Navigating a leadership crisis, w/Web Summit CEO Katherine Maher
Masters of Scale
WaitWhat
4.6 • 4.4K Ratings
🗓️ 30 November 2023
⏱️ 35 minutes
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Summary
How do you restore confidence after a high-profile leadership uproar? Web Summit’s new CEO Katherine Maher joins Rapid Response host Bob Safian to discuss taking over after the sudden, forced resignation of founding CEO Paddy Cosgrave. With echoes of the drama at OpenAI, Maher describes how she navigated the tumult, calming partners like Amazon and Google and enabling Web Summit’s signature event in Lisbon to draw 70,000 attendees. Plus, Maher shares lessons from her time at the helm of the Wikimedia Foundation and insight on how the world of politics and global events is increasingly intertwined with business.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi listeners, it's Marsha Mukutonina and I'm a producer on Masters of Scale. |
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| 0:45.0 | On the cab to JFKK the night before I left I went, |
| 0:49.0 | is this really the right decision? |
| 0:51.0 | It's an incredibly high wire act to pull off navigating an |
| 0:57.7 | organization through a moment where it has been thrust into the sort of |
| 1:01.7 | geopolitical spotlight. I was, you know, incredibly |
| 1:05.1 | concerned about whether I was going to be able to rise to that moment, but I've |
| 1:09.1 | spent a lot of time in the Middle East. I have spent time in Israel. I have people that I love very dearly |
| 1:16.0 | in these communities. We need to find a way of course to recognize that Patty's comments really did create harm and hurt. |
| 1:26.0 | And also we need to find ways to ensure that Web Summit doesn't shy away from topics. |
| 1:32.0 | Maybe this is the original sin of the tech sector |
| 1:35.0 | is that everybody stood up and said, |
| 1:36.5 | hey, we're here to change the world |
| 1:38.0 | and people said, great, okay, well, we're gonna make you, |
| 1:40.0 | you know, live up to your promises. |
... |
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