15 CEOs Reflect On Their Pandemic Year
Bosses from Moderna to Chipotle talk about their challenges and share lessons for the times ahead.
7 min
Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. Chief Executive Chris Nassetta worked from home in Arlington, Va., with his wife, six daughters and two dogs for two weeks before returning to the hotel chain’s nearly empty headquarters for the rest of the past year. Sharmistha Dubey has been leading Match Group Inc. from her dining room table near Dallas. Herman Miller’s Andi Owen has her dog Finn to keep her company while working from her home office in Grand Rapids, Mich. Moderna Inc. MRNA 5.05% CEO Stéphane Bancel relishes twice-daily 30-minute walks between his home in Boston and the vaccine maker’s Cambridge offices, where he resumed working in August, so he can crystallize his priorities and reflect on the day. The Wall Street Journal photographed them and 11 other business leaders in their pandemic office spaces as they discussed the past year and what’s to come.
More than a year after the coronavirus upended the way we work, the business leaders said they have found that more communication, flexibility and transparency have been crucial in staying connected to their employees.
Heads of companies across sectors including finance, hospitality and technology spoke from their current workspaces about what they’ve learned from the largely remote year, what challenges they faced and what changes they plan to leave in place during the next phase of work.
Brad Karp, chairman of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, predicted his schedule will remain less hectic after the pandemic is over: “Personally, I can’t see myself reflexively flying cross-country for an hour-long presentation or meeting.”
Nandita Bakhshi
Bank of the West. Working from her home office in New Jersey.
“[To handle overwhelming Paycheck Protection Program loan demand], we got 600 volunteers signed up overnight that left their day job, learned how to do a PPP loan, and started to work day and night on that. If we were in the physical world, that collaboration would take lots of meetings to set up. But that happened within hours.”
Adena Friedman
Exchange operator Nasdaq Inc. Working from Nasdaq’s New York office.
“I don’t want to make permanent decisions in a temporary situation…. We want to be able to plan for the future, our employees want us to be able to plan for the future, and yet we’re in a temporary situation so we try very hard to avoid making decisions that we’ll later realize were not the right ones for the organization.”
Juan Andrade
Insurer Everest Re Group Ltd. Working from Everest Re’s New Jersey office.
“We’re built for responding to a typhoon or to an earthquake or to a hurricane or winter event or whatever it is. And so, yes, you look inward and then you apply a lot of those lessons to how you run the company.”
Chris Hyams
Job-search site Indeed. Working from his home office in Texas.
“I used to spend a lot of time on aeroplanes, travelling as a means of trying to stay connected to people. I was flying 200,000 miles a year for the last six or seven years. And sitting in this one room and just being on Zoom, I am more connected with everyone in the business than I’ve ever been––because everyone is in the same place. We’re all just squares on a screen.”
Stéphane Bancel
Vaccine maker Moderna Inc. Working from Moderna’s Massachusetts office.
“Because of the intensity required to save every hour, every day we could, we were literally working seven days a week non stop. And I realized that I have to be very disciplined … And so I had to actually make sure I was doing sport in order to stay healthy and to stay mentally sane.”
Sharmistha Dubey
Online-dating giant Match Group Inc. Working from her dining room in Texas.
“In the Zoom world, you can get a lot of things done, but you have to ask for it. There are very few serendipitous moments. It’s almost as if there is a scripted narrative that we’re using in every conversation we have; it’s very transactional.”
David McCormick
Hedge fund Bridgewater Associates LP. Working from his kitchen in Colorado.
“We took a lot of steps to try to make sure we reaffirm the culture remotely, but there’s nothing like being together. So I think we’re all going to go back to work, hopefully this fall [autumn], with a sense that work is a real privilege. It’s a real privilege to be able to go to the office and be with your colleagues.”
Michel A. Khalaf
Life-insurance company Metlife Inc. Working from his converted-closet office in New York.
“We like to think that there will be a better normal, hopefully, coming out of this. We’ve seen incredible levels of collaboration of people working in agile ways of innovation and experimentation during the pandemic. In a way, we had to move much faster than we normally work because that was the only way for us to deliver for our customers during the pandemic.”
Andi Owen
Furniture company Herman Miller Inc. Working from her home office in Michigan.
“If we think about how we’re going to take what we’ve learned from this [year of remote work] and move it into the future, we’ve got to take a hybrid approach that’s good for the employer and for the employee … I think productivity in the future is going to be much more a measure of results, rather than activities.”
Julia Hartz
Event-ticketing company Eventbrite Inc. Working from her home office in California.
“The real shadow side to working remotely is that this [work-from-home] shift … has also revealed and greatly exacerbated inequality. We’re starting to talk more about that, in terms of how access to technology or balancing your home and work lives in this reality has been very challenging.”
Chris Nassetta
Hotel chain Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. Working from Hilton’s Virginia office.
“The realisation for me was that I wasn’t really built for this. I’ve dealt with it like everybody else. I really like being with our people and it gives me a huge amount of energy. And I hope that when I’m with them—I can’t be with them all the time, obviously given the scale, breadth and depth of this organization—that I give them some energy…. But when I’m sitting here doing Zoom calls all day, it’s hard to really tap into that.”
Jean Hynes
Investment firm Wellington Management Co. Working from her home office in Massachusetts.
“Going through the pandemic is such a stressful situation, and what we’ve heard back from our employees is that in increasing transparency we took away a lot of the stress. That was a big lesson learned for me as a leader, that we needed to be stress absorbers for the organization.”
Brad Karp
Law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. Working from his home office in New York.
