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Tag: Modern CEO

  • This CEO Just Sold His Company for $21 Billion. It Wouldn’t Have Happened Without Federally Funded Research

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    Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.

    Being a life sciences CEO is not for the faint of heart. Drug discovery and patent approvals are costly and time-consuming, and even if an executive can steer a company to clinical trials, there’s a very small chance the product will be commercialized. One study says that 90 percent of clinical drug development fails because the treatment didn’t have its intended impact, had the wrong formulations, or harmed patients. “You have a business challenge, a science challenge, a clinical trial challenge, and a regulatory challenge,” says Kevin Conroy, CEO of the colorectal cancer screening company Exact Sciences. “It’s like solving a complex puzzle, and there’s simply no guarantee of success.”

    When companies do solve that puzzle, the rewards can be huge: As Modern CEO went to press, Exact Sciences announced it was selling to Abbott in a deal valued at $21 billion.

    Still, biotech and health technology companies are now confronting an additional burden: simmering science skepticism. Pew Research Center found that in 2024, 76 percent of Americans believed that scientists act in the public’s best interest, up slightly from 2023 but down 10 points from prepandemic levels. A new survey from Pew shows that 24 percent of parents of school-age children question whether vaccines have undergone enough safety testing.

    Rebuilding trust in science

    Some lawmakers are fanning the flames. Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called for changes in the ways vaccines are tested. The White House has cut budgets at the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, and moved to terminate federal funding to universities, all of which participate in the funding of medical and science research.

    Conroy says the current environment is a call to action to the biosciences industry to help rebuild trust with the public and lawmakers. “How can we in this field show success that brings back a stronger belief in science, in data, in clinical studies, in evidence generation?” he asks. “I think it’s our responsibility to do that.”

    According to Conroy, Exact Sciences isn’t facing any societal or political headwinds. It makes a colon cancer test (if you’re a certain age, you’ve probably been served ads for its Cologuard Kit) that will screen 5 million people for cancer this year. “Science skepticism hasn’t touched cancer screening,” he says. “People on the left and right are touched equally by cancer.”

    Still, Exact Sciences and other science companies have benefited from an ecosystem of government-funded research, rigorous approvals, and endorsements that make the U.S. a biotech innovation powerhouse. Exact Sciences was founded in 1995 by an engineer who wanted to develop an alternative to colonoscopies, but the company struggled for years to develop a test. Conroy joined in 2009 after meeting with David Ahlquist, a Mayo Clinic physician who had spent 20 years researching noninvasive colon cancer detection—research funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute, and the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science.

    Exact Sciences collaborated with Ahlquist on an approach that tests a patient’s stool for abnormal DNA or blood cells that might indicate the presence of colon cancer. Cologuard received FDA approval in 2014, after a huge clinical trial involving 10,000 patients; that same year the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it intended to cover the test, and the American Cancer Society included the test in its colon cancer screening guidelines—a key recommendation that helped build public trust in the at-home kit.

    “Exact Sciences would not be here without federally funded research at the Mayo Clinic,” Conroy says.

    Follow the data

    Conroy notes that all businesses can gain from a scientific approach—running experiments, conceding when something doesn’t work (even if you’ve invested time and money in the research), and following the data. At Exact Sciences, such rigor extends beyond the lab. Before the company launched its kits, the team tested two different product designs for sample collection—a scoop and a container. The team thought consumers would favor the scoop, but research showed 85 percent of users preferred the container.

    “We would have made a big mistake if we had trusted our gut,” Conroy says. “A lot of times you’re so passionate as a CEO, you skip all of those steps and just bulldoze your way toward the answer you’d like to see. I’m as guilty of that as the next CEO.”

    I asked Conroy how biotech executives can help restore trust in science and rally support for the broader system of grants and research funding now under fire. He notes that he travels to Washington from Exact Sciences’ headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin, every quarter to meet with lawmakers, largely to advocate for early detection of diseases but also to talk about innovation and discovery. “Every CEO in this field should be doing the same thing. It’s too important for America’s competitiveness,” he says.

