Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - November 9th, 2019

and fiercely coming in number one. And we were there in the sunshine, just soaking it all in the greatness that is that campus. Pretty confident there because, as you said, they were number one, coming in ahead of Dartmouth's Tuch School of Business. But Chuck, I gotta tell you, they made a big move. They jumped seventeen spots, coming in second, Harvard, University of Chicago's Boot School and the Darden School at

UVA rounding out the top five. We'll hear from some big name Stanford alum like A b in Bath's, Carlos Brito and John Donahoe. He's currently the CEO of Service now, but he's also the next CEO of Nike. He'll take that spot in the new year. Blassic Guy in the News because of the team that he owns. That's Joe lake Up. He's the owner of the Golden State Warriors. But first, well, yes, indeed, bloomber Business Week naming Stanford the number one US business school in a NBA ranking.

Let's get into it, though, because there's a lot of work that goes into it. Let's catch up with a couple of our editors are Bloomberg News Senior editor Caleb Solomon. He joins us from our Boston bureau, and also with us is our Bloomberg Business Week editor Joel Weber. I gotta start with you, Joel. First of all, I know there's a lot of work goes into it. We know, and talking to the alumni that everybody looks for these rankings, UM,

talk to us a little bit about it. Yeah, and it's the thirty first year that Business Weeks has done a business school ranking. But really we we uh we we started from scratch almost a year ago, uh to basically reimagine what the business school ranking could be. And and Caleb gets big props for being one of the

architects of that. And we really tried to lean into where we thought h a ranking of this variety could go, and so much of that has been let's actually lean into the networks and the students and the alumni and actually start asking questions to them about their experiences. And

that's what really makes this ranking be so definitive. It's very interactive, so you can actually customize the ranking based on what you're what you're interested in, and that's um, you know, I just hats off to Caleb as being one of the architects for it. So, so, Caleb, when you look at this year versus last year or even years before, what what are some of the distinguishing things that jump out at you? You know, thanks Joe for

all that. You know, so you you you nailed what we what we were, what we're all trying to do here. We just to really personalize these rankings. So I mean, if you're looking at a school, you know, one of the top tier school, say in the on the West Coast, it doesn't matter to you where Harvard and m I

t in our on our list. So we gave you the ability to really personalize this based on your scores, the region that you're interested in, the industries that you want to work in, and really create your own customized ranking and all of the tools that we built to do that, we made them so much better this year. The personalization, this ability to sort of create your short list along the way that provides all of the comparisons of the amazing data we have. It's all at your fingertips,

it's all share able. You can send it to friends, you can send it elsewhere. Those are some of the biggest changes we made. And talk to us about how Stanford got the trophy. Stanford just came out number one in a couple of our big indexes and compensations. Stanford was number one, tied with Wharton in Tonio. So that's that's one of the key measures for business school. You know, how much do you make when you get out of school? What what our alumni made game five, six, seven years

after they're after they left school. And the other big index that mattered a lot to standard was entrepreneurship, where again they came out number one. So with number one place on those two indexes, that pushed them right to the top. Carol Jason, I'm like looking at you, Caleb from here and I'm like, you guys are in at Stanford, Like, what have you guys been hearing out there? What's what's been interesting. Well, everybody knows they're the champs out here.

I mean, listen, this is this school is unbelievable in a lot of ways. When you you know, we've got a chance to talk to a lot of the alum as well as the students. You know, the people who come here. It's a very diverse student body. Uh. They spent a lot of time thinking about that in terms of who they recruit, but also who's teaching and what they teach. Caleb, I did want to ask you because it did come up in some of our conversations here number two with a bullet talk coming in making bake

move talk to us about that? Yeah, that really that really jumped out to all of us. UM so TUK did pretty well. Asked year on compensation exactly, Dartmouth and Hanover, New Hampshire, UM near near where I live and so um. But what they really came out they surged in the networking index and our networking indexes. You know, how much do alumni interact with students? How much do alumni help

other alums get jobs? What's kind of the halo the impact of like when you go looking for a job, how much does having, you know, telling people that you came from talk or is they like to call him a tucky? How much does that matter? And UM, I think we got a lot better response this year from both the alumni classes that we surveyed as well as the graduating students, where they must have had a much much much better experience with other with alums than they

did in the past year. What else did for you guys in this year's survey stood out is just the range of responses we get. So the way we broke it down is UM, you know, so an entrepreneurship While Stanford comes out number one BABS and the school that overall is ranked lower than Stanford came out number two in entrepreneurship UH, the University of Maryland came out number five. The Salt Lake City School, Utah, the Utah School actually

school in Utah UM came out number six. So it's it's finding these gems and specific areas that may interest you where you just you know, you don't think of these schools necessarily as bastions of entrepreneurship, but they're really teaching people how to do well in this field, and and we're bringing that information out to people and that's Joel Weber and Caleb Solomon breaking it down for us

what went into those rankings. They are must watch four Shore prospective business school students, alumni, and of course the schools themselves. They're watch them pretty clothes and there's so much material online. So I'm so glad you got to hear what Caleb and Joel had to say, but definitely check out what's online because there's a lot more information there as well about the top business schools that are

out there. So we kicked off our week at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Palo Alto, cal of Fornia. The school it took the title of top business school in Bloomberg Business Weeks, I know rankings. It did so Jason for the second year in a row. And to kick it off that day, we had a chance to sit down with the dean of the school, John Levin. He told us what it means to take the top spot for the second year in row, and also what's

new and different about Stanford. It's really just a testament to the fantastic students and faculty and staff and alumni we have at the school. And I couldn't be happier to be Bloomberg's Top business school this year. What's on their minds right now? It is a topsy turvy corporate world, and as they prepare to get into the next phase

of their career, what are they most worried about? Well, the students, you know, they're arriving these days at a time of great change in business and technology and society, globalization, and those things are all in their mind. They're thinking about Right now, they're thinking about what am I going to do my eight am class? Right? But then they're going to be thinking about what jobs am I going to get? Has my career going to evolve? Am I

prepared for a changing world? And that's what That's what they're here for. They're here to get exposed to all kinds of different opportunities and ideas and people and develop the skills that are going to carry them forward for their careers. I do feel like corporate responsibility and governance is really front and center. How do you work all of that in to what you do here at Stanford? Yeah, we start with that on day one. We asked the students what kind of leader do you want to be?

