The theme this week is "underdogs." John Chen has history in this department: His parents escaped communist China to Hong Kong, and his father had to work jobs beneath his education level so Chen could have a shot at a better life. At age 17 he came to the United States to finish high school. After he entered the workforce, Chen hit a roadblock. It wasn't common at the time for engineers to get promoted into broader management positions, and he was still growing in his comfort with communicating as a leader in English, his second language.
Fast-forward to today, and Chen has been CEO of BlackBerry for five years. He has taken the company from a dying smartphone maker to a stable provider of security and automotive software. And it's not Chen's first turnaround; after becoming CEO of Sybase in 1998, he led a reinvention that saved the company.
In all of my years covering Chen, I'd never heard his personal story. For the Fortt Knox 1-on-1 this week, I finally get to the root of why Chen is so comfortable playing the long game when it comes to leadership ... and how it ties back into the sacrifices he saw as an immigrant and the son of refugees.
147 - New Life for Fortt Knox on LinkedIn and YouTube. See You There!
146 - AWS CEO Andy Jassy on JEDI, the Cloud's Future and More
145 - Trump and Apple’s CEO Talk Business in Texas
144 - A Fresh Look at Design: Melanie Perkins, co-founder and CEO of Canva
143 - Microsoft JEDI: The Empire Strikes Back; with Morgan Brennan
142 - Mr. Zuckerberg Goes to Washington: with John Stanton and Farhad Manjoo
141 - Tech's Free Speech Challenge
140 - Savings and Startups: Credit Carma CEO Ken Lin; Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman
139 - Microsoft's Dual-Screen Surface: Winner? With Patrick Moorhead
138 - When to Fire a Founder, with Walter Isaacson and Steven Levy
137 - Employees or Contractors? Gig Economy’s Labor Crisis
136 - Apple's iPhone 11 and More: Boom or Bust?
135 - Can Tech Save the NFL? Plus, Rapper Jim Jones on His New Pot Venture
134 - Segment CEO Peter Reinhardt; Plus, Marvel’s Spider-Man Divorce and Streaming Wars
133 - Goodbye IPO, Hello Direct Listing?
132 - The WeWork IPO: Why the Controversy?
131 - Apple Card: How the Cash and Features Stack Up
130 - Monopoly: Are Apple, Google, Facebook & Amazon Fair Game?
129 - Facebook’s $5 billion speeding ticket, with NYT's Farhad Manjoo
128 - Putting a Dollar Value on Personal Data, with CNBC's Josh Lipton
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