Wisdom From The Top with Guy Raz

When the COO of Chase Bank told Jacqueline Novogratz that she had the potential for a high level career at Chase, she knew she had to quit her job. She continued to use the skills she learned from investment banking, and used them to change the way the world sees capitalism and philanthropy. Today Acumen has delivered more than 100 million dollars in loans, grants, and investments to projects and...

Black Entertainment Television launched in 1980--at a time when MTV didn't play Hip hop or "urban music. Not only did BET fill a vital programming void, it was the first Black-owned business traded on the New York Stock Exchange, and it helped make the first Black Billionaire in the US (Bob Johnson). Debra Lee, a young Harvard-educated lawyer drawn to the company’s mission, was recruited by Johnso...

Growing up in a small town in India, Leena Nair overheard her mother say it was too bad Leena was born a girl, because it meant her smarts and talents would go to waste. But Nair went on to join Hindustan Unilever, becoming the first female manager to work on a factory floor, the first woman to serve on the management committee, and the youngest-ever executive director. She has since gone on to th...

Shellye Archambeau knew as a teenager she wanted to grow up and become a CEO. But when Shellye started as an undergraduate at the Wharton School of Business in 1980, there were just two female CEOs of large corporations, and none of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies were Black. Despite the lack of representation, Shellye became the first Black woman to lead a division of IBM overseas. She broke ba...

When a mentor, and now friend, told Kenneth Chenault during a hiring process at American Express that he was "looking for catalytic agents of change," it struck a deep chord--because it's exactly what Chenault wanted to be. Kenneth Chenault learned early on to only worry about the things he could control; this helped him when life—and business at American Express—threw unpredictable events his way...

Jason Fried, the CEO and co-founder of 37signals (maker of Basecamp) doesn’t want you to come to meetings. He insists that you work no more than 40 hours a week; 36 in the summer. He doesn’t really want you coming to the office either…and this approach has helped make Basecamp hugely successful. In this episode, Fried describes how he’s built an institution by bucking a lot of conventional wisdom....

On taking what you learn shaking up one industry and applying it to an entirely different industry: Mark King has a reputation for turning businesses around by moving fast on innovative, and sometimes expensive, endeavors. Before his current tenure as CEO of Taco Bell, Mark served as president for Adidas’ long-stagnant North American division, reinvigorating the brand with major athletic sponsorsh...

Ken Coleman calls himself “America’s Career Coach.” In his syndicated call-in show, and in books like The Proximity Principle and One Question , Coleman helps people think about what kind of work they would find meaningful, and how they can connect with people that will help get them into that work. Coleman came about the knowledge he imparts honestly: he spent about a decade working different job...

Joe Keohane is a longtime journalist and editor who believes that talking to strangers can not only help people feel happier and more empathetic, but can actually make the world a better place. In his first book, The Power of Strangers: The Benefits of Connecting In A Suspicious World , Joe talks to psychologists, anthropologists and plenty of strangers to prove it. In this encore episode, Guy and...

David Epstein is a science writer and investigative reporter. His articles have spanned a wide range of topics, from crime and violence, to athletes using steroids, to the intersection of science and the Olympics. And, he’s the author of the books The Sports Gene and Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World . But, before all of that, David studied geology and ran on Columbia Universit...

What does it take for a person to change? BJ Fogg, founder of Stanford’s Behavior Design Lab, says the key to behavior change isn’t what we’ve always been taught. In Tiny Habits: The Small Changes that Change Everything Fogg draws upon true experiments--from his lab and his life--to outline a system anyone can use to create good habits or unravel the bad. In this episode, originally published in 2...

Stacey Vanek Smith has reported on business and the economy for over 15 years now, first for public radio’s “Marketplace,” and as the host of Planet Money’s daily podcast “The Indicator.” Over that time, she’s seen the same barriers blocking advancement for women in the workplace again and again. Recently, she’s started to recognize that a lot of tools to move past those barriers can be found in t...