    Deadline extended

    We’re extending the deadline for Modern CEO of the Year nominations by a few days. If you or someone you know has had a standout 2025, please fill out this nomination form by November 28. We’ll name the Modern CEO of the Year on December 29.

    Read more: science in focus

    The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    Stephanie Mehta

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  • Booking Holdings’s CEO Weathered the Dotcom Bubble. He Says the AI Boom is Different

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    Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.

    Glenn Fogel joined dot-com darling Priceline in early 2000, a year after the “name your price” travel site’s blockbuster initial public offering (IPO). “I joined one week before the Nasdaq peaked,” Fogel recalls. Within a year of his arrival, the stock had cratered to $6 a share. By March 2002, the Nasdaq, a proxy for the burgeoning e-commerce and tech infrastructure companies that went public, plunged 77 percent from its March 2020 highs. Quips Fogel: “At the time, my mother was wondering whether I still had a job.”

    Today, Fogel is CEO and president of Booking Holdings—parent of Priceline, KAYAK, Booking.com, OpenTable, and other brands. His experience navigating the dotcom bubble (more on that in a moment) affords a compelling perch from which to observe the current generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) boom. He sees parallels in the gold-rush mentality of both booms: “There’s lots of investments, lots of new companies,” he says. “Many of them will not make it. Many investors will lose money.” Corporate investment in AI reached $252.3 billion, and private investment in gen AI reached $33.9 billion in 2024, according to data compiled by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered artificial intelligence.

    The key difference between the dotcom bubble and now? “I would say in terms of the possibility for human society, I think the possible transformations from gen AI are so much greater than what was possible from the [startups of] the nineties,” he says.

    Fogel points to breakthroughs like Google’s AlphaFold model, which decoded protein folding and could accelerate drug discovery. “Every area really of our society can be greatly improved by using gen AI,” he says. “That’s the thing that’s so exciting.”

    Happy travelers

    In travel, the stakes may not be as high, but the impact on daily life could be profound. “Maybe we’re not going to save a lot of lives the way that the healthcare industry is going to be able to do, but maybe we’ll make the experience much happier,” he says.

    Indeed, the company is already deploying AI to reduce customer-service wait times, using gen AI chatbots that can solve problems instantly. When a human agent does handle a call, the bots generate conversation summaries and next steps—work that previously consumed significant amounts of agent time.

    Embracing emerging technology has been key to Booking Holdings’s longevity. When predecessor company Priceline Group bought Booking.com in 2005, it acquired Booking’s prowess in leveraging Google’s paid search and platforms that enabled the business to rapidly test messaging to optimize conversion rates. The company subsequently bought travel search engine KAYAK in 2013 and restaurant reservation platform OpenTable in 2014. Priceline Group changed its name to Booking Holdings in 2018.

    The long view

    Travel itself is currently experiencing a boom. Despite economic uncertainty, U.S. consumers, especially those at the high-end of the market, are prioritizing travel, with airlines and hotels indicating strong demand for premium products. Indeed, at the end of October, Booking Holdings reported better-than-expected third-quarter earnings and said it continues to see “steady travel demand trends” in the current quarter.

    Having led Booking Holdings through the dotcom boom and bust—as well as the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to a near complete shutdown of travel—Fogel acknowledges that nothing goes up forever.

    “I don’t know when those bad times are going to come, but they’re going to come sometimes,” he says. Still, he takes the long view: “I do know, in the long run, travel is always going to increase. It is human nature . . . people wanting to travel.”

    This time it’s different?

    Do you agree that the societal benefits of gen AI companies and technologies dwarf the contributions of the dotcoms? If so, what breakthroughs excite you most? Send your examples to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. I’d love to share your scenarios in a future newsletter.

