurance business, a pretty significant subscription business in infotainment and autonomy as well. I learned a few things. One is setting really high bars and high goals. And Elon is famous for his super ambitious goals for people and then really holding folks accountable to those on a weekly basis, but also giving them the tools to be successful. So it wasn't just throwing people to the wolves, it was really supporting them. I think what I also learned was all the stuff I learned about putting scaffolding in companies that was helpful to growth, worked at scale. And so that gave me the confidence then to go help other companies at scale. After Tesla, I joined largely to help to be a part of the team would build the muscle to get them public. And it was an exciting process to go through for sure what all companies have to do is really internally start to build the kinds of processes and scaffolding that help them with certainty, make their quarters. Once you're public, it's very different from being private. There's no gimmes, no mulligans if you miss, uh, your stock value is gonna be decimated. So you have to be prepared not to miss. And that's most of the work in terms of getting a company ready to be public. And that can get down as simple as kind of the weekly sessions you're having on demand and supply balance to make sure that you're hitting your forecasts and then financial planning to make sure that you're getting a forecast is hittable. So all of those things go together to be able to, to, to prove to a company internally that it can win and it's ready to be public. I think autonomy is going to play out really in, in two ways. One is uh in Robo Taxi, but there has been this view that there's this panacea. If uh if you replace the driver with a with a computer, the cost change uh and the cost they change for the better and therefore profitability for people like Uber and Lyft will go up for companies like Uber and Lyft will increase. And the fact of the matter is is that the driver today brings the car, so the network doesn't pay for the car, the driver cleans the car, the driver maintains the car, the driver fuels the car, that's all going to be the responsibility of somebody. And So even though there's this panacea of, hey, the driver's cost drops out of the P and L and therefore the profitability soars. I think it's a panacea that gets replaced with fleet cost that somebody has to bear. And so I think there's an, there is a path in robo taxi. Uh but it may be not as attractive as it seemed at the beginning in parallel to that, we're kind of at a moment where cars of today may be compared to like flip phones. And so I think uh personal autonomous vehicles are every bit as interesting as uh as the Robo taxi story. But we've got to get to uh autonomous vehicles first and that's proved to be a, a climb with a lot of false summits in the US. We have roughly 50,000 traffic fatalities a year and 95% of those are caused by human error. So the whole goal of autonomy is eliminating those fatalities. It's 50,000 families that don't go through a tragedy, but it turns out our, our roads are some of the safest in the world. So if you expand out the traffic fatality count globally, it's 1.5 million people die annually in traffic accidents that are human, largely human cause. And so the reason to do autonomy is just that it's to eliminate fatalities. Number one, number two, it's to give mobility to people that don't have mobility options. Today, I have a friend who's blind. Uh And when we introduced uh autonomy at Tesla, he called me immediately and said, when am I going to be able to take my first drive by myself? When am I going to be able to drive a car? And that stuck with me? Uh And so he's been a motivation for my involvement in autonomy because there will be people that today don't have the mobility option to drive a car by themselves. He'll be able to hop in a car and go where he wants for the first time in his life. Safety has got to come first. And so what Cruz has done is really expand a safety first culture. There were a lot of voices within Cruz that were demanding safety be the primary consideration or expansion and growth. And we totally agree with that at GM. So we've taken the best of GM resources to help crews pivot that culture to be safety first because when you're doing breakthrough technology like this, it's important to make advancements. But you've absolutely got to do that with a framework that says we're going to keep people safe as we do this. The safety team has a seat at the senior management table and they've got, they've got a veto right on what gets released and what doesn't get released. And so that safety capability and talent has been elevated to the highest level of care. There's this concept in manufacturing that, that's now common it was taught to us by the Japanese. And that is that any individual worker, if they see something going wrong can stop the production line. Where's the big deal? Uh When you stop the production line at a car factory, you're talking about millions of dollars an hour uh uh results in that stoppage. So it's a big deal to hand that capability uh or that agency to a worker. And so that's at the heart of the cultural change. Uh at cruise is, is enabling people to pull the cord and essentially stop the line. I've got a lot of confidence in the cruise team. They're returning to the mission, they're returning to the roads with autonomous driving because they've got more data and really more experience than anyone else in the autonomy space now with the safety first mentality and framework. And I think it's going to be the best of both worlds in terms of a very bright future for the cruise team. DVX ventures is, is a little bit different. We're a company creation platform and we were formed because I had this vision of being able to systematically create companies from scratch. Like I'd done six times in a row before I'd done joined Tesla. So during that journey of starting and scaling and then getting liquidity on six companies. I slur it right down like how you take a company from zero to a million in sales, a million to 10 million, etc and, uh, and develop these playbooks. And so DVX really was burst out of those playbooks to say, uh, could we start companies from scratch, scale them and really have impact on the economy. Technology is we start with three things have to be true. First is you got to have a big market that's provable. The second is you have to have significant profit pools that makes it worth your while. And the third is we've got to have a moat or an angle that we think is super unique to us so that we can win. And if we've got those three, uh we're essentially an idea, generation factors. And when those ideas pop, then we start to put product out in the market and start to experiment with a feedback loop from the market really quickly. Uh and those that gain traction, then we eventually turn into companies uh and then hire teams and scale them. We describe ourselves as as venture capital 2.0 in the sense that we are not investors, we are hands on operators. Uh And so, uh when we launch a company, one of the partners is the first CEO. And so the companies I launch, I'm the first ce these companies, we're that hands on and then we build the team around us and eventually step out as CEO. And so we're able to spot what good product looks like, what good markets look like, what good people look like. What good tech looks like. We know that because we've been operators and we can help build that into the company from the very start. So what we try to do is really de risk an idea and get a company started and then can hand the baton to a really experienced entrepreneur or even an entrepreneur with potential that can grow that company into something really special. So there are two ways that uh that V CS make money. One is for the fees that they charge for the amount of dollars they have under management. And the second is, is the upside in the company. And what's evolved over the past five or 10 years is VC motivation has become more and more fee oriented in the sense that they want to raise more and more capital to generate fees. The problem is, is that, that's a kind of a risk free model. And at the core of venture, we want to take a risk, we want to take the appropriate risk. And so we feel like DVX, like uh there's a, there's an evolving trend towards uh putting our money where our mouth is and we call this VC 2.0. And so we don't charge our investors fees. We take like them a share of the upside. And so we are completely aligned with them uh in that the only way we make money is if they make money. And I think we're going to see more and more of that in the VC market as investors get wise to the need to have a, an investing partner who takes appropriate risk and is compensated by succeeding rather than merely collecting fees, I think. Well, there are, there are more than 1000 unicorns that are uh that are waiting to get public, but there are it, it today's pace, 30 to 50 companies to get public. And so that means that a year. So that means that uh out of those 1000 plus uni unicorns, uh a lot of those aren't going to get public or get bought. Uh And so the incentives have to be aligned in the future so that uh the venture investors are taking the same risk really as their, as their investors and are getting paid for successful outcomes versus getting paid for evaluation. We've got a cybersecurity company that has really innovative technology, unique technology where we can see in this inside the stack of a company of a company's software and that allows us to spot vulnerabilities for them. We score those vulnerabilities and hand them back a daily health scorecard about how they're doing with their cyber risk. And that company is our fastest growing company. It's hit the ground running and it is taken off. We've got a clean tech company where we asked ourselves the question, could we save 40 percent of the energy costs of buildings in the US and developed a really super simple firmware solution that stays on top of thermostats that really provides technology that helps that building save 40 percent of its energy cost. A company called Kirby that, that brings software to dealers. So dealers can do mobile service so any dealer can look like Tesla in the sense that they can come fix your car at your home, at your office, uh like uh like magic E and then disappear after your car is fixed. So you didn't have to take your car anywhere to get it fixed. The biggest impact on my experience in my career in leadership has been to have mentors. It is an unfair advantage and I didn't realize this when it was happening at the time. But I had a mentor in my first job uh in high school. I had a mentor in my uh in my first job out of college and a mentor in my first company. All of those mentors made me better. Uh And then I learned like to grab mentors both vertically and horizontally vertically. People that have uh that have seen the movie before they're ahead of you on the journey, maybe by 5, 1015 years. Uh and then horizontal member uh mentors uh fellow CEO S fellow leaders in your uh in your kind of market and maybe same age range and experience where you can bounce things off of each other. Uh You may not be able to bounce off of your colleagues, your peers, your boss. And for me, the biggest leadership hack is having mentors. The worst piece of advice I've gotten is to build a company for an outcome. In other words, build a company for a big valuation. What you need to do instead is build a great product that people love and the company will follow. Uh and you'll have a great big company at the end of the day. But if you end up pursuing the wrong goal first, which is just get big, you tend to cut corners on the product and the company doesn't tend to last. And so I think the worst piece of advice I've got is, is just build big. Uh, I'd rather build great.

Sebastian Siemiatkowski knew GenAI was going to be a big deal, so he rushed to get on Sam Altman’s calendar when OpenAI began getting some recognition. Now, according to Siemiatkowski, the companies have a productive partnership—and even share a Slack channel.

Klarna CEO on how OpenAI partnership has allowed the company to stay ahead of the curve

Photo illustration by Fortune. Photograph provided by Klarna.

Sebastian Siemiatkowski knew GenAI was going to be a big deal, so he rushed to get on Sam Altman’s calendar when OpenAI began getting some recognition. 

Klarna CEO on how OpenAI partnership has allowed the company to stay ahead of the curve


At plan. Now, we were like, um as many other, I think entrepreneurs and founders and founder led companies, you know, when you start the business, you're all about building a product. But then you start thinking about how do you organize yourself and all that. And then you look around and you read these books, like management books, like good to great or you know, all these different books, you're like, what, what do we do from that? And then you read in the newspaper, it says Google just launched 20% of creative time, which used to be big thing, you know, back in the days and like, we have to do 20% of created time for everyone and we did that and nothing happened and, you know, we put Coca Cola in the rooms free Coca Cola, ping pong tables like, and, and you know, lego in the conference rooms like we did it all right. And we've been trying and testing all of the things that like you read in the press, like you're reading too many management, I think. Exactly that was my conclusion as well. Eventually. But it took some time to reach that, you know, reach that realization. Welcome to leadership. Next, the podcast about the changing rules of business leadership. I'm Mi Avram and I'm Diane Brady. When I think about clarinet, I can't, I'm hard pressed to think of a bigger fan of generative A I to the point where you actually put out a press release, I think in your first month talking about how, um you know, I think it was the equivalent of 700 full time agents through chat GP T talk about how transformative that has been for you. I mean, I think it's amazing. I first of all, I would like to say something, which is that I'm actually one of the people who are kind of skeptical about new technologies. And like people have been asking me about crypto obviously for a lot of years. And I always said like if I can't convince my mom to use it, I don't understand the value of it. And so like I did, I never got my mom to understand why she would have a Bitcoin and I still haven't convinced her but she does use. But there you go. And, and so I think when Jen A I came out, it was very clear from day one that this actually has practical application, we can use it, but it's difficult to get it to practical application because it's a new technology, you have to figure it out. And as much as you will see a lot of noise currently about people doing press releases about this and that product launches, few things we have seen have actually come to like serious uh you know, results that have business impact. And so when we achieve that with uh the customer service experience, where actually the A I chat has a similar and many times higher customer satisfaction than people interacting with human agents. We felt that that was quite an interesting data point and we wanted to share that because at the same point of time, we feel a little bit that society is not necessarily and politicians are not necessarily taking enough consideration to the implications that will have on jobs, which is why obviously sharing that 700 number, we knew it was somewhat controversial and then we will create some like people with, you know, open, you know, they would, you know, react to it. But at the same point of time, we said, look in, in the short term, we hire big uh customer service companies, they have hundreds of thousands of employees. They're just going to, when we have less errands, they're going to send errands as well. These people will still have jobs. But in the longer term, in the few coming years, this will have severe and you know, big implications for society. And we think it's time to think about that more proactively. We understand you uh allowed Sam Altman from open A I um to basically use Klarna like an A I sandbox. Um So I'm just curious to hear how that relationship started. Obviously, we're seeing open A I spark some really interesting partnerships. This is definitely one of them. So tell us about it when I tried it myself first in November a little bit more than a year ago. Now, I was like, wow, this was like a Google experience back 20 years ago when I tried Google first time. But even better, I would say to some degree and like, it became very obvious to me that Sam and open A, I would be a company that would be very hard to reach very soon and a great relationship. So I was like, I better move off before it's too late. So I made sure to get the, yeah, exactly. Get on the calendar. I took a trip to San Francisco basically only to see Sam and I managed to still, it was kind of funny because I think initially the meeting was two hours and by the time I arrived it was only 30 minutes. So it was kind of a good impression of like how fast open A I's calendar were shrinking due to the interest in the company. But I think the, the point we had a meeting and I said, look, I want to be a great partner and I know, you know, afterwards I heard a little bit they were like, really a European bank. Are they going to be one of our most like forward leaning partners. But since then we created joint slack channel and we've had like a lot of good interactions and like just testing and you know, saying we want to try that, we want to try that and provide a lot of like good meaningful feedback to them about how the API S work and what could be working better. And I think it's, it's helped establish us as a, as a good partner of theirs. There's such a mixing maturity of application and utilization of A I cross companies. You'll have everything from people like are very much leaning in to like people that are still like, oh this, I'm not sure how this is going to work. And is it, what about data? What about hallucinations? What about this and that? But for the people leaning in, there's a capacity issue, like there's a clear capacity issue where like there's not enough electricity, there's not a lot of, you know, uh there's not a lot of processing power. And so like leaning in and making sure to be a customer that's actually, you know, we just want to buy and we want to make sure we're easy to work with actually benefits us in that case because it becomes easier to get, you know, access to the processing power that we need. And so it's been very helpful for us since I think it just allows us to stay slightly ahead of the curve. Uh which is what we're trying to do. You're the first person I know who's used the Toyota way applied to something that's not manufacturing. I think of tape on the floor and very kind of distinct modular management practices to apply it to the financial services sector is really interesting. Well, and I think it's very fun that you say that because I, I'm not going to say which company this was, but I talked to one of the largest banks in the world and their chairman is from the manufacturing industry and he was quite disappointed that the bank that he was a chairman of wasn't like more applying these practices. I think to some degree, the thing with banking, right? Which is interesting. And I think there was a research that showed that like bank is banking is the only industry in the last 150 years that basically has zero productivity gains in the last 150 years, right? Like as opposed to manufacturing a lot of huge price. And I think the reason for that is because we regulated banks so much, there's actually a very limited competition to be fair. Like once you reach that size, the competition is actually quite limited. And so as a consequence, the excess wealth that is created has been distributed to the employees of the banks and the shareholders, right? Which is why we also used to have these tremendously high compensation. Now after 2007, it's come down a little bit but, and so there hasn't been that strong incentive and as much as officially banks are so well regulated with policies and instructions, like in a lot of banks, those compliance parts live a parallel life to reality. Um, which is also why we're still seeing things happening and things blowing up now and then. Um, so I think that like really applying them in practice is, is actually an interesting challenge and, and, and has a lot of opportunity in itself.

Murati sat down with editor-at-large Michal Lev-Ram at a Fortune MPW dinner in San Francisco to discuss the Apple partnership, new CFO Sarah Friar, customer trust and safety, how she found her love for AI, and more.

OpenAI CTO Mira Murati responds to Elon Musk calling Apple partnership ‘creepy spyware’

Murati sat down with editor-at-large Michal Lev-Ram at a Fortune MPW dinner in San Francisco to discuss the Apple partnership, and more.

