- In today’s CEO Daily: A sit-down with TIAA CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett
- The big leadership story: Robinhood slashes jobs to avoid being a ‘heavily-layered’ organization.
- The markets: Mostly up as investors await the Federal Reserve’s rate decision.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell writing from New York. When Thasunda Brown Duckett got tapped to run Fortune 100 company TIAA, it was the middle of COVID. She didn’t meet with her board in person for over a year, and mission No. 1 was to get the company through the pandemic, one Zoom call at a time.
But beyond that, she had a plan to modernize and expand the retirement behemoth’s offerings via a product dubbed “guaranteed lifetime income,” and five years into her tenure, it’s delivering.
TIAA has scaled to over $1.5 trillion in assets under management. Last December, it secured a partnership with Vanguard to put its lifetime income annuities in front of millions of American workers, expanding TIAA’s reach from its traditional nonprofit institutional market into the much broader 401(k) market.
Brown Duckett and I spoke about her CEO playbook on the most recent episode of my podcast, Fortune 500: Titans and Disruptors of Industry, which is out today. We also covered the leadership and life lessons that have helped her succeed at the highest levels in business. A few that stood out:
Live life like a diversified portfolio. “You only have 100% [of your time] to offer. You do not have 110%,” she says. “You have to allocate it to the things that define who you are. I’m a philanthropist, a mother, a sister, an auntie, a wife, an executive. The reality is, my children don’t get 100%—they get 30%, and I have to divide that across three kids.”
You rent your title and own your character. “Yes, I am the CEO of a Fortune 100 company, and I am jealous of me in terms of what I get to do every day,” she says. “But it is rented. There will come a time when I will no longer be the CEO of TIAA. But I am always Thasunda Brown Duckett.”
Pursue joy, not happiness. “I try to live a life of joy, not happiness,” Brown Duckett says. “Happiness is a reaction: The kids are happy, I’m happy. Joy comes from within.”
On leaving JPMorgan and what it’s like to be recruited for a Fortune 100 CEO job. “Timing sometimes is not perfect. But behind the scenes, you get the call from a recruiter. You do not not take the call. You start asking a ton of questions, and then you get to the point where you’re like, ‘This is something that I can’t pass up,’” Brown Duckett says. “This was an opportunity to make a different impact. It was an opportunity to run the entire company and make history at the same time.”
Check out the full conversation with TIAA CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett on Fortune 500: Titans and Disruptors of Industry. And if you enjoy it, please leave a review of our podcast on Apple here.—Alyson Shontell
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com