    Read more: bubble theories

    Why the AI-fueled stock market isn’t a bubble waiting to pop

    There isn’t an AI bubble. There are three

    Are we in an AI bubble?

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    Stephanie Mehta

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  • This Influential Philanthropy Has an Expiration Date

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    Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself.

    Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman faces a rare leadership challenge: He is managing an organization that has announced its intention to spend $200 billion during the next 20 years—double what the organization dispensed in its first 25 years—while working to permanently close its doors on December 31, 2045.

    Suzman, who joined the foundation in 2007 as director of global development policy, advocacy, and special initiatives, and became CEO in 2020, says the finality and scale of his mandate actually provides clarity and focus. “It allows us to be very predictable and reliable for the next two decades,” he says. “That’s a luxury for a CEO.”

    With clarity comes focus

    The foundation announced it is sunsetting earlier this year, accelerating a shutdown that Suzman says had always been part of the organization’s long-term plan. At the time of the announcement, chair and board member Bill Gates said the nonprofit would concentrate its efforts on three areas: ending preventable deaths of mothers and babies, eradicating deadly infectious diseases, and putting millions of people on the path to economic prosperity.

    That means some programs will “graduate,” or be reworked. Some existing initiatives that fall outside the focus areas or may not be achievable by 2045 are moving into new partnerships. For example, the foundation’s work to foster technology and tools to expand economic opportunity for Americans is now part of NextLadder Ventures, a coalition of philanthropies including Ballmer Group (cofounded by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer), Valhalla Foundation, Stand Together, and others.

    Leadership through change

    I asked Suzman about leading a team of more than 2,000 mission-driven employees—some of whom are seeing projects deprioritized—through this lengthy transition. He contends that the foundation has always had to make hard choices. “When you’re part of an institution that has a wider set of goals, there will be trade-offs—trade-offs about how we allocate our internal resources, how we allocate Bill’s voice. We work on this by trying to pull people up to our shared set of goals,“ he says.

    He also echoed a common refrain I hear from virtually every CEO trying to manage an organization through massive change: “You can never over-communicate enough,” he says. “You have to keep driving that message through in every possible channel, internal and external, to help people see the connections and understand that you know how they all come together toward the greater goal of the foundation.”

    The foundation’s phase out comes in the wake of major changes to its structure. In 2024, Warren Buffett, who has donated $48 billion since 2006, said the foundation would not receive a contribution upon his death. That same year, Melinda French Gates resigned as co-chair after 24 years, receiving $12.5 billion from the foundation for her independent philanthropic work. In January 2025, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was renamed Gates Foundation, with Bill Gates becoming sole chair.

    Message to the next generation

    The announcement also coincides with challenges to some of the causes the foundation has championed, including vaccines and international aid. Suzman notes that the Gates Foundation is now the largest funder of the World Health Organization (WHO) after President Donald J. Trump’s executive order withdrawing from the WHO.

    Suzman contends that philanthropy shouldn’t solely provide resources for health and humanitarian organizations that governments have historically supported. But he also urges a new generation of business executives and founders to begin their giving journeys.

    “I’m the beneficiary of the amazing generosity of Bill, Warren, and Melinda . . . they themselves frequently talk about how personally fulfilling philanthropy is to them,” Suzman says. He adds: “We only hope there’ll be more following our example. The world needs it desperately.”

    Sailing into the sunset

    Have you ever had to lead the winding down of a company or organization? How did you do it, and how did you keep employees engaged? Send your stories to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com for possible use in a future newsletter.

    Read more: the business of giving

    How to build charitable giving into your business model

    Is the era of the benevolent billionaire really over?

    The top 50 U.S. donors gave $16.2 billion to charity in 2024

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  • Beautycounter CEO Gregg Renfrew’s “Season of Learning”

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    Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday.

    Gregg Renfrew is back. Four years after the entrepreneur sold her clean skincare and cosmetics brand Beautycounter to The Carlyle Group in a deal valued at $1 billion—and more than a year after she and the private equity firm shut down the company amid falling sales—Renfrew today is officially launching Counter, a new company built on Beautycounter assets she acquired from Carlyle’s lenders.

