Jean Case: Author, "Be Fearless"

Gene Case, CEO of the Case Foundation and Chairman of the National Geographic Society, credits her trajectory to early experiences:

• Raised by a single mother in Normal, Illinois, and later South Florida, she attended a private school on scholarship while navigating a working-class background.
• A high school internship with then-mayor (and future Congressman) Clay Shaw in South Florida provided life-changing mentorship that shaped her initial desire to become a lawyer.
• After a 1980s Reagan-appointed role in Washington DC failed due to budget issues preventing her return, she pivoted to the tech sector, joining the nation's first pure-play online service.

Case's career in the early internet sector was defined by strategic partnerships and navigating existential threats:

• At GE, she built the "Genie" online service, an advanced platform in an era when only 3% of the population was online for an average of one hour per week.
• After joining AOL's predecessor, Quantum Computer Services, the company faced an existential crisis when Apple terminated a proprietary "Apple Link" partnership.
• Case secured a $3 million "divorce settlement" from Apple, which funded the pivot to building the standalone America Online (AOL) brand.
• Case championed a "coopetition" strategy with competitors, notably Microsoft and Prodigy (a CBS/IBM joint venture):
  • The Microsoft deal made AOL the default operating system and search engine, while Microsoft included AOL on all new PCs.
  • The Prodigy deal transformed a $1 billion competitor into AOL's largest source of customers through a joint advertising arrangement.
• AOL's growth accelerated rapidly after rebranding: reaching 1 million customers in 1995 (a decade of growth) and 5 million customers by 1996 (within 10 months).
• Case left AOL in the late 1990s, shortly before its unsuccessful merger with Time Warner.

The Case Foundation, co-founded by Case and Steve Case in 1997, operates with an entrepreneurial, risk-tolerant approach distinct from traditional philanthropy:

• The Foundation aims to fund "people and ideas that can change the world," focusing on collaboration and innovation in daunting social challenges.
• Case critiques the philanthropic sector for prioritizing the protection of endowments over the "radical" risk-taking seen in tech entrepreneurship.

Case identifies a concerning consolidation of the US tech ecosystem and a decline in venture capital diversity:

• The number of new startups is at a 30-year low.
• 75% of US venture capital flows to only three states: California, New York, and Massachusetts; Florida, the third-largest state, received only 2%.
• Venture capital diversity is critically low: in the last year, only 2% of VC went to firms led by women, and less than 1% went to African-American founders.
• Case argues that "talent is universal, but opportunity is not," warning that capital consolidation limits economic vibrancy.

The book Be Fearless outlines five principles derived from research on change-makers and Case's career experiences:

• Make a big bet: Avoid settling for incremental change; aim for historical impact.
• Be bold: Accept that risk-taking is inherent to doing new things and pushing boundaries.
• Make failure matter: Treat failure as a learning mechanism (referencing Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein) by analyzing errors to refine ideas rather than abandoning them.
• Reach beyond your bubble: Actively seek diverse partnerships and perspectives to broaden vision and cover personal blind spots.
• Let urgency conquer fear: Utilize the "fierce urgency of now" to drive transformative change and move individuals out of their comfort zones.

Current leadership initiatives at the National Geographic Society focus on digital transformation and risk management:

• The organization recently surpassed 100 million Instagram users and won an Oscar for the documentary Free Solo.
• Chairman Case emphasizes the institution's 130+ year history of risk-taking and its need to "disrupt ourselves so that we are not disrupted by others."
• The Society defines fearlessness not as the absence of fear, but as the ability to push past it to explore the unknown.