Conversations with Mike Milken

Ray Dalio Founder, Co-CIO and Co-Chairman, Bridgewater Associates “A financial bomb has gone off. And then you have to say, okay, who are you going to help first?...Choices have to be made. The real question is whether we can do that together in a bipartisan way, in a skillful way, because there's enough money and credit to go around and this can be done.” For master investor Ray Dalio, COVID-19 p...

Bruce Broussard President and CEO, Humana “Many of our members are alone and in their homes, and that can become quite an impact on their mental health. Having a phone call and being able to talk to somebody sounds so simple, but has been so impactful.” As president and CEO of one of America’s largest health insurance companies, Bruce Broussard considers every aspect of care for Humana’s more than...

Joe Tsai, Co-Founder and Executive Vice Chairman, Alibaba Group; Governor, Brooklyn Nets and New York Liberty - “When we reopened, we were very tentative about letting people back into the office….You have to show your health code, which is attached to the Alipay app. It'll show a green, yellow, or red code; basically it reflects a lot of data—where you've been, who you've been with.” If you’ve ne...

Tom Wyatt, CEO, KinderCare Education - “[Our teachers] write me, they call me, they are so taken aback by the grateful comments they get, the emotional letters and emails they get from the doctors and nurses and others saying that they could not be doing their work without our support.” With more than two-thirds of his 1,500 KinderCare centers now closed, Tom Wyatt feels it is his civic duty to ke...

Kurt Newman, President and CEO, Children’s National Hospital - “We've been around for 150 years and we want to be around for another 150 years. So we'll figure out a way to deal with the finances. Right now we're just focused on doing the right thing for these kids and families.” Putting patients first—in this case, young patients who often require special care and immediate attention—has long bee...

Rob Manfred, Commissioner of Baseball - “They may not be perfect with large crowds at Dodger Stadium. It may look a little different. But I really am committed to the idea that it's important as part of our recovery to get the game back on.” A month after what would have been opening day, the national pastime remains in limbo. For Commissioner Rob Manfred, deciding when to play ball this year mean...

Robert Bradway, Chairman and CEO, Amgen - “This is, of course, unlike anything any of us have experienced before. This synchronous global shutdown caused by what is a pretty tricky virus – a virus that had a head start on all of us. But we're gaining ground fast.” Under Robert Bradway’s leadership, Amgen is aggressively pursuing SARS-CoV-2 on a number of fronts. Some of their efforts build on past...

Vas Narasimhan, CEO, Novartis - “Our thinking is, how do we create a protease inhibitor that could work on future coronaviruses, not just the current coronavirus? … Fundamentally, our ability to withstand pandemics is likely going to center around our ability to think of this more as a defense topic than a health topic.” As the CEO of one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, Vas N...

Jeff Skoll Founder and Chairman, Skoll Foundation, The Jeff Skoll Group, Participant, and Capricorn Investment Group “About a month ago in the US we had about a thousand confirmed cases; today we have about 600,000. The developing world is very much on that same pathway.” Jeff Skoll knows pandemics. More than a decade ago he launched an organization whose current name reflects its mission: Ending...

Rick Scott US Senator; former Governor of Florida “If we do anything to get this economy going again, make it easy for the entrepreneurs in this country.” As two-term governor of Florida, Rick Scott led his state through crises including hurricanes, mass shootings, and the Zika virus. Now, as a US Senator, he’s helping see the nation through COVID-19. While the roles are different, Scott’s philoso...

Harry Reid Former US Senator “At this stage, we have to recognize that there’s going to be some downtime here. But I think that with the experience we’ve had around the country, especially in New York, it’s something we can handle.” Senator Harry Reid knows about handling adversity. Born during the Great Depression, he grew up in a shack in Searchlight, Nevada with no indoor toilet, telephone, or...

Steve Ballmer Founder, USAFacts; former CEO, Microsoft; Co-Founder, Ballmer Group; Chairman, Los Angeles Clippers “There is an information-collection problem from the counties, which is where most of the data lives. We've got a team that literally goes through both by hand and using technology. … one of the things I'd say we're very proud of is being able to help CDC with some of that.” In 1980, S...