    A season of learning

    Counter, which has been quietly selling products online since June 25, shares its predecessor’s clean ethos and uses some of its formulations. Renfrew also secured data on all of Beautycounter’s customers. But Counter is an upstart compared with Beautycounter, which reportedly booked $400 million in annual sales at the time of the Carlyle acquisition. Despite her considerable experience as an entrepreneur—she previously cofounded a bridal registry site bought by Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia—Renfrew is, in many ways, going back to basics, focusing on profitability and listening to customers and sellers.

    “I come into this today with a level of humility,” she tells Modern CEO. “I don’t claim to have all the answers. I’m in a season of learning.”

    Beautycounter’s demise was indeed humbling. (My Fast Company colleague Elizabeth Segran offers a thorough recounting of the company’s rise and fall.) Sales foundered and the company struggled to service its debt. Efforts to revive Beautycounter, such as a deal to sell its products in retailer Ulta Beauty, and changes to leadership, including the return of Renfrew as CEO in 2022, ultimately could not save the business.

    Renfrew says buying back the Beautycounter assets instead of starting a new company from scratch wasn’t just a way of kickstarting a business. It was an emotional decision, too. “To let the old company completely go and die when it pioneered, created, and led clean beauty—knowing that it had been a very successful entity at one point in time—I didn’t want to let go of all that,” Renfrew says. She adds: “My daughter Georgie was literally bawling in front of me saying, ‘You can’t just let this thing die. Mom, you worked so hard for so long.’”

    Second chances and lessons learned

    Renfrew is not the first founder with seller’s remorse. In 2023, Ben and Nate Checketts took back control of Rhone, the apparel brand they started, from investor L Catterton. Sprout Pharmaceuticals founder Cindy Eckert sold her company to Valeant Pharmaceuticals (now known as Bausch Health Companies Inc.) in 2015 for $1 billion, then bought it back two years later because the giant didn’t make “reasonable efforts” to commercialize Sprout’s female sexual health drug.

    At Counter, Renfrew is applying lessons learned the hard way from the Beautycounter collapse. She is not the majority shareholder, but she says she has a high degree of decision-making authority. Her backers are mostly individuals, most of whom invested with her before. The one institutional investor came in “knowing that we were going to do things a little bit differently,” such as prioritizing profitability over growth. “Profitability gives you optionality,” she says. “One of the things I’m very acutely aware of is you don’t ever want to be in a situation where you’re not profitable. And if that means the business is slightly smaller and it takes longer to grow, that’s okay, because your customers then know that you’re going to be around in five years.”

    She’s doing teleconference meetings with customers and sellers, asking what’s working and what’s not. “I’m seeking to understand and learn,” she says, adding that she “recognizes that we’re here in service of others who will afford us the opportunity to build a great brand and a great community.”

    Counter’s success is by no means assured. The clean beauty category Renfrew helped create is now crowded with competitors, and the demise of Beautycounter left employees, sellers—the company sold through its website but also through so-called ambassadors who earned a commission on sales—and customers in the lurch. Counter may have to, well, counter lingering negative feelings. “Those who continue to purchase from us in this new company—we owe a debt of gratitude,” Renfrew says. “We need to treat them with the respect that they deserve.” For Renfrew, one way of showing them that respect is, this time, to build a company that’s built to last.

    What’s your approach to business longevity?

    If you’re a founder or work at a founder-led company, what are the ways that your business is ensuring its longevity? Share your insights with me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com, and we’ll include some of the best reader feedback in a future newsletter. As a reminder, I’m soliciting nominations for Modern CEO of the Year via this form. Submissions are due November 21, and we’ll share our pick—or picks—in a newsletter at the end of December.

