After leaving PayPal, Roelof Botha went on to help Sequoia nurture some of the world’s most influential tech companies, including YouTube, Instagram, and Square. Sequoia has been an investor in the AI space for a long time. The firm was an early investor in OpenAI, the company that has accelerated the current AI wave with its groundbreaking generative AI technology, which Botha sees as a foundational shake-up for business. He tells Alan and Michal that he doesn’t think this wave of AI is hype, a...
Feb 06, 2024•34 min•Season 5Ep. 1
Amazon is not just the “everything store,” it is the “everything company.” No. 2 on the Fortune 500, the e-commerce giant impacts our lives in many ways. It delivers our groceries, entertains us with Prime Video, provides us health care with One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy, and plans to provide the planet with broadband internet. Alan sits down with Amazon president and CEO Andy Jassy at Fortune’s annual Davos dinner to discuss all the above topics and more, including how generative AI will chal...
Jan 30, 2024•24 min•Season 5Ep. 1
A lot of tough decisions come your way when you’re a CEO – particularly in today’s world where there are no shortage of challenges. In Leadership Next's final episode of the season, hosts Alan Murray and Michal Lev-Ram look back at 2023, highlighting how some of their favorite guests from the year are navigating these challenges. Hear from LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman on AI; Vicki Hollub of Occidental Petroleum on climate; CVS Health's Karen Lynch on women in leadership;...
Dec 19, 2023•20 min•Season 4Ep. 41
As business continues to search for ways to harness the incredible power of AI, it's becoming more clear than ever before that the technology requires some level of regulation. But how much is too much? How do you design laws for something that's evolving so quickly? And what happens if you get it wrong? In an effort to get these questions right, the United Arab Emirates created the world's first government position solely dedicated to AI. The goals for this role extend far beyond regulation how...
Dec 12, 2023•27 min•Season 4Ep. 40
While KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell have their roots in the U.S., the restaurants have a big fan base in China. Yum China, which spun off from Yum! Brands in 2016, runs 14,000 restaurants in over 1,900 cities and - under CEO Joey Wat - is growing fast. Wat told Leadership Next host Alan Murray the company is opening several new locations each day. Unlike their American counterparts, the majority of these restaurants are not owned by franchisees. But the differences don't stop there as Wat explain...
Dec 05, 2023•25 min•Season 4Ep. 39
Ancestry - the company best known today for analyzing user DNA to help build out family trees - actually started almost 40 years ago as a publishing entity focused on genealogy. CEO Deb Liu, who took the reins in 2021, is now charged with finding new ways to expand Ancestry's offerings. She's well-prepared for that task, Liu told hosts Alan Murray and Michal Lev-Ram, after 11 years as an exec at Facebook. "I think part of what makes Facebook really special is that it really believe(s) in actuall...
Nov 21, 2023•27 min•Season 4Ep. 38
It's become increasingly clear that lithium-ion batteries are key to a sustainable future. Is it too late for the U.S. to become a power player in this industry? That's the question Leadership Next host Alan Murray has for today's guest, a woman he calls "The Battery Queen" because she is one of the pre-eminent experts on batteries in the world. Currently founder and CEO of battery technology company Cadenza Innovation, Christina Lampe-Onnerud previously founded and led Boston-Power. That compan...
Nov 14, 2023•34 min•Season 4Ep. 37
Ken Frazier is currently Chairman, Health Assurance Initiatives, at General Catalyst, which is just the most recent leadership position on an impressive resume. Frazier served as CEO of pharmaceutical giant Merck for 10 years, stepping down in 2021. He is also co-founder and former CEO of the OneTen initiative - aimed at connecting underrepresented talent with corporate jobs - and, until last year, was the Lead Independent Director of the ExxonMobil Board of Directors. Frazier has also become kn...
Nov 07, 2023•38 min•Season 4Ep. 36
L'Oréal is a longstanding giant in the consumer beauty industry. And despite being 114 years-old, the company shows no signs of slowing down. The L'Oréal group has a portfolio of 37 international brands, more than 87,000 employees and 20 research centers across 11 countries around the world. In 2022, the L'Oréal group generated $42 billion in revenue, a 10% year-over-year increase. Nicolas Hieronimus, who first joined the company in 1987, took over as CEO of L'Oréal in 2021. He is only the sixth...
Oct 31, 2023•31 min•Season 4Ep. 35
Fortune's 2023 Most Powerful Women Summit took place on October 10th-12th in Laguna Niguel, CA. Over the three days, women across a wide variety of industries (healthcare, politics, entertainment, retail, and tech - just to name a few!) took the stage to share their perspectives on the state of their respective businesses, what it means to be a woman in leadership and how to address global tumult while also running a business. In today's episode of Leadership Next, you will hear excerpts from co...
