Peter Wendell founded Sierra Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that has invested more than $2 billion in a wide variety of successful technology companies. Peter co-teaches Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, “Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital” course with former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt. He is a trustee of Merck and was chairman of the board of Princeton University Investment Company (PRINCO), which manages Princeton University’s endowment. Peter provides an insi...
Oct 05, 2021•35 min•Season 1Ep. 61
Paul Polman is the former CEO of Unilever, one of the largest companies in the world with over 300 brands. Paul helped redefine what being a good company means long before it was acceptable to think about anything besides profits. Paul shares how Imagine, a movement that he co-founded, brings together a critical mass of CEOs across the value chain to move industries toward sustainable impact goals such as climate change and inequality. Learn more about what a good company is and how your busines...
Sep 28, 2021•34 min•Season 1Ep. 60
Former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb gives an inside account of the system wide failure across the U.S. government that left the country blind amidst the global covid pandemic. Throughout the pandemic, he was in regular contact with all the key players in the government and the drug and diagnostic companies. Find out how we can better prepare for the next health crisis – be it a deadlier covid variant, a flu pandemic, or a man-made biological threat. Scott is the author of Uncontrolled Spr...
Sep 20, 2021•25 min•Season 1Ep. 59
Former New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton shares what he thinks good policing looks like, reforms needed in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, the arc of policing and the reasons crime is up in many major cities. He talks about different approaches to policing including broken windows, rapid response and community policing as well as the crisis in relations between the Black community and the police. While he and his team slashed crime rates and created the revolutionary data-driven ...
Sep 14, 2021•24 min•Season 1Ep. 58
Mike Novogratz, Founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital, shares on cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, digital assets, and the possibilities of blockchain. Learn how the first Tweet, a single sentence by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, sold as an NFT for millions of dollars and why it was worth so much. He also shares how blockchain can even be used for social good. In prisons, for example, it could be used to record solitary confinements and make criminal justice more transparent. This discussion sho...
Sep 07, 2021•44 min•Season 1Ep. 57
Gillian Tett, Chair of the Editorial Board and Editor at Large, U.S. of the Financial Times uses her perspective as an anthropologist to explain a wide variety of business and cultural phenomena. She predicted the 2008 financial crisis. Discover how she sees the world today including new phenomena such as crypto currencies, nonfungible tokens (NFTs), artificial intelligence and gaming. Her new book is Anthro Vision: A New Way to See in Life and Business. Anthropologist Ralph Linton said, “The la...
Aug 31, 2021•34 min•Season 1Ep. 56
Meat production is one of the world’s greatest contributors to climate change. Patrick Brown, the creator of the Impossible Burger and the Founder of Impossible Foods, wanted to figure out how to make delicious, affordable meat from plants that is better for the environment and consumers. Learn about his journey from Stanford University professor to creating the Impossible Burger and how he built Impossible Foods into the multibillion-dollar company it is today.
Aug 24, 2021•32 min•Season 1Ep. 55
Cass Sunstein is a professor at Harvard and one of the founders of behavioral science. He has written two books with Nobel Laureates, including Nudge with Richard Thaler. We are unknowingly influenced by our environments, by how choices are framed, by the people we are with, and a myriad of seemingly insignificant factors. Learn the latest findings in behavioral science and how they can be used by everyone - governments, businesses and individuals - to make people's lives better.
Aug 17, 2021•33 min•Season 1Ep. 54
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper discusses the greatest threats, cyber, surveillance, the information being collected on each one of us and individual rights to privacy. Learn how we can protect ourselves against future health or biological threats.
Aug 10, 2021•24 min•Season 1Ep. 53
Angela Duckworth is the Character Lab Founder and CEO and a University of Pennsylvania Professor of Psychology. Angela studies the character traits and habits which predict success. She has studied West Point cadets, National Spelling Bee finalists, teachers, sales people and students to determine who is successful and why. A few characteristics emerged as significant predictors of success. Angela shares what the character traits for success are and how we can nurture them.
Aug 03, 2021•26 min•Season 1Ep. 52
Former American Express Chairman and CEO and current General Catalyst Chairman and Managing Director Ken Chenault, shares his thoughts on leadership, race, creating diverse workforces, responsible innovation, and his hope for the future. Ken covers his early life, growing up, his experience leading American Express for nearly two decades through crises and digital transformation, and the advice he gives founders and CEOs building innovative, enduring companies backed by General Catalyst. Upon Ke...
Jul 27, 2021•35 min•Season 1Ep. 51
Manager of Michael Bloomberg’s personal and philanthropic assets, Steven Rattner, shares what he is investing in now and how he views the opportunities and risks in the market. As a former Counselor to the Secretary of the Treasury and former head of Obama’s Auto Task Force, he also provides insights on government. Steve is also the Economic Analyst for MSNBC’s Morning Joe and a Contributing Writer for the The New York Times Op-Ed page.
Jul 20, 2021•31 min•Season 1Ep. 50
Iris Bohnet, the Academic Dean of the Kennedy School and co-Director of the Women and Public Policy Program, shares how simple, evidence-based changes can reduce and neutralize the biased behaviors in classrooms, police departments, and boardrooms; and in hiring and promotion. She is a behavioral economist, combining insights from economics and psychology to improve decision-making in organizations and society.