Jonathan Simons President and CEO, Prostate Cancer Foundation “This is why we all went into medicine—for moments like this where we come together.” For Jonathan Simons and the Prostate Cancer Foundation, global collaboration and team science were a way of life long before the pandemic. The organization’s support of groundbreaking science has changed our understanding of cancer—from organ-specific...

Judy Faulkner Founder and CEO, Epic “We do have a culture of ownership, of working hard, of wanting to be heroes helping heroes. That's one of the things you hear our staff say.” The story is familiar, even mythic: brilliant young student builds out a new technology in her garage and changes the world. But Judy Faulkner never made it to Silicon Valley. The medical software company she founded in a...

Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former CEO, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; former Chancellor, UCSF; former President of Product Development, Genentech From serving as a frontline physician treating HIV patients in Uganda, to overseeing new therapies for a leading biopharma company, to running a renowned health sciences university, to heading the world’s largest philanthropy – Sue Desmond-Hellmann has seen...

Jo Ann Jenkins CEO, AARP - “It is that American spirit and willingness to give of oneself to make life better for others that is behind everything that we do at AARP.” Since taking the helm of the largest nonprofit for Americans 50 and older, Jo Ann Jenkins has built a culture of community among her staff, 60,000 volunteers, and her organization’s 38 million members. Recently, this has been made e...

Carmine Di Sibio, Global Chairman and CEO, EY “We've stressed to all our people and in particular our partners around the world that now is the time they really needed to be close with their clients, help them in any way they can, whether large clients, small clients and so forth, including doing work pro bono to make sure that they're surviving longer term.” For EY’s 300,000 global employees – in...

Eric Lefkofsky, Founder and CEO, Tempus “Today, if somebody’s positive for COVID-19, it still doesn't tell you what's likely to happen next. And what we're trying to do by combining clinical and molecular data is really be able to predict what's likely to happen to them next.” When Groupon founder Eric Lefkofsky’s wife was diagnosed with cancer, he found a lack of data maddening. Outside of her ho...

Margaret Hamburg, Foreign Secretary, National Academy of Medicine; Former Commissioner, U.S. Food and Drug Administration “I always said it was a question of when , not if , we would have to combat a global pandemic. But I never really thought I'd be watching it play out in real time.” Margaret “Peggy” Hamburg has devoted her life to elevating the best in public health while anticipating the worst...

Eric Schmidt, former CEO and Chairman, Google “We're going to need … some kind of shock treatment for seven, eight, nine days where we shut down everything to stop the spread…. And when I say shut down, I mean shut down.” That’s Eric Schmidt’s bold plan to put a stop to the pandemic so we can start to return the nation to some semblance of normalcy. Schmidt, who led Google from a startup to one of...

Andrew von Eschenbach MD President, Samaritan Health Initiatives Inc.; former Commissioner, U.S. Food and Drug Administration; former Director, National Cancer Institute “If we think of the game-changers of what is going to get America and the world back functioning normally, the FDA is probably right now the most central and critical of all the federal agencies.” Long before Andrew von Eschenbach...

Mike welcomes two guests on this edition of the podcast: Pam Sharma and James Allison. Partners in marriage and professional collaborators, the couple are leading immunologists who have dedicated their careers to cancer treatment and research. Sharma is an immunologist and oncologist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, while Allison serves as executive director of the Immunothera...

Joining Mike on this episode is Lynn Goldman. A pediatrician and epidemiologist, Goldman is the former assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention at the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the current Dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. With such an in-depth knowledge of epidemiology and related public po...

In this episode, Mike speaks with David Baltimore , a Nobel laureate, member of the FasterCures board, In this episode, Mike speaks with David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate, member of the FasterCures board, and the current president emeritus; Robert Andrews Millikan professor of biology at the California Institute of Technology. Based on his extensive research into genetics and virology, Baltimore d...

Alex Gorsky Chairman and CEO, Johnson & Johnson “What we announced that day was that we have identified a lead candidate for COVID-19 vaccine…. This is a bit of a moonshot for us.” That’s Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky talking about the $1 billion partnership his company formed with BARDA, the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. The company is ramping up so that if the...