    Read and watch: entrepreneurial second acts

    Cindy Eckert on buying back sexual health company Sprout Pharmaceuticals

    Chipotle founder Steve Ells wants to shake up restaurants with his new concept, Kernel

    Mark Lore on what it takes to be a serial entrepreneur

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  • E.l.f. CEO Tarang Amin Reflects on a Tumultuous 2025

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    Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday.

    When we named Tarang Amin Modern CEO of the Year in December 2024, the E.l.f. Beauty chairman and chief executive had racked up a string of notable successes. Under Amin’s leadership, the publicly traded cosmetics company had posted 23 consecutive quarters of net sales and market share growth. E.l.f. won plaudits for cheeky marketing efforts such as a coffin-shaped makeup kit collaboration with beverage company Liquid Death. Another initiative championed corporate board diversity via its “So Many Dicks” campaign, which cites research showing that men named Richard, Rick, or Dick outnumber women and diverse directors serving on public company boards. Indeed, such bold ads helped land Kory Marchisotto, E.l.f.’s chief marketing officer, on Fast Company’s 2024 list of CMOs of the Year as part of its Brands That Matter program.

    In contrast, this year has been a rockier one for Amin. In May, the company, whose E.l.f. skincare and cosmetics products sell at affordable price points, said it would raise prices on all its products by $1 to offset the impact of new tariffs. (The company has said 75% of its products are made in China.) In August, E.l.f. said it would not provide shareholders with a financial outlook for its full fiscal year ending March 31, 2026, citing the “wide range” of potential impacts from those tariffs. That same month, it launched a parody ad featuring comedian Matt Rife that faced social media backlash as commenters highlighted jokes Rife made about domestic violence in a Netflix special.

    Many CEOs might retreat from public view or tread carefully in this environment, but not Amin. Ahead of our search for the 2025 Modern CEO of the Year (more on that in a moment), Amin sat with me for a wide-ranging interview on the challenges of 2025, E.l.f.’s blockbuster $1 billion acquisition of Hailey Bieber’s Rhode brand, and why the company is expanding its Change the Board Game effort amid attacks on diversity programs. Here are the highlights in Amin’s own words:

    Responding to tarrifs

    Customer feedback on higher prices: “We announced [the $1-per-item price increases] to our community three months before we took prices up . . . The response from our community actually was quite positive. They love the fact that we’re not trying to pull one over their eyes; that we’re transparent.”

    Shareholder communications after pulling full-year guidance: “We just reported our 26th consecutive quarter of net sales and market share gains. What we emphasize with our investors is that we take a very long-term view. If you’re worried about short-term tariff impacts, maybe we’re not the stock for you.”

    The Matt Rife controversy

    Acknowledging the mistake: “In this onetime post, we clearly missed the mark. We’re all about delighting our community. This did not delight our entire community. And for that we apologize. I personally take that seriously.”

    Staying edgy: “We clearly missed the mark on this one. Let’s learn from it, but don’t lose [our] mojo. Don’t become scared. Don’t become safe.”

    Buying Rhode

    Why Rhode stood out: “I’ve never seen a brand that went from zero to $212 million in net sales in less than three years [by selling] direct to consumer only with just 10 products. It is just incredible in terms of success.”

    Hailey Bieber, acqui-hire: “Our approach to M&A is different than a lot of companies’. We never do synergy math or try to figure out where we can save. It’s all about growth for us. And so, one of the prerequisites we have is we want the entire team. Our approach is, ‘OK, how can we help you? How can we help you accelerate what you’re already doing really well?’”

    Doubling down on board diversity

    Change the Board Game 2.0: “We announced coalition partners that want to join us [in supporting boardroom inclusivity]. We’re going to continue to beat the drum, because these aren’t things that we do as a campaign. These are things we believe in.”

    Who is the modern CEO of 2025?

    For the second year, Modern CEO is seeking to recognize an executive who embodies the leadership qualities this newsletter has sought to highlight, such as promoting innovation, nurturing talent, and fostering excellence. Please fill out this form to nominate a chief executive—or yourself. We’ll dedicate a column in December to the Modern CEO of the Year.

