The conversation around what makes a great CEO has grown more complicated in recent years. Stakeholder expectations, workforce dynamics, and market conditions have all shifted in ways that make the old playbook harder to apply. Few people are better placed to weigh in on those changes than Michael Polk Newell Brands, a veteran executive whose leadership career spans more than four decades and multiple corporate environments.From Delegation to...
The patients Dr. Andrew Jacono sees in his New York clinic and the children he treats on surgical missions in Southeast Asia may share little in circumstance, but they share a surgeon who approaches both settings with the same technical standard. That consistency across context is, in part, what Dr. Andrew Jacono has worked to instill in the surgeons he trains that expertise developed for one patient population is portable, and its reach is a...
Few surgeons in the United States have blended elite cosmetic practice with humanitarian commitment as deliberately as Dr. Andrew Jacono. A dual board-certified facial plastic surgeon based in New York, Dr. Jacono has spent decades directing his technical expertise toward patients who could never afford it, building a body of charitable work that spans domestic violence recovery and international pediatric missions.The origin of that commitment...
The podcast industry is reaching an inflection point. As AI tools become cheaper and more capable, the gap between high-volume automated content and professionally crafted audio is growing more obvious to listeners. Greg Soros saw this coming and structured Podcraft Media Lab accordingly.The Austin podcaster and entrepreneur describes his company's approach as strategic implementation rather than wholesale adoption a distinction that sounds...
Michael Polk has led companies across three distinct chapters of a career that spans some of the biggest names in consumer goods. His years at Kraft Foods and Unilever established his credentials. His run as CEO of Newell Brands, during which he helped grow the company's enterprise value from approximately $5 billion to more than $15 billion, cemented his reputation. His move to Implus LLC in 2020, however, may be the chapter that shapes how he...
Inside the Austin audio industry, Greg Soros has built a reputation that extends well beyond his work as a podcast producer. Soros, the founder of Podcraft Media Lab, has become one of the more influential mentors in independent podcasting, spending a significant share of his professional time helping new creators navigate an industry that can be difficult to break into without connections or capital.The gap between talented creators and actual...
Building a company that is genuinely different from incumbents requires people who think differently about the industry they're disrupting. German energy company PLAN B NET ZERO has built its recruiting approach around identifying the combination of energy sector knowledge and technology-forward thinking that the company's model demands.Bradley Mundt has been deliberate about the cultural characteristics that PLAN B NET ZERO is building — a...
The most commercially successful businesses of the next generation will be those that treat social and environmental responsibility not as a constraint on profit but as a source of competitive advantage — building stakeholder trust, attracting quality talent, and establishing the reputational capital that supports long-term value creation.Burak Basel has built Basel Holding with this conviction as a guiding principle. The firm's approach to...
The communication skills developed through a season of door-to-door sales at Grit Marketing are among the most transferable professional capabilities that any employer could want in a new hire. The ability to engage strangers quickly, to listen actively and adapt communication style in real time, to handle objections constructively, and to make a clear and compelling case for a value proposition — these are skills that apply directly in sales,...
Safety culture in the trades and infrastructure services sector is a matter of life and death, not a compliance checkbox. Idaho leader Karl Studer has spent years developing and refining an approach to safety that goes beyond rules and regulations to address the underlying cultural conditions that determine whether workers in genuinely dangerous environments go home at the end of every shift. His work in this area has influenced how multiple...