View From The Top
Prominent leaders from around the world join MBA students for conversations on effective leadership, core values, and lessons learned throughout their careers. View From The Top, the podcast, is based on the dean’s speaker series at Stanford Graduate School of Business.
How Marc Stad Obtained the Unobtainable
More often than not, Marc Stad, MBA ’08, has succeeded in “obtaining the unobtainable.” A longshot internship resulted in a successful million dollar investment. After 25 private equity firms turned him down, he showed up at TPG on his lunch break and got a job. While racing to win a massive Uber deal, he sent a one line-email to Warren Buffett’s assistant, Deb. Two minutes later, Buffett called, and eventually joined the bid. “You can follow the rules or you can come up with your own rules,” Stad says, in a View From The Top conversation with Grant Stierwalt, MBA ’27, recorded live...
Tekedra Mawakana Wants to Build the ‘World’s Most Trusted Driver’
When Tekedra Mawakana told her mother she was thinking about taking a job at Waymo, her mom had a question: “Who is going to get in those cars?” The company, which calls itself the “world’s first autonomous ride-hailing service,” currently operates self-driving, for-hire vehicles in about a dozen cities across the United States, including San Francisco, Phoenix, Atlanta, and Austin.
“We want to be the world’s most trusted driver,” Mawakana tells Amira Weeks, MBA ’26, in a View From The Top conversation recorded live at Stanford Graduate School of Business. “Cars are getting safer, but humans are more distracted t...
David Rubenstein on Leading the Parade
David Rubenstein, co-founder and co-chairman of the Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest private equity firms, was the first person in his family to go to college. Born to blue-collar parents in Baltimore, Maryland, he didn't set out to be an investor. “I was always interested in politics,” Rubenstein tells Sanil Rajput, MBA ’26, in a conversation recorded live at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Though he got his JD from the University of Chicago, “I wasn't really interested in the law, and the law wasn't interested in me,” he says.
A roundabout series of events resulted in...
Daniela Amodei Says Curiosity Is Underrated
Daniela Amodei and her brother Dario lead Anthropic, one of the world’s biggest and most influential AI companies. It wasn’t in her career plan. “I really think of myself as a generalist,” Amodei tells Gintare Zukauskaite, MBA ’26, in a conversation recorded live at Stanford Graduate School of Business earlier this year. “If you were to look through my background, you would be like, ‘What is this lady actually good at? She doesn’t have a law degree. She’s not a computer scientist.’” But, she continues, “The ability to be curious and learn across a lot of disciplines and to have...
An AI@GSB Special: Demis Hassabis Thinks We’re in the ‘Foothills of the Singularity’
When Demis Hassabis pitched DeepMind to a few venture capitalists back in 2010, the business plan was almost comically audacious. “Step one: Solve intelligence. Step two: Use it to solve everything else,” he recalls in a conversation at Stanford Graduate School of Business with Stanford University President Jonathan Levin. “And people were quite confused. But we really meant it.”
Sixteen years later, the “broad arcs” of that plan have gone “unbelievably well,” says Hassabis, a chess prodigy turned video game developer turned neuroscientist turned Nobel Prize-winning AI pioneer. Today he’s on a mission to create “the ultimate tool for science,” b...
Jane Fraser Says Think About the Skills, Not the Title
Citi is one of the most important financial institutions in the world, moving $5 trillion a day across more than 100 countries. Jane Fraser has run it since 2021, when she became the first woman to lead one of America’s “Big Four” banks.
In a conversation with Sanil Rajput, MBA ‘26, on View From The Top: The Podcast, Fraser opens up about prioritizing her personal life, pursuing skills and relationships over job titles, and what she learned from the former CEO who tore up her career development plan. “Go the unorthodox path,” she says. “Because — surprise, surprise — you will get the job if you have...
David Baszucki Says Roblox Is the Future of Communication
Roblox founder and CEO David Baszucki was building a 3D, multiplayer, cloud-based world before almost anybody had thought about the metaverse. In a wide-ranging conversation with Jeremy Tepper, MBA ’26, on View From The Top: The Podcast, Baszucki describes how he created a company that’s become a household name. “My job is a constant re-architecture of myself,” he says.
From outlasting competitors like Minecraft and Fortnite to prioritizing the safety of Roblox users, Baszucki says he sees challenges as opportunities. “We really are, arguably… the future of how you stay in touch with someone else.”
This conversatio...
