Top Of The Game – Détails, épisodes et analyse

TOD LEIWEKE

Tod is a remarkable human being, full stop. His journey’s genesis is rooted in very humble beginnings in one of the poorest counties in Missouri, punctuated by two tragedies, to becoming one of the most prolific sports executives in the United States over the last four decades. He  is currently part-owner, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Seattle Kraken and was instrumental in building the world’s first carbon neutral stadiums and a beloved institution in the city, Climate Pledge Arena.

Before his current roles, he served as NFL as Chief Operating Officer running day-to-day operations of the league including football operations, media, marketing, NFL International, communications and social responsibility. Prior to rejoining the NFL, Tod  was Chief Executive Officer of Tampa Bay Sports and Entertainment, which included the Tampa Bay Lightning and Amalie Arena and in his last season the team was a Stanley Cup Finalist accentuating a remarkable turnaround of the franchise.  

Prior to joining the Lightning, Tod served as CEO of the Seattle Seahawks (NFL) and Vulcan Sports & Entertainment for seven years. During his tenure in Seattle he revived the Seahawks 12th Man brand, and assisted in building one of the NFL's finest 200,000sf waterfront practice facilities including access for fans to attend training camp. Concurrently he  also provided oversight of the Portland Trail Blazers (NBA) as acting President. Tod also served as first ever team President of the Seattle Sounders FC (MLS) helping set in motion the team that is now regarded as one of the model franchises in Major League Soccer then averaging over 40,000 fans per match. He is part-owner of the Sounders FC.  

Preceding this, Tod was President of the Minnesota Wild and Minnesota Sports & Entertainment. He also held an executive position with the PGA TOUR and  held early career positions with the NHL's Vancouver Canucks, the NBA's Golden State Warriors and a short stint as President of the Houston Rockets.

TOD RELATED LINKS

Wikipedia

Kraken’s Future 

Sounders 

Downtown Seattle Association

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LYNDEE FLETCHER

Lyndee Fletcher is CEO of VCheck GLobal and she is one of the foremost experts in the public record and reputational due diligence industry. Since joining VCheck Global in 2016 as the company's sixth hire, she has been an integral part of Vcheck's operations and technology evolution enabling Vcheck to grow 2500%. 

Lyndee is by far the youngest CEO in the industry (at 30 years old) and served as President of the company in her late 20’s. She also happens to one of the only female CEOs of an institutionally backed financial and business services company. 

She is passionate about transforming the speed, quality, and process by which companies mitigate risk by embracing a human-led, tech-enabled approach to diligence and investigations - from IPOs to massive real estate developments to blockbuster leveraged buy-outs to sexy venture capital investments to bank loans, structured credit, limited partner interests, law firm financial diligence and everything in between. The company serves some of the most respected, largest and sophisticated capital allocators, investment firms and financial institutions in the world  

Lyndee spearheads a team focused on a human-led, technology-enabled approach to risk mitigation in the industry with strategic use of automation and AI to make diligence faster, more efficient, and higher quality - ultimately a human endeavor enabled by innovative tools.

Homeschooled by her mom in a small town in Florida and starting college at 16, she embodies a new kind of leadership in this interesting and important, yet obscure, corner of the economy. Her smarts coupled with her grit and competitive drive are outsized and put her at the top of the game.

Disclaimers: (1) I serve as an independent board member of the company. (2) The introduction was generated by Google’s Notebook LM.

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FLORIAN’S BIO

Florian Faber has one of the coolest jobs in the world, he is CEO and on the Board of Directors of MCH Group, which among many endeavors owns, hosts, curates and puts together the incredible spectacles the four Art Basel shows deliver to millions. In June 2024, they concluded Art Basel in Basel, Switzerland, as he calls it “the mothership” and Art Basel Miami Beach is happening this week and weekend in Miami.

He joined MCH's company Expomobilia in 2009 as New Business Manager and in 2014 he became Managing Director of Expomobilia (now MCH Live Marketing Solutions AG). In 2019, Florian Faber took over the management of the Live Marketing Solutions Division as a member of the Executive Board of MCH Group and was responsible for the repositioning and growth strategy of the brands MCH Global (Experiential Marketing Agency), MC2 (Brand Experience Solutions Provider) and Expomobilia (General Contractor Building Experiences). Before joining MCH Group, Florian Faber was responsible for Live Marketing Communication & Interactive Marketing in Europe at the Nissan car group. Florian Faber holds an Executive Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from the University of Zurich.

MCH brands include Art Basel Basel, Art Basel Miami Beach, Paris+ par Art Basel, Art Basel Hong Kong, Design Miami, Habitat Jardin, Swiss Bau, Powertage, Weinfestival, Hack Zurich and the company owns spaces that include Messe Congress Center Basel and Messe Zurich. 