    Read and watch: CEOs on our radar

    Brian Niccol’s bold Starbucks redesign

    How the CEOs of Ohai.ai and FinMkt make innovation work for them

    Figma is growing fast under CEO and cofounder Dylan Field

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  • As Many CEOs Call Employees Back to the Office, This CEO Is Bucking the Trend and Embracing Remote Work

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    Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.

    When Brian Doubles became CEO of Synchrony in 2021, a global pandemic had upended the way companies thought about work. Remote options became ubiquitous, and many employees, when possible, were given the tools they needed to do their jobs from anywhere. Now, even as other financial services companies and banks have issued return-to-office mandates, Doubles is making a different bet: Stamford, Connecticut–based Synchrony allows its more than 20,000 employees to work from home or in a company facility (or a mix of both) with in-person gatherings for training, leadership meetings, innovation sessions, and culture-building events.

    The decision appears to be paying off. Turnover is down, job applications are up 30%, and this year Synchrony climbed to No. 2 on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list, up from No. 37 in 2021.

    The recognition caps four years of key gains for the company, which is the nation’s largest issuer of private-label credit cards. In June, Synchrony announced it would power a new credit card program with Walmart, winning back business the company lost to rival Capital One in 2018, and adding to a roster of clients that includes Lowe’s, Verizon, and Amazon. Last year, the company reported net interest income of $18 billion, an increase of 26% from 2021. Since Doubles became CEO, the stock has risen more than 60%, outperforming the S&P 500. (Disclosure: Synchrony was a sponsor of the recent Fast Company Innovation Festival.)

    Synchrony’s growth comes despite some headwinds in the world of consumer credit, which former Synchrony parent General Electric helped popularize when it started financing appliance purchases in the 1930s. (GE completed the spin-off of its credit business in 2015.) Store-branded cards once dominated credit card issuance. Now, as big brick-and-mortar retailers such as JCPenney and Macy’s have contracted, store credit cards account for just 4% of purchase volume in the U.S. Well-heeled consumers, meanwhile, are opting for rewards cards such as American Express Platinum or Chase Sapphire Reserve, while more cash-conscious Gen Z consumers finance purchases using buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) products.

    Productive paranoia

    Synchrony is well placed to respond to changes in the business and economic landscape thanks to a reorganization Doubles executed upon becoming CEO. Though the company was posting strong financial results as consumers returned to pre-pandemic spending, Doubles restructured the business to expand and diversify its customer base; he also created a growth organization and combined the technology and operations to accelerate new product development.

    “I have a productive paranoia, and I think the best time to embark on a big change like that is from a position of strength,” he says. “The intent of the reorganization was to bring innovation to market faster—to anticipate what our partners need from us before they’re asking us for it.” For example, rather than creating a dedicated solution for every enterprise customer (Synchrony calls them partners), the company now develops a standardized product and scales it across hundreds of customers, making customized tweaks in the later stages.

    Leaders say bringing teams together has given different departments fluency in their counterparts’ work, leading to faster digital tool development. “When I go inside our P.I. [program increment] sessions, which is how agile teams operate, I can’t tell who’s from technology and who’s from credit,” Max Axler, chief credit officer, says of the cross-departmental group that works on PRISM, a proprietary system that makes underwriting and credit decisions.

    PRISM is a case study in harnessing Doubles’s productive paranoia. Synchrony changed a process that was working just fine—Synchrony has always been expert at underwriting—and took it to new levels. Today, PRISM can assess an applicant’s creditworthiness in a six-second window while they’re checking out at a store, using 9,000 data points, up from about 100 in 2018. “It was a big message to the organization that we were going to completely redesign the credit platform,” Doubles says, adding: “It gave other teams permission to rethink everything they were doing as well. Even if it’s working, rethink it.”

