FORTUNE Unfiltered with Aaron Task show

FORTUNE Unfiltered with Aaron Task

Summary: From FORTUNE and Time Inc., home of iconic franchises like FORTUNE 500, comes FORTUNE Unfiltered, an original weekly podcast series featuring in-depth conversations with the brightest leaders in business today. Audiences will discover the personal journeys and the raw ambition behind the executives who are driven to greatness. These are the stories of how and why these important figures in business went from visionary to leader. FORTUNE Unfiltered: Untold and Unguarded.

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  • Artist: Time, Inc.
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Podcasts:

 Andrew Wilson, CEO of Electronic Arts | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:42:04

Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson took a circuitous route to his current job running the world’s leading global interactive entertainment software company. Raised in Geelong, Australia—a blue collar town southwest of Melbourne—Wilson bounced around professionally before landing at EA in 2000. He started on a small surfing game, then ultimately worked his way up through the company. A few years into his tenure he moved to Vancouver to join the EA Sports FIFA development team. “We were I think 19 different nationalities, speaking 20 different languages,” Wilson recalls. “We were like the UN of game development….but we all shared this one love. We shared this love for football. At the time, FIFA was the number two soccer game on the market behind Pro Evolution Soccer and was really struggling. Under Wilson’s leadership, the game broke out and ultimately became what it is today — the largest sports game franchise in the world and one of the biggest annual events in the $80 billion gaming industry. “My life is a series of unbelievable people who looked at me and said ‘yeah, we’ll take a bet on you’,” Wilson recalls, before describing the traits he looks for in young people he’s willing to make a bet on.

 Julie Sweet, Group Chief Executive of Accenture | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:50:41

Julie Sweet took an unusual road to become CEO of Accenture North America, a position which landed her at #39 on Fortune's 2016 list of the World's Most Powerful Women. In 1987, 19-year old Sweet went to China, going to a foreign culture to learn a strange language in an era when learning Japanese was far more fashionable. Risk-taking and doing things a little differently has become the theme of Sweet's professional career, taking her from partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP—one of the first females to earn that title—to her current position at Accenture NA, which has $31 billion in revenue and nearly 50,000 employees. Sweet helped Accenture land on Fortune's list of the 100 Best Places to Work by allowing employees returning from parental leave to work locally, providing 40 hours of subsidized back-up care, and prioritizing a diverse and inclusive work environment. Just this year, Accenture was the first big consulting firm to publish race and gender stats, another example of Sweet doing things a little bit differently as we discuss in the latest episode of Fortune Unfiltered.

 Susan Lyne, Founder and President of BBG Ventures | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:44:35

Susan Lyne has had one of the most extraordinary careers of anyone in corporate America in the past 30 years. Currently the founder and President of BBG Ventures (more on that below), Lyne served as CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia during the time Martha Stewart was in jail. Before that, she held various positions at the Disney and ABC, including President of ABC Entertainment. Lyne gave the greenlight to shows like Desperate Housewives, Lost, Grey’s Anatomy and The Bachelor, but was fired from ABC before any of those huge hits made it to air. In this episode of Fortune Unfiltered, Lyne discusses her public dismissal from Disney, losing her husband to cancer, the key to starting over in her career (many times) and her current endeavor, an early-stage investment fund for women-led startups. Funded by AOL, BBG Ventures sprung out of the #BuiltByGirls movement, which - by the way - Lyne helped launch as CEO of AOL’s Brand Group.

 Rebecca and Uri Minkoff, Co-Founders of Rebecca Minkoff | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:58:09

Rebecca Minkoff has used New York Fashion Week as a showcase for innovation, and I’m not talking about her fashions. Last year at this event, Minkoff became the first designer to broadcast her runway show in virtual reality. Last spring, the fashion house introduced a “buy now, wear now” format -- showing spring collections in the spring and fall ones in the fall, a seemingly logical decision that was actually a bit of a revolution in the fashion industry. "The minute Instagram...became important, the consumer was getting frustrated and angry because she sees something but is confused she has to wait this long" before it's available to purchase, Rebecca Minkoff explains. "Or a fast fashion retailer knocks me off couple days after show. Both ends of spectrum—between frustrated consumers and the fact its copied right away, that cycle was definitely not going to be fixed by doing it the old way" of runway fashions not being widely available at retail until several months later. Ahead of Fashion Week, I spoke with Rebecca, and cofounder and brother Uri Minkoff about disrupting the industry, embracing technology, the challenges and opportunities of running a family-owned business, and how the tragedy of 9/11 helped give Rebecca her first big break.

