View From The Top

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 business, focus on you, and do your thing. That will pay huge, huge dividends, and will make everything very, very clear.”

This conversation was recorded on October 21, 2025.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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.

Learn more about the Stanford GSB Centennial

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 Pacific Coast,” he wrote. 

One hundred years later, what has Stanford Graduate School of Business accomplished, and what might its future hold? Listen in as professors reflect on founding principles, frontier technologies, and the magic that makes the GSB the place it is — and shapes what it aspires to be.

Learn more about the Stanford GSB Centennial

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 his thoughts on leadership and the future of AI, von Ahn shares his unique perspective on where he’s been, what he’s working on today, and the future of learning. 

There’s also that unpredictable owl mascot. “I wouldn’t say our brand is ‘chaos,’ okay?” he jokes. “We call it wholesome unhinged.”

This episode was recorded on May 5, 2025.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 person in the room, you have so screwed up your Stanford MBA” — Griffin reflects on what he’s learned since the early days of Citadel and why he's still laser-focused on learning today.

“​I think legendary investors really know when they have an advantage — and they press it. They’re confident in their conviction, and when they're wrong, they move on.”

This conversation was recorded on April 25, 2025.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 accomplish tasks, too — make transactions, buy things, book things, book flights, get the best deals and make your life more productive, give you back more time — I think we are going to be a pretty industry-defining product and company,” Srinivas says.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 career is I was lucky enough to have bosses who asked me all the time, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ And I was like, ‘I don't know. Let me think about [it]...what I like to believe is the ability to learn at each step was what really helped me in my career.”

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 COVID pandemic. 

“I think my job — and the job of people like me who are given the opportunity to lead some of these great companies — is to change the company in a way that it's relevant for the future,” he says. “So, the only thing I really think about is: How are we making decisions and getting things done such that Walmart is succeeding and creating value 50 years from now?”

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 approach to grantmaking, why character trumps credentials, and what philanthropy can do — and what it can’t.

From actionable insights — “start with a clear vision, mission, and strategy” — to the how of making big career pivots before the golden handcuffs tighten, Walker shares what he’s learned about identifying your purpose, leading without losing yourself, and carrying humility into every room you enter.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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.”

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.