Introducing: CNBC Changemakers and Power Players

0:00Hey, everyone. I'm Julia Borsten, and I'm so excited to tell you about my new podcast, CNBC Changemakers and Power Players. Each week, I sit down with trailblazing women who are redefining leadership, breaking barriers, and transforming industries from tech and health to sports and media. They share their hardest moments and tell me how they push through. These are candid, in-depth conversations with some of the most inspiring women in business, including Ariana Huffington, Bobby CEO Laura Modi, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, and more. And we're dropping new episodes every Tuesday. Plus, stay right here to listen to a special preview of my conversation with Courtney Gibson, who helped build one of the most successful Black-owned investment firms in America, Loop Capital.

0:47Now she's CEO of Retirement Solutions at TIAA, which manages nearly a trillion dollars in assets to help Americans have comfortable retirements. Follow and listen to CNBC Changemakers and Power Players wherever you get your podcasts.

1:06Courtney, thank you so much for joining me here for this Changemakers and Power Players podcast. I see you all the time on CNBC. So I feel like we see each other a lot more on TV than in person. I agree. We've got to do better. We're going to do better. But I appreciate you making the time. I know you've been traveling around and you have this huge job as CEO of TIAA Retirement Solutions. What is your mission and your role? Well, first of all, it's so wonderful to be here with you. You know, I've always thought about you and all the work that you've done and the light that you bring to this world.

1:41So first of all, thank you for that. So when I think about TIAA and our mission as an enterprise, I mean, I think you might know we actually were founded to create retirement security for more Americans. And here we are, 107 years later, still living out that mission every single day and across our 15 ,000 associates. That's our North Star. I mean, that's such a long legacy and such an important mission. But I want to go back to the beginning. How did you end up here? Because for many years, you were at Loop Capital, which is a very innovative fund. But was this always your vision to end up in this world of finance and now retirement solutions?

2:19Absolutely not. You know, I always joke with my team. I was like, you do know I was going to be a bilingual pediatrician, right? So, you know, it's a really kind of cool thing. I didn't choose finance. I'd say finance chose me. And I was put in an incredible position where I had an opportunity. My cousin actually founded Loop Capital back in 97. And he gave me a tremendous opportunity to intern. He didn't tell me that this life was going to kind of suck me in. And, you know, started out corporate investment banking, moved through capital markets, sales and trading, and, you know, helping to lead one of the largest privately held investment services firms that's here in the U.S.

2:57And, you know, it kind of snuck up on me, if you will. but I fell in love with it. To understand how money moves, something that generally people think is so complex, making it simple, making it a reality, and being able to build relationships and grow a business is a tremendous opportunity to have. And then when I got the opportunity to join TIAA and Tashonda Brown-Duckett said, hey, we got to make sure that this company's here for the next hundred years. I was like, hey, sign me up. What's so interesting is you were in this world of big finance, but it was also a startup. And you started from the very bottom as an intern.

3:35How has your perspective been shaped as a leader from having been at a real startup for so many years of your career? You know, it's funny you should say that. I think it's created a lot of appreciation for the process. What do you mean by that? What process? So, you know, when I think about growth right growth really happens on the journey it's not when you get to the destination and so having the the privilege of 2020 hindsight and I look at all of the things that I've gotten a chance to experience over my career all of the people I've had the chance to meet to work with to help you know you get an appreciation for how it works realistically how do you build a business from the ground up how do you build relationships how does real business get done.

4:22You've got to have the substance, but I don't care if you are in a big tech company or if you are running a hospital system. People still do business with who they know, like, and trust. And those fundamentals have to stay within the fabric of an organization, within a business, in order for it to be successful. When people stop trusting you, there's a problem. So you were hired in part because you had this background at an innovative startup. How did you bring a spirit and a culture of innovation to this century-old institution? How do you start to change that culture? Now that bureaucracy that comes with big firms, that's a whole different ballgame.

5:02And you've got to kind of chip away at it, right? Because even people who want to be more entrepreneurial, who want to kind of infuse that entrepreneurial nature into the fabric of it, it's not easy. I mean, you've got 15 layers of this and that, and you've got sign-offs and check-ins and 15 PowerPoints for a 12-minute meeting. So trying to just, again, where I can personally see it, address it, but then again, empowering my team to say, how do we move faster? How do we do it better? What's getting in the way of us doing this? Because again, the clock is ticking, right? We don't, 45 % of Americans aren't saving enough for retirement.

5:43That's a big number. And when you think about two-thirds of Gen Z just not knowing what to do, that's not talking about just black and brown. It's not just talking about women. It's talking about all. And so when you think about that, it takes away what sometimes can be divisive, like, oh, why are you focusing on one? I'm focusing on it because, candidly, there's a huge inequity here. But we can all rally around the ability for people to live the retirement that they want to live. And that's something that I think is incredibly important. I mean, we're sitting here in D.C. right now. This is a partisan issue.