July means a time for rest and rejuvenation. And I just returned energized by another action-packed program at the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Summit in Aspen, CO. Together with a few hundred corporate leaders, asset managers, asset owners, leaders of NGOs, we talked through the political shifts in the business landscape, how leaders need to balance risk and innovation to drive lasting value, how best to identify material risks. And we challenged ourselves to uncover opportunities for long-term growth while navigating evolving economic, political and regulatory forces shaping sustainability and the workplace. Chatham House Rule binds me from sharing all we learned, but the program was rich with fireside chats, panels, and lots of breakouts for sharing and learning, in the true Aspen Institute spirit.

Of course, the setting was spectacular with sunrise hikes up Hunter Creek Trail and a community dinner at Pine Creek Cookhouse at the top of one mountain. I loved the dialogue stream focused on “building trust in the age of grievance” in which we did a deep-dive into the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer, which was so timely given I featured “the importance of trust” as a leadership quality in my congratulatory remarks to our May 2025 graduates.  Another session that drew out much strength of feeling was on “democracy, corporate voice, and the common good,” which challenged us to explore what’s gained and what’s lost when business opts out of the public square and what’s at stake if companies stay silent when their own commercial interests may be at risk. Unsurprisingly, my favorite part was leading a special panel discussion on financing sustainable ambition with a focus on tools and tactics to drive corporate investment with measurable impact. The testimonials of all who attended the packed session were inspiring.

I’m so grateful to Founder and Executive Director, Judy Samuelson and the whole Aspen Institute BSP team for delivering another memorable gathering and inviting me to be a part of it. These vital conversations must be had, and they were.

 

Leadership as a Radical Capitalist

In April, Brooks School Dean Colleen Barry hosted Mark Bertolini, MBA ’89, in a special class for her Master’s in Health Administration (MHA) students and she kindly invited me to dinner with Mark that evening. The stories he told about his career were incredible. Mark was CEO of Aetna during the onboarding of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and for a near-decade run. And he is now CEO of Oscar Health, a 12-year-old health insurance company that offers affordable plans with high-quality care and virtual services. The dinner prompted me to read his 2019 book, Mission-Driven Leadership: My Journey as a Radical Capitalist. It is an energized account of leadership at a high-stakes level. He has employed real dedication to being an independent thinker in the middle of a complex corporate structure.

What are the highlights for me? In Chapter 11, “Masters of the Universe Reinvented,” he talks about his responsibilities in DC as a CEO of Aetna, supporting the Affordable Care Act and the intent of the new law. Fascinating exchanges he had with key senators are outlined. Later in the chapter (p. 164), he posits that to fix the federal debt, our capitalist model “cannot simply be about maximizing earnings and increasing shareholder value, which means leaders can no longer ignore the first two P-s – people and planet. We must speak out on these issues and have a point of view that is respectful, fair, and humanistic.” Masters of the universe indeed!

The last chapter, “Reimagining the Future,” gets into how “we’ve barely scratched the surface of consumer analytics in health care and that data will personalize and revolutionize the industry.”  This foreshadows his current company, Oscar Health. “A consumer revolt is coming, and it’s easy to foresee…at some point, employees will demand a greater say in how their money is being spent and they will want coverage that applies to their needs – the curated experience.”

My favorite insights come in Chapter 7, entitled “Trust begets trust.” Bertolini quotes his friend Dov Seidman, a leadership expert, on the measurable physical effects of honorable exchanges between people. He writes: “When you trust someone, their brain responds by making more oxytocin, which allows them to trust you in return. Reciprocity – doing unto others as they do unto you – seems to be a biological function, trust begets trust.” Creating member trust for their insurer is a key focus at Oscar Health.

I cannot wait to welcome Mark back to campus to speak with our business students. Let me know what you think of his biography.

 

Mission-driven leadership requires independent thinking. And Cornellians deliver.

Three very cool stories about Cornellians came to my attention recently.

Current MSBA student Matthew Wilkinson is a truly mission-driven leader in our midst. Professor of Religion in Public Life at Cardiff University in the UK, Matthew is doing beautiful work in prison reform in Maine, and his research on effective interventions in prisons and schools is both intellectually fascinating and socially impactful. He’s exploring the usefulness of data from online education platforms and how firms leverage such data and analytics to advance their goals. You can learn a bit about the correctional education program he designed, PRIMO, in this video.