Mira, thank you for being here with us. I know you must be a little bit busy. Um So I have like a gazillion questions for Mira, but we have 20 minutes. So I just wanna set everybody's expectations. We're going to stick to a few topics including um some uh recent news and some areas that Mira oversees as, as CTO. Um And hopefully we can dive into some of those. Um I think my, my first question for you actually is just given how insanely busy and given the barrage of news that, you know, some good, some bad. Um You joined around six years ago, I think um at that time, it was a very different organization. You were relatively speaking, kind of, you know, under the uh off the radar. Um Do you ever miss those days of being able to be head down and doing the work? I mean, we're still very much heads down doing the work. It's just that the work has evolved. Uh And it's not just about the research is also now that, you know, research has progressed so far, it's also about figuring out how do we bring this into the world in a way that's helpful and safe. Um So the mission remains the same, but we made a lot of progress on research and the work has extended. Um And yes, there is a lot of public attention on it as well. Um, which can feel unusual when you're working on technology and building products. Um But, you know, it's also very much necessary given the importance of what we're doing and is good. OK. Um Let's go back even further. Um For those who don't know your trajectory, um give us kind of the, the, the, the highlights I know you grew up in Albania at a time when even uh decent access to the internet wasn't a given. How did your interest in A I start? And what do we need to know about? What led you to your current role? I've always been interested in math and physics. And so my, my background uh is very much math heavy. And uh I went on to study engineering work in aerospace and then in automotive at Tesla. And that sort of, that's where I started to get more and more interested in applications of A I in the real world through self-driving cars. Um And then I went on to apply A I and computer vision and um um applications of virtual reality and augmented reality sort of trying to understand how do you create a new interface where you interact with information in a more natural way more intuitive. Um And that's, that's sort of where I was pushing the applications of A I in the real world in different domains. Um And then, you know, thought about how do I, how do I learn a lot about A I? And um at the time I was considering, you know, um applications of A I in different domains and thought ultimately what I wanted to do the most was learn about general artificial intelligence and really diving deep into research. Um And then from there understanding what, what we could do with it in the real world. Um And I was really attracted to open mission, uh which is, you know, at the time opening, I was a nonprofit and now we're a cap profit, but the mission is still the same. Uh If the company B and OK, um I wanna get into some of the, the latest news and again, there's, there's a lot. Um but um I know Maram mentioned Sarah Fryar. Um you hired on just yesterday, the company announced that you have a new um chief product officer and um CFO. And um I think probably a lot of the women in this room are familiar with Sarah. Um She is a seasoned uh public company executive, both, you know, former CEO and CFO. And I feel like it's kind of like when you get married and the next day someone asks you, when are you gonna have kids? Uh this is like you hire a seasoned publicly public company executive. And the next day people ask you, does it, what should we be reading into this as an IP O in the, in the midst, what, how should we be uh deciphering these hires? What does it mean for the company? What it really means is that we're, you know, in this next phase of the company where we're serving hundreds millions of users and developers and companies out there. And, you know, we need to have the most competent and best executives, helping us to grow in this next phase of the company. And we're very excited about Sarah and Kevin and the skills and uh the leadership they bring into the company. OK. Um I had a feeling you wouldn't say anything about the IP O. Um So I want to talk about um the news with Apple. Um I'm guessing everybody saw this or you wouldn't live in this area. Um um But so I help us like unpack a little bit. Um you know, from a technology perspective, just how differentiated and significant this is. Um I know Apple and this is Apple, not open is, but Apple referred to it as the most advanced security architecture ever deployed for cloud A I compute at scale. Um First of all, do you, do you agree with that for this integration um with Apple Intelligence and again, just help us understand what's going on behind the scenes that theoretically makes it so private and secure. Um Well, so the partnership with Apple is we're super excited about it because it's such a great opportunity for us to bring our technology to as many people out there as possible in a very seamless way where, you know, they don't have to switch devices, they can interact with, you know, the technology comes to you in the best way possible and safest way possible. Um And the partnership with Apple is very aligned, we care very deeply about privacy and safety of our products. Um and how we develop the technology and how we ultimately deploy it. So that's very much um we're very much in alignment and it's, it's going to push us forward in a better direction. Um So Apple obviously is, you know, has been known for uh taking a privacy and, and, you know, secure approach um to roll out. Do you think that for people who have anxiety about interacting with gen A I products, not just chat GP T, do you think that this kind of helps uh uh you know, push in that general direction of more trust? Ultimately, we have to do a lot to build um trust around A I in general, right? There are so many aspects to it. Um And I think this partnership is uh hopefully, you know, something that, that moves the needle in the right direction as we bring A I into so many products and different integrations. And um specifically with our partnership, you know, people can log into charge GP T or through their Apple account. And we have, um, you know, the, the product policies that apply to either Cha GP T or Apple. Um But, you know, we both strongly believe in privacy and safety of the products. Um We will not be logging information through the um Apple accounts. Um But you know, when people log in on CHA GP T, then we will be, we will be, and, and, and you know, they have not specifically opted out from us being able to uh look at the data. Then in that case, I in in those cases, we will um we will be looking at the data and when people have specifically opted out, then we will not be looking at the data more broadly. We do not train on uh any customer data in general um or you know, other or, or data where people have, have specifically opted out. And by the way, does, on that note, the fact that the models can't train on the da user data um of of Apple os users. Um I mean is that a downside here uh to pushing forward the ability for these models to keep training and that's a lot of data. Um I'm look the the reality is that we have to do the right thing for the users. And it's very important that people are trusting the technologies and the products in which they're deployed. And it's important for people to have control over their data, how it's used and very, very important for them to understand how it's used and where it's used. Um So that comes first and that's a priority regardless of the impact that it has in how, how much, how much it drives the technology forward or, and all. So you're gonna have to forgive me because I'm gonna quote Elon Musk. Um I'm sorry, but uh but he is one person that has, is, is not uh in agreement with this being a model for privacy and security. He called the integration creepy spyware. What's your response to that? Huh. Don't care. That's, that's his opinion. I, I mean, I'm not, yeah, I uh obviously, I don't think so. We don't think so. Uh And we care deeply about the privacy of our users and about the safety of our products and how we're developing and deploy this technology. Um Our track record in deploying the technology safely is very strong. We've done that with G BT 34. We're doing the same thing with 40, right now, and we're trying to be as transparent as possible with the public and communicate how we're making decisions with a preparedness framework that shares how we think about frontier models and our approach to safety there. Um And we will continue to be transparent through the preparedness framework through things like the spec where I don't think anyone else has such a developed and transparent framework for what happens with model behavior. Um It's, you know, from the high level rules all the way to very technical decisions and how complex they are. Uh We're sharing that with, with the public and we're providing an opportunity for people to provide input. And we're also working on um a lot of experimental ways to gather input from non users as well. Um I think these are the important things, the work is not done, we have a lot more to do here. Um And not just opening eye, I think the whole industry in sort of explaining what's going on with the technology, um creating more participation, more agency. But we have to start with actually explaining because the biggest risk is that stakeholders um misunderstand the technology. So in the, in the midst of all of um these developments and you know, current partnerships um that, that you guys are striking, um you are also currently training a new model, a new A I model which is expected to bring the company closer to A G I. And I know you spend a great deal of time thinking about this. Um And, and also thinking through worst case scenarios, best case scenarios, like I'm curious, um you know, and I think probably everybody in this room is very curious about what that future looks like. Can you talk to us a little bit about how you um think about it. Um how you scenario plan for it and what's like the the the mirror case scenario like what's the ideal view of this future in, in your view? Um So my framework for thinking about the progress that we're making uh and where this technology is going is that it's definitely going to be incredibly transformative technology. Um And it requires a lot of work, not just from the companies that are developing and deploying these technologies, but also from uh other stakeholders like civil society, media, um governments regulators, the general public people in every domain. You know, we, we have to create some sort of shared responsibility around the general preparedness for bringing this technology into the, into the world. But in order to have shared responsibility, we need to understand it and we need to make it very accessible. Um And so we've been focusing on this, this last two parts, making it accessible. Um engaging with people educating with educating various stakeholders on what what the technology means, what it's capable of. Uh The, the most recent thing we did was the release with the release of GB D 40 which is our only model. Um We made it accessible to everyone for free. And you know, I I don't think I don't think there is um enough emphasis on, on how unique that is for the stage where the technology is today in the sense that, you know, inside the labs, we have these capable models and, you know, they're not that far ahead from what the public has access to for free. And that's a completely different trajectory for bringing technology into the world that what we've seen historically. And it's a great opportunity because it brings people along. It gives them uh intuitive sense for the capabilities and risks and allows people to prepare for the advent of this, of, of bringing advanced A I into the world. And obviously, the opportunities are huge. Now, it's, it's normal that we talk a lot about the risks uh because they're so important. Uh But also we wouldn't do this if we didn't believe that the opportunities here are huge. I personally think that there are incredible. Um There is just this incredible promise with advanced A I and health care and education. We're just kind of touching on some of these capabilities and opportunities with personalized tutors like from Khan Academy. But you can imagine that, you know, anyone in the world, in the most remote areas, they would have access to custom tutoring that is, you know, personalized to the way they think to their um cultural background, to their interests. And that's just amazing. Like we normally don't really think about how we learn or how we think until, you know, 10 years of education or so on. And it's just such a missed opportunity. And I really do believe that if you can push human knowledge forward, you can push society and civilization forward. Um And I mean, there's so many opportunities in health care, um, thinking about solutions in climate change. There's a long list of things that we haven't tackled. And I think, uh bringing this advanced A I systems in the world will help us a lot. Um And obviously, you know, there's, there are always risks whenever you have something so powerful, you have to deal with, with the downsides with the misuse. Um And if you think about the world around us, you know, it's all engineering and engineering carries risks and we have learned to, you know, build systems and build um build trust and uh to figure out how to, how to make engineering safe around us, you know, the buildings, the roads, the bridges, everything. Um And so this is quite similar where we have to build all this infrastructure that we trust and makes the deployment of these technologies safe and useful. Um And it's actually very congruent with business needs because people want products that they can trust and that are safe. So, and I wanna ask you one more question just on the safety side, um this is moving so fast, faster than bridge building and, you know, uh real life infrastructure. Um I know you oversee safety, the safety teams. Um and one of the things that uh when you were on our cover last year, we talked about was your belief that the unique structure at open A I provides the necessary guardrails to make sure that you have safety in mind. Obviously, there's been a lot of scrutiny, there was a lot of upheaval late last year. It's hard to remember that you were interim CEO for uh for a little while there. Um because so much had has happened, tell us uh why and how uh you think that you believe that the right guard rails, the right structure on the safety side is still in place. Um I assume you believe that or you wouldn't be there at this point. Well, so uh I, I think you're referring to the board structure, right? OK. Um So the way that opening I was set up was, you know, the question has always been what is the best administrative structure, the best incentive structure, alignment and design? So the company can fulfill its mission in the best possible way. And there have been a couple of iterations, you know, as, as we, as we work towards the mission and we learn more. It is a process of discovery. I mean, we're literally in the pursuit of discovery, we're doing research and with that, you have to kind of learn and adjust and make changes. So there was the initial change from nonprofit to cap profit um in order, you know, to actually be able to fund the supercomputers and hire talent while, you know, putting the mission first. And so that is the goal always to put the mission first. Um But as we discovered in November, you know, with a nonprofit board structure that we had, it doesn't put um the, the non profit board structure didn't have accountability to anyone but themselves. Um And we're building and deploying the technology that will affect everyone. So, ideally, there would be, you know, some sort of accountability on, on, on the board as well. And uh our, our current board uh which is very ex experience in nonprofit and uh larger companies. They are doing a lot of thinking on the governance structure and what is the best way that you can balance the incentives and put the mission first while having a lot of accountability? Ok. Well, as I said, we will not get to uh uh you know, a tiny fraction even of the questions I'd love to ask you, but I really, really appreciate you taking time um and, and sitting here and just being so thoughtful. Um There's so much interest in what you guys are doing and we appreciate you coming here and talking to us and thank you so much with that. We'll let everybody eat. Um Thank you so much. Thank you, Mia.

CEO Robin Vince says investments in technology and culture are key for the 240-year-old bank.

How BNY, founded by Alexander Hamilton, became a $50 trillion bank for other banks

Photo illustration by Fortune. Photograph provided by BNY.

We're surrounded by documents of your history that highlight some of the key points of that 240 years and including Alexander Hamilton's ledger right over there. It's an impressive display. That was his account. We have President Washington's account for those two years when this was in fact the capital of the United States. We have Warrant number one, which is particularly fun. They call it the origin story of the $35 trillion worth of national debt today. Welcome to leadership next, the podcast about the changing rules of business leadership. I'm Alan Murray and I'm Mia Well, we've been part of the fabric of the United States and actually the world's financial system for a lot of our time, we lent the first money to the new nation to help uh the nation get going. And so that's where we started. We've been involved in helping to enable infrastructure of various kinds, New York City subways, Erie Canal all over the course of us history. And then when we went global and we've been in countries around the world for 50 60 70 years. Uh in some cases serving clients around the world for over 100 years, 40% of our revenues come from outside the US. We now view our business as serving our clients by managing money, moving money and keeping it safe. And we provide a whole range of financial services to clients under those headings. But it's kind of like plumbing. Right. I mean, there's no, there's no corner uh, Bank of New York Mellon. You know, I, I see JP Morgan. I see city, I don't see Bank of New York Mellon on my corner. We're not a retail bank if that's what you mean by corner, but we're really ever present in the financial system. We power platforms for our clients that really support the pensions of the world, the savers of the world, the investors of the world all through the financial system. And so we have $50 trillion or thereabouts of assets under custody and administration. We touch about 20% of all investable assets in the world. So you may not see us on the corner front, but we are probably part of your financial life. How do you think about culture and what is the culture of bank, New York people often ask me, uh you know, what is your focus on strategy? How do you think about the importance of it? And actually my answer to that is to sort of borrow the quote from, from, from another culture, really does eat strategy for breakfast. And I'll add to that by saying and execution, eat strategy for lunch. Because without people and without the right alignment and without the right sense of purpose around what we're doing and without a sense of we're really trying to nurture a learning environment and environment which is really focused on being high performing, no company can succeed. And that's one of the things that I've really loved about Bny Mellon, we have a culture that's incredibly client centric and that holds the firm also in high regard. People cherish our history. We've got this 240 years of having really powered financial markets and people take a lot of pride in that. It's people coming here wanting to be part of the financial system, part of improving things, helping make things work better for individuals and companies all around the world. And there's a lot of culture in that. So with a footprint that large um Bank of New York, Maryland has to be central to the safety and soundness of our financial system. Um Resilience has been a big theme for companies over the course of the last few years. We've seen lots of ups and downs uh geopolitical threats that trans can translate into cyber threats. Um We've had financial uh uh uneasiness. How do you, your job is to make sure that the financial system survives through all of that. How do you do it? Well, you said the most important word Alan, which is resilience. We view resilience as a commercial attribute for our company. But it really is also table stakes for a large modern day participant in capital markets. And we had plenty of lessons of that last year when we look back to 2023 the ups and downs in some of the smaller and medium sized banks in the United States that occurred some of the ups and downs and expectations for interest rates. We had geopolitical events that either started or continuing. So there are plenty of things going on in the world and you only get to be 240 years old. If you think about things, what lies around the corner really being prepared and recognizing that resilience really matters? Yeah. So can we talk a little bit about cybersecurity because obviously that's part of the geopolitical threat. Uh uh Russia, China, Iran, all sources of cyber threats. Um New technology is accelerating the possibility of those threats. I hear people talking about quantum, the day quantum comes there will be a quantum leap in cyber threats. Uh How do you keep up with the rapid escalation of the threats? Well, cyber is an incredibly important topic uh for any large company, any government, by the way, for individuals as well, talk a lot about fishing and smashing these things are their own version of a cyber online threat. And so everybody needs to pay close attention to making sure that they're well protected. Now, for our part as a company, of course, we spend a lot of money, devote a lot of attention to making sure that we are being prepared. And we're thinking about what lies ahead in defending against the various different threats that come along. We're also focused on helping our clients to do those things because we have the benefit of a scale that allows our clients to be able to rely on us for some of those things. And they find a lot of comfort in the fact that we are trying to think steps ahead on the board for that.

From 60-year old Coach bags to Delta’s first passenger plane, take a trip down memory lane at some of corporate America’s most well-known brands.

Take a tour of some of businesses' biggest archives

In the archive, we have over 25,000 items. This includes all the original catalogs, all the handbags, all the ready to wear pieces, anything that has a coach stamp on it comes through the archives. Behind me is Delta's first passenger service. Airplane carried five people had wicker seats and was not pressurized. Think about how much laundry has changed over the past 200 years, you know, doing laundry in a tub with bars of soap to then using early powders and flakes and you know, the beginning appliances to then moving to liquids to then moving to pods, still similar chores, but better technologies. And we want to make sure that we capture that evolution in the archives. A lot of the larger companies, particularly those with long histories have both archives and museums and that is to inspire employees to make them feel like they belong to something bigger to themselves. And it's also a way to guide the C SUITE when they're having to do decision making. And that can include things like how was a crisis handled a decade ago. It serves also innovation. So whether you're a designer, a coach or somebody trying to find a new twist on shaving cream at PNG. And so it's a mix of both and that's why companies invest money and hire actually real historians with masters and doctorates in history. Delta has both a museum that's open to the public and is actually a very popular tourist attraction in Atlanta as well as archives. It has things like press releases, minutes from board meetings, presentations from strategy sessions, etcetera, etcetera that are important for the corporate history aspect of it. As the manager of the archives, I take care of Delta Airlines corporate archives that they have been collecting um since the 19 fifties. This is actually a piece of glassware. This is from Delta's first alcoholic beverage service. So this would have held champagne in the late fifties. Delta started, they called Royal Beverage Service and this is such a fun menu. Delta started as a crop dusting company actually in Macon, Georgia, which a lot of people don't realize in 1925 quickly moved to Monroe Louisiana and the name Delta was actually coined by Catherine Fitzgerald. She was known as Miss Fits. So she was the longtime assistant to the principal founder of Delta Ce Woolman. Delta started passenger service in 1929 then this kind of airplane. Um we actually have one, a similar one in the museum behind me is the travel air and it was Delta's first passenger service. Airplane carried five people had wicker seats and was not pressurized. I'm Kelly Moore, executive Director of the Delta Flight Museum here in Atlanta, Georgia. In my opinion, the most interesting piece is Spirit of Delta A 767 aircraft ship 102 that was purchased by employees, friends and members of the community and donated to Delta. She was dedicated on December 15th, 1982 and she flew for 30 years and we are in the first-class cabin which doesn't look anything like the first-class cabins of today. She has IFE that is on a screen mounted to the front of the cabin. We no longer use overhead projectors. One of my favorite things about uh, this airplane that you don't see anymore are the telephones and I can remember seeing people use them. You would slide your credit card and I can't remember what it was per minute, but it was some crazy amount per minute. So behind me, we have then and nail. We have the first class seats from the 19 sixties conveyor 880. You can see the bucket seats from the sixties and then behind me on this side, on my left is the life flat seats of today on the A 350. I prefer the life flat. This is my absolute favorite Delta uniform. It's dubbed the Huntsman 1969 to 70 summer uniform. You can see it comes with its own smock, its own belt, its own hat coach was founded in 1941. It started as a men's wallets and briefcase company originally from a baseball glove, leather, from a baseball glove that was repurposed. Of course, over the decades that has evolved its single against category are women's handbags. And it really hit the big time in the sixties when they hired a designer called Bonnie Cash and who absolutely revolutionized coach and brought it closer to the world of luxury and fashion and not just, you know, functional well made wallets. She was an absolutely trailblazing designer with the locks on her bags that continued to inspire design to this very day. This is the turn lock which was created in the 19 sixties by Bonnie Cash in. And the fun fact about this is that she was inspired by her 19 forties convertible and that the turn lock was what kept the top on of her car. So she redesigned it and placed it on a bag and that's why we have this today. My name is Ryan Borg and I am the manager of the coach archives in the archive. We have over 25,000 items. This includes all the original catalogs, all the handbags, all the ready to wear pieces, anything that has a coach stamp on it comes through the archive. The archive is primarily used by our design teams. They will come down here and look at all the bags for inspiration and that could be from proportions of the bag constructions of the bag and how they were constructed back in the sixties or seventies, but also for color and for the structure and the integrity of the leather. So in this case, here, we start with our 19 forties and 19 fifties collection. Uh when Miles Kahn first started coach um and that continues in this whole case with our 19 sixties, which is when Bonnie Cash and first started in 1962. Uh This is her first bag that she did for us. The shopping bag she did not like seeing women carrying around a brown paper bag down Fifth Avenue. So she designed this more lux shopping bag for people to carry their luxury items in one task for the archivist at coach to do is to source out bags that are rare to find bags that we don't have yet or currently looking for. And one bag in particular is the chubby clutch from 1964 where I recently found this through outside vendors who are willing to part with it. So this is our case of the 19 seventies bag collection. Bonnie Cashen designed up until 1973. At this time. In my opinion, she made one of the most iconic bags for coach, which is the devils. As you can see here. This is a bag that we still design and create today with little to zero modifications. You see how the handbags both reflect and push fashion as you get a sense from the sixties to now, it's really a lot of fun. Um, you know, you obviously have to be there with somebody, but I can match on my own. I could easily spend hours looking at all these products. Procter and Gamble has been around for decades and is the largest consumer products manufactured in the United States. They're behind all sorts of products, Tide and Charmin Gillette, etc, Procter and Gamble is a giant and has always had innovation in its blood. There's a lot more competition now for conser products. And so the pressure to innovate more quickly is great. The P and G Heritage Center collects preserves and shares all the great stories and objects and products and innovations from our past as a catalyst to inspire the employees as they work on the future. My name is Shane Meeker. I am the P and G company historian and corporate storyteller. The origin story of PNG really goes back to two people, an English candle maker named William Proctor and an Irish soap maker named James Gamble. And they end up coming over to Cincinnati, looking to start up their respective businesses and ended up actually becoming partners because they married sisters and it was their father in law's idea that they should join forces. And in 1837 they officially became Proctor and Gamble selling both soap and candles. Not only do we have the original partnership agreement, but we've got some very old handle cases including also some original bars of soap too from around that time period. So a day in the life in the Heritage Center is not only virtual and online requests coming from our employees but also employees just stopping in looking through the artifacts, going through the timelines asking about the stories. And we're pulling everything from photos to content to information that we then can send to them, so they can use that to research the projects that they're doing now. So we have a lot of great artifacts here. But one of the most fun is one of the mock ups of the original prototype for the Swiffer Wet Jet. And that story honestly goes back to consumer. As boss for us, we had started doing some in-home research around mopping. And while watching a consumer mop, she looked at the researchers and said, hey, I tell you if you really want to clean up something, please clean up the closet that I have to put all this mopping stuff in that then became the insight that would turn into creating this great all in one solution that we call Swiffer wetjet. And when you look at the prototype, it's really fun because it leverages areas of our expertise in different categories. Our hard surface cleaning expertise with Mr Clean while also leveraging our absorbency and non woven expertise in pampers, diapers and always pads. The wall of failures is one of our most popular exhibits in the archives and it's really centered around a growth mindset way of thinking because, you know, quite honestly, if you're not failing, you're probably not innovating. And so, you know, being around for 187 years, we try to save all of the projects that we can and all the learnings from them. And just because an idea fails, doesn't mean it's a bad idea. You know, there's so many things that could have influenced that from everything, from habit to technology, to business model, to consumer behavior, to whatever. And so for example, Tide Pods I pod is an incredible success for us that we launched in 2012. But believe it or not, the first actual unit dose detergent that we launched was called Tide Ready Packs in 1960 and that failed. So what you're looking at is 52 years of learning from failure and tempting new and different innovations to get there, just like in other spheres of life, history tends to repeat itself. And I think these archives and these museums really guide companies in harnessing their history so they can continue making products that are contemporary. I think what this shows though is that things move in cycles, what is old is new again if you do it intelligently and in a well guided way, which is what I think all these facilities help these companies to do.

A year into the job, David Risher talks innovation at Lyft, plus lessons learned from the recent earnings error.

Lyft's CEO says the company will be profitable soon

Photo illustration by Fortune. Photograph provided by Lyft.

David Risher talks innovation at Lyft, plus lessons learned from the recent earnings error.

