Latest Interviews
Showing 6031–6045 of 6,110 interview transcripts.
- Goldman Sachs23 min
Ray Kelly, Former NYPD Commissioner: Talks at GS Session Highlights
Former NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly, the first officer to rise from a cadet to the agency's top leadership, details his tenure's establishment of the first municipal counterterrorism bureau and the surveillance of major events like the 2010 Times Square bombing attempt. Kelly critiques a 2011 ruling on racial profiling as evidentiary flawed and warns that current oversight measures and the refusal to appeal could shift policing from proactive crime prevention to reactive responses, a strategy he links to a reduction of 9,300 murders over two decades. With ISIS cited as an escalating global threat, Kelly advocates for the continued use of data-driven security initiatives like the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative while balancing privacy concerns through automatic data deletion protocols.
- Goldman Sachs12 min
Linda Rottenberg, Endeavor CEO: Talks at GS Session Highlights
Endeavor is a nonprofit organization that rigorously selects approximately 1,000 high-impact entrepreneurs from 40,000 candidates across 22 countries to accelerate companies in the scale-up phase. By providing mentorship, networks, and capital to founders like Wences Casares, the organization has helped its portfolio generate $7 billion in revenue and create 400,000 jobs. Co-founder Linda Rotenberg champions a philosophy that views calculated risk-taking as a necessary economic safety net, aiming to shift the global workforce mindset from fear to confident execution.
- Goldman Sachs17 min
Daniella Vitale, Barneys New York COO: Talks at GS Session Highlights
Led by COO Daniela Finkelstein since 2010, Barneys New York executed a strategic pivot that transformed a struggling retailer into a digitally integrated luxury destination by replacing legacy practices with "The Window" editorial platform and omnichannel tools like iPads and mobile POS systems. The company successfully modernized its operations through high-aesthetic technology partnerships, such as the Intel-backed "Mika" wearable, while simultaneously shifting its core philosophy toward hyper-personalized customer experiences to drive conversion and brand equity. This comprehensive overhaul prioritized design integrity over technological novelty and fostered a culture where internal collaboration directly fuels external storytelling and targeted luxury engagement.
- Goldman Sachs15 min
Dr. Cristián Samper, President & CEO of the WCS: Talks at GS Session Highlights
Cristián Samper, Dr. Christian Sampere, Stephen
Dr. Christian Sampere, CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society, leads a global conservation effort spanning 65 countries by leveraging public-private partnerships and carbon credit deals to fund community-based protection of charismatic species. This strategy has yielded significant results, such as halting Amazon deforestation through international payments and rebuilding New York's Ocean Wonders aquarium with a $250 million resilience investment following Hurricane Sandy. By combining scientific data on human footprints with sustainable development goals, the organization balances ecological preservation with economic incentives to secure large species populations in critical habitats.
- Goldman Sachs13 min
Tory Burch, Founder and CEO of Tory Burch LLC: Talks at GS Session Highlights
Tory Burch has scaled her brand from a kitchen-table startup to a billion-dollar enterprise operating 136 global stores while driving a five-year expansion strategy targeting Paris, Milan, and Shanghai alongside region-specific product development. Complementing this commercial growth, the Tory Burch Foundation leverages the 10,000 Women Initiative to provide female entrepreneurs with capital, management education, and mentorship, a mission Burch advocates for on the President's Council on Entrepreneurship. This dual focus on aggressive international market penetration and social responsibility has strengthened employee retention and consumer engagement while establishing the brand as a leader in female empowerment.
- Milken Institute1h 13m
MI Forum: Hall of Mirrors
Barry Eichengreen, Michael Hiltzik, Skip Reimer
Economist Barry Eichengreen joined Michael Hiltzik at the Milken Institute's January 2015 forum to analyze historical parallels between the Great Depression and the 2008 financial crisis in a discussion of his book *Hall of Mirrors*. Eichengreen argued that the Euro's structural flaws and the Federal Reserve's past policy errors, including the Lehman Brothers failure, created systemic vulnerabilities that Keynesian fiscal intervention successfully averted during previous depressions. The session concluded with warnings that prioritizing short-term stability over long-term structural reform risks precipitating a future financial collapse within the next eighty years.
- Lex Fridman1h 0m
Jimmy Pedro: Judo | Take It Uneasy Podcast
Jimmy Pedro, Big Jim Pedro Sr, Travis Stevens, Lex
U.S. judoka Pedro Pedro leverages his four-Olympic experience, including two bronze medals, to build a rigorous elite training program at his eponymous center that has produced world champions like Kayla Harrison and Travis Stevens. Drawing on a childhood shaped by his father's demanding coaching philosophy, Pedro now contrasts that approach with a balanced parenting style while advocating for systemic funding reforms to address the decline of American judo participation. His methodology integrates specialized periodization, mental visualization, and technical mastery to sustain athlete longevity despite significant injuries and shifting international rules.