Joe Tsai Says Start Local, Then Go Global
Alibaba, known as the “Amazon of China,” is one of the world’s most valuable companies. In a wide-ranging conversation on View From The Top: The Podcast, co-founder and chairman Joe Tsai recalls how it became the company it is today — and looks ahead to the company it may become.
Having access to AI, Tsai says, is like “having access to water and air.” He rejects the suggestion that the United States and China must compete to develop this resource. “AI is a race among companies, but AI shouldn’t be a race between countries,” he says.
Asked for his a...
A.G. Sulzberger Is Tuning Out the Cheers and the Jeers
“Being a reporter is the most fun an adult is allowed to have at work,” says A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher and chairman of The New York Times.
In a wide-ranging conversation with Amira Weeks, MBA ’26, on View From The Top: The Podcast, Sulzberger reflects on what it means to lead a 175-year-old media institution in a moment of intense political pressure and technological disruption. He explains why journalists must “tune out the cheers and the jeers” and why democracy and markets depend on “the accountability and transparency that the press provides.”
This conversation was recorded on Jan...
GSB at 100: "The Moment"
This week on View From The Top we’re sharing an episode of GSB at 100, a limited audio series created especially for Stanford Graduate School of Business’s Centennial. GSB at 100 presents a scrapbook of memories, ideas, and breakthroughs as Stanford GSB celebrates its first century and looks around the corner to what the next 100 years may hold.
On this episode of GSB at 100, you’ll experience Centennial Day, hear Dean Sarah A. Soule honor the past, celebrate the present, and look to what the future may hold. GSB at 100 depicts a school defined not only by...
GSB at 100: "The Experience"
This week on View From The Top we’re sharing an episode of GSB at 100, a limited audio series created especially for Stanford Graduate School of Business’s Centennial. GSB at 100 presents a scrapbook of memories, ideas, and breakthroughs as Stanford GSB celebrates its first century and looks around the corner to what the next 100 years may hold.
On this episode of GSB at 100, you’ll step inside the classrooms where teaching sparks transformation.
Learn more about the Stanford GSB Centennial
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Orlando Bravo on Doing the Work, One Deal at a Time
At 30, Orlando Bravo, JD/MBA '97, thought his private equity career might be over. “I did three deals and when the dot-com bubble burst two out of the three went to zero,” he tells Gintare Zukauskaite, MBA ’26. “It was an absolute disaster.”
Mentor and firm principal Carl Thoma, MBA ’73, gave him one more chance. Bravo pitched software buyouts, and five years later — “one deal at a time” — he’d become a named partner at the firm, Thoma Bravo, which today manages about $180 billion.
“Find the [risks] that are meant for you to take,” Bravo advises. “Do the work, focus on your busi...
GSB at 100: "The Spirit"
This week on [If/Then or View From The Top] we’re sharing an episode of GSB at 100, a limited audio series created especially for Stanford Graduate School of Business’s Centennial. GSB at 100 presents a scrapbook of memories, ideas, and breakthroughs as Stanford GSB celebrates its first century and looks around the corner to what the next 100 years may hold.
On this episode of GSB at 100, you’ll hear from the dedicated and accomplished staff members who work behind the scenes to make Stanford GSB a community unlike anywhere else in the world.
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GSB at 100: “The Magic”
This week on View From the Top we’re sharing an episode of GSB at 100, a limited audio series created especially for Stanford Graduate School of Business’s Centennial. GSB at 100 presents a scrapbook of memories, ideas, and breakthroughs, as the GSB celebrates its first century and looks around the corner to what the next hundred years may hold.
The first episode of the series begins where the GSB begins: in 1925, Herbert Hoover, a Stanford alum and future U.S. president, had an idea. “A graduate School of Business Administration is urgently needed upon the Pa...
Luis von Ahn Is Making Screen Time Count
Luis von Ahn was a tenured professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who had sold a company to Google. “You were pretty set, a lot of us would say, so why were you so hungry to build something new with Duolingo?” asks Ayesha Karnik, MBA ’25.
“For the first time ever, with phones, we can reach billions of people,” reflects the Duolingo co-founder and CEO. “I want it to be the case that we can show that screen time is actually useful for the world.”
From human-computer interaction and pioneering early 2000s consumer tech gamification to...
Ken Griffin Still Checks His P&L
Ken Griffin heads the most profitable hedge fund in history. But Citadel’s founder and CEO is focused on the future — not the scoreboard.
