Masters of Scale

Renee Wegrzyn, who built ARPA-H (the White House health breakthroughs agency) before the Trump administration showed her the door, co-founded Transfyr to attack what she calls the 'magic hands problem': the unglamorous bottleneck of tacit lab expertise that everything AI promises in medicine depends on. She also tallies what federal funding cuts are costing science and says she can feel the next Sputnik moment coming. Science policy more than management, but the core insight travels: automation stalls wherever critical know-how lives in people's hands and heads, a knowledge transfer problem consultants will recognize.

Thibault 'Tibo' Sottiaux, OpenAI's head of Product and Platform responsible for tools used by more than a billion people, tells Rana el Kaliouby why he is 'proud' OpenAI delayed its latest Astra model over safety concerns, and walks through the agentic products released at DevDay. The stated theme, not letting humans become an 'afterthought' in AI products, is the same question consultants face when clients redesign work around agents.

Alyssa Ravasio on scaling Hipcamp into the largest source for booking campsites on public and private land, using what she calls 'coyote trickster energy' to get people to put down their technology, and on learning to prioritize her health as a founder. A marketplace founder story; light on organizational content beyond the founder sustainability thread.

Kalshi co-founder Luana Lopes Lara defends the prediction market platform that went from $5 billion to $22 billion in valuation in under a year and is now being sued by New York's attorney general for $36 billion. Her core argument: prediction markets incentivize truth while everything else incentivizes clickbait, even though 75% of Kalshi's volume is sports, and she shares what the platform's data says about the midterms plus what ballet taught her about running a company. A regulatory fight story, mostly outside this feed's lane, though the incentives-shape-information thesis has echoes in how transparent organizations surface truth.

Jennifer Ferro, former NPR board chair and longtime president of KCRW, on what nearly two decades as the founder's deputy taught her about leading, why we deserve a better internet, and why the best defense against being ignored is simple: don't be boring.

Hershey CEO Kirk Tanner on keeping an iconic brand culturally relevant, why GLP-1 users have not hurt the candy business, and how AI now routes Hershey's sales force in real time through Target and Walmart. For consultants: a concrete example of algorithmic management arriving in field work, worth watching for who sets the routes and who answers for them.

Codie Sanchez returns with an ultimatum, own or be owned: her case that buying an existing small business is the most reliable path to wealth most people are too scared to take, what running your business alone is costing you, and why AI is an accelerator rather than a shortcut. Adjacent to the ownership track: the wealth argument for ownership, made from the buyer's side.

Jess Smith was employee number one of the Golden State Valkyries; two seasons later the WNBA franchise carries a unicorn valuation. She talks building a brand from a blank slate, the rise of women's professional sports, and why so many women in the C-suite are former athletes.