Leadership Next

BILL CEO and founder René Lacerte is a fourth-generation entrepreneur. In 2009 he sold his first company PayCycle, to Intuit. He shares with Michal how being in a family of entrepreneurs has shaped him as a founder and a leader. He also talks about the unique responsibilities a CEO has versus a founder.  He gives advice to future founders about how to navigate potential challenges, especially when...

Seifi Ghasemi began his career in energy by attending a school in the middle of a refinery in Iran. Now, at nearly 80 years old, the Air Products CEO believes hydrogen is the only option for fighting the effects of climate change. “There is no other source of energy,” he says. He discusses with Alan and Michal why he believes Air Products has a responsibility to push markets toward clean energy so...

As CEO of the energy giant, Woods is leading the third largest U.S. company through the energy transition. While Exxon Mobil is investing in low-carbon solutions like hydrogen and carbon capture, he is not yet convinced the world as a whole has what it takes to achieve its decarbonization goals. He discusses in depth with Alan and Michal the roadblocks to net zero; the company’s challenges with ac...

G-P, founded by CEO Nicole Sahin, is an AI-driven global employment platform that enables companies to hire anyone anywhere. Sahin, who came up with the idea for G-P while living in the mountains of Guatemala, shares how her passion for anthropology led her to start the company. She chats with Alan and Michal about emerging talent markets; how AI empowers G-P to onboard workers in 187+ countries;...

Narrative attacks can be generated from an actual event that is then exploited by bad actors or can be completely fabricated using advanced technology like generative AI. Blackbird’s goal is to fight disinformation and misinformation and sharpen the line between truth and lies. Blackbird. AI cofounder and CEO Wasim Khaled discusses a number of topics with host Alan Murray, including the recent att...

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 foundatio...

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’...

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 A...

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...

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...

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 F...

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 comp...

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...

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 Hieroni...

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...

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 confere...

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...

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...

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...

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 t...

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 ye...

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...

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...

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...

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...