Stumbling Blocks: How Great Leaders Are Made

Kelli Arena spent her career at CNN telling the public what powerful people would rather keep quiet. She covered the Justice Department, won an Emmy, and reported the Moussaoui trial, the only 9/11 case tried in an American civilian courtroom. After Kelli left journalism, she went into another form of public service, serving as Chief of Communications for the National Security Agency, spending eig...

Shalene Gupta, staff editor for Fast Company's Work Life and Leadership section, interviewed 35 middle managers at some of the biggest companies in the world for her piece "The Middle Manager's AI Survival Guide." What she found is that the contradictory headlines about AI at work aren't actually contradictory. There are two different worlds, and which one you're working in makes a world of differ...

Dana Perino's new book is called Purple State. It's a political romance novel set in a gerrymandered Wisconsin district, about three young women who discover that love and friendship don't stop at party lines. Coming from the 26th White House Press Secretary and co-host of The Five on Fox News (the most-watched show on cable news!), it's a book worth paying attention to. Especially as we find ours...

My parents were visiting me the day I interviewed Sue Gordon, former Deputy Director of National Intelligence. So they joined me in the Treehouse Studio to say a quick hello to her. Here's their conversation.

Sue Gordon once oversaw 100,000 women and men of the U.S. intelligence community as Deputy Director of National Intelligence, the number two role in American spycraft. She briefed Presidents Reagan, HW Bush, Clinton, W Bush, Obama, and Trump. She managed a $100 billion budget. And in August 2019, she handed Vice President Pence her resignation letter with a handwritten note: "I offer this letter a...

A few times during my two-part interview with Judge and Rebecca Gonzales, they turned the tables on me. They listened. And they drew three stories out of me that I've rarely shared. The first is a story that never made it into the main episodes: the Oval Office advice I didn't want that... changed my life. The second is about what happens when your Quaker mother and your Jewish father sit down tog...

Part 2 of this exclusive conversation with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his wife Rebecca. It is a conversation about love, political betrayal, faith, and what it means to keep going when the wilderness feels endless. Judge Gonzales describes the political firestorm that ended his time as the nation's top law enforcement officer. What followed were years Rebecca calls "the wilderness." The...

Excerpts from Attorney General Gonzales and Rebecca Gonzales's interview with Stumbling Blocks on ICE Actions, Immigration, and the Epstein Files Excerpted Quotes from Attorney General Gonzales On ICE Actions and Immigration Based on what I've observed… it seems like we're going through an unprecedented, dangerous time. I worry about what's going on in our country, and I think a lot of Americans a...

EXCLUSIVE: This is a story two decades in the making. For the first time since leaving office 19 years ago, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his wife Rebecca Gonzales sat down together for an interview. In Part 1, the Attorney General and Rebecca speak candidly about ICE, immigration, and the Justice Department's handling of the Epstein files. They talk about Al's rise from a two-bedroom hous...

Conor Grennan is CEO of AI Mindset and until recently, Chief AI Architect at NYU Stern School of Business. He's trained teams at Google, NASA, Microsoft, JP Morgan, and many more. He's a New York Times bestselling author, a MasterClass Instructor, co-host of the AI Applied podcast, and a recipient of the Dalai Lama's Unsung Hero of Compassion Award. Conor has become one of the most sought-after sp...

In this episode, I welcome Rear Admiral Tim Ziemer, the former chief of the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) and former CEO of World Relief. Admiral Ziemer explains how and why he saved 12 million people from death by malaria, and prevented another 2 billion cases of the disease. He reflects on a life of disciplined service bookended by tragedy, from the 1968 attack in Vietnam that killed his...

A conversation with former Reuters Canada Bureau Chief Steve Scherer on job displacement, the gig economy, and America’s identity crisis. Steve was once a high-level journalist, a Reuters Bureau Chief for Canada, who interviewed world leaders like Justin Trudeau and covered global financial markets. Then, a budget cut cost him his job, his work visa, and forced him to move his family out of Canada...