“I like to think I haven’t accomplished yet what I will be remembered for,” Griffin tells Michael Liu, MBA ’25. “That this is not a view from the top, but a journey to a destination yet to be determined.”
From entrepreneurship — “If you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to first learn how to sell” — to the importance of lifelong learning — “If you’re going to go to work at a firm and you’re the smartest pe...
Aravind Srinivas Has All The Answers
Aravind Srinivas leads Perplexity — whose AI-powered search engine provides direct, sourced answers to any question you might ask it.
On this episode of View From The Top: The Podcast, Srinivas joins Aislin Rorth, MBA ’25, for a conversation that provides unique insight into how a young leader steers a late-stage startup with big aspirations — from finding a lane in consumer AI to rounding up investors and fighting the inertia that seems to grip startups as they grow.
“If we are a reliable answer machine to everybody and widely accessible, that not just gives you answers but helps you...
Lisa Su Is Still Curious About How Things Work
Lisa Su, the chair and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), leads one of the world’s most influential technology companies, a pioneer in high-performance computing and designer of chips that power everything from cellphones to supercomputers.
On this episode of View From The Top: The Podcast, Su joins Michael Liu, MBA ’25, to talk about what it takes to stay on the cutting edge of technology, the tremendous potential of artificial intelligence, and why her superpower may be her commitment to learning.
“Careers are very much by chance,” Su says. “The nice thing about my early care...
Doug McMillon Is Thinking Fifty Years Ahead
Doug McMillon began his career unloading trucks. Forty years later, he’s Walmart’s president and CEO, a role he’s held for more than a decade.
On this episode of View From The Top: The Podcast, McMillon joins Aislin Roth, MBA ’25, to talk about what it takes to lead one of the world’s largest companies, from navigating billion-dollar decisions to modeling the retailer’s core values every day. McMillon also explains why trust, speed, and culture matter more than ever, shares how a botched product launch nearly derailed his career, and reflects on lessons learned during the CO...
Darren Walker on Finding Clarity and Purpose
For more than a decade, Darren Walker has led the Ford Foundation — and has been singularly focused on inequality. Why?
“Because I want little boys and girls, wherever they are, if they're living in housing projects in the Bronx and they're Black or brown or they're living in rural towns that have been ravaged by opioids, I want them to be able to dream, and to feel as I did, that America wants you to succeed,” he says.
On this episode of View From The Top: The Podcast, Walker joins Kailash Sundaram, MBA ’25, to discuss his approac...
Leena Nair Refuses to Be the Last
Leena Nair doesn’t just talk about leadership — she redefines it. In a wide-ranging conversation with Ayesha Karnik, MBA ’25, Nair reflects on her journey from a factory floor in India to the corporate office in London, and ultimately, to Chanel’s C-suite.
With humor and heart, Nair describes how she approaches leading a global luxury brand, shares insights about risk and resilience, and explains what it means to “lift as you climb.”
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Roelof Botha Doesn’t Believe in “the Top”
In a candid conversation with Kailash Sundaram, MBA ’25, Roelof Botha, MBA ’00 — leader of one of the most influential venture capital firms in the world — reflects on his journey from South Africa to Sequoia Capital.
From meeting his wife and partner Huifen Chan, MBA '00, at Stanford Graduate School of Business, to lessons about ambition and failure, Botha reflects on his life and career so far — and why he believes he’s still “not at the top."
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Hemant Taneja on Balancing Profit and Purpose
"If there are two things that have been foundational to my journey, it's been learning, and it's been the importance of taking risk."
Hemant Taneja, managing partner and CEO of General Catalyst, shares his insights on leadership, innovation, and the evolving role of venture capital in this episode of View From The Top, the podcast.
In his conversation with Shantam Jain, MBA '24, on the Stanford GSB campus, Taneja reflects on his personal journey from a low-income household in Delhi to becoming a prominent figure in the venture capital world.
The conversation delves into...
Tara VanDerveer on Being a Coach, Teammate, and Trailblazer
1,216. That’s the total number of NCAA games won by Tara VanDerveer, making her the all-time winning coach in college basketball history. In addition to coaching for 38 years at Stanford, she led the U.S. Women’s team to Olympic gold in 1996 – finishing with a flawless 16-0 record. “Coaching is teaching. It’s really trying to help people go to places they can’t go themselves,” says VanDerveer. “There’s nothing more rewarding than a great team.”
