3 Takeaways

Peter Wendell founded Sierra Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that has invested more than $2 billion in a wide variety of successful technology companies. Peter co-teaches Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, “Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital” course with former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt. He is a trustee of Merck and was chairman of the board of Princeton University Investment Company (PRINCO), which manages Princeton University’s endowment.Peter provides an insider’s perspective on venture capital. Find out how start-ups can secure funding and grow to become unicorns – start-ups valued at over $1 billion. There are currently more than 800 unicorn start-ups worldwide.

Paul Polman is the former CEO of Unilever, one of the largest companies in the world with over 300 brands. Paul helped redefine what being a good company means long before it was acceptable to think about anything besides profits. Paul shares how Imagine, a movement that he co-founded, brings together a critical mass of CEOs across the value chain to move industries toward sustainable impact goals such as climate change and inequality. Learn more about what a good company is and how your business can thrive by giving more than it takes.Paul is the author of the highly anticipated book Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take.

Former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb gives an inside account of the system wide failure across the U.S. government that left the country blind amidst the global covid pandemic. Throughout the pandemic, he was in regular contact with all the key players in the government and the drug and diagnostic companies. Find out how we can better prepare for the next health crisis – be it a deadlier covid variant, a flu pandemic, or a man-made biological threat. Scott is the author of Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic.

Former New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton shares what he thinks good policing looks like, reforms needed in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, the arc of policing and the reasons crime is up in many major cities.  He talks about different approaches to policing including broken windows, rapid response and community policing as well as the crisis in relations between the Black community and the police. While he and his team slashed crime rates and created the revolutionary data-driven program CompStat, his career has not been without controversy.  He is the only person to have led the police departments of the United States' two largest cities – New York and Los Angeles.Bratton is currently the chairman of the U.S. Homeland Security Advisory Council and author of The Profession.

Mike Novogratz, Founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital, shares on cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, digital assets, and the possibilities of blockchain. Learn how the first Tweet, a single sentence by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, sold as an NFT for millions of dollars and why it was worth so much. He also shares how blockchain can even be used for social good. In prisons, for example, it could be used to record solitary confinements and make criminal justice more transparent. This discussion should not be relied on for investment advice. 

Gillian Tett, Chair of the Editorial Board and Editor at Large, U.S. of the Financial Times uses her perspective as an anthropologist to explain a wide variety of business and cultural phenomena. She predicted the 2008 financial crisis. Discover how she sees the world today including new phenomena such as crypto currencies, nonfungible tokens (NFTs), artificial intelligence and gaming. Her new book is Anthro Vision: A New Way to See in Life and Business. Anthropologist Ralph Linton said, “The last thing a fish would ever notice would be water.” 

Meat production is one of the world’s greatest contributors to climate change. Patrick Brown, the creator of the Impossible Burger and the Founder of Impossible Foods, wanted to figure out how to make delicious, affordable meat from plants that is better for the environment and consumers. Learn about his journey from Stanford University professor to creating the Impossible Burger and how he built Impossible Foods into the multibillion-dollar company it is today. 

Cass Sunstein is a professor at Harvard and one of the founders of behavioral science. He has written two books with Nobel Laureates, including Nudge with Richard Thaler. We are unknowingly influenced by our environments, by how choices are framed, by the people we are with, and a myriad of seemingly insignificant factors. Learn the latest findings in behavioral science and how they can be used by everyone - governments, businesses and individuals - to make people's lives better.

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper discusses the greatest threats, cyber, surveillance, the information being collected on each one of us and individual rights to privacy. Learn how we can protect ourselves against future health or biological threats. 

Angela Duckworth is the Character Lab Founder and CEO and a University of Pennsylvania Professor of Psychology. Angela studies the character traits and habits which predict success. She has studied West Point cadets, National Spelling Bee finalists, teachers, sales people and students to determine who is successful and why. A few characteristics emerged as significant predictors of success. Angela shares what the character traits for success are and how we can nurture them.