Throughout his life, Chad Sanders found himself having to navigate white culture; at school, in the tech industry, and eventually in his career in entertainment. He learned to cope with the frustration of having to do that by writing, and he wrote his first screenplay at a cafe just across the street from Spike Lee’s studio in Brooklyn—where he would run into Spike himself. Chad would come to real...

When Robin Ganzert joined American Humane as it’s new president and CEO, she thought she was helming one of the oldest and best known animal welfare organizations in the US. What she didn’t know was that American Humane was $12.2 million dollars in debt following the 2009 financial crisis. By running the non-profit more like a for-profit, Robin fixed American Humane’s finances while changing its w...

When Ken Hicks became CEO of Foot Locker in 2009 the company didn’t have a leg to stand on: the economy was in a recession, sales were down almost a billion dollars, and the brand was widely expected to collapse along with indoor shopping malls themselves. How Hicks used a commitment to better storytelling to help Foot Locker get back on the right foot. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/priv...

Josh Silverman built Evite and turned around eBay. Then, in 2017, Etsy came calling. The online marketplace for creative goods was in deep trouble. Growth had plateaued and the company was on the verge of being sold. Josh stepped in as CEO and got the team focused on one simple metric that made all the difference. Originally published in 2020. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and Ca...

Since 1992, Kim Scott has worked in almost all levels of management—from a diamond business in Moscow to startups in the Silicon Valley to leading teams at Google. Along the way, she developed a management philosophy called “radical candor” that calls for “caring personally while challenging directly.” Kim has since provided CEO coaching at Dropbox, Qualtrics, and Twitter and is the author of seve...

Over a career spanning four decades, Roger Martin has been a management consultant, an influential  business strategy thinker and author, as well as the Dean of the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto. He advises CEOs of global companies such as Ford, Proctor & Gamble, and Lego. He is well known for developing and exploring the concept of “integrative thinking” in management p...

When Peter Cuneo joined Marvel as CEO in 1999, it was a struggling publishing house teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Ten years later, Disney bought Marvel for $4.5 billion. Cuneo tells his unlikely origin story and how he became the "turnaround superhero." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In 2001, Campbell's Soup was in freefall: the company's value had halved and employee engagement was at an all-time low. Doug Conant knew he could salvage the iconic company, but first, things were going to have to get worse. How he used self-taught leadership, diversity, and inclusion to energize his employees and save Campbell's. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Pri...

Back in the 1980s, Stephen R. Covey anticipated a new kind of leadership with his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People . It wasn't the table-pounding, charismatic kind of leadership, but an empathetic one, which prioritized listening and collaboration. Guy speaks with Covey's son Stephen M.R. Covey, who has played a central role in spreading his father's teachings around the world, and ha...

Carl Bass, a renegade and reluctant executive, took the helm at Autodesk and steered the company out of the global economic crisis. At one point, he was so sure it would fail that he was desperate to find a buyer. Instead, he put his own money at risk to try a whole new business model. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not...

Jeremy Zimmer was not supposed to be heading one of the "big four" talent agencies in Hollywood. As a child, he struggled in school and eventually dropped out of college to become a parking lot hustler, making money running schemes as a valet and spending nights partying. But that all stopped suddenly one day when he was violently attacked on the job. When he got back on his feet, he found new foc...

Terry Lundgren, former CEO of Neiman Marcus and Macy's, has been instrumental in shaping the American retail landscape, but the road to bringing two notoriously competitive retail giants together wasn't easy. How he merged famous department rivals, double-downed on retail, and turned Macy's into the first nationwide department store in the United States. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/pri...

How a New Orleans native turned around a cruise company sinking from a public relations disaster... to one of the most valuable brands in its industry. When Arnold Donald took over Carnival Corporation and the nine cruise lines it operates, one of the biggest things he did was build a new leadership team. Seven of the cruise lines got new heads, including more women and minorities. He says that "d...