View From The Top

“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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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 preparing for what was supposed to be one of the hottest IPOs in years. It was completely bewildering." Chesky was called upon to provide answers, guidance, and business decisions at a time when uncertainty ruled. But when there's only a blank slate, he says, it's time to deploy creativity.  

"The hardest thing to manage in a crisis is your own psychology. People look in your eyes, and if you think you’re screwed, they see it in your eyes. You need to be optimistic. But it can’t be optimism that’s delusional. ... The optimistic mentality is the mentality you need to be creative. And you need to be creative because, in a crisis, you often have no good solutions."

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“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 your organization, and an inclusive culture.”

In this View From The Top interview, Marshall sits down with Sankalp Banarjee, MBA ’23, to share stories of how she stepped into her authentic self as a leader, how she navigated personal and professional challenges, and how she keeps burn-out at bay.  

“A lot of times people ask the question, ‘What keeps you up at night?’ I say, ‘No, to me, the question is, ‘What gets you up in the morning?’” 

Marshall was named one of 15 of the world’s most inspiring female leaders by Forbes in 2021. In March 2020 and several times prior, she was selected as one of the “50 Most Powerful Women in Corporate America” by Black Enterprise magazine.

Stanford GSB’s View From The Top is the dean’s premier speaker series. It launched in 1978 and is supported in part by the F. Kirk Brennan Speaker Series Fund.

During student-led interviews and before a live audience, leaders from around the world share insights on effective leadership, their personal core values, and lessons learned throughout their career.

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"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 2018, Walker merged his brand with Procter & Gamble, becoming the first Black CEO under the P&G umbrella in the company’s 180-year history. He is also the founder and board chairman of CODE2040, a program that matches high performing Black and Latino undergraduate and graduate coders and software engineering students with Silicon Valley start-ups for summer internships. 

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"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 to detoxify digital culture.

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"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 way people communicate, those downloads surpassed two million per day.

In this episode of View From the Top, the podcast, Kathleen Schwind MBA '23, sits down to interview Yuan about what how he creates company culture, how he strives for work-life balance, and the few things he can't live without. 

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"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 just that, funding thousands of early-stage startups and empowering more than 15,000 entrepreneurs across 54 African countries to solve the continent’s biggest problems.

In this View From The Top interview on Stanford campus, Chisom Obi-Okoye, MBA '22, interviews Elumelu about his career path, philosophy of African capitalism, and vision for the future of the continent.

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"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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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 recounts stories from the early days of 23andMe to how she’s navigating hybrid work today. “Everything is about being redefined,” she says. “Work environments are never going to be the same. And so, how do you really have a hybrid environment? And even at different policies, talking to companies about what are you doing for return to office, or are people coming in. How do you manage vaccinations? Everything has been nonstop of helping manage.”

Watch this interview on our YouTube channel.

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"You have to encourage innovation. Companies become more conservative in decision making as you grow...be okay with failure and reward effort, not outcomes."

In this episode of View From The Top, the podcast, CEO of Google and Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, speaks to Archana Sohmshetty, MBA '22, about the impact of access to technology, humanity's challenge to harness it, and how Google is sustainably defining the future of work. "When you see the appetite and the desire for people to make their lives better by gaining access to technology, that is what compels me to go beyond." says Pichai. 

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