5 leaders from NVIDIA, Goldman Sachs and more share career advice for uncertain times

AI is not likely to replace you, but someone using AI better than you might. Welcome to Meet the Leader, the podcast where top leaders share how they're tackling the world's biggest challenges. In today's special episode, we go to this spring's graduation ceremonies where top leaders from NVIDIA, Walmart, Goldman Sachs, and more. Share their advice for new grads, advice that any of us can take to heart.

Subscribe to Meet the Leader on Apple, Spotify, and wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Don't forget to rate and review us. I'm Linda Lucina from the World Economic Forum, and this is Meet the Leader. Cultivate what fuels you and don't let it go.

Brace the discomfort and the joy it brings. embrace the warrior emotion of hope, embrace the unexpected, and embrace a wonderfully imperfect world. Today's no-fire, low-hire job market is tough any way you slice it, but it's one of the worst years for new grads. These new workers will face the typical uncertainty that all folks do when they're trying to figure out both themselves and their careers all at once, but they're doing it while AI is reshaping how companies think about everything from hiring to what a human job even looks like.

There's a lot of reason for optimism, though. Less rote work might mean that entry-level workers can enjoy more responsibility. Big transformations have their way of leveling playing fields. Which brings us to this year's commencement season.

Top leaders from across the World Economic Forum community spoke to this year's new grads at graduations across the U.S. to help the next generation get their start. Whether you are entering the workforce or considering your own pivot during this very disruptive, tumultuous time, these leaders share how to think about big change, the mistakes that they've learned from, and how to keep it all in perspective to build an amazing life that matters.

We can all have a little more of that. We'll start with Jensen Wong. He is the CEO of NVIDIA, the trillion-dollar chip designer whose products are literally making the AI revolution possible. He spoke to new grads at Carnegie Mellon, a fitting start to this episode, given that university's role in helping to develop top technologies and top talent.

Carnegie Mellon is one of the true birthplaces of artificial intelligence and robotics. In the 1950s, researchers here created the logic theorist, widely recognized and considered the first AI computer program. In 1979, Carnegie Mellon founded the Robotics Institute. This morning I visited with RoboClub, the first academic institute devoted entirely to robotics.

Artificial intelligence has gone on now to reinvent computing completely. I have lived through every major computing platform shift. Mainframes, PCs, the internet, mobile, and cloud. Each wave built on the one before.

Each expanded access, each transformed industries and society. but what is about to happen now is bigger than anything before. We should not teach fear of the future. We should engage it with optimism, responsibility, and ambition.

Only a fraction of the people in the world know how to write software. Now, anyone can ask AI to build something useful. A shopkeeper can create a website and grow a business. A carpenter can design a kitchen and offer new services to clients.

The AI writes the code. Everyone is now a programmer. For the first time, the power of computing and intelligence can truly reach everyone and close the technology divide the first time. AI will change every job.

But the task and the purpose of a job are not the same. Many tasks will be automated. Some jobs will disappear. But many new jobs and entire new industries will be created.

Software coding tasks are increasingly automated. But using AI, software engineers can expand the search for solutions, allowing them to tackle far more ambitious challenges. AI does not replace human purpose. It amplifies human capability.

AI is not likely to replace you. But someone using AI better than you might. No generation has entered the world with more powerful tools or greater opportunities than you. We are all standing at the same starting line This is your moment to help shape what comes next So run, don't walk.

Carnegie Mellon has a motto I love. My heart is in the work. so put your heart in the work build something worthy of your education your potential and the people who believed in you long before the world did katherine mcclay is the former president and ceo of walmart international she's a woman who just handed back the reins last month for this role where she led 500,000 associates and served 80 million customers weekly all around the globe. Landing that role wasn't a straight line.

As she reminded students of High Point University in North Carolina, in her career, she had worked for an accounting firm, an airline, two separate retailers on two separate continents, been an auditor, been a strategist, and even worked as a butcher's assistant. You can't always control the outcome, but you can control your attitude and try to enjoy the ride. I could not have strategized my way into the life that I have lived. All I could control was effort and attitude.

She also shared a humbling experience that she had early in her career. It's one that frankly comes for us all and one that any veteran worker listening to this can relate to. It's a gut check that can help anyone step away from the madness of office politics and step down from imaginary corporate ladders to focus on what really matters in the workday. Early in my career, I was considered a high-potential employee at a large company I worked for in Australia.