Brent Beshore made his first million at 28. Visited the White House. Got ranked 28th on the Inc. 500. Got everything he wanted. And realized he had summited the wrong mountain. In this raw conversation, Brent—CEO of Permanent Equity, a private equity firm that owns 16 companies generating $400M in revenue with zero debt—goes places most CEOs do not. He talks about weighing 252 pounds while everyth...

In this episode, I sit down with Linda Rutherford , former Chief Administration Officer of Southwest Airlines for the second half of our conversation. Linda, described as the "keeper of Southwest's corporate soul," provides a rare, behind-the-scenes look at how one of the world’s most iconic brands survived two of the most disruptive forces in its 50-year history: Winter Storm Elliott and the host...

In this episode, Linda Rutherford, the former Chief Administration Officer at Southwest Airlines, shares insights into the secret sauce that makes Southwest the 'LUV airline.' She discusses the legacy left by the airline's founding CEO, Herb Kelleher, and president, Colleen Barrett, as well as her role as a growth catalyst for the airline. Linda also reflects on her early life, resilience, and the...

When Oscar Munoz stepped in as CEO of United Airlines, he didn't head for the executive suite. He headed for a Houston hangar at 2:00 AM to jump on a picnic table and listen to 500 angry aircraft mechanics. In part two of this deep-dive conversation, Oscar reveals why he threw out the "business school rule book" to save an airline with a broken spirit. We discuss: The Power of the Listening Tour:...

The viral video that changed aviation—and the CEO who broke the rules to fix it. On April 9, 2017, United Airlines faced the world’s first truly global viral crisis when a passenger, Dr. David Dao, was forcibly dragged off a flight in Chicago. The internet exploded, calls for resignation mounted, and the airline’s initial response—calling the incident a "re-accommodation"—only poured gas on the fi...

If your team is disengaged, cynical, or burnt out—Doug Conant has been there before. As CEO of Campbell's Soup, he inherited a culture that consultants called "Swamp Water." But by putting honoring people at the center of his leadership dashboard, Doug turned the company around, both in terms of employee engagement and also in terms of financial performance. In this episode, the former CEO of Camp...

Pete shares why he decided to tell the world his secret, what he did after finding what broke his heart, and what he'll do with the rest of his life after selling his company, AP Emissions Technology, to Berkshire Hathaway. He discusses how the Filotimo Foundation serves people with Cystic Fibrosis, what he would say to his 19 year old self, and giving back more than the disease will take Links: D...

Pete shares his remarkable journey from being diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, to hiding the disease as a CEO, to selling to Warren Buffett, to finding what broke his heart and refusing to look away. He discusses his family's immigration story, the evolution of their business, the challenges he faced growing up with a chronic illness, and the time his mom threatened to break a social worker's legs....

In this conversation, Sandra Sucher, a professor at Harvard Business School and expert on trust, shares her unique journey from growing up in Detroit to teaching at Harvard. She discusses the importance of apologies in repairing trust, the nuances of moral leadership, and the challenges of navigating career paths. Through personal anecdotes and research-driven insights, Sandra emphasizes the signi...

We’ve all seen the White House from the outside. But what's it really like on the inside? Especially the East Wing? Mark Farkas knows. As the producer of the first-ever HD documentary on the White House, he spent 9 months filming in rooms most people will never see. The "stumbling block" was navigating the immense security and hidden protocols of the most secure building on Earth. Mark gives us an...

What does it take to lead when the stumbling block is a Category 5 hurricane, a massive earthquake, or two global wars? Welcome to a masterclass in crisis leadership. Vice Admiral Mark Harnitchek (Retired) is one of the few people on Earth who truly knows. He served on nuclear-armed submarines, commanded the $46 billion Defense Logistics Agency, and was the military's "boots on the ground" leader...

What's the one thing that will destroy a team, a company, or a career faster than anything else? According to Charlie Green, creator of the Trust Equation, the answer is simple: self-orientation . It’s the single biggest "stumbling block" to effective leadership. In this episode, Charlie joins Jonathan to dismantle the idea that "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it." He makes a powerful c...