Oct 24, 2023•34 min•Season 4Ep. 34
The Fortune CEO Initiative was formed in 2016 as a membership organization bringing together CEOs of purpose driven companies that are committed to addressing business excellence, diversity, and major societal issues as a core part of their business strategies. Each year since then, members have gathered for a one of two day conference to exchange ideas and discuss best practices. The 2023 conference took place last week in Washington D.C., with sessions that focused on topics like: staying comm...
Oct 10, 2023•32 min•Season 4Ep. 33
Laxman Narasimhan is six months into being CEO of the world’s most ubiquitous coffee shop. Narasimhan took over Starbucks from Howard Schultz in March of 2023. Before stepping into the CEO's office, he completed a six month immersion in Starbucks cafes around the country, where he learned the ins and outs of making each customer’s favorite drinks while also constructing a vision for the future of the company. In April of this year, Narasimhan sent out a letter with a revised company mission stat...
Oct 03, 2023•27 min•Season 4Ep. 32
Julia Hartz started the event management and ticketing platform Eventbrite in 2006 alongside her then fiancée. The goal: bring the world together through live events. Hartz took over as CEO in 2016 and led Eventbrite through its $230 million IPO in 2018. The years following this promising IPO were rocky for Eventbrite. When the Covid-19 pandemic decimated the live events industry, Eventbrite lost 90% of its revenue and laid off 45% of its workforce. Yet as the world reopened and the live events ...
Sep 26, 2023•35 min•Season 4Ep. 31
Paula Kerger has been the CEO of PBS for 18 years, making her the longest-serving CEO in the broadcaster's history. Kerger oversees 330 member stations across the country and led the transformation of PBS from a broadcaster to a multiplatform digital media organization that boasts a slate of podcasts, a YouTube channel, and programming on streaming services like Amazon Prime and Hulu. According to the company, PBS reaches 42 million adults through linear television each month and another 15 mill...
Sep 19, 2023•32 min•Season 4Ep. 29
Diane Hoskins and Andy Cohen have been co-leading global design and architecture firm Gensler for 18 years. Gensler has 53 locations and 6,500 designers distributed across the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Gensler has designed some high profile projects including airport additions like SFO's T2 terminal, office redesigns like the Marriott HQ in Bethesda, MD and sports stadiums like the New York Mets' Citi Field. Hoskins and Cohen believe great design is researched-based and respond...
Sep 12, 2023•34 min•Season 4Ep. 29
Due to deep disruptions caused by global crises like Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine, the supply chain has been top of mind, and top of the media cycle, for more than three years. Even the most casual business news observers now have a basic knowledge of how the supply chain works, and how it breaks. But none of us are quite the expert that Dave Clark is. Clark is probably best known for his 23 year stint at Amazon. He joined Amazon in 1999 and is credited with building out its current logistics...
Sep 05, 2023•31 min•Season 4Ep. 28
The great crypto crash of 2022 was spectacular, to say the least. $2 trillion evaporated seemingly overnight. FTX collapsed. The price of Bitcoin fell to $18,000 in June 2022 just one year after it reached an all time high price of $69,000. The stablecoin company Circle was not also not spared. It lost half its valuation, had to delay going public, and was impacted by the SVB collapse. But things have turned around for Circle. It's USDC stablecoin regained its dollar peg in March and there is $2...
Aug 22, 2023•31 min•Season 4Ep. 27
In 2021, the popular mediation app Headspace merged with the enterprise teletherapy provider Ginger. The merger created a $3 billion mental health care company that serves both enterprise and consumer customers. The company says it now serves 4,000 employers across 200 countries and that several million people actively use the Headspace app each month. Headspace Health is keenly interested in the growing need for mental health support in the work place. A May 2023 Headspace Health survey of over...
Aug 15, 2023•31 min•Season 4Ep. 26
We are more than three years into a pandemic-altered way of working. Many companies have decided to stay fully remote or offer their employees hybrid work options, which means workers across the world have become very familiar with ever-present apps like Zoom and Slack. But there is a new remote work tool that claims to have identified the shortcomings of these existing applications, and promises to make hybrid work more efficient and connected- a tool that claims to cut down meeting times to an...
Aug 01, 2023•27 min•Season 4Ep. 25
Kara Nortman fell in love with women's soccer at the Women's World Cup in Vancouver in 2015. She promptly went out to buy a jersey to show her support ... and couldn't find one. She struggled to find a way to watch more women's games. And eventually, this led her to join other investors to bring a women's soccer team to her hometown of Los Angeles. The Angel City FC inaugural season was 2022. Then, in March of 2023 she - along with business partner Jasmine Robinson - launched the Monarch Collect...
