KIP Center for Leadership

Together is better!🙏

Quote of the day.

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Own your path, own your success.

Nandan Nilekani reminds us when you take responsibility, you take control of your growth and your future.

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Get 1% better each day.

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Genevieve Gilbreath built a $100M venture fund not in spite of her winding path through art, anthropology, yoga, and supplements, but precisely because of it.

After starting college at 16 and navigating a non-linear career that took her from academia to teaching yoga and running a B2B herbal export business from the back of a rickshaw in India, she gained a boots-on-the-ground masterclass in the consumer products world.

When she transitioned to the U.S. retail market, she faced the steep learning curve of raising capital and scaling a brand firsthand, eventually selling her business and moving into angel investing and ecosystem building with Naturally Austin.

Recognizing a "missing middle" in funding where brands with $1–3M in revenue were ignored by major funds, she co-founded Springdale Ventures in 2019 to provide strategic, operator-led capital.

Today, with roughly $100M AUM and a portfolio featuring breakout brands like Goodles, Caraway, and BeatBox Beverages, Genevieve proves that a "non-traditional" background—rooted in cultural intuition, empathy, and grit—is often the ultimate competitive advantage for a world-class investor.

Learn how to find the intersection between your passion and entrepreneurship: bit.ly/4udS7IT

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When Steve Jobs handed the reins to Tim Cook in 2011, his parting advice was unusually simple: "Don't ask what I would do. Just do the right thing."

Jobs had seen what happened to Disney after Walt died — leadership spent years trying to channel a legend instead of making the decisions in front of them. He didn't want Apple to make the same mistake.

Now Cook is stepping down, passing the CEO role to John Ternus — and offering the exact same counsel Jobs gave him.

The throughline across three leadership transitions at one of the most valuable companies in the world: don't lead from someone else's shadow. Know your values, keep them in clear view, and trust your own judgment.

Apple grew from $350 billion to $4 trillion under Cook. That didn't happen by asking what Steve would have done. It happened because Cook was fully, consistently present in his own era of leadership.

The lesson applies well beyond Apple: bit.ly/4eGkXgn

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Make the choice.

Nuance…