Next to Lead

Mastercard is betting on a new era of agentic commerce, where AI agents can act on behalf of consumers, make purchases, and even transact with other machines. But handing an AI agent your wallet raises new questions around trust, identity, and accountability. What happens when an agent buys the wrong thing, exceeds its authority, or gets manipulated? And how do you build a payments system that can distinguish between human and non-human actors?

Fortune’s Ruth Umoh sits down with Ed McLaughlin, Mastercard’s President and Chief Technology Officer, to discuss the future of agentic commerce, AI-powered fraud prevention, cybersecurity, and what happens when machines become participants in the global economy.

0:00 AI Agents Are About to Change How We Shop

1:04 What’s Keeping Mastercard’s CTO Up at Night?

3:46 How Mastercard Transformed Over 20 Years

5:33 Lessons From a Startup Founder

8:34 How Mastercard Makes Decisions at Scale

11:15 How to Move Fast Without Breaking Things

16:11 Is Identity the New Challenge of the AI Era?

20:14 Mastercard’s Biggest AI Opportunities

26:17 Who’s Liable When an AI Agent Makes a Purchase?

36:30 The Leadership Skills AI Can’t Replace

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Toast started as a point-of-sale company. Today, the restaurant technology platform serves over 180,000 locations globally and is expanding into areas including payments, payroll, marketing, reservations, retail.
In this episode of Fortune Next to Lead, C-suite and Leadership Editor Ruth Umoh sits down with Toast CMO and COO Kelly Esten to discuss the company’s growth strategy and its vision for the future of restaurant technology.

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Meta is spending billions to catch up in the AI race, betting that its latest model, Muse Spark, can help close the gap with its biggest rivals. But the company’s aggressive AI investments, ranging from advertising tools to its latest AI-powered smart glasses, are coming at a cost: Meta’s profits fell 14% in the second quarter, as spending surged alongside hefty legal penalties. 

In this episode of Next to Lead, Fortune’s C-suite and Leadership Editor Ruth Umoh sits down with Nicola Mendelsohn, Meta’s Head of Global Business Group, in Cannes to discuss the company’s AI ambitions, the creator economy, and Meta’s push towards AI supremacy.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

01:08 Ad

01:38 How AI is Shifting All Business

03:02 Meta’s AI Ad Stack Advantage

04:26: Meta’s Creative Workplace Launch

04:53 Meeting Customers Through Messaging, Business Agents

06:43 Meta’s Customers Key Pain Points

07:20: Case Study: Car Rentals in Brazil

07:54 Is Meta Taking Too Much Control?

09:07 Estée Lauder Experiment

10:44 Kylie Jenner x Meta Glasses

12:04 Creators, Community, Commerce

13:40 AI Hype, Responsibility

14:48 Future of Creators, Agents

16:28 Looking Ahead for Nicola

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As dating apps experiment with AI, Tinder CMO Melissa Hobley is drawing a line between using the technology to help people connect and using it to replace human connection. Tinder wants AI to help users choose their best profile photos, make sense of complex astrology charts, and ultimately spend less time on their phones—not create artificial people to date. At Cannes Lions, Fortune’s Ruth Umoh sits down with Hobley to discuss AI avatars, the future of digital intimacy, and where technology’s role should end and real-life connection begin.

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AI is rewriting the rules of marketing, but not every brand is ready for it. At Cannes Lions, Fortune's Ruth Umoh sat down with the marketing and growth chiefs behind four major brands to drop the polish and tackle the messy middle: what's really holding AI adoption back. How do you build momentum when your data strategy is still warming up? How do you chase innovation without torching the budget? And what happens when "AI-powered everything" creates more noise than results? Expect straight talk, live debate, and hard numbers on where the hype ends and the business impact begins.

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Today’s CMO isn’t just selling the brand; they’re responsible for the business, owning revenue, product, and data. At the same time, AI is automating a huge slice of marketing and exposing the metrics that don’t actually move the business.
At Cannes Lions, Fortune’s Ruth Umoh sat down with the marketing chiefs of Slack, Zoom, Slalom, and TD Bank U.S. to unpack how AI is reshaping their roles, what they now measure, and how they chase growth.

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You may know Coach and Kate Spade, but you may not know Tapestry, the $30 billion company behind them. After a blocked merger with Capri Holdings, and the sale of its Stuart Weitzman brand, Tapestry is betting on Coach's momentum to fuel its next phase of growth. As luxury retailers compete for younger consumers in an uncertain economy, Tapestry CFO and COO Scott Rowe says the key is winning Gen Z, investing in brand engagement, and using AI-driven insights to stay ahead of changing consumer behavior.

00:00 Why Coach Is Winning While Luxury Struggles

01:18 Tapestry's Competitive Advantage

02:09 Scott Rowe's Career Journey

03:42 Why He Left Manufacturing for Fashion

04:11 Why Global Experience Creates Better Leaders

05:35 Is Job Hopping Better Than Company Loyalty?

07:58 Why Scott Joined Tapestry

09:46 Balancing the Roles of CFO and COO

10:39 The "So What?" Test for Business Investments

11:37 Why Finance and Operations Work Better Together

12:41 What the Failed Capri Merger Taught Tapestry

14:33 Can Kate Spade Make a Comeback?

15:59 How Tapestry Is Navigating the K-Shaped Economy

17:27 Why Coach Keeps Winning

19:18 The Biggest Myth About Gen Z Consumers

20:38 How Tapestry Uses AI

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In late 2022, Carvana was flirting with bankruptcy after its stock collapsed 99% in just 16 months. Now, the online used-car retailer is staging a stunning comeback, pouring billions into acquisitions, infrastructure, AI, and its signature car vending machines. 

In this episode of Next to Lead, Fortune’s C-suite and Leadership editor Ruth Umoh sits down with Carvana strategy chief Christina Keiser to discuss what it will take to sustain that momentum and how it came back from the brink.

00:00 Intro

01:05 What is Carvana

04:49 Carvana’s online shopping business model

06:32 Christina’s rise to the C-suite

08:20 Christina’s strategy role at Carvana

10:56 Carvana’s vision

11:51 Christina’s vision

12:34 Managing Carvana’s stock crash

16:37 Looking back at Carvana’s crisis

19:00 Staying focused in leadership

21:27 Carvana’s inventory strategy

23:04 Balancing rising interest rates

25:28 Carvana’s ADESA auction acquisition

28:55 Carvana’s car vending machines

31:30 Carvana’s AI strategy

33:47 Christina’s best leadership advice

34:13 Christina’s advice for recovering from a career mistake

34:37 Christina’s personal car and outro

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Gilead Sciences moves at a pace rarely seen in pharma, delivering breakthrough COVID-19 antivirals and HIV preventatives in record time. Yet, in an industry facing a massive trust deficit, speed isn’t always enough. 

In this episode of Next to Lead, Johanna Mercier, Gilead’s Chief Commercial & Corporate Affairs Officer, joins Fortune’s Leadership Editor Ruth Umoh to discuss how the company is rewriting its narrative and balancing its patients with its shareholders.

00:00 Intro

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Adobe built the modern creative economy, but as AI reshapes how content is made, its legacy may be its biggest risk. With a leadership shakeup and rising competition, will Adobe stay indispensable or will they'll be left behind? In a moment of transformational change, Adobe President of Customer Experience, Anil Chakravarthy, says the challenge is moving as fast as AI-- without losing sight of what their creatives, marketing professionals and businesses want.

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