What kind of organizations do you want to help build? And that's just carries through the curriculum and the experience here, and it's never been more important to be, you know, become leaders grounded in ethics and in thinking about purpose and what your source of rer responsibility is. And that's a big part of the discussion throughout the time that

students spend here at Stanford. I have to think to given where we are in Silicon Valley this time, where there's a lot of talk in Washington about Silicon Valley its role in society, how do you square all of that being really the face of Silicon Valium Anyways, it's a great question when I canda Stanford is twenty years ago and Washington just steamed could not have been farther

away from Silicon Valley. It was irrelevant people. Where's that here building things, making companies, trying to make the world a better place. And it doesn't feel that way right now. It feels like Washington and Silicon Valley have come much closer together. There's more you talk about regulation, There's going to be more regulation. The impact of Silicon Valley on government and on democracy has is enormous and we're right

in the middle of that. And I think that's a really important responsibility for Stamford to to be in the middle of that discussion to try to facilitate connections between Washington and tech firms. And we're trying to do that. It's rapidly moving now and I do think about you know,

we've heard from various Stanford grads or a lums. You know what happens is it's not uncommon for a lot of executives to just kind of drop in and have conversations who students here tell us about how important that is as part of kind of what they learned the experience. I think it's a huge part of what students experience here. It's part out of what just opens their aperture to

what are the opportunities for them in the world. Is getting exposure first of all to having a really world class faculty that they can learn from, but then to have a mix of people just coming in through campus, talking in classes, talking to the students, meeting with them, and that's that that's really what opens their eyes to the things that they might go on to do in their lives. One of the interesting things about a business education is for a long time it was a fairly

straightforward proposition. It was an investment. You paid X tens of thousands of dollars. You came out on the other end, you got paid very well, paid better than maybe you were going in. It seems more complicated now and and maybe even some existential questions around why am I getting them an m b A. How do you make the case for Stanford to students. Yes, you're number one, but still you've got to make a case that you're better

than the Harvard's, the Wharton's, and the Sloans of the world. Well, all of what you said is still true. There's still great economic r o I on an NBA here and other schools. What's I think what has changed is the students have evolved. It's a much broader set of students. We have students from consulting in technology and finance, just like we always did, but now we'll have students who

come in from from government, from healthcare, from education. We have a student in the first year class who was a central banker in Yemen, another one who was a dentist in Nigeria, a woman who was an Olympic medalist on the US swimming team. And you put all those people in the mix together and that's part of the magic of the place. And then they go on to approximately the same richness of careers and that's changed. That that sense that the NBA can prepare you for anything,

for all different walks of lives, all different careers. I think that's really fundamental to to what we're trying to do. So one of the things we talked about when we were here just one year ago, celebrating you guys as the number one top ranked NBA program was immigration issues and how that was impacting foreign students being able to study here in the United States. What's changed in the year,

if anything, that's really front and center for us. More than of our class is international here, and that's part of what makes the programs so special, as you have people from sixty countries and they speak seventy languages, even though it's a very small program here, intentionally small, and I think I think one thing that I hope people appreciate, it will come to appreciate, is just what an incredible asset that is for our country to bring people in

from all around the world and have them study here and many of them will stay in the United States and contribute enormously to the great companies. Great great companies go on to be great leaders, and some of them will go back and that's great for us too, because they'll bring American values and understanding and thinking back to their countries around the world. So before we let you go, what's your single biggest challenge in your job as you

look across the next year. I think it's actually similar to one of the big challenges faced by any organizational leader right now, which is just trying to interact with all types of different people and different constituencies. And at the Business school, we have our students, we have are Fast Cold, we have our alumni, we have silk On Valley, we have Washington, we have the university, we have the

whole business community. And that's both can be some one of the biggest challenges, but it's also one of the things that makes my job so fun. That's John Levin,

the dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Great conversation, and we also talked to him offline after we're done with the interview, and he talked about how you've got students who are so comfortable getting in front of a camera that it's putting a little bit pressure on the teaching community to also get better when they stand up in front of the classroom. So Catherine august Wilda is Stanford Graduate School of Business, class of nineteen seventy five.

She's Vice cheer at the San Francisco Bay's first Republic Bank, the publicly held regional bank serving coastal, urban and affluent markets. She's been at the bank for a long time, really got it to where it is today. And she joins us here at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in Palo Altar. So nice to have you with us, delighted to be here us about your time at Stanford, And I'm curious about you know, how easily you felt accepted as a woman. I think you know pursuing an MBA,

what the environment was like. Take us back there if you would. Well, it was ninety I was a class of we were a class of sixty women out of students. Prior years had been four thirty and then sixties, so we were a big class of women and state at that level for a very long time. So women were for the first time a presence here, but it was a very beginning of it, and I it was before women knew they could do whatever they wanted, So it was we were certainly accepted, but I will did you

feel like an equal as a student here? Absolutely? Yeah, absolutely. There were However, very few women guest speakers in classes. There were I only think I had one female professor, one woman ever was a guest speaker in a class. But there weren't There wasn't the bench to cho from. So fast forward to today, you are very involved in the school. What have you done and how have you

sought to sort of change that? Because nineteen very different world, and and Stanford is is known for having a more diverse student body at this point in terms of women. This is now we have enough forty seven percent in the class. A group of us began about fifteen years ago working with the admissions office to interview women and to help recruit those women who would have long careers and who would be the future leaders of America in the world. And I think some of that was helpful.