It’s hard to believe that the legendary coach was once barred from playing herself. In the seventh grade, VanDerveer was her school basketb...
Daniella Pierson: Why Failure is the Measure of Success
“It wasn’t luck. I worked every single second of the day – I was obsessed with it. I wanted independence for myself, for my family, and I didn’t want to go back to Jacksonville.”
In 2022, Daniella Pierson was named the youngest, wealthiest, self-made BIPOC woman in the world by Forbes. The 28-year-old grew her first company, The Newsette, to a $200 million dollar valuation without taking on a single investor. As a one-woman operation, she advertised through word of mouth and ran the company from her college dorm room.
She wasn’t just working against a full colleg...
Jensen Huang on How to Use First-Principles Thinking to Drive Decisions
"You can learn how something can be done and then go back to first principles and ask yourself, 'Given the conditions today, given my motivation, given the instruments, the tools, given how things have changed, how would I redo this? How would I reinvent this whole thing?"
Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, started his career washing dishes at Denny's. He then worked his way to busboy and, eventually, founded what is one of today's most valuable companies on Wall Street. In this interview at Stanford GSB's View From The Top event, founder and CEO Jensen Hua...
Aicha Evans: "You Must Have The Irrational Belief That It Will Work Out"
"My first piece of advice is only take the role if you are really interested in it. Startups are hard," says Aicha Evans, CEO of Zoox. "And when it's tough, you find a way, you make a way, you back up the boat, you reassess, you pivot. And so if you don't have that irrational belief and pull, don't do it."
Aicha Evans took the role of CEO at autonomous vehicle company Zoox in 2019. And in 2020, she led the company's acquisition by Amazon for $1.3B.
Evans visited Stanford Graduate School of Business for View From...
Neal Mohan, MBA ’05, From CEOs to Content Creators: Be True To Yourself
"The secret sauce of being a successful creator on the platform is just being true to yourself. And that sounds sort of very cliché, but I wish somebody had given me that advice early in my career because nothing rings more true."
Neal Mohan, MBA ’05 and the CEO of YouTube, visited the Stanford campus as part of View From The Top. Mohan sat down with Shannon Beckham, MBA ’24, to discuss his background in tech, his time at Stanford GSB, and why he is an optimist about AI.
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Sarah Friar, MBA ’00, On How To Make Strategic Career Risks
“In companies, you don’t want just the product team thinking about the product; the finance team thinking about finance ... You want everyone all the time feeling like they’re an owner, and they can have a point of view on any part of the company.”
In this View From The Top interview, Sarah Friar, MBA ’00, CEO of Nextdoor, sits down with Zack Doherty, MBA ’24. During their conversation at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Friar shared her unique perspective on taking strategic career risks, how social media can effect positive change in society, and the value of bringing people...
Jacqueline Novogratz, MBA ’91, on The Role of Storytelling in Investing
"I've seen unbelievable change happen in places that the world sees as not investible. Part of storytelling is doing the work of investing so that people can tell their own stories because of the changes they've made."
In 1986 Jacqueline Novogratz quit her job on Wall Street and moved to Rwanda to help open the country's first microfinance institution. She then came to Stanford GSB in 1989, and, in 2001, founded Acumen, a nonprofit impact investing fund.
"We look at poverty always in terms of income, but poverty is so much more than income. Poverty is a lack of...
Jennifer Hyman On The Power of Relentless Optimism
"Now also in that meeting, I asked her, 'Could you introduce me to a few of your friends? I’d love to meet with them and talk about this idea.' Because every meeting has to get you to three other meetings. Never leave a meeting with someone without asking them for that introduction." In this View From The Top interview, Rent the Runway founder and CEO Jennifer Hyman shares stories from her first meeting with fashion-giant Diane Von Furstenberg and how she's worked to foster and maintain relationships with more than 1,000 retail brands.
"If you’re an en...
Shantanu Narayen: Generative AI Won't Replace Human Ingenuity
“If you can create unreasonable expectations, people amaze you with their creativity.”
In this View From The Top interview, Shantanu Narayen, Chairman and CEO of Adobe, spoke with Sankalp Banerjee, MBA ’23, about his personal evolution as a leader, including the last 16 years as CEO. Narayen discussed the importance of innovative thinking across multiple scales, seeking opportunities in setbacks, and finding creative inspiration. He also shared his perspective on the future of technology and digital experiences, including the impact of generative AI and data transparency.