 Jeff Lawson, Founder, CEO and Chairman of Twilio | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:39:45

Jeff Lawson is the CEO and co-founder of Twilio, which makes cloud communications tools for software developers. The company went public in June and has more than tripled from its IPO price, driving the value of Lawson’s stake to nearly $500 million. But having massive paper wealth doesn’t seem to have changed Lawson, who gained perspective from haing founded three companies prior to Twilio, including one that filed to go public in the late 1990s. Then the whole market fell apart and it went bankrupt shortly thereafter. “My takeaway [from that] was to focus on things that are real, of value and have faith if you focus on the true fundamentals of business - happy customers, revenue, good employees - good things will happen.” Lawson also talks about the lessons he learned about leadership and serving customers at Amazon.com where he was one of the original product managers for Amazon Web Services.

 Richard Parsons, a former Chariman of Citigroup and former CEO of AOL Time Warner | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:47:56

A former Chairman of Citigroup and former CEO of AOL Time Warner, Dick Parsons has tackled some of the toughest jobs of any American corporate executive in the past 25 years. In this episode of Fortune Unfiltered, Parsons explains why he’s always the person who gets called after disaster strikes. “I’m attracted to that – it keeps your attention,” Parsons says of leading in a crisis. “ It concentrates the mind as Pat Moynihan used to say. If you’ve got serious issues you need to be alert [and] alive in the moment. I’m not the world’s best steady-state manager...not a particularly good one because my mind wanders.” In addition to the AOL and Citigroup jobs, Parsons took over as interim CEO of the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers in May 2014 amid the Donald Sterling scandal. But all those professional tribulations pale in comparison to the battle Parsons is fighting today. About two years ago he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer for which there are a variety of treatments but currently no cure. Parsons talks frankly about his battle with cancer, his management philosophy and his reflections on being one of the first African-Americans to run a Fortune 500 company.

 Carol Roth, Television Personality, Best Selling Author and Entrepreneur | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:57:40

Carol Roth is a great example of someone who has bet on herself -- and won big. Once a rising star at Montgomery Securities in San Francisco, Roth got off the traditional Wall Street track and started using what she learned in investment banking to help small businesses get off the ground, and become big ones. In addition to being an early investor in startups like Jawbone, Roth is now an on-air contributor at CNBC, a judge on Mark Burnett's America’s Greatest Makers and author of the New York Times bestselling book The Entrepreneur Equation, which lays out the strategies that led her to be named one of America's Top 100 small business strategists every year since 2011. Despite all that (and more) Roth says one of her "proudest accomplishments" is being one of the mere 2094 people who the NFL is following on Twitter. Check out this week's episode of Fortune Unfiltered as Roth discusses her early investment banking career, her small business consulting work, her hatred of the term "woman entrepreneur," and that whole NFL Twitter thing.

 Blake Irving, CEO of GoDaddy | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:45:01

Blake Irving, CEO of the web hosting company GoDaddy is a self-professed “product guy.” He spent his 15-year career at Microsoft in a range of engineering and product management roles, then ran the product team at Yahoo before taking the top post at GoDaddy. But that’s only part of the picture. Irving is also a band geek, cyclist, and skater. He began taking drumming lessons at age 7 after his family moved to California, playing into his 20s before realizing music was a tough way to make a steady living. After Microsoft, Irving took his family on a one-year trip around the world. During a stop in Hong Kong, he accompanied his kids to a skatepark, where word quickly got out that the guy who launched MSN Messenger was in attendance. At the time, the IM service held a 90% share of messaging outside the United States, according to Irving.

 Steve Case, Co Founder of AOL | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:48:06

AOL co-founder Steve Case lives by the African proverb: “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Before there was Facebook or Twitter or Google, there was America Online, the company which once served the functional equivalent of all three combined. During AOL's heyday in the 1990's, the company had over 300 partnerships, including with Apple and Sprint. Those partnerships helped Case's company become the first Internet company to go public and become the best-performing stock of the 1990's dot com boom. The boom ended in 2000, shortly after AOL's stunning $164 billion acquisition of Time Warner. In this episode of Fortune Unfiltered, Case talks openly about went wrong with AOL-Time Warner and why being far removed from Silicon Valley’s startup culture was a key part of the Virginia-based company’s growth into one of the top consumer tech brands in the world.

 Beth Comstock - Vice Chair of Business Innovations at General Electric | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:40:06

What Jack Welch taught Beth Comstock. GE's Vice Chair describes how she overcame being an introvert and learned how to 'pick up the hammer'

 Rob Manfred - Commissioner of MLB | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:48:10

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred talks about A-Rod, Pete Rose and the future of America's pastime.

 Gary Vaynerchuk - Co Founder of VaynerMedia | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:57:17

Gary Vaynerchuck is just getting started. There's more to 'Gary Vee' than just his social media celebrity.

 FORTUNE Unfiltered Teaser Episode | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:01:15

"FORTUNE Unfiltered with Aaron Task" launches Monday July 25th.

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