How Leaders Lead with David Novak

Today’s guest is Jimmy Dunne. He’s the Vice Chairman and Senior Managing Principal at Piper Sandler. He was one of the founders of Sandler O'Neill + Partners which was acquired by Piper Jaffray in 2020. He is renowned for how he led his firm in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Sixty-six of his associates tragically died that day, including the firm’s founder Herman Sandler a...

One of your most important jobs as a leader is to define reality. You have to figure out what is really happening in your organization if you want to make it better. And today’s guest is Alberto Carvalho, the Superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, and someone who knows exactly how to define reality. He leads the fourth largest school district in the nation, and it’s quite the success...

Today’s guest is hall of fame and former world #1 tennis player, Andy Roddick. You may remember him destroying opponents with his serve, or winning the 2003 US Open, or even hosting Saturday Night Live!  But these days, he’s doing all kinds of other fun stuff. He’s the CEO of the Andy Roddick Foundation, which supports kids in low-income communities. He’s co-founded two companies, one in healthcar...

Today’s guest is Becky Frankiewicz, President of ManpowerGroup North America, which is the leading workforce solutions company in the world. Now when she took the job, she was stepping into a whole new world. Why? Because Becky actually made a name for herself in various marketing, sales, and finance roles at PepsiCo.  And not every leader can go from finding breakthrough marketing ideas for snack...

​​Today’s guest is Timo Boldt, Founder and CEO of Gousto, the largest meal kit company in the United Kingdom, which Timo founded at the ripe old age of 27. In the last seven years, its valuation has grown to over one billion dollars!  That is some seriously impressive growth.  And you’re going to love hearing how Timo and his team have done it.  He is constantly pushing himself and his company to...

In this special episode of the How Leaders Lead podcast, listeners will learn that all top leaders are incredible “AVID LEARNERS” - people who’ve demonstrated a real commitment to continuous learning throughout their careers. They all learn by DOING. They all ASK a lot of QUESTIONS and LISTEN CLOSELY for real insights. And at some stage of their career, each of them has learned from FAILURE. So su...

Get ready for an inspiring conversation with today’s guest, Lonnie Ali. She’s the wife of legendary boxer Muhammad Ali and a powerful leader in her own right. She incorporated, built, and sold, Greatest of All Time, Inc. and also founded the Muhammad Ali Center, which is a nonprofit museum and cultural center devoted to inspiring the world through Muhammad Ali’s legacy. Lonnie is an extraordinary...

Today’s guest is Bob Greifeld, the former CEO of NASDAQ. These days, the NASDAQ is a powerhouse market. But that was not the case when Bob took over. It was small and struggling. During his time in charge, he grew the market by a whopping 2000%, attracting companies like Apple, Microsoft, Starbucks, and Amazon.  In this conversation, we go behind the scenes of that amazing turnaround. You can see...

Today’s guest is Jeff Lawson, the co-founder & CEO of Twilio, one of the world’s fastest growing technology companies. Millions of software developers use their platform to add communications to apps and websites we all use, like airbnb and Lyft. Jeff has a unique point of view as an entrepreneur. He has a foot in both the technical developer world AND the executive world. So if you need to make y...

Today’s guest is Wendy Clark, Global CEO of Dentsu International, and the first female CEO of a big six global advertising agency. Before that, she did incredible work as a marketing executive at Coca-Cola and AT&T. She’s a giant of the advertising world. She is literally in the hall of fame. But despite all her success, Wendy is the absolute master of embracing the underdog mentality.  It’s how s...

Today’s guest is Mickey Drexler, the former CEO of The Gap, J. Crew, and Banana Republic. He’s the legendary king of retail who put all those stores (and several others) on the map. These days he and his son have teamed up to build a new clothing brand called Alex Mill. Mickey is a hard-charging guy with plenty of conviction. When you listen to him, you remember just how compelling it is when a le...

Today’s guest is Stephen MR Covey. As the CEO of Covey Leadership Center, he built the largest leadership development company in the world, and orchestrated the successful merger of Franklin Covey. He’s also the New York Times bestselling author of the excellent book, Speed of Trust. If you’ve ever felt like your business just doesn’t move fast enough, you’re going to love this conversation. Steph...