I think when we started that we were at thirty one percent. We're now forty seven percent. So we've worked very hard to both interview, recruit, talk to women who are considering coming to Stanford or other places and telling them why this is such a great place to be in terms of other diversity. About ten years ago I

taught I was a guest speaker in a class. I've done it for about ten years for a professor, and I was stunned to see the diversity in the class, the number of international students, the ethnicities, the gender mix was totally different than when I was here. So this is a class of mixed from all over the world, from all genders, from all all ethnicities. And I think it's great because these different people are learning together and showing each other different experiences that they will go and

take back to whatever they do next. Agreed. And we know all the studies about having diversity, whether it's you know, throughout your employee base, your you know, senior executive levels as well as your boards and your C suite. One thing I want to ask you, and I was doing some research UM in terms of women MBA's, women with NBAS are in six or more with an MBA, but still not as much as men. Why is that still around? Why is that we're improving the pipeline. There's almost parody

in terms of the number of students here. Why doesn't it carry over on all levels when we get into like kind of the corporate Well, there's been a lot of studies on this, and I'm not the expert on it, but I think, uh, in some cases women may not have as many opportunities because people tend to promote people who are more like them, and so until people are running those corporations, they may not be as obvious. When women wind up on corporate governance committees, there generally winds

up being more women on boards. So it's a matter of looking around and saying, am I comfortable with this person? And some of us look different, And so I think the more women get to the top, the more women will be throughout the pipeline, and the less they will be paid unequally uh and have unequal amounts of positions. But it's going to still take time. The thing is, uh, some women for one reason, other may not decide to

go for it. And you have to be pretty committed whoever you are, if you want to get to the top. It has to be a very core goal. And one of the things I did when I was here, I felt so lucky to be here. I felt like I had wound up in a place that was going to change my life and I wanted to be a beacon an example for other women. I've many of us felt that way, and so I always had in my mind that that was one of my objectives. Uh. Some women saw that and copied us, some didn't. I think it

will still take more time. I think Dean Levin's focus on this is probably gonna help a lot um. But we have to help women understand that they can do it. They have to ask for what they want, they have to speak up, and they have to move on if they're not going to get it in their existing company.

And that's Catherine august Dewilda. She is now the vice chair of First Republic Bank, a place where she has held some senior positions going all the way back to n She has seen the growth of that bank, but also the growth of the financial services industry and also, how candidly, the growth of Stanford Graduate School of Business, no doubt about that. Bloomberg Business Week released its Best Business School rankings in the United States, and for the

second straight year, drumroll, please Stanford it's number one. The ranking, of course, is based on surveys of more than twenty six thousand NBA students, alumni and recruiters about their goals and experiences, as well as important elements like compensation, job placement data from each school. It's all in the magazine. It's also at Bloomberg business week dot com, so I

highly recommend that you check it out. In the meantime, we spoke with Stanford Business School Alamin A. B InBev CEO Carlos Brito about the program, his journey there, and also we got into his business. We talked about the slowdown in Chinese consumer demand and the trends he's seeing in his industry. So when you think about Stanford, I mean this was a formative moment in your career, really set you on the path that you're still on today in many ways. Take us to the decision to choose

Stanford in the first place. Well, when I was applied to business school, I was in Brazil. Brazil was a very close country. In those days. Everything was difficult. Nobody would travel abroad. They didn't send the money abroad to pay for fees too. To apply to a college in the US was a big deal. We had to know somebody in the US and all that. So I started researching and back then Business Week had a ranking of business schools and Stanford number one. So I set my eyes,

looked at the magazine. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, that that was our bible and all the ranking. So I looked at it and said, hey, yeah, I'm gonna apply to the schools, but Stanford, for sure, it's number one. And at the time, Stanford would take only one Brazilian per year. It did that. It did that through the eighties through the nineties, and U by said, oh, we'll apply. Long story short, that was accepted and then I had to fight for scholarship because my my parents didn't have that

kind of money to send me to school. So and then I went to Stanford Business School and uh, it changed my life. You gotta talk about the financing to get there. Well, it was interesting because I got a scholarship from the Rotary Association, but they didn't cover Stanford, said the end Rotary Club. So at the end when I went, when I got accepted to Stanford, in the last round of acceptances, I tried to change the scholarship.

They said, no, we don't cover Stanford. So long story short, there was a businessman in Brazil that had a boutique investment bank called George Paulo Lemon, one of the top guys today in the world of business. And I knew that he had a bank that would give loans to some of the bank employees that we're pursuing an NBA abroad. I was not one of them. I worked for Shell Oil. But because I was the Brazilian accepted Stanford that year.

