Conversations with Mike Milken

“In America, we don't look to the government alone to develop the solutions. We look to the creativity and ingenuity and vitality of the private sector, whether it's corporations or philanthropic organizations for many of those solutions.” In normal times, Brent McIntosh’s charge at the Treasury Department is to advance America’s economic interests abroad. Today, that mission includes extending a...

“Public health will not be able to cope with this pandemic if it becomes a major crisis of the scale that we have seen in the West and in China. There's almost nothing we can do about it because we just don't have time. But it has been a massive wake-up call.” Strive Masiyiwa is in a race against the clock. The Zimbabwean-born businessman, entrepreneur, and philanthropist is working to shore up me...

“Explain things in a credible way so that the public understands why they're being asked to do things. You can't force people – especially Americans – to do things they refuse to do.” When he retired from the U.S. House of Representatives after four decades of service, Henry Waxman was considered one of the most influential and effective legislators of his era. He championed such issues as the env...

A Special Episode on Potential Breakthroughs in COVID-19 Research Coming from Cancer Research by the Prostate Cancer Foundation and FasterCures   A video recording of this episode – with helpful graphics – is also available at  mikemilken.com . For our 50th recording, Jonathan Simons (President and CEO, Prostate Cancer Foundation) and Esther Krofah (Executive Director, FasterCures) join...

“We spend numerous hours a day updating that tracker because what is critical is real-time information that researchers and scientists can respond to. … As I've been speaking to colleagues, ranging from NIH to these large companies, they're using that daily in their prioritization exercises to determine what they can accelerate and what the potential opportunities are.”  Keeping track of rapi...

“Normally about 14,000 students live on our campus in our dormitories and that's down to I think less than about 900 students. … The campus has taken on an eerie feeling of really being abandoned.” Big changes are afoot at UCLA, America’s #1-rated public university. Chancellor Gene Block has already seen an 85% reduction of his on-campus workforce, and with a record of 5,000-plus classes currently...

“One day, for the first time in my 39 years, there were no patients in the emergency department. It was a Sunday morning. Never seen that in my life. … Heart attacks, strokes, mental illness – these people were not coming in. … There are a lot of deaths that are indirectly going to be associated with COVID-19 even though the patients never had the infection.” As the vice chancellor of UCLA Health...

“Most times your right or your requirement for personal privacy trumps other kinds of needs. But a pandemic is … when it becomes quite clear that sometimes the needs of the collective, the needs of society, trump the needs of the individual.” As the CEO and Director of DBS Group, a financial services firm operating in 18 countries throughout Asia, Piyush Gupta is known for anticipating and staying...

“The US and China, particularly in 2020, are on something of a collision course....We should confront where we must, we should cooperate where we can, and we should be clear-eyed that we're in for a period of real tension.” A retired 4-star, Admiral James Stavridis has not lost his focus on the future of geopolitics and American national security. Recently, the former Supreme Allied Commander of N...

“In this fight, where we are today—this is May of 2020—there's a lot of other companies and a lot of other approaches that are trying to generate vaccines. I wish them all success, and we all need to be successful here. I have only two competitors in this race: the virus and the clock.” If developing a COVID-19 vaccine were a race, Tal Zaks and Moderna Therapeutics won the first leg. It took them...

“When I was working at ground zero, I saw a level of cooperation and willingness for everybody to sort of check their egos at the door because we knew that we were all facing an external threat. And that's exactly what we're seeing today. We're all in this together.” For Richard Hatchett, 9/11 changed everything. While serving as an oncology fellow in New York City, he quickly found himself on the...

“We knew that some kind of pandemic has always been inevitable….What we didn't really predict was the magnitude of the impact, the stress on the healthcare system, shocks to markets and economies….How do we predict the new normal at speed and at scale?” Predicting the future isn’t what it used to be, especially with the inherent variables of a pandemic. For WorldQuant Predictive CEO James Golden,...