Brands are so interesting and reputations are so interesting because they take a long time to build and once you've got them, they actually persist for, for many years. So I was just by the way at fortune, we know that for sure, hard to, hard to kill a good brand. Once, once you are, you guys trying? No, we're not anymore. But there probably been times in our past when we were trying. Pretty hard. Welcome to leadership next, the podcast about the changing rules of business leadership. I'm Alan Murray and I'm Mia, this is a hyper competitive business. You're like Coke and Pepsi or maybe more like Hertz and Avis or something. And, you know, I know when I'm, when I'm getting a car, I just want the car to be there fast. I don't care who it comes from. So what is the nature? It's a fairly undifferentiated pro uh product. What, what, what can you do? What is, what, what, how do you really make ground against Uber in this battle? Yeah, it turns out you can do a lot and it's interesting because so first of all, you know, really focusing on the customer really makes a difference. So I'll give you some examples. When I started, the company had started to focus a little bit too much on Wall Street and a little bit too little on its own riders and drivers. And so, you know, if I'm honest, we were paying our drivers not quite uh competitive rates. We were uh charging our riders a little bit more, uh under the hopes of making more money faster. Just a bad strategy. Just because to your point, a lot of people, they'll say, you know, who's going to get me there less expensively, who's going to get me there faster. So when I, when I look forward, you know, over the year, you know, just fixing some of the basics really, really helps and I'll give you, you know, an example a year ago our of what we call our pin eta difference. So let's say the gap between how fast you might be picked up and the other guy versus us might have been three or four minutes, which is significant if you're in a hurry now, it's 10 seconds. Now it's 10 seconds. So when you get to the point where it's 10 seconds, now, you can start to compete on other things, you can start to compete on women Plus Connect, which we launched, which is a product that's women, choose women. You can start to compete on faster airport pickup where people are very stressed about getting to the airport. So it's sort of a couple stage thing. You got to make sure you're focused on your customers. You gotta fix the basics to give yourself permission to do some of the other more innovative things. And then you can start to innovate and give people a real reason to choose one or the other instead of having them. Think it's kind of the same thing is, uh, transparency part of it too. I mean, I, I would assume that drivers care very much about that. Have you made changes there? Absolutely. Absolutely. And in fact, that's exactly it. So I have AAA public email address. Uh It's David at lyft.com and, and, and drivers, right? And they're very clear about what it is that they like and they're also very clear about what bugs them. And so, but again, customer obsession, right? So our drivers are our customers. So we have to pay attention to what bugs them and the lack of transparency really bothers them, you know, they start to kind of come up with all sorts of theories of what's going on. So now, and this again is a relatively new feature where actually I just rolled it out over the last, you know, six weeks or so. At the end of every week, you, you get a full statement that, that literally starts with how much riders pay because that was the thing that would bug them so much is they would say, you know, I got a, a, you know, a trip where a rider paid me 50 bucks and I only made 10 and it's like, but what, what is that? So anyway, so now we show them, you know, the complete statement, uh, literally everything that rider paid, everything that they got, all their tips, all the tools, all the different, you know, things. And then again, if it's ever less than 70% after those pass through fees, we literally send them a check, we send them a check. And again, this driver group, I talked to the other day, they said I couldn't believe it. The first time I got a rebate, you know, it was sort of like getting a tax rebate. It was, it was great. So David, you're, you're, you're focusing on customers, you're focusing on riders, you're focusing less on shareholders. But at the end of the day, you do have to make money and you haven't yet. Uh uh How do you feel about progress towards that goal? And the reason is because our, our mantra is customer obsession drives profitable growth. So, you know, let's look at the other numbers for a second. So, um, so first on the growth side, you know, the first quarter that I was, uh CEO we grew about 10% year on year, then we grew about 17% then we were about 20% then we grew about 26%. So those are the first four quarters. So we're growing. So then the question is, what are we doing it profitably? Well, as you point out, we haven't made gap profitability yet, but it is absolutely on the, you know, on the road map, we were free cash flow positive last quarter. That's Q four of 2023 we will be free cash flow positive this entire year. Absolutely. We've promised it to Wall Street and when you look at our losses, they are diminishing to the point where they're really quite small right now. And most Wall Street analysts show us turning a profit quite soon. So we are absolutely on that path. Some of it was very hard decisions. You know, one of my first decision was, was obviously very difficult uh involving cutting about 26% of our staff, which is very difficult to do incredibly hard, uh you know, kind of heart wrenching uh work, but you, you have to do it if you're gonna be able to lower your prices and pay drivers more, you know, and, and, and, and now we're being very disciplined, very disciplined quarter after quarter. Our listeners would never forgive us if we didn't ask you about the EBITA mistake because it was such a fascinating moment. It was a misplaced zero in a press release that caused the, the stock to soar came back down. You now have class action lawsuits. What did you learn from that? Did you learn anything? Was there we were there any? Oh Yeah, we learned, we learned a lot. Yeah, I mean, the first thing I have to say and I said this before, I'll say it again. That's on me, that's on me. And I want people really to understand that when you're a leader of the organization, no, makes a mistake. It's your problem. And so now I will also say, man did our team hustle and, and what happened, what happened literally was an extra zero that got inserted into an early version of the press release and it just rolled forward. And this despite literally no exaggeration of hundreds of people's hundreds of people's eyes, including my own seeing it over and over again. But what happened, it was in a forecast piece which gets a little less scrutiny than the backwards looking stuff, the basis point versus percentage. I mean, they are very, very different words, but unfortunately, they mean something very, very different. And so, and we literally found it in real time as we were reading out the, um the, the, the sort of earnings report and we changed it within two minutes, I think. And all of a sudden our legal team again and actually our policy team jumped into action so very, very quick response. Absolutely fantastic. And I certainly learned how fast the team can work when it, when it is under that kind of pressure. Now, uh what have, what have we also learned? Well, we've learned that even though we have really exactly the same process that every other public company has all sorts of eyes, it wasn't sufficient, it wasn't sufficient. So, what are we doing? We actually now have a process. We're just about to go through this as our next earnings come out where we take all of our materials. We now give them to an outside third party we've hired to do exactly this and what they do is without having any other context. They look, not just to sort of double check the numbers, but they try to build the model that our press release and earnings statement is suggesting they build and then look at what that model results in. And then we compare that back to our internal models. And if those models are vary by anything that significant, we know there is a problem along the way.

Fuel up with Fortune, Cannes 2025

Elite leadership isn’t just about vision—it’s about action, resilience, and the relentless pursuit of growth. At Fortune’s exclusive Fuel Up With Fortune panel in Cannes, Snap Inc. EMEA President Ronan Harris and Mars Wrigley North America President Anton Vincent share their top leadership learnings and what truly sets outperformers apart.

Elite Leadership: Unlocking Growth at the Top

Elite Leadership: Unlocking Growth at the Top Pannel at Cannes

At the Fuel Up With Fortune panel in Cannes, Snap Inc. EMEA President Ronan Harris and Mars Wrigley North America President Anton Vincent share their top leadership learnings.

Fortune COO Summit

How are the companies pioneering artificial intelligence technology actually using it internally? These two preeminent operational leaders at the forefront of the AI revolution will share the strategies they are using to deploy the very technologies they're developing—while writing the future of AI for the world. We’ll hear how they are leveraging AI to optimize operations, fuel growth and share specific advice for corporate leaders about how best to implement today’s most cutting-edge innovations in their own organizations.

ARCHITECTS OF AI: DRIVING TECHNOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION FROM WITHIN 

Fortune MPW International Summit 2025

Hosted by ROSHN Group  
Around the world, significant strides have been made to increase the number of women in corporate leadership positions. In the U.S., women make up 29% of C-Suite level roles and hold approximately 30% of board seats. And here in Saudi Arabia, nearly 10% of board positions are held by women, a new reality made possible by the Kingdom’s ambitious Vision 2030 strategy and other significant government-led reforms. Even with such progress, untapped opportunities remain in industries where women have traditionally been underrepresented – from construction and engineering to technology and energy. In this special lunch program, we’ll explore the strategies needed to advance women into C-suite positions, create more inclusive workplaces, foster untapped talent, and create a path to parity – not just progress – for women at all levels of business.
Panelists:
Dr. Maryam Ali Ficociello, Group Chief Governance Officer, Red Sea Global
Giovanna Carnevali,	 Executive Director, Master Planning, ROSHN Group
Dr. Saeeda Jaffar, Senior Vice President and Group Country Manager – GCC, Visa
Jena Ladhani, Chief Executive Officer, Global Workplace Solutions, KSA, CBRE
Renée McGowan, Chief Executive Officer, India, Middle East, and Africa, Marsh McLennan
Moderator: Michal Lev-Ram, Contributing Editor, Fortune

WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP LUNCH PROGRAM: ADVANCING WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE

Workplace Innovation 2025

Does DEI promote or prevent meritocracy? After a growing number of companies announced they’d be rolling back their DEI programs, some employees were left wondering if the pre-2025 DEI movement in business was wholehearted or largely performative. How will the private sector navigate external pressures while fostering inclusive and equitable environments for employees and customers? Netflix’s inaugural Vice President of Inclusion Vernā Myers joins Anson Frericks, the author of the recent New York Times opinion essay “Working at Anheuser-Bush, I Saw What Went Wrong With the D.E.I. Movement,” for a thought-provoking and multifaceted conversation about how America got here--and where DEI is headed.  

DEI IN 2025: RETREAT OR REINVENTION?

And welcome. Thank you for being with us today. We're excited to start our 2nd day of conversations and connections. We have lots to dive into today, like multi-generational workforces and how to manage them under one roof and the debate over return to office policies. We'll look at the trend of skills over degrees. We'll talk about integrating AI as your new employee. We'll hear lessons on career building from a Hollywood power player and we'll step into the world of the hit show Severance to see how corporate dystopia is brought to life. It's gonna be so much fun and we're going to get right to it all, but first, a quick reminder about what can be shared and what's off the record. What's said on stage or in our breakout sessions is on the record, including the open Q&A. Feel free to post on social media. And tag us using hashtag fortune workplace summits. What's said over the table during a meal or on breaks is private and off the record unless that's agreed upon by those involved. In just a moment, Fortune's next to lead editor, Ruth Umo, we'll kick off our conversations, but first, our partner McKinsey and Company wants to share some thoughts on getting the most out of tech. Tech has limitless potential, but how do we turn that into value? Unlock the power of AI at scale, reinvent tech delivery, build innovative products, and entirely new businesses. We rewire organizations to get the most out of tech, from strategy and talent to operating model, data and governance, capabilities, and culture. Great tech is essential, but with McKinsey, it's never just tech. Hey, good morning, everyone. Let's start with a big question. Is DEI DOA dead on arrival? Diversity, equity and inclusion in America is at a crossroads. Critics argue DEI initiatives have gone too far, creating new divisions and unfairness. Supporters say DEI strategies are necessary to address workplace inequities and can drive business success. We're gonna dive into both sides of the debate, and we have two great guests to do just that. Anton Ferris is co-founder of Strive Asset Management and a business leader who believes talent and results should take priority over diversity metrics, and Bernie Myers is founder and president of the Vernie Meyers Company, which helps organizations build effective DEI strategies. Please welcome them to the stage. Welcome, welcome, thank you both for joining us. Let's cut straight to the chase. Anson, you have argued that one of the fundamental failures of corporate DEI movement is that no one has ever clearly defined what it was trying to do. Let's do just that to level set. How do you each define DEI? What do you think it is actually trying to accomplish? something you want to take it first here, Renee, ladies first here. Thank you, thank you. So I am now start not saying DEI anymore. I'm saying diversity, equity and inclusion. When I say diversity, I mean talking about a difference and a mix, quite frankly, of culture and identity and experience when I'm talking about inclusion. It's about how do you make all of those differences work on your behalf, right, creating an environment where people of all backgrounds feel included. I often say expected, respected, and also reflected that's that's the idea of inclusion and with equity it's what you need to do the processes and. And the, the kinds of, uh, I would say tools that are necessary in order for that inclusion to actually flourish and for you to get the best out of human talent. Same question for you. Yeah, and I think, I think one of the biggest problems with diversity, equity, inclusion, it's never been well defined. If you ask everybody in this room, they're going to give you a different answer. I think that. Bernay's answer was a very plausible answer for DEI, and I think if you go back in time 5, 10 years ago, I think probably everyone in DEI wanted just to go out and find the best and the brightest. DEI was about finding a diverse group of candidates, trying to make sure they had an equitable opportunity or an equal opportunity to be able to succeed, and then we want to be inclusive of all people and walks and different backgrounds. I think there was a lot of positive in the initial DEI movement. why it's become controversial and I'll define why I think it's become controversial is DEI instead of just providing equal opportunities for people of diverse backgrounds. I think it's about now perceived in a lot of circles as forcing equitable outcomes for people as opposed to equal opportunity. So based off of your race, sex, gender, etc. the diversity piece has been about a lot of quota systems in certain. Companies we're going to hire people based on their race, sex, gender. That's become very controversial. The equitable piece is not about sort of equal opportunities, but making sure that everybody gets promoted in an equal way or an equitable way based on race, sex, gender, and then even the inclusive pieces, I think, become very challenging because the inclusive piece is very difficult to define and I actually think stifled a lot of open debate and free speech and dialogue. So I want to thank you for Having this conversation because I think it's incredibly important, but that's how I think about DEI and think about the two different definitions of what it was and I think what it's become. Well, Renee, let me turn to you then. What is your response to critics who argue that DEI, to his points, often rewards identity over performance and risks sidelining the most qualified candidate, um, in the name of representation? I'm gonna say poppycock. Right, because the whole point of DEI is to allow for merits, right? And it is much older than 5 years ago or 10 years ago. We've been doing the work of DEI since the civil rights movement. In fact, that's the birth of diversity, equity inclusion, and the idea is that it is hard to get to merit when there are obstacles, unfair. Obstacles in the way and so there is no MEI without DEI. In fact, it is impossible and and and what is so upsetting for me and I feel like it's, I would say morally unjust and bankrupt to suggest that we could just move forward as if we had somehow managed to level the playing field. You cannot get. To equality without recognizing inequality, it is impossible to do that and in no other business setting would we have an objective, not measure it, not looking at outcomes and how well the actual operation is either delivering on equality or not. And so we've got plenty of data that would suggest that it's not equal. I mean, if I look at women right now in the C-suite. We've got, uh, I, I actually brought the numbers because I am always not, I'm not always on numbers, but I know that there's 28% now women in uh the C-suite and that's up. It was 17% in 2017. So the work we did to get women to be recognized for their merit is working. In fact, I think this backlash against the EI is because we're winning, is because we are leveling the playing field and not because by identity. But by allowing people to actually share and exhibit what they're capable of, I will also say that if we look at women of color in the suite, C-suite, it's much, much lower. So let me jump in here because I do want to hear from you, Anton. Yeah, thank you. Uh, and, and I love that this is a spirited debate because Anne Sandy, you wrote, uh, a New York Times op ed, um, and you pointed to Anheuser-Busch, where you worked for some time as a cautionary tale of DI gone wrong, but was the real failure DI itself, or was it the clumsy way that DI was executed? Why is it a failing of DI overall and not just how they leveraged that business strategy potentially in a in a way that was erroneous. I think that DI there was a failure in terms of definitely how it's been implemented in companies, and I think what I think about sort of a company and why does a company exist, you have a clear mission statement that most companies have, you know, if you're a beer company, you were supposed to, our mission as a company was to create a future with more cheers. That was the mission of the company as a as a beer company, perfectly good mission. There's lots of other missions as well. Coinbase is doing crypto. Indeed is, I don't know, empowering people and finding jobs, whatever it is. Those missions are great. Then I have a view that we should find people and attract people that's going to help the company fulfill that mission. And if you're, you know, in the business of fighting fires, you want to have firefighters that are brave and resilient and all these things. If you were a beer company and the way that InBev worked and Anheuser-Busch and 3G, it was a very hard-nosed finance kind of driven company. And if you're a healthcare company, you probably have different people for that, and you should have different sort of characteristics and adjectives that you can describe to recruit people, and I think that each company needs to define those own adjectives to create. the sort of workplace they went in, but every company, I think before defining what those values were of who they wanted to recruit, they first looked at it through a DI lens, and I think that was problematic in saying that before we find people that are brave or empathetic or compassionate or hardworking or whatever adjective you want to describe for that company, first you have to look through this lens of, well, what's people's race or sex or gender or others, and I think you know there's a why is it you used the word before. Why can it all happen at the same time? This is just my experience working at Anheuser-Busch and then also running Strive Asset Management where we're investors in hundreds of different companies across the S&P 500. It just didn't. It probably can, but I think most people, they look through sort of the lens. Wells Fargo is a good example of a company that said in 2020 that we're going to have to interview 50% of all candidates have to be minority candidates for any job that's over $100,000 and then they were actually accused of literally encouraging minority candidates to apply for jobs after they'd already been filled just so they could check a box. And I think that's sort of the problem of like a lot of people just implemented DEI policies poorly and wrongly. And they became, I think, frustrating for, I think, a lot of minority candidates. They were supposed to help. And then also conversely became very frustrating, I think for non-minority candidates or even say candidates of background that were Asian or Indian or others that might have been passed over for a job because they weren't called the check the box right minority. Let's dig into it really quickly, and I think you might actually be about to touch. On this because you mentioned DI quotas, hiring quotas, and we saw a number of companies, uh, that instated the certainly post George Floyd and so if, if, if the argument is that DI initiatives result in these diversity quotas, Verne, how is that not trade in one form of exclusion for another? Let's, let's, let's get the language right. There's no such thing as quotas. Quotas are illegal. They've been illegal for a very long time. Kenji Yoshino last night yesterday explained to us it's not about quotas. That's another example of a disinformation campaign. It was about goals. And every company, if you want to achieve a change or cultural transformation, you have to have goals. How else are you knowing whether you are making a difference with what you're implementing, right? So people said unless we pay attention to this problem, the problem being the underrepresentation of groups of people over a long period of time due to exclusion, both intentional and Unintentional. This work does not get done unless you pay attention. It's attention and intention. People often think, well, just let it go. It'll just happen. It never just happens. I mean, you know, people will quote that like the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice. Thank you, MLK, my love. It doesn't bend by itself. You have to bend it. I'm a, I, I came into the legal profession. I was the first black person in my law firm, the only black lawyer, I should say, in my law firm. When I went back to my Harvard Law School, um, women in Harvard Law School, I learned that in 19. 53 when they finally let in women, they had no toilets for no bathrooms for the women. So you can say they had gender diversity maybe, but you cannot say they had gender inclusion and if you arrive in an environment and it's not set up for you, it's not conducive for you. It's insisting that you emulate the person or the group that has been there. And who have dominated for a period of time and if you don't, you can't advance because somehow we have this idea of fit and that's about our own comfort and it's a lot about our prejudice and also our biases and that is what DEI is hoping to do to create an environment where everyone can succeed versus being. Held back because of an identity, it's just the opposite of what is being perpetuated these days about the disadvantaging effects of DEI. Who has been disadvantaged? We have no data that would suggest that white men are being disadvantaged by the work of DEI. Well, let me ask you that, do you think that white men have been disadvantaged by the work of DEI? No, but I think definitely like Asians have 100%. If you take a look at Harvard versus Fair admissions, it was all the Asian students that had to essentially have twice the SAT scores, twice the whatever the scoring rubric was that that that black students have to have to get into Harvard. So I think yes, there's definitely been, and if you look at med school admissions, you look at other admissions, definitely certain races have been excluded, and I think We have to get back to the MLK's dream is that we have to get back to finding a place where we don't discriminate based off of race, sex, gender. Like any type of even reverse discrimination is discrimination. And so if we're discriminating against Asian people for advantaging black people, that's discrimination. I think we have to have an open and honest dialogue and conversation about that, and the data shows that the people are being discriminated. No, I don't think which data? Well, if you look at any admissions data for Harvard University, that's why affirmative action was overturned. And even if you go back like, you know, you're right, the Civil Rights Act that started in 1964. Hubert Humphries, who was the floor leader at the time, said this ever leads the quota systems, I'll eat my hat. Affirmative action, you're lower by background. California versus Bakke essentially said that you cannot have quota systems. When the California system literally set aside a quota of 16 positions for minority students in med school, they said that's illegal, but you can do affirmative action to take into race considerations. That was upheld in Michigan in the Supreme Court case in 2003. But even Sandra Day O'Connor at that time said at some point the affirmative action has to go away. At some point we can't just keep giving. Certain people an advantage based off race, sex, color, gender, and Sandra Day O'Connor said within 25 years. And so maybe it was 5 years earlier than she originally anticipated when Harvard versus Fair Students for admission overturned affirmative action, but it went away and at some point we have to get to the point where we're not looking at people based on race, sex, gender, sexual orientation. We're looking at them as individuals and say when do you want to do that? When do you want to do it? Do you want to do it now when we still have deep Equality and disparities not just in outcomes but just how people are being treated and in fact I feel like what we're doing what we're hearing is a way of trying to divide and distract and keep people from being connected and being unified across their differences and their commonalities and so I'm saying to you, when do we just stop doing it and. When do we start to acknowledge that there is still an enormous amount of work to do? We've been at this DEI work for a long time. It's not time to stop it. It's time to continue to evolve it. So let's talk about that evolution because we are running up on time. If we strip away all of the buzzwords, is there a version of diversity, equity and inclusion that both skeptics and supporters could agree on? What does that look like? And let's try and make it quick. OK, I think that what it looks like is, uh, I'm going with the, I'm going with the R's. I think we have to actually reassess. We need to redefine, we need to reimagine, and we need to re-engage. We need to redefine what we mean because obviously folks have a different opinion about what DEI means and what it means to have equality, right? And I do think we need to really try to do an assessment. What are we doing that is working and what are we doing that might be holding people back or making certain people feel excluded and then how do we reimagine a new idea, a new possibility, and then how do we re-engage, which is a lot of listening and a lot of caring? Yeah, 20 seconds for you. Yeah, I think it's the most exciting time if I was in the HR world because we don't have to do DEI specifically anymore and every company essentially adopted DEI. Yes, they had a different little flavor of it, but it was very similar to DI. Every company should have their own program to hire people and as long as we have a baseline, we don't, we don't discriminate based on race, sex, gender, then come here with your own program. It could be MEI, it could be whatever program you want to come out with. But talk about what's unique about your company, the people you want to attract, the values that they have, and talk about that and extol that being unique to your company. I think that will create an amazing workforce. We'll create amazing HR, uh, business partners in this room where you guys can really define what is unique about your company and who's gonna thrive there. Well, we'll end here. Thank you both for an illuminating conversation. Although you have cons shots and viewpoints, clearly, uh, your insights underscore the importance of continued dialogue. So thank you, thank you. So that's That's this way. OK, thank you so much.