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Brian Chesky on Crisis Management
In April and March of 2020, as shelter-in-place mandates swept the globe and travel halted, bookings on Airbnb plummeted. With an 80% revenue loss, the company had to lay off nearly a quarter of its workforce.
"When you’re our size, and the business drops by 80 percent in eight weeks, it's is like being in an 18-wheeler going 80 miles-an-hour, and then you slam on the brakes," Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky said. Chesky was interviewed by James Yan, MBA '23, for View From The Top, on the Stanford GSB campus.
"This is weeks after we were prep...
Cynt Marshall on Workplace Culture As The Measure of Success
“You know what kind of culture you have by how your employees are feeling on Sunday night when they think about getting ready to go back to work on Monday morning.”
When Cynt Marshall was hired as the CEO of the Dallas Mavericks in 2018, she presented her vision: that the organization would become a global standard for inclusion and diversity. “I truly believe if you have an inclusive culture and a diverse group of employees, you can get anything done," Marshall says. "I’ve lived it. There’s a bottom line impact to having diversity, and having equity in y...
Tristan Walker, MBA '10, "Every Action Must Be Based in Your Values"
"For me, the thing that stood out was my difference. I wasn’t chasing the thing that others were chasing. I was chasing the things that lived with my values." In this View From The Top interview, Tristan Walker MBA ’10, founder and CEO of Walker & Company, sits down with James Yan, MBA '23, to talk about his journey from Stanford GSB to entrepreneur. Walker shares a story from day he'll never forget: when he found a cafe, and sat down to write down his values. From that day forward, Walker says, built his business and life accordingly.
In 201...
Andy Dunn on Entrepreneurship, Bipolar Disorder, and Cofounder Divorce
"If you want to build the future, don't look to the future. Look to something that's in the corner in the present." In this episode of View From The Top, the podcast, Andy Dunn MBA ’07, founder and CEO of Bonobos, sits down with Cyerra Holmes, MBA '23, to talk about his journey building a clothing company while a student at Stanford GSB. He also shares stories from his recently released memoir, "Burn Rate: Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind," which explores the intersection of entrepreneurship and mental illness. Andy's next business venture is a social media app that aims t...
Eric Yuan on Keeping Customers, and Employees, Happy
"My number one priority is to make sure Zoom employees are happy. I believe if you have happy employees, you’re going to have happy customers." Eric Yuan, SEP '06, founded Zoom in 2011 to "deliver happiness and bring people together" in a frictionless video environment. In 2019, Eric led Zoom to one of the highest-performing tech IPOs of the year. But it was the next year that really made his company a global verb. In January 2020, the Zoom app averaged about 56,000 daily downloads on the Apple App Store. Within two months, as the COVID-19 outbreak forced a tectonic shift in the w...
Tony Elumelu on "Democratizing Luck"
"Entrepreneurship is in my DNA. In my own life journey, I've come to appreciate the significance of entrepreneurship in transforming communities, in transforming countries, societies, and humanity." Tony Elumelu, a Nigerian businessman, billionaire, philanthropist, and champion of African entrepreneurs, is a steadfast believer that the private sector has a role to play in developing countries across Africa.
After a career running United Bank of Africa, Elumelu says he has decided “to commit the second phase of my life to helping democratize the luck that I had growing up, to help expand access to opportunities.” And he has done...
Gwynne Shotwell: Finding and Defining Your Team's "Big Moments"
"Figure out what the big moments where you can bring your teams together are. It cures a lot of ills. It really helps with morale. It's incredible for team building."
In this episode of View From The Top, the podcast, Gwynne Shotwell, the president and COO of SpaceX, sits down with Christopher Stromeyer, MBA '22, to discuss risk-taking, feedback, and her pre-launch ritual.
Watch this interview on YouTube.
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Anne Wojcicki: There’s No Such Thing as the Perfect Dataset
Alexandra Eitel, MBA ’22, sits down with Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and CEO of 23andMe to discuss breaking down inequality through genetics and how leaders should build trust by being unabashedly honest. “The guiding principle for 23andMe is transparency and choice. It’s the choice whether you want to get your genetic information, the choice if you want to participate in research, the choice that you don’t want to do all these things. And I think that’s one of the issues I have in healthcare — most times you’re not provided choice and you’re not provided transparency.”
Wojcicki also re...