Jul 25, 2023•33 min•Season 4Ep. 24
Fortune's 2023 Brainstorm Tech Conference took place over three days last week, and it was one of our buzziest conferences yet. CEOs, a former Vice President, investors, founders, journalists and entrepreneurs gathered in Park City, UT, our first year hosting BST in the "Silicon Slopes," to discuss what's happening in the tech industry. In this episode of Leadership Next, host Michal Lev-Ram is joined by guest co-host Deputy Tech Editor Alexei Oreskovic to recap the conference's highlights along...
Jul 18, 2023•34 min•Season 4Ep. 23
When Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz took over the toymaker in 2018, he was the company's fourth CEO in four years. Mattel's internal culture was rigid and top down, and operating income was at a $343 million loss. Kreiz implemented cost saving and restructuring measures, which included laying off almost 2,000 people and closing five Mattel factories. In 2021, the company recorded $730 million in profit. Mattel is now betting big on using its beloved toy brands as IP in other media, starting with the much...
Jul 11, 2023•29 min•Season 4Ep. 22
The changing public expectations for how corporations should honor Pride month has been nothing short of a roller coaster ride over the past decade. Pressure from both the public and from employees to support the LGBTQ+ community has been vocalized and well documented. That pressure was followed by some corporate missteps and accusations of pinkwashing, but this year’s corporate pride celebrations have been the most conflicted in recent memory. Right-wing backlash led Target to pull its Pride me...
Jun 27, 2023•36 min•Season 4Ep. 21
Dave Calhoun took over as the CEO of Boeing in January 2020 in the midst of two major crises: the crash of two of Boeing's 737 Max aircrafts that led to the grounding of the fleet and an abysmal internal culture that was being discussed in the press and throughout the industry. Calhoun has led the company through a notable turnaround in the past three years, as reflected in the company's earnings and increased demand for its aircrafts. Boeing's Q1 earnings for 2023 grew 30% year over year. In th...
Jun 20, 2023•30 min•Season 4Ep. 20
Over 30 million Americans suffer from some form of kidney disease, and roughly 600,000 people have their kidneys fail. It's a chronic disease that requires chronic treatment, and there is a Fortune 500 healthcare company dedicated to supporting people living with it. DaVita, an Italian phrase meaning "give life", is number 357 on this year's 500. It runs almost 3,000 outpatient dialysis centers across the country and is working to transform from a dialysis company into a holistic kidney care com...
Jun 13, 2023•30 min•Season 4Ep. 19
Delta Air Lines soared twenty-eight spots up the 2023 Fortune 500 to reach number eighty-five. Demand for air travel is bouncing back to and beyond pre-pandemic levels, and Delta's earnings are bouncing back along with it. Delta reported $51 billion in revenue in 2022, a 69% jump from the previous year. This is not the first time CEO Ed Bastian is leading Delta through a period of bouncing back. Bastian took over as CEO in 2016, but he has been in the airline's leadership ranks for twenty-five y...
Jun 06, 2023•37 min•Season 4Ep. 18
Emma Walmsley, who became CEO of drug giant GSK in 2017 after 17 years at L'Oreal, has led the company through several challenges: disappointing COVID-19 vaccine candidates, noise from activist investors, and Europe's largest demerger in two decades when the company spun out its consumer healthcare business. But according to Walmsley this all comes with the job. And, she also has a lot to celebrate. Shortly before she visited the Leadership Next studio, GSK announced its RSV vaccine was one of t...
May 30, 2023•28 min•Season 4Ep. 17
Reid Hoffman might be best known as the cofounder of LinkedIn. He’s also a partner at the VC firm Greylock and was an early investor in OpenAI, the company that developed ChatGPT. He's been investing in and writing about A.I. for several years, and recently he put the technology's capabilities to the test. In March 2023, he released his book Impromptu: Amplifying Our Humanity With A.I. , co-written by GPT-4. In this episode of Leadership Next, Hoffman joins hosts Alan Murray and Michal Lev-Ram t...
May 23, 2023•33 min•Season 4Ep. 16
When Brian Cornell became Target's CEO in 2014, the company was in desperate need of a turnaround. The retailer was plagued by supply chain problems, trying to recover from a major data hack and struggling to compete with e-commerce giants like Amazon. In today's episode of Leadership Next, Cornell talks about some of the key decisions he's made that have led Target to now be ranked number 32 on the Fortune 500, including a particularly unpopular announcement in 2017 that the company would spend...
May 16, 2023•34 min•Season 4Ep. 15
May 12th is National Childcare Provider Appreciation day. To show our appreciation for the workers who take care of our kids, Leadership Next is bringing you an episode of Where's My Village? Fortune's podcast about America's childcare crisis and the people who are trying to fix it. You can listen and subscribe to the entire series here. In this episode of Where's My Village?, Fortune senior writer Megan Leonhardt digs deeper into the opportunity for and pros and cons of private investment in ch...
May 12, 2023•41 min