“Remote work, while initially liberating, can be exhausting. Waking up every morning and going to sleep every night in your office quickly becomes old. So does the lack of boundaries in a world without diversions. The workweek has taken on a 24/7 vibe, and, as a leader of my law firm, creating reasonable boundaries and worrying constantly about my colleagues’ mental health and stress have become critical priorities.”
Lynn Good
Electricity and gas company Duke Energy Corp. Working from her home office in North Carolina.
“We have remarked over and over about what an extraordinary time it has been. But it truly has. I mean, it has threatened health; it has created loss; people have had issues with how to manage their work, their families, their schooling—just everything. And at the same time social unrest [and a] tough political season all coming together.”
Brian Niccol
Restaurant chain Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. Working from Chipotle’s California office.
“There’s just value in every four or five weeks getting everybody on the phone together, do a live Q&A. It’s really important for our kitchen manager all the way up to our executive team, directors, folks that are doing payroll to have the ability to hear first hand what’s going on and then also provide questions on what they’re feeling and how they’re being impacted right now.”
Produced by Meghan Petersen. Designed by Andrew Levinson. Additional reporting by Chip Cutter and Kathryn Dill.
Reprinted by permission of The Wall Street Journal, Copyright 2021 Dow Jones & Company. Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Original date of publication: May
Working from home or from deserted headquarters, bosses of companies from Moderna to Chipotle talk about their challenges and share lessons for the times ahead
Copyright 2020, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. LEARN MORE
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4 min
The marketplace has spoken and, at least for now, it’s showing preference for hybrids and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) over battery electrics. That makes Toyota’s foot dragging on EVs (and full speed ahead on hybrids) look fairly wise, though the timeline along a bumpy road still gets us to full electrification by 2035.
Italian supercar producer Lamborghini, in business since 1963, is also proceeding, incrementally, toward battery power. In an interview, Federico Foschini , Lamborghini’s chief global marketing and sales officer, talked about the new Urus SE plug-in hybrid the company showed at its lounge in New York on Monday.
Lamborghini
The Urus SE SUV will sell for US$258,000 in the U.S. (the company’s biggest market) when it goes on sale internationally in the first quarter of 2025, Foschini says.
“We’re using the contribution from the electric motor and battery to not only lower emissions but also to boost performance,” he says. “Next year, all three of our models [the others are the Revuelto, a PHEV from launch, and the continuation of the Huracán] will be available as PHEVs.”
The Euro-spec Urus SE will have a stated 37 miles of electric-only range, thanks to a 192-horsepower electric motor and a 25.9-kilowatt-hour battery, but that distance will probably be less in stricter U.S. federal testing. In electric mode, the SE can reach 81 miles per hour. With the 4-litre 620-horsepower twin-turbo V8 engine engaged, the picture is quite different. With 789 horsepower and 701 pound-feet of torque on tap, the SE—as big as it is—can reach 62 mph in 3.4 seconds and attain 193 mph. It’s marginally faster than the Urus S, but also slightly under the cutting-edge Urus Performante model. Lamborghini says the SE reduces emissions by 80% compared to a standard Urus.
Lamborghini’s Urus plans are a little complicated. The company’s order books are full through 2025, but after that it plans to ditch the S and Performante models and produce only the SE. That’s only for a year, however, because the all-electric Urus should arrive by 2029.
Lamborghini
Thanks to the electric motor, the Urus SE offers all-wheel drive. The motor is situated inside the eight-speed automatic transmission, and it acts as a booster for the V8 but it can also drive the wheels on its own. The electric torque-vectoring system distributes power to the wheels that need it for improved cornering. The Urus SE has six driving modes, with variations that give a total of 11 performance options. There are carbon ceramic brakes front and rear.
To distinguish it, the Urus SE gets a new “floating” hood design and a new grille, headlights with matrix LED technology and a new lighting signature, and a redesigned bumper. There are more than 100 bodywork styling options, and 47 interior color combinations, with four embroidery types. The rear liftgate has also been restyled, with lights that connect the tail light clusters. The rear diffuser was redesigned to give 35% more downforce (compared to the Urus S) and keep the car on the road.
The Urus represents about 60% of U.S. Lamborghini sales, Foschini says, and in the early years 80% of buyers were new to the brand. Now it’s down to 70%because, as Foschini says, some happy Urus owners have upgraded to the Performante model. Lamborghini sold 3,000 cars last year in the U.S., where it has 44 dealers. Global sales were 10,112, the first time the marque went into five figures.
The average Urus buyer is 45 years old, though it’s 10 years younger in China and 10 years older in Japan. Only 10% are women, though that percentage is increasing.
“The customer base is widening, thanks to the broad appeal of the Urus—it’s a very usable car,” Foschini says. “The new buyers are successful in business, appreciate the technology, the performance, the unconventional design, and the fun-to-drive nature of the Urus.”
Maserati has two SUVs in its lineup, the Levante and the smaller Grecale. But Foschini says Lamborghini has no such plans. “A smaller SUV is not consistent with the positioning of our brand,” he says. “It’s not what we need in our portfolio now.”
It’s unclear exactly when Lamborghini will become an all-battery-electric brand. Foschini says that the Italian automaker is working with Volkswagen Group partner Porsche on e-fuel, synthetic and renewably made gasoline that could presumably extend the brand’s internal-combustion identity. But now, e-fuel is very expensive to make as it relies on wind power and captured carbon dioxide.
During Monterey Car Week in 2023, Lamborghini showed the Lanzador , a 2+2 electric concept car with high ground clearance that is headed for production. “This is the right electric vehicle for us,” Foschini says. “And the production version will look better than the concept.” The Lanzador, Lamborghini’s fourth model, should arrive in 2028.
This stylish family home combines a classic palette and finishes with a flexible floorplan
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.
