Conversations with Mike Milken

“Venture capital is concentrated in … three states: California, Massachusetts, and New York. We know that not all the good ideas come from those three places. And so it's really important that we think hard about how we make sure that all small businesses can access capital.”

With a career that effortlessly spans public and private sectors, including successful forays into entrepreneurism and philanthropy, Maria Contreras-Sweet is lauded for her ability to bring efficiencies and modernization to large scale organizations. Her tenure as the 24th Administrator of the Small Business Administration was noted for record-breaking results in lending, investments, and contracting. A proud immigrant, Ms. Contreras-Sweet has never forgotten her family’s journey nor the lessons it taught her.

“I still remember being the 4th grade milk monitor and writing to my grandmother to say, ‘I'm now in charge of something,’” she tells Mike. “And she said, ‘It's not about the titles that you have. It's about what you do with the titles that you have.’ And so, I found ways to make sure that all the kids – even though they didn't have the nickel for milk – that I was the right kind of gatekeeper and offered them free milk. That's how it all started.”

“We have to rebuild with a more inclusive capitalism, and I emphasize both of those words … so that as we go forward with crises – and there will be crises – the impact of those crises will not be so heavily defined by the color of one's skin.”

As President and CEO of TIAA, Roger Ferguson manages 1.1 trillion dollars in retirement funds and services spanning the academic, research, medical, and cultural fields. As one of only four Black CEOs currently leading a Fortune 500 company, he knows the importance of making capitalism work for everyone. And, as the former vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve who helped stabilize markets during 9/11, he has seen how resilient the system can be – even in the midst of a pandemic.

“The speed with which markets moved, I think, has been quite breathtaking,” he tells Mike. “This may have been the shortest bear market in history, and one of the most rapid trough to peak [recoveries] we've seen in the history of markets. That is a lesson for all of us, how quickly with the action of central banks and others that the markets can turn themselves around.”

“What we've done during COVID in many ways, we've taken 10 years of technology adoption and crammed it into three months. I'm certain we're getting ready to have a slew of new ideas that you and I haven't thought of, but that we're going to be delighted to support.”

Bob Pittman was 15 when he started in radio – and he never looked back. The Mississippi native and current Chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia has been hailed as a visionary and belongs to multiple broadcasting and advertising halls of fame. He pioneered and led MTV, and served as CEO for AOL Networks, Six Flags Theme Parks, Quantum Media, Century 21 Real Estate, and Time Warner Enterprises. More recently, he led a group of founding partners in launching the Black Information Network (BIN) in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing.

 “When you hire for a job, you tend to look for experience,” he tells Mike. “If you look for experience, you're basically going to get what was, not what could be. So with BIN, we hired everybody for potential. … We need to unlock the career for everybody who doesn't look like the past, but we know looks like the present and the future. And how do we get there? BIN for us was just a great opportunity to unleash some of that.”

“Once you have a whole body PET scan, there's not a lot of value often in doing a physical examination or taking out your stethoscope because the information on that scan tells you everything you need to know. The classic medicine history examination is giving way to a whole new form of medicine where we are using a variety of different technologies.”

As a noted physician-scientist and nuclear medicine physician at the University of Melbourne in Australia, Michael Hofman has built a career on using the latest technology in the pursuit of better cancer treatments, especially those using positron emission tomography (PET) scans and precision medicine. COVID-19 is accelerating adoption of these approaches, and he sees other treatment trends on the horizon. 

“I think it's going to become more mainstream – where the doctor acts as an advisor as part of the patient team, he tells Mike. “And we share all the data that we're accumulating with the patient, we advise of the pros and cons, and then the patients go off and do their own research and come back with ideas as well. And we becomes part of a team working on the shared goal of achieving the best outcome.”

“I really want to be building on this technology here at Berkeley and making sure that we are creating a community of scientists that are doing two things: not only extending this extraordinary science and thinking about how to apply genome editing in ways that will have real impact on humanity; but also doing it with an eye towards social responsibility.”

It used to be the stuff of science fiction: A scientist discovers a way to edit genetic sequences in humans and plant life, creating new opportunities to eliminate diseases and famine. Except in Jennifer Doudna’s case, the CRISPR-Cas9 technology she co-invented in 2012 has already produced real-life benefits – along with a scramble to translate the game-changing process into more treatments and cures. In the meantime, it has shown promise in the fight against COVID.

“CRISPR proteins are quite useful for detection of viruses,” the Berkeley biochemistry professor tells Mike. “In fact, that's what they naturally do in bacteria. And not only that, they operate by a molecular mechanism that allows them to release a signal when they find their targets. So they can report on the presence of a virus in real time and with a visual signal in a way that I think could be a very powerful diagnostic tool in the near future.”