“Play is never canceled. You can cancel school, you can suspend retail stores or close movie theaters, but you cannot cancel play.” For Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz, taking the helm of one the world’s iconic companies two years ago was a privilege and a responsibility. In the age of COVID-19, he views the company’s mission as more important than ever to help children—and their parents—navigate the challe...

“You start by taking care of your people. Your people then can take care of their families and loved ones. That's how communities get taken care of. And that's kind of the building blocks that we see as being critical here.” For MassMutual’s Roger Crandall, leadership in times of a pandemic means more opportunities to help policyholders and employees create virtuous cycles. Under his stewardship,...

“I was deeply impressed. They managed much bigger volumes than in any normal period, and we were really very proud and still are very proud how our fixed income and equity traders managed these challenges, because it was certainly not an easy environment.” Thomas Gottstein became CEO of Credit Suisse on February 14, 2020. Within three weeks, the world had changed, and he found himself leading the...

“One of the other things that has come to light with regards to COVID-19 are health disparities….in the infection rates and the hospitalization rates and in the death rates of certain communities.” As a young African American girl growing up in the early 1960s, Freda Lewis-Hall was accustomed to people telling her that she would never attain her dream of becoming a doctor. Today, she can look back...

“The consumer is resilient. Vacations are mandatory. I believe the cruise business within a year will be back. I truly believe that. And I believe the [Las Vegas] Strip will be back within that period of time too.” As the founder of Diamond Resorts International and the former chairman of Brand USA—the nation’s first public-private partnership to promote tourism—Nevada native Stephen J. Cloobeck h...

“We're perhaps working now at 10% of where we were working before the COVID infections. It's heartbreaking to think what cancer patients are going through as they're watching their cancers grow, and yet have to deal with this threat of the virus and problems in getting access to care.” When Steven Rosenberg joined the National Cancer Institute more than 45 years ago, he was determined to prove tha...

“This is a demand shutdown in the economy that's affecting all businesses….If you're a small business, your access to capital in some cases can be limited, [so] that's why getting resources to these small businesses that employ so many is so, so important.” For David Solomon and Goldman Sachs, helping small enterprises navigate the crisis requires access—to expertise, education, and capital. The f...

Vivek Ramaswamy Founder and CEO, Roivant Sciences “Seeing my own family members in New York go through what they're going through has...not only turned our personal life upside down, but also has turned upside down...the near-term priorities of our company to help do our part in addressing this pandemic.” When Vivek Ramaswamy was only 28, he founded the pharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences. Whe...

Adam Boehler CEO, U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) There are places in the United States now with little to no cases, and if the states have the ability to do contact tracing with some testing to ensure that if there's a flare we can move quickly, then I think it's fine to open up now as long as one could take very quick action. “We're testing 200,000 Americans a day. That'...

Francis deSouza President and CEO, Illumina “The first genome sequence of the virus that was published on January 12th online was done on Illumina machines, and so we have been working on this outbreak [since] well before it became a pandemic.” Sequencing DNA quickly and cheaply has revolutionized medicine with new cures and therapies that have extended and saved lives. As president and CEO of Ill...

“As we began to see in January the evolution of this virus...we began reorienting ourselves to our inpatient responsibilities and to the potential that the nation would need us to be its backstop in a healthcare system.” Dr. Richard Stone’s job title is as clear and direct as the man who occupies it. As the executive in charge of the Veterans Health Administration, the nation’s largest integrated...

Rodney McMullen Chairman and CEO, The Kroger Co. “We made the decision to share publicly all the work that we were doing internally in case it could be helpful….We're trying to pay it forward just like others paid it forward to us.” When Rodney McMullen took a high school job bagging groceries at his local Kroger, he had no way to know he’d go on to lead the company—now one of America’s largest em...

Barbara Humpton President and CEO, Siemens USA “We often talk about Siemens as being a company that was built to serve society. And that mission really hasn't changed….We have real expertise in electrification, automation, and digitalization. And that's all coming into play right now as the nation wrestles with COVID-19.” Hospitals. Factories. Data centers. Government facilities. If it’s an essent...