United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby was one of the first leaders of a major American company to insist all employees be vaccinated against COVID-19. The move was controversial. But in the end, over 99% of workers complied. Kirby tells Alan Murray and Ellen McGirt that while he was confident the mandate was the right choice, he's glad the process is now in his rearview mirror. In this episode of Leadership Next Kirby shares how he makes hard decisions. He talks about United's commitment to be "100% g...
Nov 16, 2021•28 min•Season 2Ep. 38
When Adrian Gore decided to build an insurance company in South Africa in the early 1990s, he took a novel approach: the company should aim to make people healthier. This was not - and is not - a common tactic in the insurance business. But in a country with lots of sick people and not enough doctors, it seemed like the only sustainable choice Gore told Leadership Next. His gamble paid off - Discovery is now a very successful global business that has expanded beyond health insurance. In this con...
Nov 09, 2021•25 min•Season 2Ep. 37
Cruise, backed by General Motors, plans to have one million of its self-driving cars on the road by 2030, according to CEO Dan Ammann. But the cars won't be sold to individuals. Instead, Cruise plans to introduce the public to its autonomous vehicles via ride sharing. The idea is that instead of calling an Uber or a Lyft, passengers will call a Cruise AV. On this episode of Leadership Next, Ammann tells Alan Murray and Ellen McGirt how the company plans to pull this off. He also explains why he'...
Nov 02, 2021•26 min•Season 2Ep. 36
In the past, offering executives leadership training was an expensive proposition. This meant only a handful of employees were able to participate. But what if you blew that model up? If you could lower the. cost, you could increase the number of employees being trained to excel. The result: a broader and more diverse group of up-and-coming corporate leaders. This is exactly what ExecOnline's CEO and co-founder, Stephen Bailey, has done. His company partners with top business schools and offers ...
Oct 26, 2021•24 min•Season 2Ep. 35
Jack Dangermond founded Esri over 50 years ago and has grown it into a giant private company that provides software to global corporations, governments and NGOs. At its heart, it's a map-making company. Customers pull data into Esri software to create maps that help inform all sorts of decisions. As Jack tells Alan Murray and Ellen McGirt, "Our customers run the world ... and they do it through maps." But Esri's mission runs deeper than this. "We look at issues of a social nature or an environme...
Oct 19, 2021•28 min•Season 2Ep. 34
Michael Dell had a reputation for not paying attention in school. But apparently, reading computer magazines in the back of his high school classrooms paid off - he went on to found Dell Technologies. This story, and many others, appear in Dell's new book, 'Play Nice But Win.' And today he's sharing several of them on Leadership Next. Alan Murray and Ellen McGirt spend some time digging into Dell's decision to take his company private in 2013 and then return to the public markets in 2018. You ma...
Oct 05, 2021•28 min•Season 2Ep. 33
Thanks to COVID-19, corporate America has been forced to reimagine how, where and when works gets done. And the former CEO of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi, is pushing companies to inject "more humanity" into these future of work conversations. For her that means including discussions on how to support families, enabling everyone to fully participate in the workforce. As she tells Alan Murray and Ellen McGirt, this is not a "feminist issue," it's an economic one. Drawing on her new book, "My Life In Full...
Sep 28, 2021•29 min•Season 2Ep. 32
In today's race to attract and retain the best employees, creating an inclusive environment where people actually want to work is key to success. And this is something today's Leadership Next guests have been focused on for years. Michael Bush is CEO of Great Place to Work (GPTW), and Aron Ain is CEO of UKG, the company that recently acquired GPTW. The two tell Alan Murray and Ellen McGirt why their companies recently joined forces, and share advice on navigating the rapidly-changing world of wo...
Sep 21, 2021•27 min•Season 2Ep. 31
Robots have been moving into factories and other manufacturing facilities for some time. But Daniel Dines is out to automate tasks traditionally done by knowledge workers. Dines's company, UiPath, is working hard to bring robotic process automation, or RPA, into offices across the world. He argues that automating routine tasks ultimately enhances jobs - and investors seem to agree. The company went public earlier this year in one of the largest U.S. software IPOs in history, and continues to gro...
Sep 14, 2021•28 min•Season 2Ep. 30
It's been almost exactly two years since the Business Roundtable - a DC-based advocacy group comprised of the country's biggest companies - updated its mission statement to include stakeholders like employees and communities alongside shareholders. The move signaled a change in approach that Leadership Next's Alan Murray calls "transformational." As co-host Ellen McGirt points out however, skeptics continue to say this is all just talk, not substantive change. So today, Alan and Ellen check in w...