Jul 13, 2021•32 min•Season 1Ep. 49
Imagine homes that can grow themselves whenever and wherever they’re needed or buildings that can adapt to their environment. We’re limited only by our creativity in designing materials that physically sense, adapt to their environment, heal themselves and grow. Skylar Tibbits shares how we can design simple and elegant materials that harness nature without electronics and batteries.
Jul 06, 2021•35 min•Season 1Ep. 48
Elizabeth Nyamayaro is the author of I Am A Girl From Africa, Special Advisor at the United Nations World Food Programme and founder of the HeForShe movement. She shares her near death experience and how she used adversity to create an opportunity to do greater things.
Jun 29, 2021•24 min•Season 1Ep. 47
Boeing’s fall from grace didn’t happen overnight. Sandra Sucher shares five key mistakes made by the CEO and the board of directors.
Jun 22, 2021•28 min•Season 1Ep. 46
Secret Service Director James Murray is responsible for the Investigative and Protective missions of the Secret Service. He shares how the Secret Service trains its agents and protects against new types of risk such as the cyber physical nexus. He also shares how we can protect ourselves from cyber risk.
Jun 15, 2021•20 min•Season 1Ep. 45
James Collins, co-inventor of the technology behind Covid vaccines, shares a revolutionary approach to drug discovery. By harnessing the power of artificial intelligence, he discovered an amazing new class of antibiotics, which he named halicin after Hal, the murderous robot in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Professor Collins' patented technologies have been licensed by over 25 biotech, pharma and medical devices companies. He is known as one of the founders of the new field of synthetic b...
Jun 08, 2021•23 min•Season 1Ep. 44
Ellen Bennett created a multi-million dollar business with clients ranging from 2 star Michelin restaurants to Martha Stewart and Google, without any design or business experience. She shares her hard won and unconventional wisdom of what worked. Her new book is Dream First, Details Later.
Jun 01, 2021•24 min•Season 1Ep. 43
Warren Buffett recommends Dr. Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence, which has sold over 5 million copies, as one of the best business books of all time. Dr. Cialdini shares his latest findings on how we can all use the tactics of influence and persuasion to get people to say “yes” to us.
May 25, 2021•39 min•Season 1Ep. 42
Wall Street Journal best-selling author Katy Milkman shares science-based ways to create change in our lives. She is a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and author of How to Change: The Science of Getting From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be .
May 18, 2021•37 min•Season 1Ep. 41
William Green shares investing and life lessons from the world’s legendary investors. Learn the surprisingly simple rules they follow to stack the odds in their favor in both investing and in life. Discover their common approaches to investing, such as sublime indifference to crowd sentiment. William Green is the author of Richer Wiser Happier.
May 11, 2021•31 min•Season 1Ep. 40
Founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self Sherry Turkle shares her personal discoveries with empathy and how tech changes our relationships. She also reveals the implications of constant connection and artificial intimacy.
May 03, 2021•37 min•Season 1Ep. 39
Yuval Levin, Director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and founding editor of National Affairs, talks about the collapse of trust in our institutions – public, private, civic and political – and its surprising consequences. He explains why it has happened and how we can rebuild lost trust.
Apr 27, 2021•29 min•Season 1Ep. 38
Learn from Tracy Palandjian, CEO and co-founder of Social Finance, about using impact investing and social impact bonds for a wide range of social purposes from improving high school graduation to reducing recidivism. Social Finance has mobilized over $150 million to transform the lives of more than 20,000 individuals across a wide range of issue areas including workforce development, education, and health.
Apr 20, 2021•21 min•Season 1Ep. 37
“Education runs on lies. That’s probably not what you’d expect from a former Secretary of Education, but it’s the truth.” Arne Duncan exposes the lies and the broken system that have caused American kids to fall behind. He also shares what really works.
Apr 13, 2021•29 min•Season 1Ep. 36
The Wyss Institute For Biologically Inspired Engineering accounts for 25% of Harvard’s intellectual property startups each year, with discoveries and startups ranging from healthcare to energy, robotics, architecture, and manufacturing. Find out from Wyss founding director Don Ingber how their unique model works and how they make breakthrough discoveries in such a wide range of fields and bring them to market so quickly.
Apr 06, 2021•30 min•Season 1Ep. 35
Howard Marks, co-chairman of Oaktree Capital Management with $150BN under management, talks about the most important things in investing and how the real accomplishment is to have profit potential disproportionate to the risk. Learn how to get the odds on your side and find out why diversification is not a magic elixir and why stock prices could go much higher.
Mar 30, 2021•34 min•Season 1Ep. 34
Of the 10,000 business plans Bill Sahlman has read, only 3 companies met their plan. Find out what it takes to succeed. Entrepreneurs have to be really good at running tests and execution trumps idea. Jeff Bezos is the most effective experimentalist in history. Bill Gates did not invent word processing, the spreadsheet, or presentation graphics; rather he took ideas and out executed everyone else.
Mar 23, 2021•29 min•Season 1Ep. 33
Former Secretary of the Treasury and President of Harvard Larry Summers talks about the defining trends of the 21st century, including how we are going to achieve collective solutions, the shift in the center of gravity of the world’s economy and culture to the east, the upcoming transformation in education, the hard choices facing the leading universities, and the exponential growth in what information technology will be capable of.
Mar 15, 2021•32 min•Season 1Ep. 32