Brainstorm AI London 2025

When no one was looking, the global semiconductor business became a smash-mouth, no-tariffs-barred affair. But in an age of AI, business is still (very) good. The founder and CEO of one of SoftBank's newest multibillion-dollar acquisitions weighs in on the future of AI compute, the changing cast of industry power players, and the shifting geopolitical landscape ahead.

Iron in the Fire

Peter and Daniel. So there's a lot of excitement about what AI can do, right? That's why we're here. But none of it's possible without the right infrastructure and the right chips. The competition to build the next generation of AI hardware isn't just a business story, it's a strategic one touching on everything from investment and innovation to geopolitics. Today we're joined by one of the most respected leaders in technology and semiconductors to help us understand what's at stake and where the future is heading. So please welcome Renee James, chairman and CEO of Ampere. Hi Renee. Good to see you. All right. Thank you for joining us. So You worked at Intel for a very long time, um, and you worked with the great Andy Grove. You were for a long time, you were first as chief of staff, is that right? And then you, you know, right before you left Intel, you were the president of Intel. So, When you look at that, I promise I will ask you questions about your company Ape, which was acquired by SoftBank for $6.5 billion earlier this year, but I promise we'll get there, but I have to know as an, as an Intel vet. What would Andy Groves say about the state of Intel today? Thanks. Yes, um. He would be very disappointed. Why? Because it's an industry that Intel um invented literally invented the means by which you fabricate modern semiconductors, um, the what we think of as fabs that everyone likes to talk about and weirdly wants to build everywhere. Uh, and the process that goes into them was pioneered by Intel, developed by Intel. The modern transistor technology was invented by Intel, um, the first modern CPU that powered, you know, computing and the entire PC mobile, everything. Was Intel. So when you think about that, and these were people who left Fairchild because they had a different view of how the future could be and started with venture capital, if you can believe it, in the late 60s, 6869, this is, you know, their life's work and then to see Intel fall behind. Um, a company that was a great partner, has been a great partner, still is, I think of Intel forever, my supplier TSMC was started in collaboration with Intel, um, because we needed an additional source. So you look at it and you think, wow. That's kind of scary and sad. And Intel is not that sort of enzymatic uh uh uh actor that it was in in its heyday is, is kind of what you're inferring. And a lot of the technology that we use today, I mean, the Mellanox interconnect technology of Nvidia was invented at Intel and spun out there, you know, my company, uh, not just me but several of the key leaders, we're X Intel, we built every server product that built every data center. it started, you know, all of this cloud stuff. So, you know, a lot of good came out of it and a lot of spinoff companies, you know, the modern way that we think about building silicon and semiconductors that we all take for granted like a miracle occurs. You turn something on and it just works and like, you know, 70 billion of something you don't even know what they are is going on and on a little piece of silicon and we don't know, you know, it just works it it truly is miraculous, but then you think about the state of the company today and And I, I wish them recovery. I really do. I think they're super important to global semiconductors. They're super important to the future of where we're going because at its base Intel is the company that invents the future of transistor. still today, even in their current situation, super important. We will come back to the sort of global implications of that in a second, but I do want to, I do want to talk about Amper for a second. So Renee, you're one of two women who run semiconductor companies. It's extraordinary. And then you I'm happy that there's someone else now. That's right. That's right. And you went even further because you said, I'm going to start one. Like that isn't exactly how that went, but yeah, I think Andy said, what are you doing with your life? Why don't you start the next one? So what what what leads one to start a semiconductor company because I've always gotten the sense that um sort of like an automaker, you can't just turn around and it's not exactly a software company, you know, you can't just spin it up overnight. You need a lot of capital. Yes, um, well, so first of all you have to have a passion and a vision for where you think things are going because you, you know, you're not, you wouldn't start a company at the kind of the scale of a CPU company or GPU company, um, from the ground up at this point in the history of semis given the the hurdle rate and the investment rate and costs, um, unless you had a passion for doing something that hadn't been done before because you know you're not gonna start a company to like compete with Nvidia. That's ridiculous. Um, so we said the problem that we hadn't solved, the thing I was passionate about after 30 years of building microprocessors, was we have always, whenever we got into trouble we would just say like, oh, you know what we can do, we'll just put more power onto it. We can just release the power and I'll get higher performance or we'll put down more transistors. I mean, we did a lot of things that at the time it didn't matter. It didn't cost as much. It was, you know, no one was going to freak out that we went from 350 watts to 400 watts to, you know, whatever. I mean these were conscious decisions to change because you have to change the spec on what the server is and what goes into the data center and all that stuff, but more was more, more was more and you could get paid for it. Um, so the thing we didn't do was something that we knew about. I mean, good and physicists know that at some point, you know, you need to constrain the power and figure out how to improve the performance through other techniques, and that's a lot of R&D and a lot of thinking. About thinking differently, thinking differently about how we designed the architecture of X86 for the last 20 years that we had been working on it, um, before I was president until I ran R&D for a long time, so we spent a lot of time thinking about this, so we, um. I said, you know what, that's what I want to work on. I want to work on how we build out what comes next, knowing that not AI in the way that we think of it today, but we were working on machine learning and everything already. We knew that was the next big thing. We knew that cloud computing, the way that the cloud used software was different than the way that the enterprise consumed software, like in this linear scaling, always on, always on demand. Um, and, and the microprocessors that we had built were meant to turn on and off in a way to be efficient for different workloads but not for the cloud, so that was our thesis and um. I gathered around people that were retired or that had worked for me before and I said we should do this and they're all like, you've lost your mind because we had built like 80 microprocessors, 80, and they were like, really, are you sure? I'm like, we can do this. If not us, then who? And then Andy says. He was still alive and not really that helpful in the sense that he was like, we taught you everything, you know, this is what we what Bob and Gordon and I did. This is what, you know, this is, this is the history of Silicon Valley. Someone has to do it, so that's what we did and I was really fortunate because the Carlisle Group, who doesn't. Usually do venture um back to us in our first round um and then we had a couple of strategic, our largest strategic being Oracle over time um and we ended up raising billions of dollars over the course of the last 8 years and um last month announced that, um, SoftBank Group is buying the company for $6.5 billion. In cash. So let's talk, let's talk a little bit about that. So what. Some folks were scratching their heads when that deal was, was, was announced. What does SoftBank give Ape? What does Ampere give SoftBank? Um, well, of course the deal isn't closed, right, so we're in the regulatory period, but in general, um, we've pioneered, we have a lot of patents and a lot of technology we've built, um, 5 generations of product already that have been deployed into major hyper scale data centers, um, how to build very, very high performance in an air cooled, meaning 500 watts or less envelope, um, and we could release the power and use liquid cooling. And go even, but the performance is that of like an AMD leading edge processor today we have integrated AI acceleration inside of that envelope. We can add additional functionality on and only release the power, you know, 50, 100 watts. So I think that that whole thing allows you to build out a vision of AI, you know, scale data centers that are more efficient over time. Um, we were, we are an arm architecture licensee, so a sister company in the SoftBank Group, um, so we had taken an architecture that's inherently low power but had not been known for the highest performance, and we had, um, invented ways to bring it up to. The level of, you know, that kind of performance, and I think that it's very synergistic with their overall vision and the mission that Masasan has for Stargate. For sure, for sure, and, and we will get to that in a second. I, I wanna ask you, I want to come back to the, the geopolitics question so. When you and I were talking about Intel previously, um, you were expressing to me kind of the importance of that company in the overall ecosystem, um, honestly, in the US, but, but in as as outdated the terms as it is with the West. Um, we are in a very US versus China moment in time right now and you're very concerned. Um, what is the future of SEI right now and What's it look like if we don't get it right here in the UK? In the UK, um, what do you mean by don't get it right in the UK? What, what is the landscape, right? What is the playing field given these tensions and you know what, how do we remain competitive given that sort of binary choice, you know, semiconductors historically have been a global product that have been available globally, um. That you know the predominance of semi semiconductor business is distributed around the world both in supply chain and design. Um, some of the great design teams in different segments of semiconductors are in Europe, and many of the industrial companies in Europe do their own semiconductors, so super important. Um, the predominant and and currently an EUV only lithography equipment is from Europe, so I think we have a long history of a very open design design and manufacturing ecosystem. I, I do think that there is, you know. An importance in the global nature that this business has always been, it was never just a US business that went global. It was global from day one. So I think we have to think about where the people are who do this, how, how the, you know, how it moves, how it affects every segment of the economy in all these different countries, because computing is not just about people doing office work anymore, it's how we live our lives. It's everywhere, right? So, um, I think as long as we're conscientious about open market and and how we move forward on that I think that's important. The China thing is a separate situation because China has capabilities that are self-contained and to some extent I don't know what direction that will go it, you know, I have always participated in a global market, so it's hard for me to speculate on what that would look like, but it's the US and. Um, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, European, you know, design capability for global semiconductors is profound. I mean, it is hard to imagine doing, you know, some level of networking and mobility and everything without teams in France, for example, right? Like there's just specialties around the world, Poland. Right, right, I will come to the audience for a question in just a moment. I wanna just quickly ask you to tell me, you know, does AP have a role in the Stargate project? And if so, what? Um, well, I can't comment too much on that, um, but as we said in the press release, we, we do have a role in that, so yeah. All right. All right, let's go to the audience for questions. Questions for Renee James. They're all wishing they were in semiconductors, like, really? All right, well, I have, oh yes, right here up in the front, just wait, wait for the mic to reach you. Way up here. It's on the couch. And as always, your name and who you're with when it comes to you, OK? Thank you. I'm Doctor Shiva, I bank, and like I said yesterday, we're building a data center and also I'm from Sri Lanka. I don't know whether you all know Bain graphite, the pure graphite is in Sri Lanka and only 1% is exported. And now there are people looking at graphene, which is the GPU. Uh, you know, for graphene chips, you need graphite. Is there any, you know, experiments that you are doing or what's the plan? Yeah, so we don't do base level. Um, Ampere is a fabulous semiconductor company unlike Intel. We don't do um base level metallurgic, um, material science at MPR. We do design, advanced design and IP um development, um. So I am sure there are people looking at that, but most of that work is done in process fabrication, um, in conjunction with that. So at TSMC and Intel and places like that. Yeah. We have a question. Thank you for your question. We have one right back here, yes, your name and who you're with. Uh, I like, yes a business school. So I had a question about the overall ecosystem around CPUs and GPUs. So where do you see this going? Nvidia is now very dominant in the GPUs. Um, you know, X86 is still powerful in the CPUs. Where, where do you see this in 5 years, you know, Nvidia, ARM, everything. Yeah, thanks for the question. Um, in the, in the, you know. GPUs, as you know, grew out of gaming. So a large portion of the GPU, you know, the shaders and the things you need for rendering and gaming aren't used to um train large language models. So, Um, while it's a lot of horsepower, it isn't the only way that you can do the computation required for AI. And in fact, um, as we've discussed in multiple roundtables here, um, as we go to smaller models, as we use, let me say the appropriate AI technology or machine learning technology for the job at hand, you might just run it on an enhanced CPU. In fact, that's probably the most efficient way. So all the CPUs are being enhanced with AI acceleration, and we have a product that we've talked about Ampeer1 Aurora, that actually has um the AI functionality because we have 512 cores you can put, you know, AI cores and compute cores and into that's one of the great innovations that we've been working on. Um, so I think that 5 years from now what we're going to see is a convergence of AI and compute and architecturally there's an underlying thing that is super insular, uh, Silicon Valley Wars kind of thing which is the micro architecture of computing. Will it be X86 or will it be something else? Um, Nvidia is an ARM licensee. Nvidia builds their things on ARM as well. I do think given the progress we've made and now under our new ownership that um our proposed ownership that that arm is looking like a long term it's the architecture that Apple uses they're in a licensee that Samsung uses that Qualcomm uses that Broadcom uses. And um because of the developer community being on phones, laptops, you see, you get this bulk of developers that know that environment so I, I, I think the future is relatively bright there. And of course, SoftBank owns arm. Yes, right here. Hi Seth Dober in Quantum AI and Infinity Adventures. Hi Renee. Um, so one of the biggest challenges in, in AI, especially training is not necessarily compute, it's the distance between compute and memory. Are you guys doing anything in that space? That's my favorite topic. Oh my God. See, I, yesterday at lunch I was like, I love that guy. I, uh. Yes, Seth, of course we're working on that problem that we've had for the last 30 years. Um, if it exists, if it, if it was a problem in mainframes, it's still a problem. Um, of course there's high speed memories, but one of the things, of course I, I'm not gonna reveal how we're doing it, but all of us have been working on moving memory closer, staging memories, uh, flexible different kinds of memories that you might want to put in and out depending on costs, so there's a bunch of things that we're doing to, um. Deal with moving the workload in and out more efficiently. It's not just memory, it's a lot of the die to die interconnect as well, as you know, right? So we've done a lot of innovation. We have patents in it and die to die and how you move things across, but you know, the other thing that's quite fascinating only to me but probably not the rest of this room, but maybe to you, the way you lay out the chip where you put computation versus IO actually matters because it determines some of the. Length of travel and so we've been very attentive to that as well. Thank you for your question. I feel like I saw one more. Yes, was just my memory. I wanna talk about semiconductors. Come on now. Oh yes, right up here. Oh yes, your co-host. Yes, that's right. Just wait for it right here, Maddie. Thank you. Hi Renee, Jason Del Ray from Fortune. Um, I spent a lot of time, probably too much time thinking and reporting about Amazon, and I'm curious what you see as their potential future in the chip space. Um, I know they've made a lot of investments and are you bullish, bearish on them in the future, and either way, where, where do you see them fitting in? Yeah, so, um. Thank you for that question. It's, it's Amazon uniquely has an outstanding team that they've had together for years, and one of the hallmarks of a successful semiconductors is how many generations has a team done together, and the answer to Amazon is a lot, and they also use ARM architecture and have been quite successful in building chips, as has Google, by the way, um, that are specific to the pathology. They have a really unique way of accelerating data inside their own network and they're and they have an outstanding silicon team that's been able to build, you know, really great products that for their own use. I think given you know their their might and their team and everything that they'll continue to be very successful with that strategy. I, you know, the hyper scalers have the wherewithal to. Do that kind of thing, but the other half of the market is the enterprises of the world that need to use AI that don't have it, and that's where I think, you know, commercial chips have to fill that gap and they're not all gonna build out massive Nvidia infrastructure either, right? So there's still an enormous market opportunity and let us not forget, despite the fact that we never talk about it. Pure computational data, non-AI is growing as well at a double-digit kegger. So there's kind of a, there's other stuff going on as well. Thank you. Everyone, the fantastic Renee James.

Brainstorm AI San Francisco 2024

Colin Kaepernick, Founder and CEO, Lumi; Super Bowl Quarterback, San Francisco 49ers Interviewer: Andrew Nusca, Fortune

Brainstorm AI 2024: Colin Kaepernick’s Next Revolution 

Hey Collin, how's it going? It's great. How are you? Good, good. We uh we got a lot to talk about my friend. Um So why don't you explain the origins of loom me? Because I was fascinated to find out that it's really focused around comic book, illustrators, graphic novels, things like that. And I thought Colin Kaepernick, so please indulge us. Yeah. So part of this came out of 10 years building a media company, five years building a publishing company um and seeing the challenges that creators face. But the other part was I grew up on comics. Um And we had a whole stash of comic books. We had boxes and boxes of them. Um My brother is actually the one who really got me into them. He's 10 years older than me. Um We used to have a sounds a little sketchy now, but there was a house down the couple blocks away, we ride our bikes to and the living room was just comic books. Um So we go through and grab the ones we wanted and go back home. Um But as I went deeper down creating graphic novels, being on the publishing side and seeing the challenges that creator are facing, whether it's writers, illustrators, anchor, um colorists. Uh What we found is a lot of them are living paycheck to paycheck project to project. They actually aren't creating things that they want to. Um Because they're just looking for that next gig and a lot of them have their own ideas that they want to bring to life and are just looking for the avenue and opportunity to do so. Is your company focused around the kind of creative tool and support part, the distribution part? Because that's important with publishing too, where does it come into play if you're one of those folks? Yeah, both of those. OK. Um So very focused on creating that tool set for creators to give you A I assistance where and if you need it. Um So you can go on the platform and create and never touch A I if you don't want to or you can use it through the process to help you. Um And then that is distributed directly on the platform. Um trying to solve that distribution issue that a lot of creators face. How does this company make money? Because that's the number one question when you're talking about media and publishing? Absolutely. Um So a few different ways, the first way is we do a monthly subscription. Um that's our immediate revenue generator. But as we look more broadly, we have on-demand publishing for physical publishing publishing. We've realized creators want that they need it. Um And it's a way for us to do that profitably from the first copy sold, which is a anybody that has worked in the publishing industry. Um you know, it has a very difficult space to work in and be profitable. So we solve that. And then the last piece is we help with the merchandizing of the stories that they're creating. And I've released graphic novel, multiple children's books. Um I talked to a bunch of artists around this and what we've realized a lot of them aren't merchandizing very well. And I actually didn't merchandise my own uh projects because it wasn't an easy process to be able to do that. So that's something that we're looking to solve for them as well, right? What's harder publishing for football? Depends which part. I mean, the physical tool, football definitely harder. Um figuring out how to be profitable and scale a publishing company is no small fee. Yeah. Fair, fair, fair, fair. So what is the status of Lumi right now? Where are you at in terms of a product? Where are you headed? Yeah. So right now we have a product beta testers on the platform. Um Interesting enough, we actually have contracts with school signed right now. Um And they're looking to use that as something to advance learning um project based learning to help literacy, literacy rates, um student voice, student engagement. Um So seeing a lot of traction there in use cases that they want to elevate students with. How are your uh how is your company handling? Ip we've talked about uh copyright and, and concerns about that on this stage already today. Um I think that's the big question throughout the industry, how we look at is creators own everything that they create on the platform, anything that they bring to the platform they own. We're not touching that we don't wanna touch it. We wanna be a space where creators are owning the content because that gives them longevity. And if we're serving them in the best way possible, that creates a much more reciprocal relationship. Um And it also pushes us to be the best company that we could beat for creators. Um We don't want anybody controlled or constrained by that. So that's a great point around that. If someone creates a breakout comic or graphic novel, they could take that and sell it to Netflix or Disney or any other platforms, nothing that we're doing on our end to restrict that in any way. Got it. I'm going to come to the audience for questions in just a minute. But I want to ask you one more. You've already raised funds for this company uh that took you on a, you know, the, the show uh with investors. What did you learn from that experience? Um Yeah, very similar experience to playing football. Um Oh, please go on. Yeah, so what you realize is you aren't gonna be everybody's cup of tea. Um, in football when I was getting drafted, even when I was going to college, you always looked at, it only takes one, you need one person to believe in you and then that gets the ball rolling. Um And ultimately, you want to have a chance to be in the game. We found some great investors that support us in that way. Um So any other founders or people looking to raise funds? I, you're going to get a lot of nose through that process, keep going and just look for that one person that truly believes in you and is going to support you. Yeah. All right. Let's go to the audience for questions, please. Questions for calling. Oh, yes. Right up here. Well, please wait for the uh the mic your name and who you're with when you get it. Thank you. Thank you. So, uh Lorenza Ple and I work or have worked for a while with the economist. So I think it's great what you're doing, especially uh you know, trying to help the community and to people with low resources, to create content to sell, etcetera. Um So I'm curious to, especially because I've worked for a long time, mobile apps, engagement subscriptions, etcetera. Uh Yeah, I would like to understand what do you think is the best way uh to, you know, grow your platform, but at the same time making sure that it's affordable for people uh with low resources. And uh are you partnering with any other, let's say third party companies that will help you perhaps or get them like free credits? Like, I don't know, like to publish on Amazon books or to, you know, like get some sort of partnerships with, with publications to uh yeah, help uh help those with low income. Thank you. Yeah, that's a great question. Um So that's actually part of the foundation of why we built the platform. Um So right now, subscriptions start 20 to $75 a month. So we take a tiered approach to make sure we're trying to give access to people who may be financially constrained. Um The other part to step back and look at the difference in where we're at on this is if you look at the lowest bar of where creators are typically entering a publishing space today, typically is through a Kickstarter and they're raising 5 to $10,000 to get a project off the ground. Um So we're drastically lowering that barrier. Now, if you look at projects that I've done in the past, typically, you're looking at a six figure investment and you're looking at a two plus year production timeline um before it ever sees the light of day. So we're trying to break down both the expense and the speed of creation for creators to be able to get their ideas out into the world. Right on another question for Colin, please. Yes. Right up here in the front. Hey, Steven Steven Wolf Beta. I'm the CEO of AL Fund company. But before that I started a kids media company focused on diverse kids media called Nandos. And one of the great areas for creators to really monetize their I pe is actually with merchandizing. Do you envision the platform actually expanding into products and giving the ability to actually have storefronts? Um Just because there's so much more to just the content, it's actually all the merchandise. 1 1000% you are, you are dead on with how we are thinking about it. Um No, one of the things that we realize is the people who are consuming the content, the people who are buying the books are also the people that are most likely to buy the merchandise, like it's a natural progression. Um Most people aren't doing it. Um And the ones who are actually, they don't love the process of doing it. They just do it as a means to an end. Um So we want to help simplify that process all the way through for the creator from creation, taking that idea to a finished product, to the publishing, to the merchandizing. So one, they can create the things they actually want to. And two, they don't have to worry about the being the business owner, the operator handling all the logistics. Um Every creator we've talked to they're like, I just want to create, I don't want to do those things, but a lot of them end up doing it because they have to today and those are barriers that we can break down. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. II, I understand that mindset very well. Let me ask you a question. Colin um, you know, you've gone on this, uh, this journey po you know, post, post football every morning, by the way, you still training, of course, OK. You heard it here. He's still training. I was, I was training before I got on my flight to come out here. Now you're making me feel bad. OK. So, so, II I would love to understand, you know, who you see as a mentor for this part of your career, whether that's in Silicon Valley or somewhere else. That's a great question. Um I think there have been a few different people that have really helped me get to where I'm at today. Um One has been in the VC community, Ben Horowitz has been great person to lean on. It's given me phenomenal insight. Um Williams has been another one who has really helped me my thinking. Um Having the opportunity to sit on the board of medium has been incredibly insightful and very helpful for my own development. Um And the other one just thinking about where I'm at today is Alexis Christina, the 776 team um who is our lead investors. They're incredibly brilliant and also great people. Um so to be able to have them to lean on and ask for guidance. Um And also just pick their brains on things that we're working on. Um how we can scale things more effectively, how we can reach, reach creators more effectively. Um Especially when you have someone like Alexis who's built reddit. Um You know, you have a great person to be able to lean on in that regard and an enthusiastic one. All right. Well, let's go for one, one more question. I think there was one over here, but I cannot recall. Oh, it's way over here. Yes. Hey, Carol. Hi, I'm Carol Vanda. I chair um responsible A I for Mars Incorporated. But outside of that, I'm actually an author. So I have a question because I know a lot of authors have negative feelings when it comes to A I, they feel that it's stealing their copyright, their IP how do you overcome those objections to launch Loy? And thanks for your great work. Oh, of course. Um Phenomenal question. And we have talked to a lot of writers about it. Um I think one is understanding that A I isn't going to do the work for you. Um Two is understanding that most of the writers are already using A I, they just don't know it as A I, um we talked to a lot of writers that hesitant, they wanted to see the platform, what it was um as we talked to them and they showed us their workflow, most of them are using grammarly um and the A I in their workflow already then as we get them on the platform and they see how it actually works and how we're looking to engage with them. Um We aren't looking to do the work for them and we're looking to be there to be helpful in that process if they need help brainstorming ideas, if they're struggling and, you know, they hit writer's block and they're looking for, where can I go with this? Where can I take it? Um So we're looking to help them through that process, but they also have the opportunity to use it as much or as little as they want. And that's one of the things that was really important for us. Um, both on the writers and the illustrator side is making sure that they have the opportunity to opt out if they want to, um, or engage when they do want to. Fantastic Colin, thank you so much for joining Fortune Brainstorm A I Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Ok.