Aug 24, 2021•26 min•Season 2Ep. 29
Why should business care if the government agrees to repair roads and bridges? The answer to that question is more complex than you may think. But this week's Leadership Next guest lays it out beautifully. Andrew Liveris, former CEO of Dow, is co-chair of a boldface group of CEOs called Build Together. Their goal: to encourage bipartisan support of the $1T infrastructure bill. That bill passed the Senate - garnering support of all Democratic Senators and 19 Republicans - last week. Now, it's hea...
Aug 17, 2021•29 min•Season 2Ep. 28
Flex is "one of the biggest companies you may have never heard of," Alan Murray says on this week's Leadership Next. The third-largest manufacturer in the world, Flex makes products and components for other companies you DO know - like Cisco, Dyson and Bose. Revathi Advaithi became Flex CEO in February of 2019 - just in time to negotiate sensitive trade issues with China, quickly followed by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this episode of Leadership Next, Advaithi talks about running factories and man...
Aug 10, 2021•25 min•Season 2Ep. 28
When the COVID pandemic hit, Best Buy turned all of its stores into curbside service only - in the span of just 48 hours. And while stores have since reopened, many changes made as a result of the global crisis are here to stay. CEO Corie Barry tells Leadership Next how Best Buy has rethought using its stores, connecting with customers and best utilizing employee skills. And what about business itself? Will the outsize demand we saw for tech products eventually wane? Barry's answer may surprise ...
Jul 27, 2021•26 min•Season 2Ep. 27
Leadership Next's Alan Murray calls the board shakeup at Exxon one of the biggest business stories of the year. And today the man behind that shakeup - Chris James of Engine No. 1 - joins Alan and Ellen McGirt to explain what inspired his activist campaign, and why he believes it succeeded. Fortune's Katherine Dunn - who has been reporting on the story - has valuable insight to offer too, laying out how the proxy fight unfolded and why the moment was ripe for disruption. Also key of course is wh...
Jul 20, 2021•25 min•Season 2Ep. 26
Grab is widely considered Southeast Asia's most valuable startup. Founded in 2012, the company started as a riding hailing service and has grown to include food delivery, financial services and more. From the beginning, co-founders Anthony Tan and Hooi Ling Tan have focused on building a successful business that also creates a lasting social impact. On this episode of Leadership Next, CEO Anthony Tan tells Alan Murray and Ellen McGirt how the company came to be, how it has grown, and how competi...
Jul 13, 2021•27 min•Season 2Ep. 25
While Leadership Next enjoys an extended Fourth of July holiday, check out this episode of Fortune's Brainstorm podcast - a weekly podcast which examines how tech is reshaping our world. Like what you hear? Subscribe here! In this episode, which originally aired in May, hosts Michal Lev-Ram and Brian O'Keefe look at Silicon Valley's efforts to perfect a delicious meat alternative. There are more plant-based meats on the market than ever before. But startups are increasingly using other methods t...
Jul 06, 2021•31 min•Season 2Ep. 24
Duke Energy, number 126 on the Fortune 500, delivers electricity to nearly 8 million customers in the Southeast and Midwest. A fair amount of that electricity remains generated by coal-fired plants. Since Lynn Good became CEO in 2013 she's retired 52 of these plants, but there's still work to be done. And with an increased focus on climate change coming from government, investors, employees and customers - the push to reach net zero is stronger than ever. Good tells Leadership Next's Alan Murray...
Jun 29, 2021•25 min•Season 2Ep. 23
Vivek Sankaran was ten months into his tenure as CEO of Albertsons Companies when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. His roughly 300,000 employees immediately became front-line workers, and the company had to scramble to figure out how to keep everyone safe. But ultimately, Sankaran said, the pandemic made Albertsons a better company by accelerating innovation around digital orders and much more. Another big change for Sankaran over the past year is how he thinks about social issues and community imp...
Jun 22, 2021•27 min•Season 2Ep. 22
Dow is one of the world's largest producers of plastics, yet company leader Jim Fitterling is committed to ending reliance on single-use plastic products. It's a tension that's difficult to balance, and it makes for an interesting discussion on this week's Leadership Next. As Dow moves towards a more sustainable business, Fitterling points out that products are just part of the equation. The processes used to make the products have an even bigger carbon footprint. So how specifically do you appr...
Jun 15, 2021•29 min•Season 2Ep. 21
Pat Gelsinger has been CEO of Intel for about four months now. But he's not new to the company - he spent the first 30 years of his career at Intel. The story of how a young man from a Pennsylvania farming community landed at Intel is a good one - and it's something Pat shares with Alan Murray and Ellen McGirt in this episode of Leadership Next. But first, semiconductors. They're embedded in all the tech we touch, and most of them are manufactured in Asia. Supply chain problems have led to short...