Decided to make my case, and he decided to pay for my first year, not out of the bank pockets, but out of his own pocket, because I was not an employee of the bank. So I went to Stanford because of him. And uh, it was interesting because he asked three things of me when I went. It's at first, keep in touch. Second, before you accept any full time job offer when you're done with Stanford. Talked to me. First,

no obligation to come work for me. And third, helps somebody as I'm helping you in the future if you can't pay. Yeah. So that was it. And the keeping in touch part. If I recall, you know, this is the late eighties, and so you were writing letters, writing a letter, the writing a letter any through regular email, at regular mail. He never rolled back, but he always

called back. He'll always called me back. So I always say that his financial generosity got me to Stafford, but he was this time and commitment to me that got me through Stafford, because we've had monthly calls and he would nudge me in the right direction, asked the right questions, you know, asked the questions as well, and also always had high expectations for me and what I was doing at Stanford, which always propelled me to give my best and to put all my energy and passion in what

I was doing, because that's a different way to go to school in many ways. You know, some people have their parents, you know, sort of lording over them, but other people, you know, they're just sort of left to their own devices. Sort of having him sitting on your shoulder must have given you a different perspective exactly because he was my sponsor for the first year. Then I had to figure out how to pay for the second year, which was also part of his education in terms of

me is not getting everything for free. So you as you got the scholarship for the first year, but guess what second year? You have to figure it out. So I had a good summer job. I also got a scholarship from the Brazilian government, and I was able to conclude the second year, so that was part of the education. Now, talking about the education at Stanford, what that experience it was like, what you got out of it? That was very Transford, you know. For me, it transformed the way

I view the world. It was a very international place in the Pacific room, so very open to the world even in those days. It was also a place where I learned the value of talent. I was surrounded by the best people in the world pretty much at that age group, with that kind of orientation businesses, and I had to op my game. I used to be the top students, that always top of my class in Brazil, and I went to Stanford, I was not top of

my class. I had to work harder elevate my bar And what I got from Stanford was that in life it's about first who Then what I learned that talented people. One talented, very talented guy or a person is worth ten very good people, but it's hard to find. We hear that a lot from I feel like very successful individuals like yourself that go for tens, right, why settle in terms of the people you work with, Yeah, but go for the very talented because they were worth ten

other very good people. And I learned that at Stanford because I was surrounded by very talented people. I could see the difference. They were making discussions, class participation, group works, and I said, man, yeah, talented people and never imagined could make such a difference. And when you look at Stanford, the Valley, Silicon Valley, that's a mirror image of each other. So Stanford has open minded, always embrace ideas. Other places

look at new ideas as threats. Stanford embraced the shake. So things are moving, they embraced it, and they say there's an opportunity here. So they're very open minded. They attracted people off the same kind of mindset, and I think the Valley is a true reflection of Stanford, and Stanford gets also, you know, retro elementation or retro thanks from the value as well. All right, well you you

at this point in the act, one reinforces the other. Right, you work though now far literally and figuratively in many ways from Silicon Valley, except that innovation is a huge part of your strategic initiatives, where at a b N Beth talk about how that has sort of filtered through and the things you sort of look back on and apply even now in your in your job running this

comming well. One of the first things we did when I left Stanford years later is that we opened what we called the ber Garage, which is an office of ours. And the whole idea is this, you have new technologies being developed in the valley, but we have brands and consumers around the world, and these ideas need platforms to be tested, to be validated, and we need ideas to continue to progressive building our business and evolve the way

we interact with consumers. So that's a perfect match between people with ideas and platforms like ours to test and validate those ideas and scale them up in the case they work. All right, So let's talk about your consumer a little bit. It's an interesting time to say the least in the world. You have a global view. Uh, let's go straight to China. You know where the business it's a huge business. Uh. And yet there are concerns about the Chinese consumer right now? What do you see?

And that played out in your latest earnings and and investors were a little spooked by it. No, no, no, but the China for us has been an amazing story. And the thing is that many years ago we decided to focus on the premium and super premium side of the market in China. And if you look at China, you cannot talk averages. You have to go by segment. Interesting because such a huge market, right it's the biggest market in the world for beer, for most consumer goods.

And when you go segment by segment, what you see is that this year there is industry declining China, but that's on average. But if you go to premium super premum, they're growing, and that where the growth is in the margins are in China. For example, Budweiser is the number one premium beer in China by far. In Corona, Start Garden lead the super premium segment by far again, so we lead both segments where the margins are and where

the growth is. So that for us, that's why our business in China, our profitsibility is way higher than any of our competitors in China even if you add them together, despite us being number three invited, but we're number one

profitability if even if you had the next four. So that's because of the brands we have, the premium day command, the consuming sides we've always had, and the things we offer given the consumer sides were to help me out here because I thought in terms of your latest earnings report, you did talk about consumer demand below in the United States and in China, and from some other makers and beverage makers, we've seen that they've talked about increased demand

in China. So I guess we're trying to reconcile what's going on in China right now. Well, in China right now, for sure there was some deceleration but still growing. You know, it's x percent the whole economy, and in our business, Ninthlife is a very important channel where Budweiser dominates, has the must of the share in that Nightlife got to beat a bit um de emphasize, given some of the celebrations in China. So that happens from time to time, so it's not time to time to the Ninth Life

goes down a little bit then comes back up. So this quarter was a quarter in which Ninth Life cames back, came down a little bit, and that's that impacts Budweis, which is on Man Brandon China. That's Carlos breach Out, the CEO of A b in Bed and he gave the commencement speech in eighteen and great to catch up with him about his experience because his path to getting his m b A. I feel like it's unlike so many others. Well, he tells a great story about it.

It obviously was a seminal moment in his career, not just because it exposed him to everything that Stanford had to offer, but his eventual boss was the guy who paid for his first year and he's been very successful. That's been a very successful team ever since. So steeped in areas of diversity, organizational behavior, and more. Sarah soul is the more Gridge Professor of Organizational Behavior. She's a senior Associate dean for academic Affairs at the Stanford Graduate

School of Business. So nice to have you here with Jason and me. We were thinking about all of the headlines and in terms of what's going on at companies, how do you pull in the headlines like we have the McDonald's CEO being fired, we have under arm Or being looked into for the last couple of years in terms of accounting concerns. But how do you pull in

what's in the headlines into your teachings? And that's a great question One of the things that is sort of distressing, of course, about many of these headlines is that it actually allows us we hear about them, but it allows us wonderful learning opportunities in the classroom, particularly these days when we're bringing more and more about diversity, equity, and

inclusion into all of our classes. Having these examples, these real examples that our students have read about and are experiencing, allows us to think and work with them, to think about ways that they would better handle such situations, and allows us to really train them to be better principles and purposeful leaders. So while they're distressing to hear about, it allows us a lot of wonderful learning opportunities to

learn from learn from failure. Right, And so what are students expecting in this regard that maybe they didn't expect five, ten, twenty years ago. What are they expecting to learn? Where are they pushing you? This is another great question, Jason. Our students have changed a lot over the last ten or fifteen years. As you've probably heard about. Our students have come of age in a very different era than certainly I did, and certainly many of our past students did.