is a unique conference dedicated to exploring the increasingly crucial nexus between business and design. 

Brainstorm Design 2024

Bob Dennis, Senior Director of Creative Studio & Resort Development, Universal Beijing Resort, In conversation with Nicholas Gordon, Editor, Asia Fortune

Brainstorm Design 2024: Designing Memories

Bob Dennis, Senior Director of Creative Studio & Resort Development, Universal Beijing Resort, In conversation with Nicholas Gordon, Editor, Asia FORTUNE  

So I thought there would be a fireplace. Uh Fortune invited me to a fireside chat. So I thought there would be a fireplace. But we brought is, is how is is wordplay part of your tool kit for memorable experiences. Yeah, it's immersion. Don't you feel cozy? So we're, we're going to get into your thoughts on park design, how to build immersive experiences, how to leverage emotions. But I have to ask, I'm a fervent player of video games. What was it like for Universal to work with Nintendo? Oh Amazing. First of all, Miyamoto. So is a genius and uh it's a learning curve for both of us. Uh because in the world of video games, it's digital and our world is physical with steel and concrete. Um So it's a learning curve on both sides but an amazing partnership. So, so as mentioned, you know, you've worked in this space for over 30 years. I believe your first gig was working for a San Rio theme park back in 1988. How has theme park design changed over the decades? Well, I'm old. So um when we were designing theme parks back in the eighties we didn't have any computers, we didn't have computer assisted design. It was all done with a pencil and then ink and then of course you pulled your prints. Um But everything was exhibition then and the industry has changed so much that now it's immersion. Um And we're getting better and better at that, but we've been doing immersion since before the term was even coined. So, I mean, let's split at that. I mean, given your long experience kind of working with immersive experiences, you know, before, was a buzzword that people used. You know, how do you actually create such an immersive memorable experience? What's your toolkit? And I believe we have some slides, maybe even some audience engagement a little bit as we go through this. So I think the table stakes because of where we are, it's a good reference. The table stakes are excellent storytelling and of course, um you'll hear this often today. Um visual stimulation, sensory input. So you need a, you need a beautiful picture, but you also need a logical story that the guests can connect to and find their place in what it is that you're trying to present. So that's cable stakes and where you have to go further is you have to, you want people to connect to the story you have and most people forget about emotion. So every memorable experience can be done by senses here in Macau, you get a sense of awe, a sense of grandeur. But what's missing to make it an episodal autobiographical memory is emotion. So the best connection is always made through emotions and often people confuse feelings with emotions. So there's a million colors and everything that we do happens here, it happens inside the brain, regardless of how good your design is or how grand your experience is, all of it has to be encoded so that we have an experience without the memory. What's the point? Right? So most people don't realize that with three colors, you can make a million, a million different colors with eight basic emotions. You can also make a million different feelings. And it's very important to understand the difference between emotions and feelings. OK? Can you guys guess what this emotion is? We don't need mics, you can just yell it out just fine play along, right? So this is obviously joy. I created these images um to trick you in a minute. Um But yeah, these are facial expressions uh that evoke that particular chemistry happening in your limbic system. So you understand joy, the opposite of joy. Of course, the next one, sadness, right? And after sadness, I'll, I'll see if you can guess this one. This is the trick. Most of you are thinking love, however, love is not an emotion. Love is a feeling that is a combination of several emotions. It could be joy, sadness, disgust, right? And um these all come together in a symphony inside our brain that we equate with the feeling of love. So it's trust, trust is the emotion. This one is a good one discussed, right? This is baked into our limbic system for your survival. Um And so memories that are formed along with this emotion are deeply encoded anger when we have a perceived wrong. Um These also are strongly recorded, not as moments but as experiences. So they're, they're like little videos instead of a snapshot. If somebody makes you afraid, you will retell this experience over and over again in great detail. OK? Anybody anger, right? Same process. So every oh they made me so mad and then they'll tell you every little detail because it's been recorded as an autobiographical memory. It was, it was an experience. OK? This one, this one, Alfred Hitchcock was a master at this. We use it often too um anticipation. And then finally, uh this is where you take your redirect. So if you use the emotion of anticipation, the brain starts creating all kinds of scenarios on its own and it engages deeply in the frontal cortex. And what this does is creates more engagement and people are doing their own self reflection. And then of course, you do the redirect, you take them into a way that they did not expect the outcome to be and we get surprised. So we have these eight emotions then how are you kind of putting them all together? And leverage them into a memorable experience. I mean, some of these emotions make sense for a theme park setting, joy, surprise anticipation, even fear, some feel a little bit, you know, maybe not quite as easy to put into an entertainment setting like discussed. So how are you leveraging all of these emotions together to kind of tell a story in the real world? It's a good point. So you don't want to manipulate people and you don't want to use uh emotions as trickery. So it has to be authentic. And so I think most designers forget about engineering those emotions in putting together a recipe or a symphony that causes crescendos and date crescendos. And that, that working together engages the person into a story and they, they're all useful, but some, we use more than others, obviously joy. Um There's a great one, anticipation. We try to stay away from fear and disgust, but they're used, we, we do use them. Um I want you to dive a bit deeper about kind of adapting these ideas, you know, a lot of universal zone properties, the properties of your partners like Warner for Harry Potter or Nintendo. These are things that exist on the page or on the screen. They don't exist in the real world. You know, as much as some of us would love magic to exist in the real world. It, it it doesn't. But how do you take these things that only exist? You know, in fiction basically and make them work as a real world experience. So this is why I'm losing my hair. Um So our, our creatives um Miyamoto Song JK Rowling, um They're amazing at creating worlds in print or production designers like Stuart Craig for film and they can pretty much create anything that they can imagine. So our job is to take that world and those stories and connect our guests to those characters. But we have to do it with steel and concrete building codes, safety requirements, throughput, operability. Um Basically, we shouldn't do anything because it's almost impossible. And yet we have many parts around the world that do just that. So um it, it's very difficult to, to translate, but we're very fortunate because we work with our IP partners and the films are there, we only get three or four minutes to, to kind of get people through that experience. Um And so we do a lot of callbacks, a lot of bringing up things that they saw or remembered in the film. And we have to do that in a way they can touch it. So a gag has to work every time, every day for years, not just to catch it, capture it on film. So I would say we use all the sciences um and all the arts and that our attractions are some of the most sophisticated machines there are. And I think that when you go to a theme Park. We don't want you to know that we try to keep that secret, but it's a fact. Um I want to stick on this film point for a second and how it connects particularly to one memory I have of going to Universal Studios, Japan when I was a very small child. I still remember seeing the Water World Exhibit for those who don't know. Water World is a 1995 film starring Kevin Costner. Um I'll say reactions to the film were mixed and being charitable. Um But I dare say the attraction is more, is, is, is more famous than the film at this point. Um It's in, it's in many of um universal parks. Um And so kind of why do you think this attraction in particular is so popular? And how does it fit in your philosophy for immersion and experience? We actually have some video that you can have talked for a bit first. It's a very good example. So the film mixed reviews on the film II, I don't think it was a blockbuster. Um But we were able to take uh from that film and use the emotions that are created by it and do a stunt spectacular. So not only was it visual, which is great and great sound and great lighting and great special effects, but everything is real. We don't use projections, there's real flames, we set the entire lagoon on fire and you will feel the heat from that and you will get wet. Um But in the story itself, we also engage many of the emotions, you may be angry at the villain. Um You feel some joy. So I think that the theme park experience in this example um has outlived the film and we're gonna show a little bit of it what actually happens on screen. Um So I want to talk about kind of another stakeholder in this discussion. We've talked about designers universal, we've talked about it partners, but there's also the fans um these are worlds with uh I'm going to call them very devoted fan bases, very passionate fan bases. That's true of Harry Potter. It's true of Nintendo, it's true of your um your peers at Disney, you have to work in Star Wars. Fans are passionate, they are also a little nuts. Um And so how do you kind of design these experiences in a way to kind of give fans what they want to make it memorable for them, but also managing expectations and managing it for those who maybe haven't read every single book a dozen times. So I think as designers, we often get caught up in our own story and um we, we wanna engage our visitors to remember what they want to experience. So at Universal, we really believe our guests are co creators. We engage often and constantly with those, not just the deep fans, but with uh the people that may not be deep fans, it's very important to get that feedback so that you're telling the story that they can get, that you're telling the story that they want to experience and that you don't get too stuck in what you want. Um So it has to be more objective, a little less subjective and constantly engaging with the feedback from the fans and we love hearing from them. Um And you're right, some of them are a little crazy, but we love that kind of crazy. Um You know, just kind of, it's gonna bring a kind of more examples of rides we've worked on. I mean, what's maybe another one of these exciting rides that you've worked on that really kind of shows your philosophy on, on designing immersive and memorable experiences. So the the awards are, are Industry's Oscars and we received it last year for Jurassic World Adventure. You all have to come to Beijing. That's the only place that attraction exists right now and that I believe really checks all the boxes on visual stimulation, um experiential design, but more importantly, emotion. So I remember when we opened, uh there was a 12 year old boy that was a guest of a friend of mine. And after going on that attraction, he asked me quite seriously, uh what do we feed our dinosaurs, right? So, so that type of sense, the suspension of disbelief um can only be found in, in, in the major players in this and that was why that is my favorite. I'm going to have to find an excuse to go find a story to write about it and then get work to expense it. Um But thank you Bob for, for walking us through the toolkit on how you build immersive experiences at universal. We're going to take a short break right now. Please help yourself to coffee, which will be served right outside the ballroom. Don't forget to pick up a copy of Gensler's design forecast 2025 report available at the desk on a first come first serve basis. So grab your copy. Now we'll meet back here for our next conversation promptly at 1045. When we come back, we'll hear from two of Silicon Valley's leading industrial designers and a panel of accomplished design leaders on customer experience. We'll see you back here soon.

Fortune Global Forum 2024

Abby Joseph Cohen, Professor of Business, Columbia University Graduate School of Business
Gary Cohn, Vice Chairman, IBM; Former Director, U.S. National Economic Council
Lynn Martin, President, NYSE Group
In conversation with: Diane Brady, Executive Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media and Co-Chair Fortune Global Forum

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Business at the Speed Of Change

Photograph by Michael O’Shea for Fortune

Abby Joseph Cohen, Columbia University Graduate School of Business
Gary Cohn, U.S. National Economic Council
Lynn Martin, NYSE Group
Diane Brady, Fortune Live Media and Co-Chair Fortune Global Forum

Most Powerful Women Summit 2024

Get to know the attendees of the Most Powerful Women Summit 2024

Most Powerful Women Summit 2024: Welcome And The Big Get-To-Know-You

Impact Initiative 2024

Debbie Dyson, Chief Executive Officer, OneTen Zakiya Carr Johnson, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, US State Department Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP, President and CEO, SHRM Moderator: Phil Wahba, Senior Writer, FORTUNE; Co-chair, Fortune Impact Initiative

Impact Initiative 2024: DEIA's Next Act

Photography by Rebecca Greenfield/Fortune

Debbie Dyson, OneTen, Zakiya Carr Johnson, US State Department, Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP, SHRM, Phil Wahba, FORTUNE

Join the Fortune COO Summit: Driving Operational Excellence this October, where the world’s leading operations executives will unveil game-changing strategies. Gain insights on transforming supply chains, managing risks, preparing workforces, and enhancing financial performance.

COO Summit 2024

Leslie Motter, Chief Executive Officer, Make-A-Wish America
Jessica Orkin, Chief Executive Officer, SYPartners
Moderator: Lila MacLellan, Senior Writer, Fortune; Co-chair, Fortune COO Summit

