Latest Interviews
Showing 496–510 of 597 interview transcripts.
Clear all filters- Goldman Sachs20 min
Robert Rowland Smith: Exploring "What It Means to be Human"
Robert Rowland Smith, Dennis Coleman
Former Oxford fellow Robert Roland Smith explores the essence of humanity in his book *Autobiophilosophy* by contrasting transient data-driven identities with deep human experiences like fate, generational time, and group belonging. Smith critiques how artificial intelligence and social media fragment personal perspective, arguing instead that true existence requires navigating the tension between global complexity and manageable tribal limits defined by Dunbar's Number. Through autobiographical anecdotes ranging from personal failure to geopolitical analysis, the work posits that genuine mindfulness and humility are essential for resisting the reduction of individuals to mere data subjects in a transactional society.
- Goldman Sachs20 min
Dana Canedy: The Pulitzer Prizes and the Power of Storytelling
Dana Canedy, Sarah Marie Martin
Dana Kennedy, the first person of color to lead the Pulitzer Prizes and former New York Times partner, addresses critical shifts in journalism, including the industry's delayed progress on diversity and the transformative global impact of its MeToo reporting. She highlights the historic unanimous decision to award a Pulitzer to Kendrick Lamar as a pivotal moment for genre recognition while emphasizing the erosion of shared truth as the sector's most pressing modern challenge. Kennedy further connects these professional insights to her personal legacy as an author and producer, noting how her work adapting *Journal for Jordan* with Denzel Washington has inspired a broader movement among military fathers to document their stories for future generations.
- Goldman Sachs20 min
Ken Langone on Values, Culture and Founding The Home Depot
Following a Wall Street career marked by military service and the collapse of his first venture, Ken Langone co-founded Home Depot in 1974 with former J.C. Penney executives Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank, providing the crucial $2 million seed capital and strategic guidance that propelled the retailer to a $230 billion market capitalization. Langone attributes the company's return of $110 billion to shareholders to an "inverted triangle" management philosophy that empowers frontline employees to drive innovation, a cultural model he continues to advocate for at NYU Langone Medical Center. This approach balances strict ethical accountability with a deep commitment to respect and recognition, allowing individual initiative—such as the successful implementation of store-level display experiments—to flourish without fear of punishment.
- Goldman Sachs14 min
Deborah Jackson and Davida Herzl: Advancing the Future of Women Entrepreneurs
Deborah Jackson, Davida Herzl, Stephanie Cohen
Plum Alley Investments, founded by Deborah Jackson, targets Series A female-founded technology companies like Davida Herzl's Aclima by providing capital and strategic support to address the systemic capital gap for women in hard tech. This venture capital firm prioritizes ventures with validated products and societal impact, operating with an investment thesis that diverse leadership correlates with superior financial returns and global innovation. Through an active partnership model where members commit $1.5 million or more annually, Plum Alley aims to establish a replicable template proving that women-led investing and companies can achieve both massive market impact and exceptional profitability.
- Goldman Sachs15 min
Ken Griffin: How Talent and Technology Are Shaping the Markets
Citadel leverages a synergistic framework of fundamental, quantitative, and market-making strategies to manage approximately $30 billion, prioritizing human judgment augmented by robust technology over artificial intelligence for generating alpha. The firm sustains its competitive edge through a rigorous meritocratic culture that focuses on global talent acquisition and an 18-year pipeline for grooming associates into portfolio managers, while using advanced diagnostic tools to shift decision-making from defensive risk management to offensive positioning. This operational model, which emphasizes resource allocation and rapid infrastructure scaling, enabled the firm to navigate the 2008 crisis and maintain superlative performance despite a modest 52% hit rate in idiosyncratic stock picking.
- Goldman Sachs13 min
Dr. Paul Farmer: Reshaping the Global Health Community
Dr. Paul Farmer, Christina Minnis
Dr. Paul Farmer and co-founders established Partners in Health in 1987 based on a mission to build university teaching hospitals in resource-poor settings, differentiating the organization as an academic NGO focused on long-term capacity building over temporary relief. The network achieved critical global health milestones, including the mobilization during the Ebola crisis and the success of PEPFAR which saved millions of lives, while simultaneously demonstrating in Rwanda that community-based care could eliminate mother-to-child HIV transmission at rates surpassing U.S. standards. Farmer contrasts these outcomes with the U.S. healthcare system, arguing it functions as an illness care model lacking the integrated community support necessary to prevent patients from being lost to follow-up.
- Goldman Sachs18 min
U.S. Navy, Retired Admiral James Winnefeld, Jr.
James Winnefeld, Jr., James "Sandy" Winnefeld, Jr., Gary Giglio
Retired U.S. Navy Admiral James Winnefeld co-founded the organization SAFE following the heroin overdose death of his son, Jonathan, to address systemic failures in mental health care and pharmaceutical oversight that contributed to the nation's escalating opioid crisis. By citing CDC data that frames annual overdose fatalities as a catastrophic national security threat, Winnefeld advocates for immediate reforms including stricter prescription limits and the removal of stigma surrounding addiction treatment. The Admiral further extends this philosophy to global security, urging a complex diplomatic approach to North Korea while emphasizing that effective leadership requires holding individuals to high standards while providing essential support.