And they've come of age on college campuses where they're undergraduate professors, their undergraduate peers are talking about issues of diversity, about equity, inclusion, corporate so ual responsibility, and so they come to us as learners who have already been already been exposed to some of these pressing issues, and they come to us hoping that we will give them answers and that we will be able to train them to

become better leaders. Well, I gotta say, I do wonder about what the student body thinks, because right all of I feel like global corporations are talking about the importance of diversity, and you know how it's just better for so many different reasons. So I'm just curious, does the student body think that the corporate world is doing enough because there's so much conversation. But you know, some of the numbers are getting better, but I still think people

think that there could be much more significant improvements. And I think that I think that's kind of mixed. I mean, I think that there's you know, I tend to be an optimists and I sort of tend to point to the real winds that we see in many companies. Uh and but I also believe in transparency, and I believe in making sure that companies are able to tell us

what they're doing so that we can do better. And I think our students really come to us believing that they can make positive change in the world, and that they want to make positive change in the world. So I already said I was an optimist, but but I really believe this now. So it's wonderful to see our students asking us and pushing us as professors, pushing us as leaders of the g SB to teach them the skills, the competencies and the values that they need to lead

better organizations lead into the future. So talk to us about some of your work, especially around social movements, because I find that so fascinating, especially given where we're sitting right now in the heart of Silicon Valley, when there are big this is my favorite word, existential questions around technology, around humanity, around our responsibility to each other. How do you what or I guess I should say, what do you make of the last couple of years of social movements?

You know, whether it's around climate change, whether it's around me to like what described the moment where we are from your perspective, I think we are in an incredible

moment where there's a lot of mobilization. I mean think not just here in Silicon Valley, but we've all been watching the news and various countries, Hong Kong, We've been watching Hong Kong, Lebanon, Um, Chile, and and I think what we're seeing is what social movements parlance we call a wave of protest or a cycle of protest, and that is that people are coming together and learning from one another and are not content to just let discontent

be the norm. So we're but we're also I think at a point where many of our company leaders, many of our leaders of course of not just companies, but many government leaders are are open to and willing to change. And so we're at a moment right now where I think there's openness to learning from what it is that people activists want at the same time a willingness to work with and collaborate with activists, both at company, but I think also and in some of them, some of

the nations. And that's Sarah soul Stanford Business School Senior Associate Dean. She's done some research on the world of protests, and that is a really interesting lens to look at the world right now. We continue with our special broadcast in Palo Alto, California this week. Of course, we were at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Just a reminder, the school took the title of top business school in the Bloomberg Business Week's annual rankings for a second year

in a row. And in talking to the alumni, we talked about, you know, how they looked when they were considering getting an NBA. Many of them looked at these rankings. They absolutely did. And one of the school's more successful alum, he's Joe Lacob. He was a ventured capitalist for many years at Kleiner Perkins, but now best known as the owner of the many time champion Golden State Warriors. So let's talk about your time at Stanford. You are a class of eighty three. You have to remind me we'll

take us back there. What was it like on camp is in and your experience here? You know, it's very very different. Uh. I was a guy that came out of a very different background. I was a science biology major. I didn't really know anything about business, and I worked for a few years and I decided I need I liked it, and I needed to get some business rains. So unlike a lot of people came from maybe Wall Street jobs, I didn't. I didn't know anything, but I got in, I came here. It was one of the

best schools then too. And uh it was a great, great experience and for me, perhaps better than even some other people, because I learned so much well, and you learned a lot about Silicon Valley in a lot of ways, which is where you really made your career. What is it about that? Connection? Mean, obviously geography helps, but there's something deeper going on between this school broadly the university, but also the business school and what's happening around us.

What is it? Well, I think geography does play a big role. I mean for forty years, fifty years, I mean that we've been in the what arguably is Silicon Valley. No one knows where Silicon Valley really is, but this is in the middle of it somewhere. And the truth is, the classes are great. When you come to Stane for business school, you you're with great students, you know all these other people that are in your class, but you're in this environment that is kind of hard to replicate.

I told my kids and I tell others, you can't really beat it because you're in the middle of something that is hard to explain. It's a culture, and I think that culture pervades the business school and the entire area. What do you think about we got we caught up with the Deaned John Levin earlier about what's going on here UM at the school. But it's interesting I'm curious about you know, I feel like companies are dealing with a lot more in terms of E S g UM

leadership concerns. I think that's it's very much fun and center accountability. Like, what do you think has to be a part of getting an MBA today? As someone who has been involved with many startups in the VC world, and we'll get into basketball at a moment, what do you think has to be part of getting an NBA today? I mean, it's just not about what's in the books, right, It's about a lot of other things, and there's so

many issues that one has to be aware of. UM to be a cu oh if that's your goal, or to be in business and the world it's a very international world now. You can't just think domestically. As we all know, it affects the business I'm in even right now, as we all know recently. So I think it's you really have to have an experience where you get exposure to all of those issues, and I think that's what Stanford in this place does it. It's very very good

at doing that. So when you think about this place, Silicon Valley and Stanford, so many companies have been born of this, private companies. We seem to also be at a moment where private valuations public valuations. You've been in the business venture capital for a long time. What do you make of this moment where people are trying to decide what something is worth and there's candidly some disagreement

out there. How does this end? Well, I'm not really investing as a venture capitalist here so much maybe privately as an individual to some extent, but I do. I do. I'm very aware of it all, and I would super aware.

