It's Not Magic, a Sixth Street podcast

Season 3 of INM opens with Frank Doyle, Dean of Harvard University’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). Frank takes us inside Harvard’s efforts to cultivate interdisciplinary collaboration and to grow an engineering school within the “176-year-old startup.” With his inspiring vision for the future of problem solving, Frank challenges us to think bigger and bolder and to embrace the people around us as the key to unlocking our full potential. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The microchip powers everything we do — from our iPhones, to the cars we drive, to missile guidance systems. Do we take for granted how much the world depends on such a scarce resource? For our Season 2 finale, we are joined by Chris Miller, Professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and author of the Financial Times 2022 Book of the Year, “Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology,” to learn how a group of visionaries brought this world-changing technology into existence, the incredibly delicate supply chain that holds together the most complex machinery humans have ever made, and how America’s perch as the world’s chip superpower may be in doubt. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr. Amy Abernethy is known for modernizing the FDA’s approach to big data. Now as President of Product Development and Chief Medical Officer of Alphabet’s Verily, and a member of Sixth Street’s Scientific Advisory Board, she’s exploring approaches to real-world data and developing tools to bring advanced therapeutics to patients. Amy joins our host, David Stiepleman, as well as Sixth Street’s Vice Chairman, Marty Chavez, as we discuss her contributions to transforming FDA processes and how today’s scientific advancements can lead toward improved public health outcomes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Join us as we explore the success of STAT – the fast-growing media company delivering trusted news on health, medicine, and the life sciences. After being the first to break the COVID-19 story in January 2020, STAT became a go-to source for information during the pandemic with over 26 million visitors in March 2020 alone. In this conversation, co-founder and executive editor Rick Berke reveals where things have gone right (and wrong) since the company’s founding in 2015 and his ambitions for STAT as it expands to cover the science and policy driving healthcare systems all over the world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What’s it like running one of the fastest growing tech companies in France? Jonathan Cherki, founder and CEO of Contentsquare, joins us from New York to talk about how his company became a global leader in helping brands enhance their customers’ digital experience. We discuss why Jon left his family’s dry legume supply business to found a tech company, the strategy behind Contentsquare’s rapid growth, and what’s next for brands after a decade of ecommerce revolution. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What’s it like leading a family business that invests in everything from baseball to robotics to soft drinks? We went to Minneapolis to talk with Jim Pohlad, chairman of the Minnesota Twins and co-head of the Pohlad Companies, about the balance between building for the long-term and the desire to “win now,” the process behind designing the Twins’ much-loved Target Field, and his family’s enduring commitment to their home state and town. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back for Season Two of It’s Not Magic! We’re kicking it off with a woman who epitomizes what it means to be a tech leader: Stacy Brown-Philpot, former CEO of TaskRabbit and founding member of the SoftBank Opportunity Fund. Recorded live from the Concrete Rose Summit in Menlo Park, CA, Stacy walks us through her experience leading TaskRabbit and its community of "Taskers", the advice she received while founding the Black Googlers Network, and her love for Detroit pizza (it's the water!). We loved Stacy’s perspective on the need to leave things better than how you found them, and we hope you do too. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For our Season One finale, we sit down with Julie Jones, chair of Ropes & Gray, the venerable law firm founded in 1865 that today is a $2 billion enterprise with over 1500 hundred lawyers. Julie is the first woman to lead the firm, and we discuss her elevation to Chair in 2020 just as the world and business leaders faced unprecedented challenges. We talk about how she prepared and marketed herself with intention early in her career on her way to becoming one of the world's preeminent M&A lawyers, her experience as one of the inventors of the reverse termination fee, and how she's adjusted from being a lawyer to being a leader. We also learn about her firm's response to covid, how she approaches speaking authentically on divisive issues, and the advice she received from Lloyd Blankfein. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do you build a business in a highly regulated industry? We asked the expert. Clip in to the via ferrata and join us with Igor Rozenblit, Managing Partner of Iron Road Partners and founder and former Co-Head of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Private Funds Unit. We learn about what it takes to build something new within a government agency, and we get Igor’s perspective as an entrepreneur from both sides of the regulatory fence. He takes us back to the days at the SEC post-Bernie Madoff, and we get deep on what motivates people. What do regulators care about most? Tune in and find out. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What's it like being the first to develop a new way to detect COVID-19 using gene-editing technology? Janice Chen joins us (with special guest Sixth Street's Jeff Pootoolal) to talk about building a business around CRISPR, the revolutionary gene-editing technology. We discuss how she and her co-founders prioritize the myriad potential applications for CRISPR, creating the first CRISPR-based COVID-19 diagnostic test, and how working in the collaborative environment of Nobel laureate, co-discoverer of CRISPR, and Sixth Street Chief Science Advisor Jennifer Doudna’s lab at UC Berkeley prepared her for life as an entrepreneur. We get into servant leadership, strategies for stepping back and connecting the dots, and how there’s no substitute for rolling up your sleeves and doing the work -- especially when that work is searching through thermal vents for life-saving enzymes. Learn more at https://sixthstreet.com/podcasts/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.