- Goldman Sachs7 min
Sara Blakely: Fireside Chat
Sara Blakely, Kathy Elsesser, John F.W. Rogers, Kevin McCarthy, Tyler Perry, Danny Meyer, Sarah Kauss, Wilbur L. Ross, Michael Bloomberg, Gina Raimondo, Rick Snyder, Marco Rubio, Lloyd Blankfein, Richard Branson, Warren Buffett
Sarah Blakley founded Spanx with $5,000 to solve the issue of visible panty lines for women wearing white pants, despite lacking formal business training or industry connections. After facing initial skepticism from manufacturers, she leveraged a childhood culture that rewarded failure to build a company culture centered on public error disclosure and challenging industry norms. Her strategy of deviating from standard practices enabled the creation of a footless pantyhose product that revolutionized the hosiery market and generated significant breakthroughs.
- Goldman Sachs15 min
Rep. Kevin McCarthy: Standing Up for Small Businesses
Kevin McCarthy, John F.W. Rogers, Tyler Perry, Danny Meyer, Sarah Kauss, Wilbur L. Ross, Sara Blakely, Michael Bloomberg, Gina Raimondo, Rick Snyder, Marco Rubio, Lloyd Blankfein, Richard Branson, Warren Buffett
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican with deep roots in the state's energy and agricultural sectors, outlines his journey from early entrepreneurial ventures to crafting bipartisan legislation like the Jobs Act. He argues that small businesses are the nation's primary job creators and urges owners to build direct, sustained relationships with lawmakers to overcome capital and training hurdles. Drawing on historical symbolism from the Gettysburg Address and Washington Crossing the Delaware, McCarthy concludes by calling for cross-party collaboration to address long-term challenges and forge a more perfect union.
- Goldman Sachs16 min
Boyan Slat: Combatting Plastic Pollution in the World’s Oceans
Founder and CEO Boyan Slat's organization is advancing a fleet of 60 passive, U-shaped floating barriers designed to remove 50% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch within five years by leveraging natural ocean currents rather than traditional active fishing methods. Following a rigorous development cycle marked by early prototype failures and a $40 million capital raise, the system has evolved from inflatable chambers to solid pipe structures and is currently undergoing assembly at a facility near San Francisco for a targeted July launch. This initiative addresses an annual economic cost of $13 billion and a threat to 800 marine species by simultaneously targeting legacy accumulation in the Pacific and intercepting the roughly 2 million tons of river-borne plastic entering the ocean each year.
- Goldman Sachs17 min
Daniel Schwartz: The Millennial CEO Changing the Fast Food Industry
Daniel Schwartz, Jennifer Coppola
Daniel Schwartz, CEO of Restaurant Brands International, leads Burger King, Tim Hortons, and Popeyes by applying 3G Capital’s meritocratic ownership model to revitalize operations and accelerate young leadership. This strategy includes mandatory frontline shifts for executives, streamlined menus to boost profitability, and equity incentives that replace tenure-based promotion with performance-driven advancement. Under Schwartz’s direction, the parent company has shifted its product focus toward authentic ingredients while leveraging a generational mindset to drive technological self-disruption across the global foodservice sector.
- Goldman Sachs17 min
Deborah DiSanzo: Solving the World’s Health Problems of the Future
Deborah DiSanzo, Christina Minnis
Former healthcare executive Deborah DeSanza leads IBM Watson Health's initiative to integrate artificial intelligence and cloud computing with clinical expertise, achieving tangible results such as reducing breast cancer trial matching times by 75% at the Mayo Clinic and accelerating drug discovery from 18 months to under 12 weeks. By partnering with major industry consortia to aggregate millions of patient records, the organization aims to alleviate physician burnout caused by electronic health record burdens while lowering costs through real-world evidence generation. Under the strategic direction of IBM Chairman Ginni Rometty, this approach shifts the technology firm from legacy hardware to a dominant position in AI-driven healthcare solutions that prioritize patient data ownership and life-saving outcomes.
- Goldman Sachs17 min
John Avlon: Covering the Intersection of Politics and Power
Former speechwriter and *Daily Beast* Editor-in-Chief John Avlon applies a legacy of 9/11-era resilience and a nonpartisan but morally accountable framework to steer the publication's growth to 1.1 million daily readers while targeting powerful bullies and bigots. He warns that contemporary journalism must actively counter hyper-partisanship and misinformation, drawing on George Washington's Farewell Address to advocate for national unity and fiscal responsibility amidst the challenges of the current political climate. Avlon maintains that holding power accountable requires a clear mission to follow facts regardless of political preference, a principle that guided the newsroom's diverse hiring strategy and its coverage of high-stakes investigations like the Mueller probe.
- Goldman Sachs15 min
Talks at GS - Arianna Huffington: Thriving in the “Attention Economy”
Entrepreneur and author Arianna Huffington discusses her transition from founding The Huffington Post to establishing Thrive Global, driven by her personal burnout and a mission to debunk the myth that success requires sacrificing well-being. Highlighting the dangers of the attention economy and the toxic Silicon Valley "brilliant jerk" culture, she details her tenure on the Uber board where she enforced strict accountability measures, leading to leadership changes and a zero-tolerance policy for unprofessional behavior. Ultimately, Huffington advocates for systemic shifts in how organizations value sleep, creativity, and human dignity over short-term metrics and relentless productivity.
- Goldman Sachs18 min
Talks at GS – Dara Khosrowshahi: Uber’s Roadmap to the Future
Dara Khosrowshahi joined Uber to stabilize a crisis-ridden company and transform it into the world's largest transportation provider by leveraging a marketplace strategy across rides, food delivery, and micromobility. Strategic moves including the SoftBank investment, a pivotal settlement with Waymo, and leadership hires like Tony West have secured capital, resolved governance conflicts, and restored operational focus. The company now aims to integrate multimodal transport and cover 80% of the global population by combining direct operations with equity stakes in key regional markets.