I'm aware you can't help, but I would say that you know, they're clearly private valuations are very very high, and there's some structural issues going on here respect to the giant funds that have been raised and the prices they've been willing to pay for some of these startups or a little bit later stage than startups, and so I think that the public markets. Private markets have to sort of figure all this out. This is no different

though that's gone on in the past. To some extent, We've had these periods where private company valuations perhaps have gotten what some people believe to be too high. Public companies valuations have to sort of make do with all that. I think it'll all work itself out. So jo the idea of like I p o ing, is it still going to make sense in the future. I hope so, and I think so because you know, that's something called liquidity. When you're in a private company, you don't really have

that liquidity, and that's the big difference. And I think liquidity is a very important thing and investing. It's not just about return, all right. I've resisted for as long as I possibly can. We got to talk about basketball, but I'd rather talk about that yet because I have to think. You walk through this campus and there are people who look at you and see, well, that's what I want to be when I grow up, is I want to own a basketball team. It's not easy right now.

What do you make of this season so far? Because there have been some twists and turns. Every year is the same way in the NBA, it's unbelievable. How you start the year and everyone has a certain mindset or expectations and they change because the fact is that players get better, some get worse, some get older, you know, the younger ones are emerging, and injuries happen, and so the truth is that every year is the same thing. You don't really know and that's what makes it great.

And this year in the NBA, anyway, unfortunately for us to some may say we have a lot of injuries, but it's really exciting, I think for the fans. But to know that, you know, truthfully there's nine or ten teams that any one of them might win the title, that's exciting. Now I'd rather be the prohibitive favorite like we've been. Injuries, of course, i'd rather, but it's sports, and things happen and you have to adjust. Well, how does it infect the season? Though? Steph Carry is out

what for three months? Right now? You're up to on your basketball? I see he is. He's gonna be out for three months. Clay Thompson's out for at least that, covering from his A c L. But more than that, every single player that was on our roster last year is either gone or injured right at this particular moment. Now we will improve. We're playing a lot of young guys, and I'd like to tell my guys it's a you know,

I'm always positive. Everything's about You've gotta be positive, and I do believe the silver linings and everything, and this in particular will allow us to develop our younger players. They're gonna get a lot of time, they're gonna get better, and we've got some really good ones. So from a standpoint of basketball, I think our fans understand it. They're going to be with us, and we're gonna end up being better. Uh sorry, NBA, We're gonna be better. We're

actually gonna better when this is all over. I have to ask you about China, everything that happened with the NBA over there, the commissioner, Lebron, everything that happened, What happens next with the NBA in China. You know, I could comment on that more, but I'm not is the truth, because I think we have a commissioner that is really a great commissioner, maybe the best in all of sports, and he's on top of this and he's concerned about

it too. Obviously, and he's uh, the one who's on the front lines dealing with these issues, and it's a very sensitive subject. It's something that I don't think all of us really here and the players and even myself can fully explain or understand. So I think it's gonna work its way out. It's like everything else, and I think we'll get back to the place where we were before.

That's that's my again, the optimist point of view. That's Jill lake Up, the owner of the Golden State Warriors, And you know, I give them a lot of credit because we kind of gave them a little bit of a hard time saying it's not been the greatest start to their season, and we talked to him about that, and of course the NBA in China really kind of holding back in terms of saying anything, but it was good to get at least his thoughts on that as well. And they've got a new arena to they do and

a lot of expectations on that team. We'll see how the season progresses. Bloomberg business Week at least it's best business school rankings in the United States, and for the second straight year, drumroll, please Stanford, it's number one the ranking, of course, is based on surveys of more than twenty six thousand NBA students, alumni and recruiters about their goals and experiences, as well as important elements like compensation job placement data from each school. We want to get right

to some students. Stanford Graduate School of Business students uh, and we have two with us there are both in their second year here at Stanford. Emily Nounez Cabinets and Polka Aggarwal are both as I mentioned in the program. So nice to have you here with us. We love getting all of the different perspectives why Stanford and Emily,

let me start with you. For me, I knew Stanford really was the best business school in the world and is, and I know it's really so well positioned for leaders who want to become really strong leaders and fields like entrepreneurship, innovation and technology leadership isn't a really important thing. How about for you? Polke it? Well, So I'm an engineer by background, and so I remember this. We both have dads that super because I didn't invention competition in undergrad

and they asked me what's your business plan? And I said word of mouth, And so I realized I think business would be actually pretty beneficial for me and in entrepreneurship as well. So that's that's sort of what led the spark to do my n b A and so Emily, tell us about your company, Sword and Plow, because it's such a cool concept that everybody can understand. It comes in part from what you did before you were in the army, and tell us about the inspiration and what

it is. So eight years ago I started a social enterprise called Sword and Plow with my sister, and we work with veteran known American manufacturers across the country to make bags and accessories um such as this necklace. We also have leather goods and it's just military grade materials from what I understand, some of it, yes, some of it.

