Office Hours with Spencer Rascoff

In this episode, Russell Wilson joins Spencer at Zillow Group’s Seattle headquarters for a live recording in front of employees. Russell is the starting quarterback for the Seahawks, leading the team to its first Super Bowl win in 2014. He’s also one of the NFL’s most charitable athletes. Russell founded the Why Not You Foundation, which has raised millions to support Strong Against Cancer and other children’s charities. When he’s not on the field or engaged in philanthropy, Russell is also an entrepreneur; he founded TraceMe, a social media platform, and Limitless Minds, a leadership development company. In this episode, Russell and Spencer discuss Russell’s approach to leadership on and off the field, how to overcome adversity, his latest business ventures – and even his proposal to Ciara.

Van Jones hosts his own show on CNN, and he’s the founder of The Dream Corps, an accelerator that supports economic and environmental innovation. Its #YesWeCode initiative aims to help 100,000 young people from underrepresented backgrounds find success in the tech sector. Van is an important voice on social justice and STEM education, and Time Magazine named him one of the 100 Most Influential People in the world. In this episode, Van joins Spencer at Zillow Group’s New York office for a live recording in front of employees. The two discuss Van’s impressive background working in communities and promoting green jobs, how to increase diversity in tech and why young people have the power to change the world.

Stewart Butterfield is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Slack, a collaboration hub beloved by more than eight million daily active users. In this episode, Spencer joins Stewart at Slack’s San Francisco headquarters to discuss their recent partnership with Atlassian, Slack’s unique origin story, managing through growth and adversity, and how Slack is fundamentally changing communication at work.

John MacFarlane served as CEO of Sonos from 2002 to 2017 and was instrumental in building the company’s loyal customer base. Just last week, Sonos filed to go public in a $100 million initial public offering, and the company is on track to do $1 billion in revenue this year alone. In this episode, John discusses Sonos’s decision to partner with competitors like Google and Amazon, why he stepped down as CEO and why it’s important to be relentlessly progressive.

Adena Friedman is president and chief executive officer of Nasdaq, which operates the second-largest stock exchange in the world by market cap. Named one of Forbes’ most powerful women, Adena built her career at Nasdaq, starting as an intern straight out of an MBA program. Outside of a three-year stint as chief financial officer at The Carlyle Group, she’s been with Nasdaq ever since. In this episode, Spencer joins Adena in New York City to discuss the power of mentorship, the future of the U.S. capital markets and why going public can spark innovation.

Emily Chang is a best-selling author and host and executive producer of Bloomberg Technology. Earlier this year, she made waves with her book “Brotopia,” an expose on how sexism became pervasive in Silicon Valley, despite its utopian ideals. Drawing on interviews with some of tech’s biggest names, Emily shines a bright light on a big problem. In this episode, Emily joins Spencer at Zillow Group’s San Francisco office to discuss her inspiration for the book, how the tech community got to this point and what we can do about it.

Alaska Airlines CEO Brad Tilden is in the midst of his "what's next" agenda following the company's successful acquisition of Virgin America. Acquisitions, no matter how well executed, are almost always tough on companies. But the commonalities between Alaska and Virgin - their focus on customers and building alignment among employees - lays the foundation for the former competitors to work together and adopt the best features of both airlines as they move forward under a single brand.

What will the home of the future look like? Imagine built-in Wi-Fi, voice-activated digital assistants and other technological innovations that will render older homes obsolete before long. Earlier this month, the nation’s largest homebuilder, Lennar, took a big swing in this direction, announcing that all of its new homes will include smart locks, Wi-Fi, thermostats and lights — all controlled by Amazon Alexa. In this episode, Lennar’s former CEO Stuart Miller, who now serves as its executive chairman, joins Spencer to discuss how technology will impact homebuilding and design — and how he helped create a culture that embraces innovation at the 60-plus-year-old company.

Comedy writer and producer Robert Carlock's spectacular career includes writing and producing credits on iconic shows such as "Saturday Night Live," "Friends" and "30 Rock." Most recently he co-created the Netflix original series "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,". As a leader in a creative field, Robert doesn't rely on data to make decisions. Instead, he draws largely from his intuition and simply knowing what's going to be funny. And untethering creativity is a lesson all companies and industries can learn from.

Dara Khosrowshahi is CEO of Uber, a company that’s become a household name for transportation. Uber’s dominance hasn’t come without controversy, however. Uber’s reputation as an innovator has often been overshadowed by negative revelations about its culture. In 2017, Dara left his role as CEO of Expedia to take over the reins at Uber from founder Travis Kalanick. His mission: Get the company on the path to cultural reform, profitability and, eventually, IPO. In this episode, Dara and Spencer discuss why he made the move to Uber, what he’s learning – and the role of “flying taxis” in Uber’s future.