Charles Coristine, MBA ’12, also brought some independent thinking to his company, LesserEvil, a healthier popcorn and snack alternatives company he bought in 2011. After a successful two decades on Wall Street, Coristine bought the Danbury, Connecticut company for $250,000 and grown its brand to deliver $103.3 million in annual gross sales and $14.4 million in EBITDA. Incredible! According to a CNBC report in April, the company was purchased by Hershey for $750 million. The report details how Coristine did it and how the pivot happened just after he got his Cornell degree. There is extensive discussion about a new branding and his reliance on an unconventional ingredient – coconut oil. The part of the journey that resonated for me is that in 2018 the company secured a major investment from sustainable food and agriculture investment firm, InvestEco. And Coristine’s quote at the end is priceless – “It feels joyous, so it doesn’t feel like work.”

And if those two stories did not grab your attention, I highly recommend you check out the May 2025 New York Times story on Factorial Energy led by our very own Siyu Huang, MBA ’12, entitled “A decade-long search for a battery than can end the gasoline era.” Siyu and her co-founder husband, Alex Yu, PhD ’14, and their employees at Factorial have been working on a new kind of electric-vehicle solid-state battery, that could turn the auto industry on its head in a few years. It’s all about charging faster, going farther, and making electric cars cheaper and more convenient than gasoline vehicles. The best parts of this story derive from Siyu’s and Alex’s upbringing in China, their research at Uppsala University in Sweden before Cornell, and the twists and turns in the funding they have secured since founding from WAVE Equity Partners and partners including Hyundai Motor, Stellantis, and Korea’s LG Chem.

Congratulations Siyu, Alex, Matthew and Charles!

 

Mission-driven leadership gatherings in June

June and July have kept us busy with mission-driven cohorts. 

The Accounting for Sustainability (A4S) Summit in London: This gathering of about 250 CFOs, CIOs, consultants, bankers, and several scholars discussing sustainable finance and also featured this year’s Finance for the Future Awards. I was pleased to serve as lead judge, and we honored Dr. Mervyn King with the first FFTF Lifetime Achievement Award, along with Deloitte Global Vice Chair Veronica Poole. These honors took place in the awe-inspiring Wallace Collection, amid the brilliant paintings of Canaletto, Rubens, and other great masters.

CEMS Strategic Board Meeting in Paris: Our college represents the United States in the CEMS global alliance in management education. Just two years ago, we hosted our Strategic Board Meeting NYC. That was a heady gathering at which the full group hammered out a careful re-statement of the CEMS purpose; it was a revelatory and positive challenge for us, in the face of the environmental and political threats of the time, and we firmly recommitted ourselves to globalization, sustainability, inclusivity, and open, civil discourse.

Now, two years on and many more changes adopted, we have re-addressed ways to stay the course in this radically changing world. Naturally, CEMS fellows have great interest in life in the US at present. I spoke about the current environment for business schools here, as a financial economist studying the consequences of globalization and as a son of refugees from a violent, repressive Communist Hungary who came to live the freedoms of Western life in Canada, now the US.  Others spoke about the situation in Europe and Asia, what the future is going to be for all of us, and how CEMS as a network can be part of the future. Research has long shown that there are two sides to globalization. One side provides economic efficiency that eliminates restrictions and “economic deadweight losses” from taxes, duties, and tariffs. Another side aggravates inequity across nations in terms of their ability to participate in the global economy  due to vulnerabilities, and within nations, showing how inequality of wealth, income, and opportunity can become dramatically exacerbated. I explained that Cornell will continue to welcome international students from all around the world in celebration of our core value of “any person,” and that we will make sure they have the resources to deal with visa disruptions. We will show and encourage our students to engage more across disagreement and debate in order to hear and discern for themselves the components of every perspective. It’s entirely about opportunities for all to learn and grow.

It was the most well-attended CEMS Strategic Board meeting ever, with 20 of the corporate leads (mostly, CHROs, Chief Talent Officers) in attendance. We were even given a tour of L’Oreal’s remarkable original offices, which have been in place for 120 years. 

RME Week 2025 in New York City: PRME founded RME Week in 2023, and this year the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business hosted at Cornell Tech. Responsible business through education is the mission that drives PRME, RRBM, AACSB, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, and the roughly 400 attendees who joined us. The panels, conversations, workshops, and social opportunities helped seed collaboration and knowledge sharing among educators who aim to transform business through education. What’s next for business education remains to be seen, but our relationships with fellow educators and corporate partners are strong, as is our focus on hiring and supporting young faculty with innovative, multidisciplinary, often non-traditional expertise. We are collectively driven. So proud of our incredible SC Johnson College of Business staff who helped to pull this off. Thank you!

 

And I couldn’t leave without mentioning some of my summer reads:

• Empires of Ideas: Creating the Modern University from Germany to America to China, by William C. Kirby
• The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, and Why It Must Be Protected by Jonathan R. Cole
• How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.

Now for a little rest; I’ll report on my progress in the August post.