Thasunda Duckett

some successful, suc- very successful people, you know, people use Oprah and Jordan to say the gap is closed.

What about Robert F. Smith? You think about Ken Chenault, Rosalind Brewer, Mellody Hobson, um, Thasunda Duckett.

Um, these are Black leaders at the top of finance, uh, and corporate America.

They exist in a different type of, you know-

One of the challenges of leadership is that the more responsibility you carry, the harder it can become to know what people really think.

People may respect you, they may agree with you in the meeting, they may even tell you things are going well, but are they telling you the truth? And maybe an even better question is, have you created the kind of environment where they feel like they can? Today's guest is Thasunda Brown Duckett, President and CEO of TIAA.

Thasunda was with us at the 2025 Global Leadership Summit, and she took the time to sit down with friend of the GLS, Paula Faris, to talk about how leaders like you can intentionally get proximate to your people to understand what they're seeing, what they're caring, and what you may be missing from where you sit.

You'll hear some very practical ways she does just that, including small group conversations with employees across the organization, and a simple question she uses to invite what she calls the counter-narrative.

And sometimes it means letting people see a little more of the person behind the title.

For those of us leading teams, churches, organizations, or even families, I think there's a useful question here.

What might people tell us if they were completely confident we really wanted to hear it? Here's the conversation with Thasunda Brown Duckett.

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