    Because PRISM looks at more variables to make credit decisions, Synchrony says it has been able to extend cards to people who previously might have been rejected because of their credit scores alone. And many of those consumers become especially loyal customers: Synchrony says these customers use their cards as “top-of-wallet” payment methods, driving repeat purchases. (Synchrony makes money when consumers borrow and pay interest on credit cards it has issued.)

    Winning back Walmart

    Even as Synchrony has been seeking new sources of revenue, including its own buy-now-pay-later offering, investors and analysts are cautiously optimistic about the financial impact of returning customer Walmart. (Before the companies parted ways in 2018, Walmart accounted for about $10 billion, or 19%, of Synchrony’s retail card balances, according to a story in The Wall Street Journal.)

    Doubles didn’t offer much detail about the renewed relationship other than touting the benefits of the new card, especially for Walmart+ subscribers, who pay a membership fee for perks like free delivery and shipping, among others.

    In a September report recapping a meeting with Synchrony executives, Bank of America Securities senior payments analyst Mihir Bhatia noted that management expects the partnership to be accretive to growth and profit margins, and characterized company leaders as “palpably more excited” about a deeper collaboration with Walmart, including store displays and online promotion of the card. “If Walmart is invested in the partnership and pushes the product and

    creates an interesting value proposition, customers will respond to that and get the card,” says Bhatia, who has a “buy” rating on Synchrony stock. “If more people get the card, more people spend money on the card, more people borrow on the card, and that’s good for Synchrony.” (The report also paraphrased management saying pure-play BNPL competitors are having a limited impact on Synchrony’s growth, and noted that Synchrony has introduced its own BNPL offering.)

    RTO outlier

    For all its technological and operational gains, Synchrony is still best known in some circles for its flexible work arrangements. But it wasn’t always a remote-work champion. “Pre-pandemic, we were a 99% in-office culture,” says DJ Casto, chief human resources officer at Synchrony. “This was a big fundamental change and a big trust exercise with our workforce.”

    A company survey showed that more than 85% of employees wanted a remote option, prompting the company to permanently adopt a policy that lets everyone work from home or in the office, or for many, a combination of the two, provided they live within commuting distance of a Synchrony office and come in from time to time. In contrast, many Wall Street investment banks and competitors such as JPMorganChase have mandated in-office days. It is worth noting that because Synchrony doesn’t have any physical bank branches, which aren’t needed in the credit card business, the company is able to offer hybrid work to hourly and salaried workers alike.

    “We’re trusting our employees to still give 110% even though we’re not monitoring how much time they’re spending in the office,” Doubles adds. “I remind our team all the time that the hybrid work model is a privilege, and we have to earn it every day. We have to earn it by running a successful business that’s growing.”

    To ensure accountability and employee engagement in a hybrid workforce, Casto says the company emphasizes the importance of ongoing one-on-one meetings between employees and managers with “significant focus on coaching” versus “managing.” Indeed, the company has embedded coaching throughout the organization. All of Doubles’s executive leadership team members have coaches, and Casto is working to make coaching available to a wider group of employees, including high-potential folks or people trying to work through complicated problems. The company also offers wellness coaches to all employees.

    Listening to employees drove Synchrony’s approach to work. Doubles says he also leans on active listening to help him run the business. “You have to listen to your employees,” he says. “They’re going to tell you what’s working and what’s not working. And if they’re telling you what’s not working, you have got to act on it fast, and they have to feel you acting on it.”

    Is your team remote or back in office?

    What is your company’s remote-work policy, and has it improved employee engagement? Send your experiences to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. I’d like to share some of your insights in a future newsletter.

    Read more: winning workplaces

    Fast Company’s 100 Best Workplaces for Innovators in 2025

    Inc.’s 2025 Best Workplaces recognizes the top small and midsize employers

    Adam Grant on how to build a winning workplace

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    Stephanie Mehta

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  • Exclusive: REI’s CEO Shares the Retailing Co-Op’s Growth Strategy

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    Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday.