COO Summit 2024: Closing The Say-Do Gap - Executing On Purpose

Um I have to say as a journalist, I have mixed feelings about this topic because this is our bread and butter finding the places where companies are not doing the thing that they say they're all about, right? They have a lofty purpose, but that's not what they're executing on. But I know this is a problem. We need to learn how to close it. So I just wonder if you can talk to me, Jessica a little bit about the, the say do gaps that you've seen out there in the wild when you with your clients and how they come about? Sure. Um So at the highest level, every single company in here, all of your leaders, all of you, you have a purpose, probably a purpose statement. Um You probably have cascaded that then into what is your strategy? What are your key priorities, etcetera. Um This is the work that Xy partners does uh with our clients all around the world. The heartbreak and the um disappearance of trust happens when that does not translate into the lived experience of all of your employees, of your customers. And so it's one thing to go out and say in big beautiful language. Um the change that you're seeking to create in the world, the impact that you're seeking to deliver. Um But if the day to day realities don't express that um you lose credibility and this is an economy that is run on trust and the weakening and erosion of trust is affecting all of our businesses for profit and not for profit. Uh And we work with both the how of connecting those two things is something that we can get into through this conversation. Great. Thank you. Um And Leslie, I know that you are in the nonprofit world right now, but you had for profit experience, especially at American Express. What in this room full of coo s what advice do you have from a company that's all about executing on purpose? What can they take away from the nonprofit world? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the purpose at where I am now make a wish is very clear. We are creating a life changing wishes for Children with critical illness that is very clear purpose and one that so many rally around whether it's our own employees, our partners, et cetera. And it is so critical. I think that the beauty is though we have the same capability, whether we're with a for profit or a nonprofit. As you mentioned, I spent 11 years with American Express previous to this role with make a wish and we absolutely had just as strong of a purpose about being the world's most respected service provider or service brand. And as part of that, we've tried to make sure that resonated with our employees. And that's really the key, whether it's for profit or nonprofit is having that employee engagement aspect of the brand. So I ran the largest service center at American Express at the time, we had about 3500 employees and it was making sure that every single employee felt that every day they came to work. It was about providing exceptional customer service, not just answering the phone. Great. Thank you. Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about like how the gap actually erupts if you've ever if you have a way of pinpointing that and if you have any examples from your own companies about gaps that you discovered and how you managed it sometimes strategy gets well ahead of the operational realities. So I think we've been talking about actually in some previous sessions about you're really working on two time scales, you're working in the far future in the transformation that you're trying to drive through your company. But then you're working the absolute day to day and the day to day is built on legacy systems. And so no matter how fast and how agile our companies can be, there is going to be a gap between those two. Um A lot of times, front line workers, baristas we've worked with Starbucks, um starting with Howard in 2008. Um, through to the present, you can have a disconnect between what the company both stands for its values, the strategy of where it's going. It's very bold vision and then actually being able to innovate and update the operational systems, the processes, the ways of working that cascade through the whole organization and touch both your front line employees and then your customers. Right? Ok. Yeah, it's interesting, you mentioned Starbucks because recently they hired a CEO who's going to commute by jet, not every day, but people are pretty upset about that because Starbucks is also talking about part of its purpose being green, right? Um In the audience, please, um be thinking about any questions you might have for our panelists. I'll come back to you in just a few minutes. Um Have you found any examples that make a witch where you had, you discovered a gap in your purpose and what, how you were executing and what have you done to really drive home purpose for your employees? I think, um we also have a very bold vision to reach every eligible child, which we're not doing currently. So in order to do that, I think one of the things that we've been really focused on the last few years is making sure we have engaged employees because it's so important to where we're going. And one of the I guess gaps, um I would say is that our internal culture did not match the power of our brand externally. I mean, you talk to anyone about make a wish and you get the, oh my gosh. And you get the, it's, it's about community and support and lifting each other up, etcetera. And so we've been very intentional the last couple of years about making sure our internal culture is raised to really match the power of our brand externally. And if we get there, we're gonna be unstoppable, having every employee feel that way about coming to work every day. And it's important, I mean, I hire technology folks, finance folks operations. So it's not necessarily, I mean, it's, it's a competitive skill set, whether they could go somewhere else and make more money. So making sure that they have that power of being connected to the ultimate mission of the organization. And then they feel that every day is so important. Do they have an opportunity to meet some of the, the people, the Children or the parents who are? That's a great question and that, and that's one of the things that we found. So, you know, as we have people working in it behind the scenes, they could feel very disconnected from the mission. And that is um one of the things I talk about about bringing the power of the brand externally internally is exactly that. So we now have things like mission moments where we start meetings with an actual make a wish that has occurred. So regardless of where you are in the organization, wherever you're sitting, because we're also remote as well. You feel connected to ultimately what your position is and how it's so impactful in the world. Great. Um Those, yeah, that sounds lovely. Actually, I wish we could have mission moments right here. Um Is there anybody in the audience who would like to ask a question? You can raise your hand and yes in the back, sir. Good morning. My name is Martin Vanneman. I'm joining you from New York City. Question to three of you and everybody. How are you on tiktok? Sorry, on Tik Tok. How are your thoughts on Tik Tok? Uh Interesting. Now, do you use Tik Tok as part of your strategy, either with your employees or with your customers? Not with our employees? And really for us, uh the Tik Tok is much more organic as Children are having wishes or waiting for wishes, etcetera where uh we really utilize both Insta and um and other channels much more from that perspective. But we're out there, we're pretty much everywhere with the reach that we have and especially with our demo demographic. We serve Children ages 2.5 to 18 and they are all over it. And then you think about the 20,000 volunteers we have across the US and all of the employees, et cetera. It's happening organically, but Insta is really where we're targeting more with our corporate partners like a Disney fanatics, et cetera. We don't, we're a very quiet brand, uh very quiet company. We work with many people and companies in this room, but you might not know it. Um because what we do is so kind of precious and needs to be quiet in terms of the transformation that we're doing. If what you're talking about is sometimes what's under that question is sometimes a disconnect um between what a company stands for and how it's showing up in the world. Um There also needs to be some communication with your employees about where and why there might be disconnect. So it's actually something to lean into versus to pretend it's not going on. Um Rena Moskowitz, who is the coo and CMO of Etsy and she speaks a lot about this. Um She was telling me that the combination of those two things, both being the chief operating officer, but then really being responsible for the communications. Um And the marketing of the organization is a shift she's seeing uh generally with the CEO role you're becoming in many ways, one of the primary ambassadors champions and communicators, um which is maybe a shift from the deep, deep technical expertise uh that was driving the coo role in the past. So, so interesting because I know there was a study out of Paris that found executives are, you know, have no problem sort of describing what a company's purpose is, but as you went lower and, you know, down into the ranks of the company, it was much harder, like 60% of employees can't explain what a company's purpose is, which is way too low. So, um I imagine also that during a time of crisis, it would be very easy for a coo to drop purpose or to not keep their eye on that aspect of a job of the job. How do you maintain it? Um when there's a lot of financial pressure. So I actually was the coo of make a wish prior to moving into the CEO position. And I held that role during quite a few um the pandemic being one of them, uh quite a few of, of um those crisis if you will. And I think it's actually more important than, than ever to make sure that you're making that link for all of your employees. Um We had to actually have some pretty major transformation during that time. Uh Previously, we had a couple of volunteers that went into the home of each child and helped discover their wish, et cetera. We really had to transform overnight because we were not able to do that anymore. And we still wanted to find creative ways to deliver these life changing wishes to Children when they it most. And so that really took the engagement of all of our stakeholders to think creatively about what we could do. So if we weren't really tying into the overall purpose, it would have been, it would have been a completely different, I think, experience. But we were able to transform both the way that we delivered wishes, virtually, wish discovery et cetera as well as the way. Um you know, many of our stars interacted with Children since they weren't having concerts, they could do video wishes, et cetera. So that transformation during that time and of crisis only beca came because we were tying back to the purpose and how do we still maintain what we're doing and what's so important to do during this time? That's great. One of those silver lining stories in the pandemic. Um And how do you track whether or not a gap is opening or whether or not you've maintained that closure between the say do gap. Um Jessica. Sure. So one of the things we do a lot of is um actually looking at the incentive systems of your organizations. Um So again, how do you tie the big picture purpose into strategy? Bold moves focus areas and then Kpis or metrics that ladder out from that. But there's a step deeper which is looking at how are your people actually incentivized? Are you valuing through actual performance reviews, career progression, mentorship compensation. Are you valuing in actuality, the things that you say you value up top? Um And again, legacy systems, sometimes you crash into legacy performance systems, operational models, et cetera? That were wired for a different time. And so you have to do the work of actually bringing those into alignment. And then to your point about communicating your purpose, understanding your purpose, identifying some of those really operational changes as an expression of purpose and then how it ties back up. So that might include compensation. Yeah, the company. Yeah. Yeah, we've done our own work on this at Syp. So um our purpose is to unlock collective potential to build more vital futures. The collective potential is really important. Um in your organizations, there's so much potential uh held by teams and larger groups, but it's stuck because of many, many issues, many reasons. We all know it and we crash into them. Um within SYP, we do all of our work by bringing different people together with different disciplines. So we have strategists and analysts and tech people, but we have designers, we have filmmakers, we have people from real anthropologists, right? And so what we were realizing was because the market values different skills and different roles differently. So somebody with an MB A, somebody who has a deep strategy background often gets paid more than, let's say a designer, we had that gap in our organization as well because we were looking out at what the market was telling us that did not align with our own values. And so we did a full compensation philosophy overhaul. We changed how we pay people and how we um communicate our values uh to everybody in the organization, how did people react just quickly? You know, it took a lot of communication because on the one hand, um some people really felt seen for the first time. Um and it was a very practical example um of putting your purpose into action. Um But for other people, because they're so used to how the market rewards you, right? It took a little bit of time to get their head around it. And so again, consistent communications, the drumbeat of why we do what we do is so critical. Thank you so much. This is some great practical tips. It's really lovely to have you both. Thank you and thank you for the question.

How do we mitigate some of the unintended consequences of AI, to security, productivity, and the overall job market? And, importantly, can the industry keep developing at speed and scale while also moving forward responsibly?

The program, presented in association with Accenture, will feature intimate one-on-one conversations, engaging panel discussions, and lively roundtable sessions.

Brainstorm AI Singapore 2024

Torrey SMITH, Co-founder and CEO, Endiatx Moderator: Ellie AUSTIN, FORTUNE

Brainstorm AI Singapore 2024: Swallow This! The Transformative Power Of AI-Enabled Micro-Robotics In the Human Body

Brainstorm AI 2024: The Transformative Power Of AI-Enabled Micro-Robotics In the Human Body

So as I said, we're talking about micro robots here that are ingested into the body that in itself poses a lot of questions. It sounds a bit like a science fiction film, which is both a source of fascination. But also I think for many people probably in here a source of skepticism. So if we could start off by you explaining to me briefly why you think pill bot is more effective than the traditional endoscopy? Well, thank you. Our hope is that with little tiny robots that can swim around in the body, you can actually supplant or augment the existing tech that's out there. I'd, I'd like to think that pill bot could be a little scout to go out and find illness out in the world and then bring that illness into a hospital to treat properly. Ok. Ok. So it's, it's speeding up the process that it's making it more efficient. Um Looking at your website, the pil bot team, it's made up of a lot of engineers. Now, some people might expect there to be doctors, scientists on your core team. Can you explain to me why that isn't the case and where the medical expertise comes from in this process. Well, so besides a group of almost 20 deep tech engineers, we actually have leading gastroenterologists from all over the planet that have joined the company and many of them have even stepped up and invested and put their, put their names on the line. And are they part of the team or are they an advisory panel? What's the structure? Well, we're very proud to count Vivek Kumari, a leading gastroenterologist as one of our co founders and a very close friend. OK. OK. So some people here in the room are going, I would imagine the draw comparisons to something like Elizabeth Holmes and the an of scandal in that this is an outlandish idea that promises to transform the healthcare industry. Some might say it's too good to be true and we're going to see the technology demonstrated in a minute. I mentioned that you're in the process of seeking FDA approval. How else are you going to legitimized pillow within the scientific and the medical community to silence those skeptics? Well, the key here is just uh putting a robot where our mouth is, right? If we can create a technology that lets a doctor have a look around inside you to the point where it's maybe a little bit more inexpensive or a little bit more accessible. And if doctors start to say we'd like to use this in our actual patients, then we're starting to do our job. But until we get to the point where doctors are demanding to use pill bot, you know, it really is just a R and D project, but we're excited to show it off right here. So you can kind of start to judge for yourself. So it's word of mouth. Obviously, that's the FDA component is that also going to be peer reviewed research. How does that side of things work? Actually, that's been one of the things that's helping us most of all uh attract brilliant doctors is uh to be honest, uh everyone wants to publish on til bot. It's an exciting new platform that can open up all all sorts of new research avenues. And so people are actually realizing that uh you know, joining the team and, and getting a hold of the robots could actually help them in their, their academic career as well. And are people publishing? I know PBO? Yeah, it hasn't featured hugely in the mainstream press. But if we're looking at the scholarly academic side of things, kind of what level of publication has that been so far around Pil Bot, the biggest publication so far that's coming is that we have officially done our first patients uh in Auckland, New Zealand uh in our IRB uh clinical trials. And we're actually starting to see Pil bot do some clinical work, but of course, that's just uh under, under under active progress right now, trial gets complete, will basically bring all that data together and we can think about publishing. Ok. So nascent, but you're looking to have more data in the future. For sure. My final question before this part of the session is so pilot or your, your company has raised $7.5 million I believe in funding since it was founded in 2019. And it's worth noting that 1.5 million of that dollars, um 1.5 million of those dollars comes from the Singapore based Virge Tech Health Fund. Um 7.5 million. It's a good amount. It's not a huge amount. And I imagine that this is deeply expensive technology to develop. So where's the rest of the money going to come from? Well, we're obviously excited to continue that adventure. You can always do things with new amounts of funding. But the thing that we're really proud of is with the support of Verge Health tech funds here in Singapore and the support of some of the most passionate deep tech engineers in Silicon Valley. And, and actually beyond, we've been able to make some magic happen using pretty limited resources. But when we show you the robot today, you'll see that it's not perfect that you'll definitely see opportunities for it to improve. And that's kind of where the next rounds of funding might be able to help us. Ok. So you're going to continue pitching right on that note, I know you've got a couple of slides to show us to uh to explain in a bit more depth how the robot works. So take it away. Yeah. So let's just briefly look at a robot and we'll start to ask ourselves, you know, if we go back in time, you know, the way that you would get data uh from someone's health inside the human body, um was very difficult, you could cut into the body, you could slide a tube into the body. But in a hospital and we're asking ourselves, could we potentially have microscopic robots travel throughout your body? Not only finding out what's wrong, but maybe actually starting to fix it. So that's the adventure we'd like to go on today and we'll have to acknowledge that it's a difficult challenge. But where we're going to begin is the human stomach. Because in the human stomach, we have this unique opportunity for a robot that is maybe not microscopic. This is the size of your fingertip. But pill bot contains a live video, three dimensional motion with pump jets. If you're willing to drink some water, you can get some motion um and the ability to control it in XY and Z. And so the goal here is to basically show there's a part of the body that we can actually send a robot to right now. The stomach, we can probably do an amazing block of work there. Then where do we go next? And so you'll see right here is kind of where we are in the current process of miniaturization. I want these to be rice brain size. I want to do brain surgery with it. Um So looking inside till bot, you'll see a pretty elegant combination of pump jet motors, really high powered lithium batteries that we work really carefully to make safe live video, right? A lot of the stuff you would see in a drone. But the reason that we're doing these robots is that they give us the data, right? Data is how we understand what's wrong data is how we train up A I. And from here, there's a bright future for this. But you know, let's start to talk about what we can actually do with uh one of these. So OK, this, this is pill bot and I need to turn this thing on and if I'm gonna turn this thing on, I'm gonna need my chief engineer Quentin to come out here, Quentin. Let's bring this thing to life. OK. So, and Tori and Quentin, I need you to talk us through what you're doing here at. So Quinton is using an optical signal, a bright light to wake til bot up, it's been sleeping. And so now you'll see til bot um start to uh swim around. He just got some water into the thruster lumen. So we don't get vapor locked. And what we have here is basically a swimming little drone. And can I just highlight how Quentin is controlling it. He's using what looks like an Xbox controller. Yeah, we, we find that a lot of younger gastroenterologists really understand the value proposition. Um, but basically what we're doing here is we're saying, let's make a swimming robot. Let's call it a little eyeball. Let's drink some water. Let's swallow the robot. And let's take a procedure that would be done in a hospital after several physical hospital visits. Let's take that whole adventure and let's digitize it. Let's turn it into a telemedicine, call it home. Let's let a I do some of the boring work for us. So this is about accessibility. How much does a pill boat cost? So cost of goods uh can often hover around 35 to 50 bucks, right? It's a relatively inexpensive physical article. All of the value is in the hard work that miniaturized it and in the data that comes off of the robot. But if we can't make it inexpensive to build, then there's no way we're going to get it out into the world and actually go find problems. What do you expect it to cost when it comes to market? Um In the US market, it'll be a couple of $100 just like a normal pill camera. But if we're going to take it to Asia and beyond, um honestly, I envision a future where these would cost maybe 10 or $15 or maybe even less, but you'd have hundreds of millions of people accessing this kind of care. But the amazing thing is that while we're doing that, the health data that would come off a platform like that would be incredibly valuable. OK? Um So Tori, I believe you are not going to swallow pill bot. I, you know, honestly, we came all this way. I think we might as well might as well go ahead and swallow. It would be rude not to. Ok. So you're, you're gulping down a glass of water to prepare your stomach. I imagine I need a little fish tank in my tongue. You need a fish tank in your stomach. Ok? And for context, Tori told me earlier, this is the 45th pill box that he has swallowed in his lifetime to date. It's, it's a lot of fun. We really enjoy this process. Ok? Perfect. And for those who can't see, I was like, oh wow. More. Ok. I would say the pill bot looks like the size of a pretty large multivitamin. Um It's, it's not small, it's not a small robot. In fact, it's probably just about the biggest thing that someone could ever reasonably swallow. And even maybe half of people might not be able to do it. But the thing that bugs me is that we transact as much as $55 billion every year in the old way of how we do endoscopies. But that only reaches 1% of stomachs and So we're, we're really not reaching people where we need to reach them. And what do you think? Should we uh go ahead, we get you guys. OK. All right. So Quinton is gonna hand me this guy and uh let's uh let's do it. I'll get it nice and wet and uh hopefully let's get a live video up on the screen. Here we see. Oh, here we go. There we go. OK. So you can see. Oh, and I need the uh antenna a little bit closer to my tummy. There we go. So hopefully you can see me. You can all see yourselves. And now let's go ahead and swallow pills out. All right. So let's have a look at my stomach. I've been starving all day. Ok? I can whip it around a little bit and then the hope is that we'll sort of break into the bottom of the stomach and you'll kind of see what's going on. There we go. So, the idea here is we want to make sure that you can quickly and easily give a gastroenterologist a live view inside the stomach and the ability to move around. I want this to be like the tip of an endoscope, but just in virtual form. Ok. Um Here we go, we're traveling through your intestine. Um Tori if how are you feeling, first of all? So sometimes I'll feel it when I swallow it. But honestly, once, once I swallow it, that's OK. I think we're gonna cut the video now because that's enough intestines for one day. But Tory, I, I've just got a few questions like quick fire questions that I want to ask you as, as we come to a close. Um, is there anyone who can't take pillow? I'm thinking pregnant women, Children. Well, right now, the, the weird thing is if you're like a child or a cancer patient, you'll have a really delicate G I tract and inserting an endoscope is actually kind of traumatic. And so if we can make it maybe a little smaller, so it would be appropriate for a kid. You might actually be opening up treatment avenues for people that are actually kind of prohibited from them. Ok. And you said that you mentioned this, all that some people call it. The what happens that? Well, we have been swallowing camera pills that don't move but still contain many of the components. We just saw, uh for more than 25 years. And during that time, we've learned how to do it safely and we've also learned that maybe one in five, maybe one in 10 people are going to have trouble swallowing a camera pill. So for us, even if we make it the same exact size and shape, we're going to be missing out on maybe 10, maybe 20% of the population. The thing is though those camera pills because they don't move, they only address about 1% of the population, you can't use them on everyone. And so we're actually talking about going from addressing 1% of people to maybe 80 or 90% of people by making it a virtual experience. And worst case scenario, pill goes rogue within, you know, what, what are the potential health dangers as a result of that happening? Because as incredible as it sounds, we're putting a small drone into the human body and that must come with risks. Well, we had a, we had a pretty amazing uh chat with FDA back in December and they sat us down and the thing that was really thrilling was to hear enthusiasm coming from the biomedical engineers over at FDA, from the regulatory bodies, from the doctors working with them. And they said honestly, this is tech that everyone is kind of hoping for and we want to sit down with your team and figure out how do we do it safely? How do we do it? Right. And what were they concerned about the FDA when you spoke to them? We were concerned about the fact that we use lithium batteries and we were curious if the FDA would be willing to even entertain the conversation. And they actually said, absolutely, sit down. Let's go over your engineering plans. Let's see how you test these batteries. Let's see what happens when a battery fails. Can you contain it? And so far it looks like we're actually on track to being able to turn this into a safe platform. Ok. There's so many more questions I have Pretoria, I'm sure you have Pretoria as well. But thankfully, he will be sticking around for the next two days. So please do feel free to find some at a coffee break, flag him down and continue the conversation because this, as I said is quite an outlandish idea. Thank you for demonstrating it to us today and I look forward to seeing what happens next and thank you so much. Thank you.

Conferences

The Crypto Playbook

Bitcoin is the cornerstone of the crypto industry thanks to its impeccable pedigree and bulletproof security. That’s been true ever since the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto published his vision for Bitcoin in 2008, but its role has changed over time. On the inaugural episode of Crypto Playbook, Jack Mallers, the renowned “Bitcoin maxi” helps break down its journey from an outlaw currency to $2 trillion Wall Street behemoth.

Bitcoin then and now

The incredible evolution of the original cryptocurrency

Leadership Next

Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone joins Leadership Next to unpack the company’s bold transformation from a sprawling media conglomerate into a streamlined, product-first tech company. He shares lessons from turning around Ask Jeeves; why authenticity, not hype, is key to rebuilding trust; and how Yahoo’s future rests on delivering real utility to users through innovation in AI, sports, finance, and beyond. Plus, Lanzone gets personal about leadership, family, and why Yahoo’s next 30 years might be its most exciting yet. 

The Yahoo Comeback: Jim Lanzone on Reviving a Tech Icon

Photo courtesy of Jim Lanzone; Graphics by Fortune

Daphne Koller, CEO of insitro and cofounder of Coursera, joins Leadership Next to unpack a bold idea: Just as calculus revolutionized our understanding of physics, AI could do the same for biology. In this episode, Koller explains how insitro is blending biology and machine learning to unlock new treatments for diseases like ALS and fatty liver. She also opens up about her leap from academia to entrepreneurship, the ethical challenges of data collection, and why the future of medicine lies in personalized, AI-driven care. Plus, her take on why humans and machines must work in tandem to drive meaningful innovation. 

The Machine Learns Medicine: Daphne Koller’s Vision for AI in Biotech

Photo Courtesy of Daphne Koller; Graphics by Fortune

How insitro’s founder is using AI to decode disease—and why she sees it as biology’s version of calculus. 

Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman joins Leadership Next to unpack the forces reshaping American real estate—and the friction threatening its transparency. In a wide-ranging conversation, Wacksman addresses the industry lawsuit brought by Compass and defends Zillow’s stance on keeping property listings open and accessible to all. He explains how the current system—a uniquely American one that allows any buyer or agent to view every listing — is now at risk.
With home prices nearly doubling since the pandemic and affordability out of reach for many millennials and Gen Z buyers, Wacksman outlines how Zillow is leaning into AI, computer vision, and immersive virtual experiences to create “super listings” that streamline the buying process. He also shares Zillow’s strategy for supporting buyers long before they’re ready to transact, highlighting the role of casual browsing in shaping the future of homeownership.
Wacksman discusses the emotional weight of buying a home, why nearly half of buyers report crying during the process, and how Zillow is building tools to ease the burden. He also opens up about the company’s remote-first culture, the power of retreats to foster creativity, and why he champions a “career jungle gym” over a traditional ladder.

Home Truths: Inside the Future of Real Estate With the CEO of Zillow

Courtesy of Jeremy Wacskman; Graphics by Fortune

Jeremy Wacksman on AI, Industry Shakeups, and Making Home Buying Less Miserable

Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America, joins Leadership Next to reflect on his journey from law to banking—and how that unexpected pivot brought him to the head job at one of the world’s largest financial institutions. He shares his leadership philosophy, emphasizing the power of staying calm in a crisis and the importance of giving energy to his team, not taking it away.
Moynihan discusses Bank of America's strategic shift from aggressive acquisitions to organic growth, fueled by major investments in technology—like the AI assistant Erica. He explains why Erica is evolving from “third-grade Einstein” to near-genius capabilities.
He also shares his perspective on responsible capitalism, the importance of expanding opportunities for underserved communities, and how he's preparing the bank for its next generation of leaders.
Tune in to hear Moynihan's take on what it means to wear responsibility like a “comfortable sweater”—and how corporate leaders can help combat hate and promote dignity in today’s world.