I was included in development opportunities, important meetings, my star was on the rise. And then we had a leadership change. And almost overnight, I went from being a favoured up-and-comer to a relic from the previous regime. I will never forget attending a company event and looking for my name on a seating chart.

In the past, I would have always been on table one near the front. This time, I found my name, finally, in the back, at table 86. I could quite literally and objectively calculate my fall from grace. It was a bit of a blow to my ego, but then I stepped back and I realised something.

A job is effectively a contract between you and your employer to do certain tasks and to be paid a certain amount. That is it, nothing more. You're not guaranteed favour or fairness. But from that contract comes enormous opportunity to create satisfaction and joy.

I found my joy by helping others around me and it was my first step towards understanding what leadership for me might feel like. I also discovered it can be a lot more fun on table 86. Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist, New York University business professor, and an expert on human flourishing. In fact, he's taught a course on that topic for the last 12 years and written a number of best-selling books like The Anxious Generation, exploring how social media and tech are getting in the way of that.

He touched on some of these themes on our recent meet the leader about whether humans will finally crack happiness. But for now, there is no one better to share three tips on how to have an amazing life. Here's his advice to this year's crop of NYU grads. Treasure your attention, do hard things, and connect with people.

I'll let him explain more. In 2014, when she was nearly 80 years old, the poet Mary Oliver wrote a short poem titled Instructions for Living a Life. It goes like this. Pay attention.

Be astonished. Tell about it. It sounds simple, but paying attention is in fact one of the most challenging and meaningful things you can do. Because what you pay attention to shapes what you care about.

And what you care about shapes what you become. So, once you're in control of your attention, you can start to ask yourself one of life's most exciting questions, which is, what do I want to do? What should you do? You should do hard things.

This is among the most universal pieces of advice from our ancestors. In the words of two great philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche and Kelly Clarkson, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. The psychological foundation of this great truth is that humans, and especially young people, are not fragile. They are anti-fragile, to use a term coined by NYU Professor Nassim Taleb Fragile things break when they get knocked over or challenged so we need to protect them vigilantly But anti things grow stronger so we need to expose them to challenge diligently Throw yourself into your next job or academic program or whatever your next adventure is.

Take chances. Say yes to anything that will expand your capabilities. And I'm not just talking about your career. Devote your precious attention to taking chances in relationships too.

You've heard it said that tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. That line becomes even more resonant once you understand that your heart is anti-fragile too. And this brings me to my final point, because along with the question, what should I turn my attention toward, comes a related question. whom should I spend my attention on?

You should spend a lot of your attention on real people in the real world. During your time at NYU, in-person connection was built into the architecture of your lives. You ran into friends constantly. Or maybe someone texted pizza, and 10 minutes later, you were having pizza.

Shared experiences are easily launched in college. That's part of what makes this place so special. But today, one of the most common experiences of adulthood, especially in ambitious cities among high-achieving people, is a strange kind of loneliness. You can be messaging people all day.

You can see everyone's lives unfold in real time. And yet, despite all this so-called connection, you may find yourself feeling increasingly alone. Friendship now requires much more intentionality than it once did. So my advice as you think about what does and doesn't deserve your attention is reach out to others even when it feels awkward.

Call someone you love just to say hi. Invite someone to dinner and say yes when someone invites you. Be the one who makes things happen in the real world and others will be grateful to you. Think about your most memorable moments from your time at NYU.

I'm willing to bet that almost none of them happened on a screen. Most of them probably happened while you were spending time with other people who made you laugh or helped you grow. Keep making those moments happen. Thesonda Brown Duckett is the first woman CEO of TIAA.

That's one of the world's largest financial services providers and a leading retirement system for millions of educators and nonprofit professionals. She's also one of only three Black women today running a Fortune 500. She talked to Florida A&M University, an HBCU, or Historically Black College and University, about the responsibility they have to make opportunity for others. She explained how that responsibility has shaped how she sees potential and even how she navigates change.

I have led organizations through enormous change. And I'll tell you what I tell my own team. The goal isn't to predict every disruption. The goal is to build the kind of character, the kind of relationships, and the kind of internal resilience that allows you to move through disruption with your integrity always intact and your people right alongside of you.