So we incorporate repurpose military surplus um like this lining uh as well as the fifty caliber of cells which are in all of our jewelry, and they're all made by veteran known American manufacturers, and we donate ten percent of our profits to veteran nonprofit organizations. It's an amazing I mean, we've been looking at some of the products. It's really incredible. So Pok it give us a sense of what it's like to be a student here, especially at a time where is a lot expected and a

lot of big questions about businesses right now. I think we would all love to sort of be in your classroom in some ways because discussion, asking big questions. How do you characterize it? Yeah, What's what's actually really interesting about Stanford is that they really bring out the authenticity within you, and all the education that's given you is sort of surrounded around who you are and staying true

to yourself, but then also being good at business. And the coolest thing is not only are you in the Business school at Stanford, but you're also part of Stanford as a whole, and there's amazing classes and things outside as well they can use to supplement your education. That's

what's interesting. We heard that from some of the administration, from the dean of the school, that the importance of it's not just about the graduate School of Business but integrating it among all of the other schools that are here and getting kind of a more holistic education to

some extent. Right Definitely, I feel the same way. The two most interesting classes that I'm taking or have taken the past are making social ventures happen, which is an amazing way to learn more about systems thinking and drawing my experience of as a social entrepreneur. But then right now I'm taking a class across the street at the law school about regulating AI and it has just been fascinating. And the access that we have to cutting edge thinkers

in the tech field is um is amazing. And so what do you think about the impact of the NBA on on the choices that you make going from here? Like, what do you do next? Not to put too much because you've got a company to right, Yes, yeah, exactly. I started a recruiting agency for the blockchain space before business school, and so I'm thinking of going to Singapore.

The biggest thing about Stanford is it opens so many more doors, and so the first thing that people think about is, oh my gosh, there's now so many options. After that think about which option to consider, and so that takes two years on its own, and so I think I'm closer towards the end of that process, but I think I want to go to Singapore and start

a company there well. And it's interesting too, because I do think about some of the really important issues that We spend a lot of time talking about UM and how the graduate programs, including Stanford, are bringing them into whether it's climate change, whether it's diversity. Tell me a little bit about, you know, some of the discussions that you want to be having because you think it's obviously going to be something that you're gonna be carrying with

you once you leave. Tell me a little bit about that pocket. Yeah, one of the biggest things for me is I think that culture within a company is going to become more and more important the more we go from data and information can all be done by computers.

The aspect that people are going to bring that's gonna be different is who they are and what kind of person they are, and we're seeing more of that, you know, coming from the manufacturing just people are machines to now big companies are focusing on their people culture and these new roles are coming up, and so I really want to be part of that, and I think I want to do a bit of that in the recruiting space or the people operations space in Singapore and so Emily,

do you plan to expand your company even further another company on the horizon, what do you have Yes, Well, I've definitely been busy and UM sort of plow has a lot of exciting things coming up, including a really large collaboration with a publicly traded accessors company coming out this Better instead A and being here at Stanford has just been incredible to really dive deeper into social entrepreneurship and learn about other fields to like technology and increasingly

some of the issues around UM cultural and social issues. And that's Emily Nunias Cavnists and pull get Agarwal two very impressive, I daresay second year students in the NBA program at Stanford, both very accomplished candidly before they even got there. It'll be interesting to see what they do now with this credential, because they're just getting started. It's

really impressive. Bloomberg Business Week released its Best Business School rankings in the United States, and for the second straight year, drum roll, please Stanford it's number one. The ranking, of course, is based on surveys of more than twenty six thousand NBA students, alumni and recruiters about their goals and experiences, as well as important elements like compensation, job placement data from each school. It's all in the magazine so I highly recommend that you check it out. And we sat

down with John Donahoe. He's the incoming CEO of Nike. He'll start job in the new year. It was really great to catch up with him because to see what he said about why he took the job, what he sees in terms of the fitness industry. But it was really fun. Is there he is or he's been in Silicon Valley and we got to talk about some of those bigger, broader issues like the tech backlash that we're

seeing his views on that. This is a guy. It's interesting his wife and you'll hear this in the conversation. She holds to keep position at Stanford. They were really partners throughout. She went to law school while he went to business school. So his perspective on this is wide ranging. A very thoughtful conversation. We gotta start, John, uh with your time at Stanford. Take us back there. Well, I was.

I was blessed enough to be at the GSB between nine and it was really, I think probably the most formative experience I had that has set me up for not just my career, but to be honest, my my overall life. Over the last thirty years. Um, I distinctly remember many of my professors as well as my class mates. And what Stanford really really, you know, grounded me in was this notion of servant leadership. Um. It was a phrase I first heard at Stanford. It resonated with me.

Ernie R. Buckle, it had been a former dean of Stanford, and that's where the phrase came from. And if I were to say, there's been one foundational, foundational, almost guiding principle for the last you know, thirty five years since then, it's been a real inspiration and attraction towards this notion of servant leadership. Well, and there's so many full circle elements to this, and we're gonna get to them throughout the conversation, one of them being the Phil Knight Business School.

But you were the winner, I believe, of the R. Buckle Awards. So clearly whatever you learned there really took root. I mean, when you go there in the eighties, Silicon Valley is certainly developed and developing, a far cry from from where it is now. Why did you go west in the first place? Well, Stanford at the time that you know, I I went to Dartmouth College undergrad I was fortunate enough as a senior in college to apply

to a few different business schools. I was fortunate enough to get in, but I knew I wanted to go to Stanford because Stanford, as a as a senior and a senior in college rather in two it was known for teamwork. Um. It was known for working with and through others, and that was really attractive to me. I had played sports my whole life. I loved team sports. I had not yet been in business, but I knew that a team approach was what I wanted to do,

and that was a reputation Stanford had. I'd never lived in California. So I joined Baine for two years, uh, with the agreement that I was going to going to Stanford in four And when I came out, I certainly wasn't disappointed. Well, and it's interesting, John, I mean, because both you and your wife were there at the same time. She was getting a law degree correct a law and a master's in Nation studies. UM uh so yeah, joint a joint degree. It was sort of a quick you know.