MCH Group Ltd., is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange and headquartered in Basel.  It’s roots can be traced 108 years back to the “Schweizer Mustermesse” (est 1916) and Schweizer Mustermesse Cooperative (est 1920). In 2000, the Cooperative was converted into a joint stock company, followed by it merging with the exhibition company in Zurichin 2001 under the joint umbrella of MCH Swiss Exhibition (Holding) Ltd. The holding company was renamed MCH Group Ltd. in 2009.

FLORIAN RELATED LINKS

MCH Profile

CEO Appointment

Art Basel

On Bloomberg

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JONATHAN KANTER

This episode was recorded on November 18, 2024,  the day when it was reported that Senior antitrust officials at the Justice Department plan to ask a judge to order Google to divest its Chrome web browser, Bloomberg reported citing anonymous sources. The department also intends to ask federal judge Amit Mehta, who declared Google's search engine a monopoly in August, to mandate actions concerning artificial intelligence and the Android mobile operating system. The enforcement actions are the product of the Justice Department’s multiyear case against Google which sought to prove that the tech giant has a web search monopoly in the U.S. The Justice Department won its case  federal judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google broke antitrust laws in both online search and search text ads markets. The remedies are yet to be decided and will likely be fought in federal courts. Many parallels exist between this case and  US v Standard Oil in the early 20th century and US v Microsoft in the early 21st century.

The remarkable person leading this effort which at its root goes to the heart of free markets, power and competition is Assistant Attorney General of the United States’ Department of Justice Antitrust Division. He is deeply thoughtful and his mind is expansive, especially at the intersection of the law, free markets. Prior to this, Kanter worked as an antitrust attorney at the FTC and in private practice. AAG Kanter is considered a critic of “big tech” and DOJ has worked to block  a record number of mergers on antitrust  grounds. During his tenure, the DOJ won its first conviction in a criminal monopolization suit in four decades

Jonathan has a very humble beginning in a working class neighborhood of Queens and  graduated from SUNY Albany and Washington University School of Law.  After graduating from law school, Kanter first worked as an antitrust lawyer at the FTC. He later worked in private practice, where he represented clients including Microsoft and Yelp as an  associate at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson. Kanter was later a partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft followed by  Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. 

Two other notable cases he has led include an antitrust suit related to JetBlue's attempted acquisition of Spirit, and one against Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation Entertainment. Upon filing the lawsuit, Kanter stated that "Live music should not be available only to those who can afford to pay the Ticketmaster tax".

Much of his work, as was his confirmation by the United States Senate, has broad support across party lines, a rare thing in today’s Washington. 

RELATED LINKS

NYT Article

CNBC Segment

Wikipedia

Bloomberg Article

Stanford Graduate School of Business Talk

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LIZ HUEBNER

Liz currently serves on the boards of REI and Curology where she chairs the audit committee(s).  She is a past board member and audit committee chair for three companies that are disrupting their respective industries:  Blue Apron, Jumia Technologies and Boom Supersonic.  She brings many years of executive finance experience and expertise to these roles, having served as CFO for several public companies, including Getty Images, Primus Knowledge Solutions, and Fluke Corporation. She was also a board member for the NACD's PNW Chapter, a non-profit organization that promotes board excellence and leadership.

Liz has a proven track record of delivering financial and operational results, driving growth and profitability, and executing strategic M&A transactions. She has also earned multiple honors and awards for her finance leadership, such as America's Best CFOs and Fellow of the NACD. She is passionate about supporting innovative and mission-driven companies that create value for their customers, shareholders, and society. She is committed to enhancing corporate governance, risk management, and ethical standards as a board member and committee chair.

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MARCELO DE SANTIS

Marcelo is as thoughtful, accomplished and smart as he is a terrific human being. Born and raised in Argentina, he is a seasoned C-suite executive with over 25 years of global experience. He also happens to be a world-class mountain climber that has summited some of the highest peaks on earth. He is former Chief Digital Officer at Thoughtworks, Group Chief Information Officer at Pirelli, and Chief Information Officer, North America at Mondelez.

He serves on the boards of UNICEF and HITEC  and was co-founder of Angeles Investors, a venture capital organization dedicated to funding minority-owned technology startups. Marcelo also established Employee Resource Groups focused on diversity at Kraft Foods, Thoughtworks, and Mondelez, demonstrating his dedication to fostering an open and inclusive workplace culture. In 2019 he was nominated by Crain’s as one of Top 50 CEOs, entrepreneurs and technologists.

He is also a published  author, the book:  “Figure Eight: Leadership Strategies for Times of Exponential Technology Innovation”  Marcelo earned his Executive MBA from the Kellogg School of Management and a B.S. in Computer Sciences from Universidad Argentina de la Empresa.