Jun 08, 2021•31 min•Season 2Ep. 20
Chris Nassetta has been CEO of Hilton since 2007. He tells Alan Murray that when arrived on the job "the business just wasn't functioning in the ways that it needed to function." And while some of that related to strategy, he pinpointed the real problem as tied to culture. "It (had) really sort of lost its way from a cultural point of view." While the problem may have been easy to diagnose, it was anything but easy to solve. He succeeded however, as evidenced by the company's high ranking on For...
Jun 01, 2021•29 min•Season 2Ep. 19
Any time you propose a change that impacts thousands of companies, you're likely to hear complaints. That's what happened when the Nasdaq stock exchange said it wants its listed companies to disclose their board diversity stats. What's more, it wants companies to have at least one woman and at least one individual who identifies as an underrepresented minority or LGBTQ+ on their boards. The proposal is still making its way through the SEC approval process, but Nasdaq's CEO says she's not concern...
May 25, 2021•23 min•Season 2Ep. 18
Even before the pandemic, a large number of PagerDuty employees were working in a hybrid fashion. "I think maybe even some organizations are underestimating the complexity that comes as a result of giving your employees the flexibility they want," CEO Jennifer Tejada says on this week's Leadership Next. She shares tricks and tips for successfully leading a hybrid workforce. She also talks about the impact the pandemic has had on working women, why PagerDuty opened an office in Atlanta, and the i...
May 18, 2021•30 min•Season 2Ep. 17
Katrina Lake is the founder and CEO of Stitch Fix, a personalized styling service founded ten years ago. When Lake took her company public in 2017, she was the youngest female founder to ever do so. And, she's one of the few women founders to IPO a tech company. The IPO itself was notable for another reason too: many pictures from the event show Lake holding her young son. "It was a really meaningful moment that I didn't anticipate," she tells Alan Murray and Ellen McGirt. Lake reports that she'...
May 11, 2021•25 min•Season 2Ep. 16
As we begin to emerge from the pandemic, it's a question that seems to be plaguing most CEOs: How do you hold on to the benefits of remote work while encouraging more in-person collaboration? This is just one topic that Alan Murray and Ellen McGirt broach with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen. Listening and responding to employees is clearly something Adobe does well - the company has landed on Fortune's list of 'Best Companies to Work For' several years in a row. It's far from the only thing the comp...
May 04, 2021•29 min•Season 2Ep. 15
Patagonia - the 48 year-old outdoor equipment and apparel company - has long been passionate about protecting the environment. But when Georgia passed new voting access laws in March, Patagonia was one of first to speak out and push back against the changes. Why did the retailer choose to be a part of this political fight? That's what Alan Murray asks Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert in this episode of Leadership Next. Gellert details how the company's activism has evolved over time, and how Patagonia...
Apr 27, 2021•27 min•Season 2Ep. 14
Etsy - the e-commerce site focused on handcrafted goods - saw its revenue more than double in 2020. CEO Josh Silverman describes the COVID-19 pandemic as the company's "Dunkirk moment." At a time where traditional suppliers couldn't even come close to meeting the demand for face masks, Etsy makers stepped up. The company wound up selling about $740 million worth of masks in 2020, according to Silverman. However those sales were dwarfed by the clamor for home goods - everything from custom-made d...
Apr 20, 2021•28 min•Season 2Ep. 13
Ryan Williams is the CEO of Cadre, a company that's out to "democratize" commercial real estate. In other words, he's making it easier for the average investor to buy a piece of the pie. And, he's utilizing technology in a way the staid industry hasn't seen before. His success landed him on our 40 Under 40 list in 2019, and the COVID-19 pandemic hasn't slowed him down. In this episode of Leadership Next, Williams tells us about his early business ventures and how he came up with the idea for his...
Apr 13, 2021•29 min•Season 2Ep. 12
Biotech company Genentech has eight drugs in various stages of development as therapeutics for COVID-19. But early in the pandemic, the company decided to turn over a large chunk of its manufacturing capacity to a competitor. Time was of the essence, and this company had a promising monoclonal antibody cocktail in the wings. Will this spirit of collaboration survive post-pandemic? That's just one topic Leadership Next explores with Genentech CEO Alexander Hardy. Another big topic of conversation...
Apr 06, 2021•28 min•Season 2Ep. 11
Kara Goldin never planned to create a company that competes with giants like Pepsi or Coca-Cola. She just wanted to drink water that didn't taste boring. But now Hint is the country's fastest-growing independent beverage company. Since its founding in 2005, Hint has grown to include products like sunscreen and hand sanitizer. But its mission remains the same according to Kara: to help people lead healthy lives. That purpose has also led her to push for a closer examination of the country's drink...
Mar 30, 2021•24 min•Season 2Ep. 10