Brian Moynihan on Leading Bank of America With Calm, Purpose, and AI

Photo Courtesy of Brian Moynihan; Graphics by Fortune

How the CEO of Bank of America balances innovation, inclusion, and long-term vision to prove capitalism can work at scale.

Michelle MacKay, CEO of Cushman & Wakefield, doesn’t see the company as just a real estate firm—she sees it as an architect of the built world. In this episode of Leadership Next, she joins us to discuss the evolving definition of commercial real estate and Cushman & Wakefield’s expansive global strategy, from solar installations to hospital management. Michelle reflects on her unconventional path from political science to the C-suite, her “filters-off” approach to hiring, and the lessons boardrooms have taught her about resilience. She also breaks down why adaptability is crucial in cities like New York and Singapore, how AI is reshaping the future of the industry, and why she’s placing big bets on underdog markets like Baltimore and St. Louis.

Leading the Built World: Michelle MacKay on Innovation in Real Estate

Photo Courtesy of Michelle MacKay; Graphics by Fortune

How Cushman & Wakefield's CEO is Redefining the Built Environment with AI, Adaptability, and Intensity

In this episode of Leadership Next, cohosts Diane Brady and Kristin Stoller speak with Kate Johnson, CEO of Lumen, about her bold effort to reinvent a legacy telecom as the digital backbone of the AI era. Johnson shares how Lumen is capitalizing on its vast fiber network to support the explosive data demands of artificial intelligence—and how partnerships with innovators like Corning are helping supercharge that capacity. 

Johnson opens up about the cultural overhaul she led inside the company, shifting Lumen’s mindset from “play not to lose” to “play to win,” and implementing leadership frameworks like Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead across tens of thousands of employees. 

She also reflects on her personal evolution as a leader, the phases of AI adoption she sees ahead, and why she believes human creativity and empathy will remain central in an AI-driven world. 

The CEO Turning a "Sleepy Telecom" Into AI’s Fiber Backbone

Photo Courtesy of Kate Johnson; Graphics by Fortune

Lumen’s Kate Johnson on redefining infrastructure for the AI economy—and the cultural rewiring that made it possible. 

What do mortgage lending and pro basketball have in common? For Mat Ishbia, everything. In this episode of Leadership Next, cohosts Diane Brady and Kristin Stoller sit down with the CEO of United Wholesale Mortgage—and owner of the Phoenix Suns and Phoenix Mercury—to explore how Ishbia channels his experience as a Michigan State basketball player into building winning teams in boardrooms and arenas alike. 

Ishbia shares how he balances being a hands-on CEO, sports team owner, and father of three, while staying laser-focused on culture, execution, and doing things “the right way.” He opens up about leading UWM to become the country’s largest mortgage lender, revolutionizing fan experiences in Phoenix, and why he believes money follows people—not the other way around. 

From the Court to the Corner Office: Mat Ishbia’s Blueprint for Winning 

Photo Courtesy of UWM; Graphics by Fortune

How the UWM CEO and NBA/WNBA owner brings his competitive edge to business, sports, and life. 

Ethan Brown, founder and CEO of Beyond Meat, isn’t just trying to disrupt the meat industry—he’s challenging the cultural, political, and economic systems that uphold it. In this episode of Leadership Next, Brown speaks with Fortune’s Diane Brady and Kristin Stoller about the uphill battle of building a plant-based food company in a world dominated by Big Meat. 

He shares why he believes alternative proteins are key to addressing the climate crisis, what the latest research says about the health benefits of going plant-based, and how legacy food giants—and even the pharmaceutical industry—are pushing back. From regulatory hurdles in Europe to cultural resistance in the U.S., Brown offers a candid look at what it takes to lead a mission-driven food innovation company in an increasingly polarized marketplace. 

Redefining Meat With Ethan Brown: The Battle Beyond the Burger 

Photo Courtesy of Beyond Meat; Graphic by Fortune

The Beyond Meat CEO opens up about challenging billion-dollar industries, the science behind plant protein, and the climate impact of what’s on our plate 

Citizens Financial Group CEO Bruce Van Saun joins Leadership Next to discuss the bank’s evolution in an era of digital disruption and economic uncertainty. Van Saun shares insights on Citizens' fintech partnerships, its focus on affluent and rate-sensitive customers, and the expansion into private banking. He reflects on leading through financial crises, including the aftermath of 9/11, and the importance of balancing regulatory oversight with innovation. From AI integration to community investment, Van Saun reveals how Citizens is positioning itself as more than just a bank—but a trusted advisor for customers navigating life’s biggest financial moments. 

Navigating Banking’s Next Chapter: Citizens CEO on Growth and Leading Through Uncertainty

Photo Courtesy of Citizens Financial Group; Graphic by Fortune

Bruce Van Saun on the future of regional banking, fintech partnerships, AI integration, and more.   

Wendy’s CEO Kirk Tanner is betting big on Wendy’s future—expanding internationally, doubling down on breakfast, and leveraging data to drive smarter decisions. In this episode of Leadership Next, cohosts Diane Brady and Kristin Stoller sit down with Kirk to discuss the fast-food giant’s evolving strategy. Tanner shares insights on the brand’s commitment to fresh ingredients, digital innovation, and international expansion, while reflecting on key leadership lessons from his time at PepsiCo. He also explains why failing forward is essential, how customer behavior—not just feedback—shapes decisions, and sets the record straight on Wendy’s so-called “surge pricing” controversy. Plus, he shares Wendy’s approach to transparency and career advice for rising professionals. 

Failing Forward: Wendy’s CEO Kirk Tanner on Leadership, Innovation, and Customer-Centric Growth

Photo Courtesy of Kirk Tanner; Graphic by Fortune

Kirk Tanner explains why customer actions—not words—drive business, the leadership lessons behind Wendy’s growth, and how the company is evolving for a new era. 

Chipotle is more than just burritos and bowls—it’s a $4 billion digital business with ambitious plans for international expansion. In this episode of Leadership Next, cohosts Diane Brady and Kristin Stoller sit down with Chipotle CEO Scott Boatwright to discuss the brand’s strategy for sustainable growth, the role of AI in streamlining operations, and how external factors like immigration and economic uncertainty shape the fast-casual industry. Boatwright shares his journey from flipping burgers at McDonald’s to leading one of the most recognized food brands, opens up about his friendship with former CEO Brian Niccol, and explains why Chipotle is holding off on breakfast—at least for now. 

Guest-Obsessed and Future-Ready: How Chipotle Innovates to Grow 

Photo by Scott Boatwright/ Graphic by Fortune

CEO Scott Boatwright on AI-driven efficiency, brand expansion, and the challenges of leading a 130,000-strong workforce as economic pressures mount.

Roblox started as a simple gaming platform, but today it’s an expansive digital ecosystem powered by AI and user-generated content. In this episode of Leadership Next, cohosts Diane Brady and Kristin Stoller sit down with Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki to discuss the company’s evolution, the future of interactive entertainment, and how AI is reshaping digital experiences. Baszucki also shares insights on Roblox’s commitment to online safety, its growing role in digital commerce, and even his personal approach to health and wellness—revealing how a ketogenic diet and continuous glucose monitoring influence his leadership. Plus, he offers advice for aspiring entrepreneurs on how to shape their own realities. 

Beyond Gaming: How Roblox is Redefining Digital Worlds With AI and Wellness

Photo by David Baszucki/ Graphic by Fortune

Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki on AI-driven innovation, online safety, and why he sees Roblox as more than just a gaming platform. 

Beyond Gaming: How Roblox is Redefining Digital Worlds With AI and Wellness 

In The Ground Up we sit down with entrepreneurs to get the story on how they were able to build a successful business.

The Ground Up

In October 2018, Aaliyah Arnold founded her online beauty and skin care brand BossUp Cosmetics when she was only 14 years old. Now at 18 years old, the Houston native expanded her line-up, offering a wide selection of products from eyeshadow pallets and lipsticks to blushes to brushes, along with her signature lip glosses. With over 1.5 million followers on TikTok, she shares a behind the scenes peek into her business where she received shoutouts from pop artist Meghan Trainor  and makeup artist James Charles.

How I Started A $700K Beauty Company At 14 Years Old

In October 2018, Aaliyah Arnold founded her online beauty and skin care brand BossUp Cosmetics when she was only 14 years old.

In October 2018, Aaliyah Arnold founded her online beauty and skin care brand BossUp Cosmetics when she was only 14 years old. Now at 18 years old, the Houston native expanded her line-up.

Honestly, it feels like a fever dream. I feel like I'm gonna wake up and all this is gonna be like, you know, not real. Hi, everyone. But it's surreal seeing something that I spent months creating from the ground up, you know, being a little kid creating these little lip glosses um to wear this today and to see people actually use it and enjoy it and say that it's good quality. It helps me know that what I'm doing isn't for nothing but it's sold out twice. My name is Leo Arnold. I am 18 years old and I am the CEO and founder of Boss of Cosmetics. I founded it in 2018 here in Cono Texas and it is now valued at $700,000. Mhm. No, for me. Hi, everyone. Welcome o my family helps me a lot with formulations and everything, especially my cousins. I remember making my first batch and I was like, hey, try this out, let me know how it is and she's like, girl, this is not good and I was like, OK, so I have to go back to square one. So after that, I did some more research, researching ingredients, formulations, lots of tron air. But in the end, we finally, we finally got it. I changed my formula. I want to say like 20 times before I got to the final one that I have right now in second grade, I started selling like little rainbow loom bracelets that I used to make. Myself. I used to have a business called Sticky Business where I would sell duct tape wallets and phone cases. And I feel like there, I kind of was introduced to the world of, oh, you make something here, you can sell it and make a profit out of it. I remember she came home once and told me that they used to call her the dollar tree because she would buy snacks and resell them to the kids at school. Honestly, I would get upset at her. Like, how can you do this, you know, like buy stuff and resell it, but it was whatever, whatever made her happy and whatever made her feel more comfortable at school because she would always get bullied. I went through bullying since I can't even remember she got bullied since she first went to school because she has really bad eczema. And they used to make fun of her. The last thing that happened with her in school was a kid pulled a knife on her when she was in line to go to the bus. That was the last thing for me. I figured the teachers are not doing anything. I'm not gonna take the risk because even though they are kids, there's kids that know what they're doing. When I was 11, I had a sign business. I sold it over on Etsy. And that's when I really started to receive, I want to say like real orders and like the Real World, it really brought like happiness with me and I knew that I wanted to continue doing that. She would leave a mess and I would get so upset. But then when I started seeing that, ok, well, this is going somewhere because she keeps getting orders and I keep taking stuff to the post office. So I kind of started being more understand this of the mess the day before my first day of homeschool ever hurricane Harvey hit. So it was a whole thing of trying to figure out how to do homeschool because it was my very first year doing it and then also losing my home of 10 years and everything in it. I couldn't take none of my slime supplies, none of it. Everything was lost. So I did have to rebuy a lot of my supplies and I kind of paused the shop while we could get into a hotel and my viewers of my shop on Etsy knew about that. I closed it because I was just wasn't interested anymore. I'm a firm believer. If you don't like what you're doing, then don't do it. So I went a year without having anything and it was honestly probably the bored this year of my life and that's how boss up came to be was out of boredom. And because I had nothing to do and as a kid, I wasn't allowed to wear very much makeup, but I was allowed to wear lip gloss. So I decided, hey, why not make it and sell it? And I knew that I needed to create something that I was going to like that I was going to use and that I wasn't going to get bored of. I didn't get my first official order till two, almost three months later. And that was just one order at the time. I wasn't doing it for that. I was doing it more just because it made me happy to make something. And I was just posting on my Instagram on Instagram and especially for small businesses. There's these things called promo pages and basically you pay them and they promote your product at the time, the promo page that I used was not charging, it was completely free. So I was like, you know, why not? I think I received like 10 orders that same day. And I remember thinking that it was just so many orders. I was just so happy and I remember calling my mom like mom, we did it, we sold lip gloss. It was so crazy. And so I remember taking a picture of the orders and saying, ok, everybody, your order is going out really, really soon. And I feel like people see that people were buying that kind of built trust in me as well. People like, oh, ok, people are actually buying this stuff. Let me try it out. The first glass that I sold was for $3 and I was barely making any sense for my profit. A lot of my customers are like, hey, I have every single one of your glasses. I need something else come out with more things so I can buy more. And I was like, oh dang, that's crazy. You know, I was evolving to skin care and I just feel like Boss Boss Cosmetics didn't really resonate with me anymore. And my cousin showed me a song and it said bless up. She's like, oh you should do boss up. And I was like, that sounds good. So I changed it to Boss Up Cosmetics. That's when I decided to change all my product names to all names that have to do with women, empowerment, uplifting and positivity and just, you know, bossing up. I hope you guys are having a good day. We are packaging orders. Your name is Aah too. Me too. No problem, Billy Pop tips. The how to start a business, stay patient and be consistent. I feel like all social media, my brand wouldn't be where it is today. It was actually my first video that I posted on Tik Tok of me making my gloss. I had never posted a video like that using my own voice and it went absolutely viral. I looked at it last time I had 22 million views and I just remember orders were coming in and that's when my mom started to come help me even more. When she started getting lots and lots of orders. She was at the office by herself. I seen that she was getting stressed out and even my mom was like, there is no going down no more. Everything from here on now it's gonna go up. And so when my mom said that I'm like, you are right. I got to take the risk and just be with her. This is the most we spent together since she moved with my mom. So every day I look forward to spending time with her being at the office. Sometimes we bump heads like, you know, every mom and daughter, but we always work through it and I just love it and she loves it too. So she tells me, Megan Trainor just bought for my small business. What the I'm in so much shock, but let's package her order. She is the first celebrity to actually notice me and buy my product. I went live on Tik Tok and she joined Megan trains on the live and she had received her products and she was saying how she loved it. It was honestly a highlight moment of my life up until they were mutual. You know, she likes my, my posts and everything likes my stories. It's crazy. So in 2019 we made a little bit less than 10,000. But in 2020 we went with 16,000, 2021 we went a little bit up, got around 89,000 and in 2022 which is our biggest year yet. We hit 500,000. Today, I shipped two to Japan and then I shipped one to Qatar. We have a lot of overseas like this one to Canada. I hope they, they feel happiness. You know, that's why I do what I do and they feel beautiful in the products that I create. You know, I feel like the importance right now is to give those orders out. You know, people pay for their product, they want their product as soon as possible. So if it takes for us to work 10 hours, 12 hours, 14 hours, that's what we're going to have to do. We have to bring someone else in. So hopefully that will help. I'm a big dreamer. I like to manifest things like to speak things into existence. I have huge dreams. But ultimately, the goal right now is to get into retail stores. Sephora Ulta target source, my products out to them. That's the ultimate goal. I never take what I do for granted. I'm very grateful and very blessed to be where I am today and to have the supporters that I do and to have the family that supports me in doing it as well. My mom has finished a lot of blink cups and it's time to start shipping them cute and inside the cup it has instructions, a little care kit and everything.

On store shelves, customers might only see a bright yellow smile waiting to add some shine to the kitchen. But, behind the iconic ridges and gleaming eye holes are years of sweat and machine grime for Aaron Krause, 54, Scrub Daddy’s Founder and CEO. Today, Scrub Daddy has made over $220 million in sales for 2023. But, Aaron said his sponge empire is just getting started. 

How I made over $220M in sales as the daddy of the Scrub Daddy

On store shelves, customers might only see a bright yellow smile waiting to add some shine to the kitchen. But, behind the iconic ridges and gleaming eye holes are years of sweat and machine grime for Aaron Krause, 54, Scrub Daddy’s Founder and CEO.

On store shelves, customers may see a yellow smile waiting to add shine to the kitchen. Behind the ridges and gleaming eye holes are years of sweat for Aaron Krause, 54, Scrub Daddy’s Founder and CEO.

Jenny Nguyen was sick of watching women’s games on mute at sports bars, so she opened her own. The Sports Bra bar in Portland, Ore. shows only women’s sports. In just 9 days, she raised $50,000 to open the bar.

How I raised $50K in 9 days to open a bar showing only women’s sports

The Sports Bra bar in Portland, Ore. shows only women’s sports.