- Goldman Sachs30 min
Admiral William McRaven: Talks at GS Session Highlights
William McRaven, Admiral William McRaven, Jack
In this strategic briefing, the speaker analyzes the evolution of ISIS from Al-Qaeda in Iraq, warning that unchecked regional instability could cascade to threaten U.S. allies like Jordan and necessitates a coalition strategy involving ground advisors rather than airstrikes alone. Drawing on personal command history of high-stakes missions including the raid on Osama bin Laden, the former three-star admiral emphasizes the importance of political consistency, detailed operational planning, and the human reality of special operations families supported by the SEAL Foundation. The presentation concludes with a call for long-term nation-building in Iraq and sustained global intervention to prevent spillover instability from Africa, underscoring the moral and strategic necessity of addressing conflicts in Mali, Somalia, and Nigeria.
- Goldman Sachs10 min
Lauren Bush Lauren, founder & CEO of FEED Projects: Talks at GS Session Highlights
Founded by a former college student inspired by global hunger statistics, the for-profit enterprise Feed utilizes a consumer goods model to fund meals for both international school feeding programs and domestic food banks. The organization’s flagship Feed Supper initiative and strategic partnerships with groups like the UN World Food Program aim to distribute 100 million meals by its tenth anniversary, with a focus on using nutrition to improve school attendance for girls in the world's poorest countries. Ultimately, the venture operates under the vision of achieving global food security so thoroughly that it can rebrand as "Fed" and dissolve its own operations.
- Goldman Sachs39 min
Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan and Lloyd Blankfein: Talks at GS Session Highlights
Timothy Dolan, Lloyd Blankfein, Cardinal Timothy Dolan
Archdiocese of New York Archbishop Cardinal Timothy Dolan leads a strategic restructuring that closes 55 parishes and 59 schools to redirect $392 million toward active social services while managing a linguistically diverse flock across three boroughs. Facing tensions between traditional doctrine on marriage and modern pastoral needs, Dolan balances doctrinal integrity with Pope Francis's inclusive approach to ensure the church remains spiritually vibrant despite demographic shifts. Concurrently, he champions religious freedom against government mandates and establishes new communication offices to engage younger generations, aiming to strengthen faith communities by prioritizing dynamic ministry over maintaining vacant facilities.
- Goldman Sachs22 min
Barrister and Philanthropist Cherie Blair with GS' Dina Habib Powell: Talks at GS Session Highlights
Cherie Blair, Dina Habib Powell, Dena Powell
Former barrister Cherie Blair discusses her transition from a thirty-six-year partnership with Prime Minister Tony Blair to leading her own international law firm while detailing her foundation's work in fostering female economic empowerment across developing nations. By leveraging mobile technology to support small-scale entrepreneurs in countries like India and Nigeria, the organization aims to bridge the global gender gap in economic participation, which she argues is essential for GDP growth and national stability. Blair contrasts historical legal barriers she faced, such as systemic discrimination during her pupillage, with modern evidence that women reinvest 90% of resources into their communities, positioning financial independence as a critical smart business imperative.
- Y Combinator31 min
Andrew Mason at Startup School SV 2014
Launched by Eric Lefkofsky, Groupon evolved from the struggling The Point platform into the world's fastest-growing company after achieving rapid product-market fit with its daily deal model. Despite facing intense global competition and receiving lucrative acquisition offers from Yahoo and Google, the board rejected these opportunities to prioritize independent growth, a strategic decision that Lefkofsky later viewed as superior to the short-term pressures of the company's subsequent IPO. Reflecting on these experiences, Lefkofsky now applies a disciplined, values-first operational framework to his new venture, Detour, emphasizing long-term conviction over immediate data-driven compromises.
- Y Combinator27 min
Kevin Systrom at Startup School SV 2014
Stanford student Kevin Systrom leveraged a bias towards action to pivot his failed location app, Burbn, into Instagram after identifying a core user need for photo filtering during a photography course in Florence. This strategic shift to a minimalist mobile photography platform, combined with a community-first hiring philosophy and a global time-zone launch strategy, enabled the service to reach massive scale within days despite early infrastructure limits. Systrom's journey highlights a successful transition from building a generic marketplace to cultivating a defensible creator ecosystem that prioritizes user experience over immediate monetization.
- Y Combinator29 min
Reid Hoffman at Startup School SV 2014
Reid Hoffman recounts the strategic origins of LinkedIn, detailing how the concept emerged from a 2000 offsite with PayPal co-founders to address capital constraints and how the platform achieved critical mass by leveraging address book integration to bypass early growth limitations. He contrasts common Silicon Valley myths with historical data, arguing that economic downturns foster superior company formation while warning against raising excessive capital that dilutes operational focus. Furthermore, Hoffman analyzes his investment philosophies through case studies of Facebook, Zynga, and Bitcoin, emphasizing the necessity of balancing conviction with rigorous self-audits to navigate markets where smart peers initially dismiss contrarian visions.
- Y Combinator34 min
Ron Conway at Startup School SV 2014
Venture capitalist Ron Conway outlines a portfolio strategy at SV Angel that prioritizes investing in entrepreneurs with innate drive and deep personal conviction over specific product ideas, noting that successful founders often exhibit a "vocation" mindset. The firm screens thousands of candidates for co-founder dynamics and product focus while rejecting those who prioritize networking or lack honesty about traction, accepting a high failure rate to capture major market wins. Through a team-based approach evolving over two decades, SV Angel leverages young deal-makers and senior advisors to guide founders who solve personal problems with relentless persistence.