What I Know

The founder and CEO of autonomous vehicle company Cruise is busy testing his company’s driverless robotaxis on the streets of San Francisco. And managing more than 1,000 employees. But that doesn’t mean he’s too busy to get into the back seat. Here’s how he allocates his time every week to put himself in a user’s shoes–and why he thinks it’s so important that leaders make the time to understand even the smallest pain points for customers in using their product.

The founder and CEO of self-driving car company Cruise has finally done it: His company’s robo-taxis are picking up passengers in San Francisco. It’s been almost a decade since he founded his company with the audacious vision to take on Google and create autonomous driving vehicles. He and cofounder Dan Kan pursued that vision–one small step at a time. He spoke with host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin about his lifelong passion for robotics, the “leap of faith” he took when deciding to sell Cruise to GM, and leading a company of more than 1,000 people–plus, how the driverless taxi experiment is going in San Francisco.

The Golden Globe Award-winning actress is also a three-time founder of companies. More than a decade ago, she launched Fabletics, the membership-model activewear brand, and more recently, she’s launched King St. Vodka and wellness-supplement brand In Bloom. But before becoming an entrepreneur, Hudson did plenty of endorsement deals–and wanted more out of them than just being a salesperson. She thought: “What happens if I bet on myself?” and began taking a stake–and an active role in–the companies she chose to work with. In a wide-ranging and candid conversation with host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin, she explains how she builds missions of sustainability and wellness into her brands, and how she thinks about democratizing high-end products, which sometimes becomes a game of tight margins.

On this week’s episode of Woman Inc., I sat down with Tala Akhavan, COO of Pietra, a platform that makes it possible to launch the brand you've always dreamt of. Tala, a former Uber executive, joined the creator economy platform with the mission to democratize access for female entrepreneurship via the platform’s capabilities.   As a first time mother, Tala talked about the struggle of wanting to give her all to motherhood as well as her professional trajectory. While giving birth in the height of the pandemic, she made the uncharacteristic choice to not return to her secure job at Uber when her maternity leave ended. Leaving to become a full-time, stay-at-home mom, Tala experienced first hand that current workplace models and policies are not structured to support women who seek fulfillment in both areas.  There has been a spike in female entrepreneurship coming out of the pandemic, but at present, there is little transparency across markets to launch a product in a financially feasible and time efficient manner. Tala discusses her role as a COO who followers a value-first philosophy and how she thinks through major decisions. After the recording stopped, Tala told me something that I believe is incredibly powerful. She told me that when she was offered the role at Pietra, she was actually offered the same role at a different company for double the salary. She turned it down because they weren’t as accommodating to her musts of being able to be a present mom. I share this, with her blessing, because I believe that is the definition of being in your worth, and as Tala mentions, holding the line.Make sure to tune in to hear the full story and subscribe to Woman Inc. so that you never miss an episode. Now, let's get over to my conversation with Tala.By: Jenna Todey, Host of Woman Inc.

The author of The Awesome Human Project and CEO of Happier is a natural at public speaking. Known for her TED talks and corporate speaking engagements, as well as coaching, she’s not one to usually experience stage fright. But she does have a secret to calming nerves before large speaking engagements, which she explains to host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin. First: Don’t tell yourself not to be nervous. Second: Do tell yourself this one key thing.

Stacey Abrams is known as a politician, a lawyer, and a voting rights activist. Her voter rights organizing in Georgia has been credited with increasing turnout in the state, including during the 2020 presidential election, in which President Biden narrowly won Georgia. Abrams is also a three-time founder–and author of three New York Times bestsellers. In her latest book (Level Up: Rise Above the Hidden Forces Holding Your Business Back), she puts together the lessons she’s learned in business–along with her co-founder Lara Hodgson. Host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin talks with Abrams and Hodgson about what they’ve learned along the way to founding three companies together.

The five-time founder and author of Happier and The Awesome Human Project is known both for her public speaking and her research into what truly makes us happy. But when she was building her last company, she herself was anything but happy. Instead, she was prioritizing everything and everyone aside from herself–and that led to her spiraling into a really dark place. She speaks to host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin about how she learned to rebuild her emotional health–and what other founders can learn about emotional fitness being a key to keeping their company healthy, too.

The bestselling author and business advisor Daniel Pink has written about everything from human motivation to the powerful negative emotion, regret. He has lots of ideas. The one for his latest book, The Power of Regret, How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, came to him while he was already contracted to write an entirely different book. How does he keep track of his ideas? He explains his system to our host, Christine Lagorio-Chafkin.

The bestselling author didn’t intend to write about the powerful negative emotion, regret, but then he experienced it himself and dug in. He explains to host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin what his worldwide study on regret illuminated–and how it has a place in your company, both culturally, and in the way leaders connect on a personal level.

The co-founder and CEO of Eventbrite is a visual thinker. She tells Christine Lagorio-Chafkin how she uses her abilities to visualize data points to solve problems or find places to innovate within her online event-ticketing company.