How I raised $50K in 9 days to open a women's sports bar

How I Raised $50K In 9 Days To Open A Bar Showing Only Women’s Sports

My name is jenny Win. I'm the founder and owner of the sports bra here in Portland Oregon. It's a women's sports bar. When you walk into a sports bar, traditional sports bar, you expect 24 7 coverage because there is 24 7 coverage of men's sports. Statistically 95% of all sports that are on tv or men's sports. And so our goal here is to take the 5% that is on tv and just put it on blast. I just knew I wanted to feel familiar. I wanted people to walk in and just feel like it was a regular sports bar. It's just a lot of decor stuff, memorabilia and that kind of that warmth of being in a familiar sports bar kind of dark, a little bit cozy. But then you change what's represented, you change what's on the tv. These are women's team flags. All the athletes are female athletes. That kind of stuff. When people say women's sports aren't popular. It's because people aren't seeing it. It's a bit of a catch 22. It's like, well nobody's watching women's sports. Well, no women's sports remain shown. It's really difficult. It's really difficult. It's like you have to be in an Internet detectives in order to find where to watch women. I was trying to stream the national team game the other day at work with some friends and we couldn't find it. I love the idea that if this place was packed, people driving by walking by talking about it would see that there are women's sports fans and they would see it. They'd hear about it and they'd be like, oh, people are into it. It shouldn't be a novelty, but it is a novelty. There's been women's athletics that have been agreeable on media for years. You know, women's tennis has always been an agreeable sport, you know, that people watched. And I think what, what I saw happen is that I saw women's basketball. Uh and ESPN really developed a strong relationship and we began to see more and more women's basketball. Um you also have that sec, you have the PAC 12, you have so many of those networks now that need more content. And so there's much more women's content available for about 14.5 years. I played pickup basketball with this hodgepodge group of women, we shared a love of sports and so we would go out before or after, um pick up and try to watch games and it was always a chore, you know, always trying to find Bar that was big enough to take a group of 12 and then also who would change the channel for us. And then not only that, but some of the people in our group are vegan, those dietary restrictions are really hard to find at sports bars. And then a large portion of our basketball group are queer folks or non binary folks. And so looking the way we do kind of feels unsafe in a lot of the traditional sports bars, There was one particular moment that stands out in my mind when it kind of clicked and it was in 2018 when our basketball group went to go watch the N. C. Double A women's championship. And I think there was like three seconds left, the game was tied and eric takes one dribble and launches a three pointer right at the buzzer and it goes in. So here we were like a dozen of us just going crazy on our own. I threw my hat across the bar and while I was standing, I realized that no one else in the entire bar was watching our game. So everybody's staring at us like we're absolutely bonkers. Anyway, we're leaving the bar and we're kind of like milling around the parking lot still kind of just high off of the game. And I was just like, oh my God, that was the best game I've ever seen. And one of my friends was just like, yeah, it would have been so awesome if the sound had been on, I hadn't realized that we'd watched the whole game with no sound. Right. Then I said, the only way we're ever going to watch a women's game in its full glory is if we had our own place. And I remember driving home and I was like, oh, we had our own place, what we call it, you know? And the very first name that popped into my head was the sports bras. It just made so much sense. All you're doing is you're taking a sports bar and you're changing the channel on the tv. So it's like a tiny switch and then it just became an inside joke. Whenever we went out to sports bars and we were frustrated with something, we'd be like, oh at the sports bra, this game would be on, oh, it's a sports bra. You know, they have gluten free buns for my burger with the sports bra. We'd never run out of toilet paper in the women's restroom or like all the things that, you know, sports bars kind of fall short on all the time. We got to talking about how when we were kids, if our parents had taken us to a place like a sports bra, how much of a difference that would have made in our lives to have a place that we walked into and felt represented or felt seen once I launched the Kickstarter, it was the first time that I put it out into the world. And by day three I was getting emails from all across the country right away. I had people coming up and being like, thank you for doing this, thank you for being an asian woman who opened a business and then people coming up and being like, oh a lesbian owned bar. I didn't think about it. I was just so focused on the sports bra and getting this off the ground. I created a space that I want to be in. So it is me in the end, but when I was conceptualizing it, I didn't think about it like that. I just wanted it to be a place that I felt good. I thought being a chef would help and I think it has, I mean, I think it's helped me like 0.5% 99 point whatever, 95% I don't know anything about. That was hard reaching out to people asking for help learning as much as possible. I mean, the learning curve for me was like a straight up and down wall for like the last year, I would say doing things with intentionality was really huge for me. And so I thought about how women's sports is underrepresented. And then I thought about what else is underrepresented. And if you want to create a space that's for everybody, you gotta try to represent everybody if we can do that through our menu. If we can do that through our physical space, let's do it. At the very beginning, I reached out to like network streaming services, All these things to get permission to play a bunch of different things that on top of trying to open a business was a lot of work. I felt like it was somebody else's full time job to try to find content. So just women's sports is a national sports media company and they have like hundreds and hundreds of hours of digital media on Youtube. So I reached out to them and I just told them about the sports bra, this concept and they're like, we love what you're doing, what do you need from us. And I was like, I'd love to have your digital content and they were like, okay, what else? Like literally that's how it went and like my heart like burst out of my chest. And then I reached out to ESPN and the same thing happened. I was on a call with seven like female executives from ESPN W and they were just over the moon with the concept. But once the word got out, the roles got reversed, then it was networks streaming services, all of these other things reaching out to us asking us to play their stuff at the very beginning, we definitely had some issues with haters. There was some like right wing blog that came out and I probably got like 45 1 star reviews saying things like oh they wouldn't let me in because I had a beard or oh they spent my burger when they found out I was a man or you know, like just all kinds of ridiculous stuff. One of them said that I held them down and made them watch the W. N. B. A. Playoffs. I would read the comment, I'd be like, oh what do I say back to this guy. And as I was thinking it like 16 other people responded with like way better things than I could have said. And I was just like, Oh the community has got this and that's how it's always been. We were able to be there on their opening night and I think that that was the moment that you could see that Portland was here to lift jenny and her organization up. I get tingles when I think about that night because the line went around the corner, there's definitely a community that just kind of I think was already here and now has a place to gather at the bronze, which is really nice. It feels like a place that I feel really comfortable in a place where I can be myself and watch things that actually are interesting to me and have that not be something that is viewed as an inconvenience to other people, but it's celebrated. People ask me jenny, why hasn't anyone done this before? Seeing how difficult it was for me to get open and get the content and all the, all the stuff that we need to make it a success so far. I don't think it would have been possible five years ago with the content that was on tv or with the investment or the interest in women's support. And I think timing was just right now for it to happen. I honestly think in the next 10 years women's sports could overshadow men's sports as far as popularity goes. I think a company like the sports bra is proving too many other companies within Portland's or outside of Portland that you can have a successful business focusing on women's sports. You know, like the, the NWSL championship game was played on broadcast on CBS and like a ton, almost a million people tuned in and that's a really big deal. So like, it's nice to finally see that. I think the kind of powers that be in sports economics are paying attention to women's sports and starting to recognize the value and we don't need to question whether it's a good idea or not and just commit to supporting women in athletics for real cultural change to happen. And I think women's sports is about cultural change, real cultural change takes, you know, according to Gloria steinem takes about 100 years. And so I think we're about halfway through that as women's sports are shown over time, we get a chance to fall in love with the athletes the same way that we do for men's sports. You know, so we can show women's sports and we can be able to prove that women will watch, men will watch families will watch women playing sports. I've had, I don't know, maybe 70 people reach out asking to open a sports bra in their town or city, um, multiple investors, just hordes of interest. Um, but besides that I've had people reach out who want to open their own thing. That is a women's sports bar. I've had sports bar owners reach out and ask how they can incorporate more women's sports into their sports bar. And so all of these things to me is part of the mission jenny. And the people around this saw a need and they're like, well, we're not gonna wait for anyone to do it, we're just gonna make it happen. So much of what we experience is, what is in existence, right? It's hard to know what the possibilities are if you can't see it. And so I think that having created this space when people come in here, I feel like it opens up a whole new set of possibilities to introduce a women's sports bar where the culture is built around celebrating and empowering and supporting women's sports. It's about time take one

Slutty Vegan founder Pinky Cole dives into her story of how she came up with a provocative way to sell vegan food and turn it into a $100 million brand from the ground up. The Ground Up showcases founders and entrepreneurs who worked their way up with a business ideas and turned it into a success story.

How I started a $100 million fast casual restaurant called Slutty Vegan

Slutty Vegan founder Pinky Cole dives into her story of how she came up with a provocative way to sell vegan food and turn it into a $100 million brand from the ground up.

Because of my confidence, I got me at least paying $1,200 in a 650 square foot space. And at my grand opening, I had about 1200 people, I couldn't believe that so many people would stand out in line to support me and that's when I knew I had something really big. I was on the front page of the New York Times in the food section. Like we built a multimillion dollar business and that was game changing for me. Yeah, Hey, what's up? It's pinky cole. I'm 35 years old and I'm the founder and ceo of the world famous $100 million brand, slutty vegan A. T. L. Born and bred in Atlanta Georgia, having a television background. I said, you know what, I know what people watch when they watch tv, they want stuff that's in your face, racy raunchy, that's going to make them pay attention. But when you think about veganism, veganism has always been known to be pure flavorless, clean, very clean, very green. And I said the two most pleasurable experiences in life is sex and food. If I can make people think about sex and think about food at the same time, I know that I can peel the layer back and educate you about veganism in a way that you've never seen it before. I'm originally from Baltimore Maryland. I grew up in a single parent household. My father did 23 years in prison while my mother worked multiple jobs to make sure that she took care of the family. I can remember my mom working so many jobs and learning how to cook with my grandmother because my mother was always gone working or pursuing her own entrepreneurial endeavors as a musician. My father was and is an entrepreneur even behind bars, he would call me and tell me books to read, he would teach me about stocks, he would teach me how financial independence was the most important thing in this world and I became a hustler at a very young age, I used to throw parties, I used to sell candy, I would sell food when I graduated from college, I didn't have any job lined up except for teach for America and I'm like, I don't want to be a teacher, no shade to the teachers, but I knew that it was in the middle of a recession and I had to figure it out. So I packed up my bags and moved to Houston texas to work at teach for America. I was out there for five days and I realized that I do not want to do this and my friend gave me $40 and I went to the airport and I can remember sitting in the airport with my yorkie Rudy and a guy walked up to me and I was bawling crying and was like, what's wrong with you? And I'm just like, I'm not happy, I don't want to be a teacher inside of the classroom, I'm gonna in other ways and he said I'll be right back. Do you know this man walked away from me and he came back and he gave me $240 just enough money to get me and my dog Rudy home and I never looked back after that. I moved to los Angeles California to be an actress and then I started doing background work and I thought that I was good at it. But then one of my sorority sisters said, listen, you were broke, you need some money, I'm gonna give you a job working in television while I was working at the Maury show. I had this bright idea to open up a jamaican restaurant and don't ask me why I just like a Jamaican restaurant, let's do it. I actually took over somebody's lease and I was paying $2400 a month, which is crazy now because you can barely $2400 a month, that's a light bill. Now. I went to Google and Youtube and I started learning everything I could learn about the restaurant industry, I barely knew what I was doing. I still don't know what I'm doing, but I barely knew what I was doing. I had the restaurant for about two years and then I had a grease fire and literally lost everything in the grease fire. My car got refold, I got kicked out of my apartment, I went flat broke, I got an opportunity to work in tv again, I was working as a casting director and I was done with restaurants, I was working on a Tv show, they had a hiatus and I started delivering for doordash and while I was delivering for doordash, I'm like okay, cool ghost kitchens, I've never heard of ghost kitchens, but I see it happening in L. A. I realized I was just preparing for what I was about to create just a couple of months later and when they asked me to go to Atlanta temporarily to work on the show, it hit me like a light bulb and I came up with this crazy as concept called slutty vegan. I didn't have anything written down, I didn't have a blueprint, I didn't have a business plan, it was just an idea that sounded good. I started slutty vegan as a ghost kitchen, It was like a $5,000 startup cost to start slutty vegan. So I had to get my permits, I had to get the facility which was like $1,200. I had to order my food. I had to get my first employees, I had to set up all of my online digital delivery platforms. A lot of entrepreneurs don't realize that if you really want to grow a company, you have to reinvest everything. When I tell you every single time I was reinvesting, I was not taking any money for myself. At first I was just making sure that my employees were paid and that I had food in my business. The reason why I started a food truck is because the facility told me that I had too many people coming to the building so I had to go, so they put me in a parking lot and I had to find a food truck on the fly, didn't know anything about a food truck. The food truck was $45,000, so I had to put $10,000 down and every single week I was paying like $3400 every single week to make sure that I could pay it off and I paid that off in like like two months, two or three months. I got a DM from somebody on Instagram and he told me that there was a restaurant that they were leaving the restaurant and it was available if I wanted to rent it because of my confidence, I got me at least paying $1,200 and 650 square foot space. And at my grand opening I had about 1200 people. I couldn't believe that so many people would stand out in line to support me and that's when I knew I had something really big. It's the people who are the meat eaters that come to slutty vegan most because one, they want to learn what the hype is about to, they have an idea that they can try this vegan thing and if it's good, maybe I can continue on this path and three slutty vegan is a vibe. Uh I'll be honest, I wasn't the most savvy business person when I started study vegan, but when it came to like price and I'm just like, okay, $16 sounds like it would make sense, that's the price. Like I didn't do any like extra calculations, but I grew as a business owner, I actually met the ceo of shake shack first randy Geraghty and I reached out to him, I'm like, hey, randy, you don't know me, but I got a really popular restaurant in Atlanta and I would love to be able to sit down with you because one thing about pinky cole is, I'm gonna shoot my shot, He responded, we went to lunch and and we built a friendship and ever since then he has been such a great mentor to me. And then a few months later I get a call saying that Danny meyer came to slutty vegan on a late night with a few of his friends and he loved the experience and they wanted to talk. It took a long time to get the investment. It took about nine months slutty vegan will be a billion dollar company from my mouth to everybody's ears is listening to this. Four years ago, slutty vegan was just a ghost kitchen concept and four years later the company is now valued at $100 million when you come to slutty vegan, it's a party, The atmosphere is just amazing, the music is booming through the speakers, the employees are dancing, everybody wants to be a part of that. The fact that I have $100 million business, I still pinch myself every day. Like I'm not talking about a million, I ain't talking about five million, I'm talking about a black woman who owns $100 million business. Forget the fact that I'm just a black woman, a woman, a minority owned business, A woman whose family is from Jamaica who comes from humble beginnings who literally has never had a silver spoon in her mouth. Like you are looking at the new american dream, I don't care if you're black, white, blue, yellow, green, funny vegan, it's for everybody.

Award-winning songwriter Barry Dean and brother Jered Dean cofounded LUCI, a company that's changing an industry by turning “dumb wheelchairs into smart wheelchairs.”

How we started a company helping 500,000 people In wheelchairs

Photograph by Ted Willis and Corey Shepherd for Fortune

LUCI is changing an industry by turning “dumb wheelchairs into smart wheelchairs.”

How LUCI is helping 500,000 people In wheelchairs

Rhiannon is active, she races in the winter special olympics every year she likes to play indoor soccer, she wants that full life. And so for her to have that full book of memories, she's got to be able to get out and do things and lucy makes it easier and easier and the easier something is, the more we can pack into a day. Lucy is truly an innovative product by the most innovative product I've seen in about 10 years that can really impact clients functionally help them to either drive a power chair where perhaps they couldn't do that at all before or certainly drive it with much better confidence, competence and safety. So it's very exciting. Were the first company in this industry to ever make a smart connected device. Our ability to push out over the air update and have lucy keep getting smarter and smarter over time is a completely new idea in this industry. So lucy is an add on accessory for a power wheelchair that turns a dumb wheelchair into a smart wheelchair. We add sensors in the brain and connectivity to the power wheelchair so that the user has increased independence. That helps not run into things. Not drive off things, connects the user to their team and to the modern world. Obviously its mission. All we're you know, we're dealing with my daughter, his niece going, we need to solve a problem and all her friends, you know that are in the same boat. She has cerebral palsy. She gets a power chair when she's maybe five or about to be five and she touched the trigger. And it the speed had not been a justice. And it took off you know six miles an hour straight into a wall and she was fine. But I then promptly parked in the garage because I was like this is too scary. I wish I could say we sat down and said we're going to start a company. It was absolutely not that it was weird solve a technical problem, build the I. P. And the prototypes and then surely there will be companies that you know that that will do this. My basement became the headquarters of lucy for a while about a year later. I think we got our first three employees and then got an actual space. But yeah Catherine's been the north star from the beginning and then we've added two and met so many amazing people. Rhiannon was born with a rare birth defect called skit successfully. So it's a development delay in the brain and it affects her motor and verbal. Um So she's highly intelligent but you know she's not able to walk. My name is I am 16. I am my high school junior with her skits and hopefully she also has spasticity. So when she's trying to make her body do something sometimes the body will go the opposite direction or her tone will kick in and she'll go full forward and you can see the scars around the house where the chair would get up against and nothing slows it down. There's a lot of injuries in the wheelchair space more than there are people having motorcycle injuries and ending up in the er, 175,000 year. People ending up in the er, because of wheelchair injuries using a power chair is actually tougher than I think a lot of people think it takes learning in order to operate this very heavy device within an environment. These wheelchairs cost as much as a car. They weigh 3 to £500 without the person in them, but there's no modern technology on them. I mean, it's really kind of a boat, battery, some wheels and a joystick. Uh and good luck. The only safety stuff on a wheelchair would be a seatbelt. I mean, we we did crash testing with one of the top independent facilities in the country and they're saying that just running into a wall in one of these chairs at full speed violates the laws set up for cars and forward crashes and there's no bumper, the knees, the feet, your toes, That's the bumper in a wheelchair. I have had some clients I've worked with who have tipped over a chair and maybe broken an arm or injured their head. So, these are very, very serious concerns, Lucy is always looking looking for the clear path and if there's no clear path, it just brings you to a stop. We're seeing now with the users, we have, we're preventing over 10,000 collisions or drop offs, tip overs every week. This is the alpha prototype, the very first prototype, March 2017. It's off the shelf sensors, just whatever I could get from spark fund and find in the garage. It proved the theory that we could do it. So we really quickly went to a beta prototype about a month later. Katherine used this data prototype for a year and a half and during that time we tracked all the data from it learned where it worked and what didn't work well. And so we took all the stuff we learned here and developed what lucy product is without today. So lucy product looks like this. We call this the smart frame and this mounts onto a power wheelchair. And so you take this smart frame mounted down there, it plugs in between the joystick or the drive method and the motors and adds multiple kinds of sensors. So we have cameras um, one on each side of the user and one in the back. And then we have our own type of ultrasonic sensor that we develop and then hidden in here and down on the foot plate of the wheelchair. We have our own proprietary millimeter wave radar. And so take all that put it on the chair and that means your chair doesn't run into things. Doesn't drive off things is connected to the modern world. You can interact with lucy through Alexa through your phone. So turns it into a modern device. So when I first heard about lucy, I have to admit the first time I heard about it all I thought this can't possibly be true. And then when I learned more about it, started seeing some videos and had a chance to finally see lucy, I was really quite amazed that it worked as well as it did. It's an extremely sophisticated system. I was also excited because I work with very complex clients and anything that I can bring to them that helps them to be more functional than they are. I'm all in. We were hoping that it would be safer but it it is so much more with all of the independence and the confidence and watching Ryan and smile as she heads out the back door by herself and just her and ninja her dog and they're just off and they're gonna go for a walk and you're just not worried. It's fantastic Lucy has given me so much confidence. I am able to be more independent and do the things I want to do. She's 16 years old, she doesn't want mom and dad looming over all the time. Now she can go act like a teenager, we have a saying internally which is, life is a team sport. We have different clinicians, we have activity, people, we have specialists involved and doctors, so we set up the, my lucy app so that people can actually set up a team and choose what information to share the right or the driver of the chair can decide. This information needs to go to my doctor. This information needs to go to my caregiver. They can share uh battery status so that an alert goes out and let people know, hey, um, you know, Katherine's at this location, her battery's low, She may get stranded soon. You might want to check in right. One of the next things that we're working on. It sounds really simple, but it's just a pressure monitor for air cushions. That's not a hard tech list. That is just a knowing that there's a problem and getting the tech into the hands of the people that need it. Now that you actually have a computer and connectivity and a smart wheelchair. It becomes a freeing device not just for mobility but also for health. One of the things I'm really excited about that we just announced is the pediatric solution. Now you can get a wheelchair for a very young child with lucy on it once kids start crawling their vision and visual perceptual skills really explode all sorts of the area areas of the brain. Just like if kids don't have this ability to have independent mobility before the age of five, it changes the whole waterfall of development of possibilities for them for their whole life. You can't get that back. I think this is going to really change a lot of people's lives. So lucy is right now getting funded by insurance and Medicaid and the V. A. But usually there's some pushback because it's new technology. So if I recommend a power chair for a client, it's being paid for by an insurance company or by a state Medicaid program or perhaps a federal Medicare program. Well, the problem is something new comes along and there's not room in our current construct for how do we deal with a truly new product once these funders see it that first time in real life, what it can do for that user, we found that people tend to flip pretty quickly to, oh this actually makes a lot of sense. I think they're starting to come around especially on the lucy device because they're starting to see what long term It actually will save them money. Rhiannon is priceless but her equipment around her is $30,000 every time she rolls out the door and goes somewhere. So you obviously you don't want it bouncing off of things. It's been an interesting learning curve for us to learn how to combine the fact that there's that passion, there's that personal need That has built a real company that's really doing things in a real market now. We're at that place of raising our first funding and doing all that and that's going very well. But it's a very different path I think than most companies go on because it's already for sale. It's already in 40 states, you know, I mean hundreds of users, a lot of people see this and it is a mission all company. We have a cause, you know, we talk about moving at the speed of the need, you know, the internally those kinds of things. But the fact of the matter is although suddenly realized this is a real incredible business opportunity as well. There's an assumption that wheelchairs are a real niche that there's not very many people using wheelchairs in the world. And that assumption is wrong. Uh, there's, you know, a million more people in wheelchairs in the US than there are electric vehicles in the US. We have a lot of these conversations about equity. But what is sometimes left off of that scale are people with disabilities. It's a broad range of people. Some of those people will require a power wheelchair to be as independent as possible. It's easy to look down upon people who are less functional than ourselves. And I think we need to remember that one of the beauties of assistive technology. One of the reasons that I enjoy assistive technology so much is it levels the playing field. So now someone who didn't have mobility before can be mobile. You look five years down the road and I think this will be um, inevitable that this technology is on every power wheelchair sold and you'll start seeing a lot of interesting new health and wellness options for wheelchair users, manual and power. There we go, Oh, now you're giving love.

Lyft's CEO says the company will be profitable soon

How Cybersecurity Became A Top Priority For Business Leaders

How Jim Kavanaugh Went From Olympian To CEO

Meet The Hedge Fund Founder Now Taking On Climate Change

Inside JCPenney's Recipe For Retail Success

Iranian Immigrant to the C-Suite: How Sephora’s North American CEO Is Shaping the Beauty Industry

Do you trust OpenAI? ‘No, and none of us should’

How a former Tesla and Lyft executive is trying to reinvent venture capital

Klarna CEO on how OpenAI partnership has allowed the company to stay ahead of the curve

OpenAI CTO Mira Murati responds to Elon Musk calling Apple partnership ‘creepy spyware’

How BNY, founded by Alexander Hamilton, became a $50 trillion bank for other banks

Take a tour of some of businesses' biggest archives

Lyft's CEO says the company will be profitable soon

How Cybersecurity Became A Top Priority For Business Leaders

How Jim Kavanaugh Went From Olympian To CEO

Meet The Hedge Fund Founder Now Taking On Climate Change

Inside JCPenney's Recipe For Retail Success

Iranian Immigrant to the C-Suite: How Sephora’s North American CEO Is Shaping the Beauty Industry

Do you trust OpenAI? ‘No, and none of us should’

How a former Tesla and Lyft executive is trying to reinvent venture capital

Klarna CEO on how OpenAI partnership has allowed the company to stay ahead of the curve

OpenAI CTO Mira Murati responds to Elon Musk calling Apple partnership ‘creepy spyware’

How BNY, founded by Alexander Hamilton, became a $50 trillion bank for other banks

Take a tour of some of businesses' biggest archives

Lyft's CEO says the company will be profitable soon

CONFERENCES

THE CRYPTO PLAYBOOK

LEADERSHIP NEXT

The Ground Up