On November 8, 2016, Michael Tubbs was elected to serve as the mayor of the City of Stockton, California. Upon taking office in January 2017, Tubbs became both Stockton’s youngest mayor and the city’s first Black mayor. Among other accomplishments, he leveraged a $1 million grant to launch the nation’s first ever mayor-led guaranteed income pilot. Here, he talks about building trust with constituents and creating relationships and coalitions across political boundaries, and discusses solutions to pressing racial and economic inequities.

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Video Series

Michael Tubbs (City of Stockton) - Change Moves at the Speed of Trust

Kevin Weil is the VP of Product for Novi, Facebook’s digital wallet for the Libra payment system. Previously, Weil was VP of Product at Instagram (overseeing consumer, growth, and monetization products) and SVP of Product at Twitter (where he led product development and design across Twitter’s consumer and ad products, as well as Vine and Periscope). In this talk, he explores the mission that drives both Libra and Novi, and shares a number of crucial insights on digital product design.

Kevin Weil (Novi) - Improving Product Design

Amy Chang is an executive vice president at Cisco. Following the acquisition of her startup Accompany by Cisco in 2018, she led Cisco's multi-billion dollar Collaboration business and its Webex portfolio. In this talk, she describes an approach to networking that’s built on affinity and even friendship rather than short-term, transactional goals. She shares how her relationships and network shaped her career as she navigated a path from electrical engineering at Stanford to her current roles at Cisco and on the Proctor & Gamble board, with formative stops at McKinsey, Google, and elsewhere.

Amy Chang (Cisco) - Networking with Curiosity

Debbie Sterling is the founder and CEO of GoldieBlox, an award-winning children’s multimedia company known for disrupting the “pink aisle” in toy stores around the world, and challenging gender stereotypes with a girl engineer character. In 2015, Sterling was inducted as a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship under the Obama administration and honored by the National Women’s History Museum with a “Living Legacy” Award for her work to empower girls around the world. Here, she explores the strategies, pivots, and mission-driven commitments that have helped GoldieBlox thrive.

Debbie Sterling (GoldieBlox) - Empowering Girls with STEM

Jeff Seibert is a serial entrepreneur and active angel investor. His current focus is Digits, which he co-founded in 2018 to build modern, intelligent, real-time finance tools for business owners. Seibert previously served as Twitter’s Head of Consumer Product and led the company’s product efforts for iOS, Android and the Web, as well as its Developer and Data platforms. He was also the co-founder and CEO of Crashlytics and the co-founder and COO of Increo. In this talk, he describes the origin of Digits, and particularly focuses on one aspect of the company: its full-throttled embrace of remote work long before COVID-19 made remote work the global default.

Jeff Seibert (Digits) - Making Remote Work Better

Olympian in luge, television reporter, airline pilot, and venture capitalist… Bonny Simi’s career path has been anything but linear. Simi is now the president of JetBlue Technology Ventures, the venture capital arm of JetBlue Airways that invests in and partners with early-stage startups that are improving the future of travel and hospitality. In this talk, she shares how she leaned into her creativity and curiosity, and found the courage to blaze her own path.

Bonny Simi (JetBlue Technology Ventures) - Cultivate Creativity and Courage

Beverly Parenti and Chris Redlitz are the co-founders of The Last Mile, an organization that aims to break the cycle of incarceration by providing education and career training opportunities in prisons. Founded in 2010 at San Quentin State Prison, The Last Mile has become one of the most requested prison education programs in the United States. In this talk, joined by former TLM student and Healthy Hearts Institute founder Ray Harts, they discuss how to build and grow social ventures that make a difference.

Beverly Parenti & Chris Redlitz (The Last Mile) and Ray Harts (Healthy Hearts Institute) - Growing a Social Venture

Joe DeSimone is the founder and executive chairman of Carbon, a global company that is driving the evolution of 3D printing from a prototyping tool into a scalable manufacturing technology. As a professor at the University of North Carolina, DeSimone made scientific breakthroughs in areas including green chemistry, medical devices, and nanotechnology, also co-founding several companies based on his research. In 2016 President Obama awarded him the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the highest honor in the U.S. for achievement and leadership in advancing technological progress. In this talk, he explores how diverse teams, perspectives and specialties can drive innovations in both technologies and business models.

Joe DeSimone (Carbon) - The Case for Convergence

Julie Zhuo is the co-founder of Inspirit, an advisory firm that partners with fast-scaling tech companies to build and scale products that people love. Prior to founding Inspirit, she was the VP of design and research for the Facebook app, and helped scale the service from 8 million users to over 2 billion. She is also the author of The Making of a Manager, a field guide for new managers that was named one of Amazon's Best Business and Leadership Books of 2019. In this talk, she focuses on how to channel user feedback into impactful product decisions, and also shares some powerful lessons about how to become a successful manager.

Julie Zhuo (Inspirit) - How to Learn from Users

Kevin Systrom, co-founder of Instagram, first spoke at ETL in 2011, just seven months after Instagram launched. Here, he returns to ETL nine years later to draw some new insights about the the startup's rocket-like growth. In an interview with Stanford professor of the practice and STVP faculty director Tina Seelig, Systrom reflects on the lessons he’s learned during the course of that journey, and also talks about his work on Rt.live, a new platform that aims to model the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kevin Systrom (Instagram) - How Instagram Scaled

Alexi Robichaux is the co-founder and CEO of BetterUp, a mobile-based platform that brings personalized professional coaching to employees at all levels. In this talk, Robichaux speaks with Stanford lecturer Toby Corey about the motivations that drove him to found BetterUp, and reflects on key values, strategies and pivots that have helped sustain the venture’s mission-driven growth.

Alexi Robichaux (BetterUp) - Uncompromising Values

Ethan Brown is the founder, president and CEO of Beyond Meat. In this talk, Stanford lecturer Toby Corey interviews Brown about how his company has redefined “meat.” Brown shares some of the key lessons learned from Beyond Meat’s startup story and explores some of the pivotal moments of his journey from idea to IPO.

Ethan Brown (Beyond Meat) - Reimagining Meat

Andy Karsner is a senior strategist and “Space Cowboy” at X, the “moonshot factory” at Alphabet (Google’s parent company). He has spent two decades driving renewable energy innovation and other climate solutions, including serving as the Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy from 2005 to 2008. In this talk, Emily Ma, Food Systems Lead at X, interviews Karsner about the nation’s preeminent natural security challenges and explores where he finds the greatest hope for designing solutions.

Andy Karsner (X) - Designing for Natural Security

Joseph Tsai is a co-founder and the executive vice chairman of Alibaba Group, a global Internet technology company based in China. He is also the owner of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets and the WNBA’s New York Liberty, along with several other sports and sports media companies. In this conversation with Stanford professor Tom Byers, Tsai tells stories and shares strategies from a career that has built many important bridges between China and North America.

Joseph Tsai (Alibaba Group) - From Alibaba to the NBA

Amy Francetic is the founder and managing partner of Buoyant Ventures, a venture fund that invests in digital climate solutions. In this talk, delivered on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic, Francetic sheds light on the evolution of the clean tech market and shares why now, more than ever, is an opportune time to invest in clean energy and energy efficiency.

Amy Francetic (Buoyant Ventures) - The Evolution of Clean Tech Investing

Each week, experienced entrepreneurs and innovators come to Stanford University to candidly share lessons they’ve learned while developing, launching and scaling disruptive ideas. The Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Series is produced by Stanford eCorner during fall, winter and spring quarters.

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Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Video Series

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