And this brings me to the most important thing I want to leave with you today. Your degree is not just a credential. It's a platform. And the question, the real question, the one that I hope stays with you long after today is this.

Who else's life can you change with the success you will achieve? Success that stops with you is incomplete. complete. Your success isn't yours alone to keep.

The HBCU tradition is one of the most powerful models of collective advancement in American history. You weren't just educated here. You were prepared to go back and give back. That's not a burden, Rattlers.

That's a calling. Because when a door opens for you, it doesn't have to close behind you. That's the choice I want to leave with you today. You can hoard success or you can extend it.

You can protect your seat at the table or you can build a bigger table. You can treat your success as a destination or you can treat it as a beginning. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon spoke to Wharton's MBA class 2026 about the values that shaped him both as a human being and in his career, like finding people whose opinion you actually trust. One of the things that has helped me enormously is finding mentors I trust and then trusting them when they tell me I can do better.

I learned a lot about this from my dad who was a leading expert in what I could do better When I was in high school I once complained to him that I didn have enough money to do the things I wanted to do His response Get another job I told him I can I had essays to write. I played three sports. I scooped 31 flavors of ice cream at Baskin-Robbins. So he told me to take out a calendar and write down everything I did each day.

And I noticed, when I had to account for every minute, that I actually wasted a reasonable amount of time. Three weeks later, with a bit more intentionality in my schedule, I was working a second job flipping burgers at McDonald's. My father had a great way of never telling me what to do, but always showing me a different way of looking at things. So find strong mentors, embrace criticism, and be open to change.

While he also shared other values like investing in people and why he takes time to write thank you notes by hand, he also shared the need to find passions outside of work. Cultivate what fuels you and don't let it go. It's important to choose a profession you're passionate about. I did.

I love finance. I love the career journey I've been on. But it is also important and necessary, I think, to have passions away from your work. It was July 2017 when my own passion came under scrutiny, and I felt serious pressure to give it up.

Six months earlier, I had become the president of Goldman Sachs, and my visibility had increased. That day in July, the New York Times headline read, At Goldman, he's David Solomon. At the club, he's DJ D. Sol.

I have always, always had a passion for music. In college, I was officially the social chair of my fraternity. And unofficially, I was the guy who made the mixtapes for parties. So when that article came out, I had been DJing on the side for a number of years.

All sorts of people came to me saying, you have to stop DJing if you want to be the CEO of Goldman Sachs. Ultimately, I decided I enjoyed DJing too much to give it up, and it's something I still do today, although a little bit less visibly. It enriches my life and it's kept me grounded in turbulent times. And besides, and many of you know this, nothing is more exciting than a damn good drop at 130 beats per minute.

I also never thought my list of personal references would include Hank Balson, Lloyd Blankfein, The Chainsmokers, Kygo, and Tiesto. There's something you do, each and every one of you, that gives you excitement and joy. Don't let it fall by the wayside. You have a long journey in front of you, full of setbacks and tough days.

it will be a lot easier to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, if you stay connected to what it is that lights you up. To close us out, I will bring us back to Catherine McLean, who spoke about hope and how to use it to battle uncertainty and anxiety. A reminder we can all use during a changing time. Hope is the warrior emotion.

I agree with that. I'm all in on that. Hope isn't easy. It isn't passive.

What's easy, what's lazy and reactive is to face uncertainty with worry or cynicism. That doesn't take any work at all. Hope requires action. It demands effort and belief.

I think the worry emotion comes in handy when you face a new beginning, a next chapter. You can't have new beginnings without endings and all endings are a little difficult. so embrace the discomfort and the joy it brings embrace the warrior emotion of hope embrace the unexpected and embrace a wonderfully imperfect world and that's the advice for new grants many of these ceos and big names have been featured on meet the leader i'll include our fireside chat with jensen wong at davos and our one-on-one with jonathan height in the show notes I'll also include links in the transcript and in the show notes to the full commencement speeches for each of the universities.

Find a transcript of this episode, as well as transcripts from my colleague's podcast Radio Davos at wef.ch slash podcasts. This episode of Meet the Leader was produced and presented by me with Taz Kelleher as editor and Gareth Nolan driving studio production. That's it for now.

I'm Linda Lucina from the World Economic Forum. Have a great day.