“I think my immigrant spirit of adapting kicked in and I said, look guys, we need to do something. We cannot sit here and do nothing because the stores are closed. Let's start a plan of attack, let's start going online. … This is what we did within 10 days … and we grew 154% online.”

Anastasia Soare is living proof that one can achieve the American Dream by building a better eyebrow. After emigrating from Romania in 1989 with limited cash and English skills – but with a solid education in art – she applied da Vinci’s “golden ratio” to the sculpting of women’s brows. With clients such as the Kardashians and Oprah Winfrey, the plucky founder and CEO of Anastasia Beverly Hills was able to build a beauty empire that today sells more than 480 products in 3,000 stores and has more than 20 million followers on social media.

“I love my clients. I love to teach women. I love to show them how they could enhance their beauty,” she tells Mike. “We are home, and this is what we have to do. I think this is the new norm, and it's not going to go away very soon. We have to go out and wear a mask. Our eyebrows need to be perfect! So the next year, this is what is going to be.”

“I'm very committed to compassionate capitalism, which is what I like to call my business. … My products are there to help patients who need it anywhere in the world. And therefore, I believe that if I can actually produce these products in a way that provides affordable access … I will be very driven by that sense of purpose.”

As one of India’s most celebrated biopharmaceutical entrepreneurs, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw has been committed to healing the sick since she was 25. In 2010, Time magazine named her one the 100 most influential people in the world. Today, the executive chairperson of Biocon is determined to make a difference through both her philanthropy and her company’s promising COVID-19 treatment. Sadly, she may become a test patient herself: Shortly after this interview was recorded, she tested positive for the virus.

“We did a proof of concept study in India with our drug and we actually got some very compelling results,” she tells Mike. “All the patients who took our drug recovered very well and in the small control arm, which did not take our drug, we had quite a few deaths. We got an emergency use approval from the regulator in India. We just received it a couple of weeks ago, and in these two weeks we've actually treated over a thousand patients in India, and most of them have recovered.”

“There's so much more that unites us than separates us. And at the same time, also from a business perspective, the small businesses around the world, well, they're looking for the same thing too. … I've been on the streets of the Soweto with some amazing female entrepreneurs. And they're telling me about the biggest businesses happening in New York today. And that wouldn't have been possible that a decade ago.”

Lady Nicola Mendelsohn is doing her part to make the world smaller, and more accessible. As Vice President of Facebook for Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, her mission is to help bring connectivity – and prosperity – to the developing world. So far, she is succeeding: The Daily Telegraph has called her "the most powerful woman in the British tech industry,” and Queen Elizabeth awarded her the honorific of Commander of the British Empire in 2015.

“I sit on the government's Industrial Strategy Council, and that is supposed to do impartial evaluation of the UK government's progress on its own industrial strategy and its impact on its economy,” she tells Mike. “I worked on the skills report that we published earlier this year. Digital skills are the most underskilled of all the skills. And at the same time, it's the biggest opportunity for any market as well. There needs to be so much work and focus put into this because businesses are going to be crying out for it.”

“Government funds alone simply aren't going to get the job done. What's needed is the engagement of the private sector and the private capital flows that come into these markets to make lasting change sustainable.” 

Created in 2004 with broad bipartisan support, the Millennium Challenge Corporation is a U.S. Government aid agency that seeks to reduce poverty in the developing world through economic growth. CEO Sean Cairncross is committed to working with governments that have a proven record of stability, good governance, and existing investments in their own people. He proudly points to the fact that MCC was recently ranked first among U.S aid agencies for transparency.

“Each project has to have a certain economic rate of return before MCC will invest in it,” he tells Mike. “We look at that over the course of time for 20 years after that project is completed in order to report essentially to our stakeholders, the U S taxpayer, that this is money well spent and that we've achieved a result.”

“Your well-being, your wealth, is very intertwined and dependent on other people's well-being. … That is the philosophy that also drives us because we know that our children's well-being cannot be isolated from the well-being of the other children in South Africa, or other kids on the continent, for that matter.”

When Precious Moloi began her career as a doctor in South Africa, she would eventually open the first women’s clinic in Johannesburg. After marrying Patrice Motsepe, they would become the wealthiest Black couple in South Africa, and the first on the continent to join the Giving Pledge. As a fashion entrepreneur, Dr. Motsepe has lifted young South African designers to international renown. And through the Motsepe Foundation, this Renaissance woman from Soweto has pledged millions to alleviate the continent’s COVID crisis.

“It's been quite challenging,” she tells Mike. “And it's really called for solidarity from all sectors of society – from business, from ordinary people, from government – we’ve just been working together. I guess this is one positive thing that we've never seen – collaborations at such high levels, and with so much compassion and determination.”