LeaderbookAI

How can leaders turn disagreement into better decisions? Karan Yadav joins Felicia Shakiba to discuss productive friction, hiring people who learn and solve problems, and building teams that challenge ideas before committing to a shared direction. Drawing on his experience at Apple, Workday and Orbi...

AI makes prototyping easier. Building a business that lasts still depends on clear priorities, close customer contact, and sound judgment. Felicia Shakiba speaks with entrepreneur and investor KP Reddy about his return to the operator’s seat with Zero RFI, applying AI to construction, and what he lo...

Why do well-supported people decisions still meet resistance? Todd Carlisle, Partner and Chief People Officer at Bessemer Venture Partners, joins Felicia Shakiba to discuss how leaders can make data useful in real conversations and evaluate where AI belongs in HR. Todd explains how he prepares stake...

A customer wants to spend more, but your revenue model gives you a reason to say no. Brent Hagan, Chief Supply Chain Officer at Lob at the time of recording, joins Felicia Shakiba to discuss how that tension exposed a gap between the company's metrics and the value customers needed. They examine ope...

Backlight CEO Kathleen Barrett explains why customers can love your products while your business still struggles to scale. She shares how she focused an acquired portfolio, rebuilt sales quotas and financial visibility, and why leaders need to fix their operating foundations before layering on AI. I...

ControlUp CEO Jed Ayres and Chief Product Officer Gadi Feldman share the decision to bring 400 employees to Dubai while the company was operating through war and crisis—and what happened to morale, trust, and connection afterward. IN THIS CONVERSATION • How leaders make decisions during war and cris...

Welcome to a new era of the Leaderbook AI podcast. Everyone is talking about AI, but no one is talking about what’s actually happening behind closed doors. In this upcoming mini-series, host Felicia Shakiba brings you into the tight executive meetings where the real decisions, heavy trade-offs, and ...

Private equity portco CEO Jeremy Jones uses cultural alignment for due diligence in private equity — not financials — as the first filter in every acquisition. The result: Frazier & Deeter has grown from 530 to 850 people in seven months through three deals, with a fourth closing next week. Jones wa...

Tina Murphy, CEO at GHX, breaks down why talent is her top three priorities — not strategy, not capital — how GHX restructured its entire organization to get closer to customers and move faster, what she's looking for in leaders today that she wasn't three years ago, and why the companies that fail ...

Private equity has had it easy for forty years. Cheap money, expanding multiples, and a rising S&P produced returns almost regardless of what firms did with the assets they bought. That era just ended — and Lee McCabe, Partner at Claymore Partners, argues most firms haven't adjusted to what replaces...