RELATED LINKS

Angeles Investors Profile

Thoughtworks Profile

The Ascent

Gartner Peer Community

Hispanic Executive Article

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ANILU VAZQUEZ-UBARRI

Anilu Vazquez-Ubarri is a Partner and Chief Operating Officer at TPG, based in San Francisco. She is a member of the firm’s board of directors and executive committee. As COO, Anilu leads TPG’s operational functions globally and is responsible for aligning these functions and strategy with the firm’s strategic business and investment priorities. She previously served as the firm’s Chief Human Resources Officer, responsible for creating and implementing a multi-year human resources strategy that institutionalized TPG’s culture of inclusivity, transparency, entrepreneurship, and innovation. Anilu is a founding member and executive sponsor of TPG NEXT, the firm’s strategy to seed and accelerate the growth of investment firms owned by underrepresented leaders.

Prior to joining TPG in 2018, Anilu was with Goldman Sachs for more than 11 years, where she last served as the firm’s Global Head of Talent and Chief Diversity Officer. She was an associate at Shearman & Sterling LLP in the Executive Compensation & Employee Benefits group from 2002 to 2007. Anilu currently serves on the boards of Greenhouse and Upwork, as well as on several non-profits and academic boards including The Vera Institute of Justice, Charter School Growth Fund, and the Fordham University School of Law Alumni Board. Anilu received an AB in History and Latin American Studies, cum laude, from Princeton University and a JD from Fordham University School of Law.

RELATED LINKS

TPG Profile

Beyond Barriers (podcast)

VC Changing Landscape (Fortune)

Latino Majority (interview)

Upwork (board profile)

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TOTG EXPERIMENTAL SERIES BY A.I. // POLICY, POLITICS, POLLS

This is the fourth of five (4/5) from our “Experimental Series by A.I.”. The machine talks about policy, politics and the upcoming election.. We gave NotebookLM a few disparate inputs and the machine created this great conversation. 

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SETH LEVINE

Seth is co-founder and general partner at Boulder-based Foundry. He and his firm have invested in hundreds of companies and funds around the world. A driving force for Seth has always been the power at the intersection of community and business. He co-founded Pledge 1%, a global network of companies who have pledged equity, time, and product back to their local communities. He is on the board of StartupColorado, which promotes entrepreneurship in areas of Colorado outside of the front range and  is a Trustee of Macalester College in St. Paul, MN, where he helped found their entrepreneurship program as well as a popular student hackathon. Seth also sits on multiple boards of his portfolio companies. He has been involved with Techstars from the start and helped grow from its very first accelerator in his home town of Boulder. 

In addition to his day job working with companies and funds at Foundry, Seth spends time as an advisor to venture funds and companies around the globe – especially in the Middle East and Africa – to help promote entrepreneurship and economic development. In 2021, he released The New Builders: Face to Face with the True Future of Business, a book he co-authored with Elizabeth MacBride about the increasingly diverse future of entrepreneurship in America. He is currently in the process of writing his second around the theme of the evolution of capitalism and its future. 

RELATED LINKS

Foundry

The Final Fund and Techcrunch take

The New Builders

VC Adventure

VC Evolve Podcast

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BISMARCK LEPE

Bismarck is Founder and Executive Chairman at Wizeline. He is a seasoned Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor. He founded Wizeline in 2014 with the mission to help companies build better products faster by making innovation accessible to all organizations. Bismarck is Mexican-American and the son of two immigrants from a small town in Jalisco, Mexico. He left a successful career path as an early employee at Google to start his own online video platform company, Ooyala, which sold for $400M to Telstra in 2014. For more than a decade, Bismarck has pioneered Mexico-Silicon Valley cross-border collaboration with Ooyala and now at Wizeline. Bismarck is passionate about driving economic growth in the global communities where Wizeline operates. In 2015, he founded Startup GDL, a non-profit organization committed to making Guadalajara a leader in innovation. 

He is passionate about driving economic growth and developing careers in the communities where Wizeline has operations through the investment in education and development of technology infrastructure. Bismarck has been credited as having contributed to the transformation of Guadalajara into a technology hub through StartupGDL and Wizeline Academy. He has generated over 1,500 jobs and attracted hundreds of millions in investments for companies with operations in Mexico and Silicon Valley.

His newest project is Hispanics in Tech: Almanac, a publication that showcases the positive contributions Hispanic technology founders are having on the broader industry and society. In his free time, Bismarck enjoys spending time with his family and is an avid runner. Bismarck graduated from Stanford with a BA in Economics.

RELATED LINKS

Wikipedia

Wizeline

Hispanics in Tech: Almanac

Nexus2024

Crossing Borders Podcast

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