We came out there, we had we had been married, we had our first child. My first term of of business school, Eileen started at Stanford Law School that next fall, and we actually lived in married students housing for five years, so the two years I was at business school and three years after and and one of the things that Stanford really embodied was this notion of family. And Stanford feels like a family inside the business school, and it's not a place where there's work and home or personal

and professional life, a more integrated understanding of life. I really felt like I learned at Stanford, and we were at a very formative stage of our marriage. You know what began, you know, a marriage and a set of dual careers that have intertwined for the last thirty five years.

And Stanford kind of legitimized that. They they they they took a lot of classes at Stanford that were about the human side of management, about the inner journey of leadership, not just accounting and marketing and finance, and so in at Stanford it was very legitimate to talk about things like the inner journey of leadership, talk about your personal and professional life and how to build an integrative life.

And so at a very young age and a very impressionable stage of my life, I feel like what I got from Stanford is those things were not only were they legitimate, they were the best way to lead a fulfilling and hopefully impactful life. It sounds like you got that early on. Because what's interesting is I feel like the conversation among leaders today we're seeing it with the Business Roundtable that you know, yep, it's great to build a strong company, a financially sound company, but it's not

just about shareholders. It's a much more holistic approach to looking at a company's impact on society at large. And it sounds like you learned that early, very much, very much. You know, Stanford embodied that. Um it was it was some of the other business schools at the time, we're almost kind of you know, factories of certain career tracks. At Stanford, they really encouraged us to to go inside of ourselves, think about what spoke to us, what do we care deeply about, to see the world in a

fairly integrative ray way. They had a very strong public sector program that was integrated into the core NBA program, not a separate program. And so this notion of you know, if I think about back in that period of time, this notion of servant leadership, this notion of an integrative perspective both of life and business, society and business, and

also an integrative way to understand a business. I feel like those are all things that, um, I didn't know it at the time, how how valuable it was going to be. And I probably couldn't have used those words at the time. I was just in the experience. But I feel so fortunate because I think those things have served me really, really well in the last you know, the last thirty five years since then. So let's go

back to the mid eighties when you come out. How does all of that inform the choices you make about the career you want to have and where you want to have it. It's a funny example because I made my career choice to go back to Bain after Stanford. I was following my wife in the sense that she was still in law school, and so I said, all right,

I'll go back to Baying. They paid for business school. UM. I don't know if I would have chosen to do that or not, But by saying that I valued that part of our relationship, UM, you know, allow me to go back to ban And I'll actually go back one other story prior to this, and just and this just tells you about what Stanford's like. During my first year at Stanford Business School, my wife applied to law school

and she got in. And so during the beginning of my second year, which was going to be her first year Stanford Law School, we had a one year old child. I went to the dean of the Dean of Students um Student Affairs at Stanford Business School, Jerry Gould, and I said, Dean Gold, I have to take next year off or I have to work part time because we have a one year old. We can't both be in graduate school at the same time. And this is classic Stanford,

she says. Dean Gold says, oh, John, not just do this. Go ahead to start and you know, if you want to take three classes instead of four, that's fine. Maybe start with four. If you want to drop one, that's fine, and we'll be flexible. You don't have you don't have to come in with some preordained plan. Well, what she did is she gave me permission to have an open mind and a mind that said, hey, it was legitimate what my wife was doing and the fact we had

a kid as well as going to business school. As it worked out, I started that second year Um started with four classes. I thought I was going to drop one, never ended up dropping one and ended up graduating on time.

But Stanford, both institutionally for the dean and just the culture gave me permission to have the fact that it was a father, the fact that I was married to someone who was a peer and had a dual career that was legitimate, And so ironically I ended up following my wife when I went to bain Um thereafter, and you know that ended up working it, okay, end up staying seventeen years of ban who would have figured at

that time? And so you find yourself then back in in Silicon Valley in in many ways and have been there really for some of the most formative years. As Silicon Valley finds its way deeper and deeper and deeper into society and culture. Help us understand the connection between Silicon Valley and Stanford, because in many ways and in many people's minds, they're inextricable. How how do we best understand that? Well, you just said it. You just said

it well, that they are inextricable. So, for instance, I distinctly remember as a business school, students state jobs came to campus and gave a speech. Uh Andy Grove came to campus, gave us speech, and you know, to be honest, we just thought that was normal. It wasn't even It was the Stanford largely because of its location, but also because of its culture. Um. You know, had a very um poorous experience with business Warren Off. It helped speak

at one of the investment classes. Um. And so the outside world, be at Silicon Valley or the other business community kind of seamlessly flowed in and out, and you, as a student were probach enough to get to get access to that. And then once I graduated, and I was part of the Silicon Valley community, first at Bain and then certainly at eBay, and now it's service. Now I'm frequently invited back to speak in a class or to do a Suminar. And and of course you'll always

say yes. D Levin calls me and says, and you say, you know, I am so appreciative of my time at Stanford. It's like, of course I want to give back because what Stanford gave me has been invaluable and so and I think that's particularly true you know around Silicon Valley. That's John Donahoe he's Stanford Graduate School of Business Class of Week. Caught up with him because this week in the magazine and Business Week magazine, it's all about the

top business schools in the United States. Stanford was number one, so he's an alum, so we talked with him. But he was chairman of the board at PayPal, former president and CEO at eBay. He had some time at Banning Company, was a former CEO there. He's now at Service now at the top job, but he's taking over the top job at Nike come the new year. A very important conversation. Important guy you're gonna want to keep hearing from, especially as he takes that new job. And that raps up

the Bloomberg Business Week's Weekend podcast. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm Carol Masser and I'm Jason Kelly. Be sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week Radio Live Monday through Friday starting at two pm Wall Street Time, And if you can't catch us live, do go to our daily podcast for the ride home or for maybe the run after work, at iTunes, SoundCloud and at Bloomberg dot com. And get this week's edition of the magazine on newsstands now.

Will be back next week. At the same time, this is Bloomberg