    When Mary Beth Laughton became president and CEO of Recreational Equipment Inc. (REI) earlier this year, she inherited an organization with a rich heritage: REI was founded in 1938 by Lloyd and Mary Anderson, who joined some fellow outdoor enthusiast friends to buy ice axes that were only available in Europe at the time. Since then, REI has retained its status as a cooperative (co-op)—a $30 lifetime membership fee unlocks member rewards, discounts, and free standard shipping—and now boasts 25 million lifetime members, 195 stores, and 14,000 employees.

    Laughton also came into a company that was losing money and ceding ground to competitors. REI reported a net loss of $156.4 million in 2024; revenue fell 6.2 percent to $3.53 billion.

    To reverse the slide and position the brand to become “the most trusted retailer for people who love the outdoors,” Laughton last week unveiled a multi-year strategic plan that aims to leverage REI’s strengths while improving retail and membership experiences. She spoke exclusively with Modern CEO about the plan.

    Evolve, evaluate, elevate, engage

    “It’s not about necessarily reinventing the co-op,” she says of the strategy. “It’s about unleashing these assets that we already have and make us unique. But the reality is that we need to drive profit so that we can reinvest in communities and employees and back into the business.”

    The plan calls for REI to evolve its culture, evaluate its inventory to make sure stores are stocked with a comprehensive and current product assortment, elevate its customer service and experience, and engage members.

    “We’re talking about being a more connected, focused, and trailblazing culture,” she says, putting customers at the center, doing fewer but more high-impact projects, and moving faster. She adds: “If we don’t get the culture right, the rest of the strategic pillars aren’t going to matter.”

    To combat competition from big-box retailers such as Dick’s Sporting Goods, e-commerce giant Amazon, and newer brands with their own stores such as Cotopaxi, Laughton and her team are focused on differentiating the REI shopping experience. They are doing so with products that appeal to casual and expert outdoorspeople alike, while tapping into the knowledge and insights of REI’s 9,000 retail employees, known as “Green Vests” in a nod to the uniform they wear. “They have a lot of passion for the outdoors; they can offer a lot of guidance and expertise,” she says. She’s also looking for ways to “bring the Green Vest online”—weave expert advice throughout the online shopping experience.

    Those Green Vests also have their own expectations of REI. Employees at 11 stores have voted to unionize, an effort that began in 2020 amid concerns about worker safety during the pandemic. Earlier this year, REI and the unions that represent the workers reached an agreement that paves the way for contract negotiations. “We’re showing that we want to make progress, and we’re working collaboratively to get there,” Laughton says.

    New vision, solid roots

    Laughton is well positioned to help REI get crisp on the fundamentals of retail and online shopping. Before joining the co-op, she ran Nike’s direct-to-consumer (DTC) business globally, which included its 6,000+ stores, e-commerce site, and more (she spent nearly a decade at the footwear and apparel giant earlier in her career). Before Nike, she was president and CEO of Athleta, spent more than eight years at Sephora, and got her career start as a McKinsey & Company consultant.

    In the same way that Athleta expanded its customer base with workout gear in a range of sizes, as well as styles suitable for wear outside the gym or yoga studio, Laughton sees an opportunity to make sure REI is stocked with items that make people feel comfortable and stylish while hiking or skiing. “We have a thousand brands, and we can mix and match and outfit people in a way that they actually want to dress for the outdoors,” she says.

    But don’t expect the co-op to stray too far from its roots. “We want to be on-trend, but we also want to make sure that we’re not trendy,” she says. “Because that’s not REI.”

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    Read more: gearing up

    Patagonia’s founder never wanted to be a billionaire, so he did something about it

    Cotopaxi’s CEO won’t abandon color in her quest to compete with Patagonia

    Arc’teryx built an exoskeleton. Here’s what it’s like to walk in it

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    Stephanie Mehta

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