Today’s guest is Milind Pant, CEO of Amway. Amway is the largest direct selling company in the world, with over ONE MILLION independent business owners – a.k.a. entrepreneurs. Milind has tapped into something that’s helping him grow as a leader AND helping his entrepreneurs at Amway grow their businesses. That secret ingredient is community. We all want to do business with people we know and trust...

Today’s guest is Cathy Engelbert, the first Commissioner of the WNBA. She is a trailblazer, having also served as the first-ever female CEO of Deloitte. But the WNBA is a whole new challenge. She is leading with an incredible drive, using her “players first” philosophy to take women’s sports to the next level. Cathy knows how to get big things done – and as you’ll hear, it’s often the small things...

Today’s guest is John “Spider” Miller, a legendary amateur golfer who captained the US team in the 2015 and 2017 Walker Cup. If you have never seen the Walker Cup, it’s a biennial competition where leading amateur golfers of the US go head to head with the best amateurs from Great Britain and Ireland. In both his golf game and his career as a beer distributor, Spider is living proof of the power o...

Today’s guest is Daniel Lubetzky, Founder of KIND Snacks – which is the fastest growing snack brand in the world. It’s not every day that you can find a snack that’s healthy AND tasty.  But as you’re going to hear in this conversation, Daniel is really good at finding a way to advance two seemingly contradictory goals, and it’s been a game changer for both his business and his life. He calls it th...

Today’s guest is Donna Barton Brothers, the COO of Starlight Racing. She also just happens to be one of the most decorated female jockeys in the horse industry and the leading on-track television broadcaster for NBC. If you watch the Kentucky Derby, she’s the reporter at the winner’s circle, riding her horse backward as she talks to the winning jockey in the moments after the race. Now that takes...

Here is part two of my conversation with Fred Ridley, Chairman of the Augusta National Golf Club. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to part one yet, stop and do that first. It’s not easy to preserve the incredible tradition of a place like Augusta National while also making sure you’re moving into the future with new ideas. That tension between tradition and new ideas is something we can proba...

Today’s guest is Fred Ridley, Chairman of Augusta National Golf Club, and the man behind the Masters. Fred has so much love and respect for the game of golf, and he’s quite a player himself – he won the 1975 US Amateur and competed in a few Masters tournaments. But after a successful career as a commercial lawyer and overseeing the Masters Championship Committee for ten years, Fred took over as Ch...

Today’s guest is Kara Goldin, the CEO and Founder of Hint Water, which is the leading brand for unsweetened flavored water.  It may surprise you to learn that Kara founded this company having no experience at all in the beverage industry.  It all started when she wanted to swap her diet soda for water, but she found drinking plain water too boring. So she created a whole new product category that’...

Today’s guest is Jesse Cole, the Founder of Fans First Entertainment & Owner of Savannah Bananas. He’s the one-of-a-kind innovator behind the incredible (and unlikely) popularity of this small Coastal Plain League baseball team. That’s because the sell-out crowds at a Savannah Bananas game aren’t really there for the baseball. They’re there for the dancing grandmas and conga lines and – get this –...

Today’s guest is Joey Zwillinger, Co-Founder of Allbirds, the world’s most comfortable shoe according to Time Magazine. His company is growing by leaps and bounds, and they’ve pioneered a truly sustainable shoe that people really love. But all of it almost never happened. Fortunately, a few years ago, Joey had the courage to ask himself one really powerful question. And when he did, he got a healt...

Today’s guest is Niren Chaudhary, CEO of Panera. Have you ever been absolutely overwhelmed by a challenge? Maybe it was a crisis … or a huge turnaround effort … or just a really complex problem you had to fix? Those are the moments that define us as leaders. And Niren Chaudhary can teach us so much about how to turn those challenging moments into defining wins. When he took over at Panera in 2019,...

Today, you’ll see that business wisdom and leadership insight can come from ANY age – because our guest for this episode is 15-year-old Mikaila Ulmer, the Founder and CEO of Me and the Bees Lemonade. Mikaila turned the lemonade stand she started as a four-year-old into a nationally distributed brand that has sold 2 million bottles of honey lemonade and is backed by Shark Tank investor Daymond John...

Today’s guest is Marvin Ellison, CEO of Lowe’s. Have you ever taken over in a position after the previous person left under bad circumstances?  If you have, then you know – those are some of the toughest situations to walk into. Marvin is amazing for a lot of reasons … but check this out: in EVERY new role during his 25-year career, he has taken over for someone who’s been fired or forced out. Now...