Meet the 2019 class of Wall Street's rising stars.

From starting a hedge fund before age 30 to running their own alternative-data shops and helping lead $27 billion investments, this group of young finance leaders is in a league of its own.

It was harder than ever this year to select just 25 people. We received hundreds of entries from bosses, colleagues, recruiters, and others working in the finance industry.

Our selection criteria: We asked that nominees be 35 or under, based in the US, and stand out from their peers. Editors made the final decisions.

We've included people with a variety of roles and experiences from companies including Apollo Global Management, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, and the New York Stock Exchange.

Here's our list of the next crop of Wall Street leaders.

Additional reporting by Alex Morell, Bradley Saacks, and Dakin Campbell.

Adam Parker, 34, Center Lake Capital

Adam Parker has been focused on running his own hedge fund as long as he can remember. It's why he worked to get into the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, why he chose to join a relatively unknown hedge fund out of school instead of what was then one of the biggest investment banks in the world, and why he's already running $350 million at his own fund before the age of 35.

"People should do what they're passionate about," he said. 

His fund, Center Lake Capital, started with $30 million five years ago, but his strategy of making concentrated bets in under-the-radar software companies has attracted more capital. The firm just outgrew its shared offices in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City and is moving to its own space near Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan, he said.

He started investing in college after he sold a GrubHub-like company he and a couple friends started. From there, he interned at the Lehman Brothers real-estate group in summer 2007 and was choosing between returning for a full-time position or joining the now shuttered Force Capital. He chose Force. 

"At the time, my parents didn't think it was the smartest thing, but that's what I wanted to do," he said.

After working as an analyst, he eventually interviewed with billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller, and worked for Duquesne Capital until Druckenmiller closed the fund. He then went to PointState Capital, which was started by Duquesne veterans, and became a portfolio manager after just a year, running $150 million to start out.

Center Lake launched in 2014 with multiyear commitments from a few critical investors, Parker said. Now he believes the firm has differentiated itself because of the concentrated investments and specific focus within the tech world. 

"You have to be focused, because everything is a tech company now," he said. 

He foresees the fund getting bigger, even "multiples bigger, but not five multiples."

"We don't want to be a multibillion fund." 

Evan Feinberg, 32, Tiger Global

After growing up in central New Jersey, Feinberg started at the University of Pennsylvania with plans to be a lawyer and had no idea what investment banking even was. It took only a year for him to transfer into the Wharton business program, and the rest is history.

Feinberg worked at Morgan Stanley during the summer of the financial crisis and joined Silver Lake Capital, a private-equity firm in New York, after he graduated. There, he discovered how much he enjoyed working with early-stage companies. He joined Tiger Global six years ago as the hedge fund run by the billionaire Chase Coleman decided to expand more into the private markets. 

In that time, Feinberg estimates he has been a part of 40 to 50 different investments Tiger Global's private-investing team has made, including co-leading the firm's investments in the Brazilian financial-technology unicorn Nubank and the buzzy workout company Peloton. Both the investments were made earlier on in the companies' histories — series B for Nubank and series A for Peloton — a fact Feinberg is proud of.

Feinberg says he has been able to spend a lot of time around successful entrepreneurs and CEOs in his career — and has been able to nail down some traits that he believes lend themselves to future success.

He's looking for founders that are inspirational but also grounded, so they don't let their vision get the best of them, while also being able to get employees and investors to buy into the potential of the company. 

Jennifer Lee, 31, Edison Partners

Jennifer Lee is a vice president at the growth-equity firm Edison Partners with a focus on fintech investments. Despite being so early in her career, Lee, who joined in 2016, has already co-led several investments for the firm. 

This year alone, Lee co-led a $100 million series C round in the mobile bank MoneyLion in July and a $62 series B in the alternative-investment platform YieldStreet in February. She also serves as a board observer in both firms.

Lee brings a unique perspective to the growth-equity investing world. She previously served as the first sales executive for ForgeRock, an enterprise software company that launched in the wake of Sun Microsystems' acquisition by Oracle. Lee guided the company through series A, B, and C rounds that led to $52 million in funding. 

She holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a bachelor's degree in economics from Johns Hopkins University. 

Ashley Serrao, 33, Tradeweb

It has been rough sledding for many private companies looking to make the jump into the public markets. However, for all those that have failed in their public debuts — or struggled to even get there — Tradeweb represents a success story.

That's thanks in large part to Ashley Serrao, who is head of US corporate development and investor relations for the electronic marketplace and played a critical role in the listing. Tradeweb popped 27% during its April initial public offering, helping the company raise more than $1 billion.

Serrao first joined Tradeweb in 2017 to work in corporate development after nearly a decade at Credit Suisse as an analyst. Initially interested in a career in equity research, Serrao developed a passion for strategy, dealmaking, and working with investors. 

Serrao graduated from Bates College with a bachelor's degree in economics.

Justin Zhen, 31, Thinknum

When joining the quantitative shop Strategic Investment Fund right out of college, Justin Zhen had big plans for how data could be used to help make investment decisions. However, it didn't take long to recognize there were some major gaps in the way firms were having to sort through unique datasets they found online.

Zhen left the fund in June 2013 and worked with Gregory Ugwi to take Thinknum live in April 2014, hoping to build one central copy of the web's data that would be more accessible to investors looking to use the information.

Fast forward five years, and alternative data has exploded, with some industry experts predicting the market will reach $7 billion in 2020. And while other startups in the space have faced tough times because of increased competition, Thinknum managed to raise $12 million in a series A round that involved ex-Visa CEO Joe Saunders. 

A Princeton graduate, Zhen holds a bachelor's degree in financial engineering. 

Ivan Brown, 33, NYSE Group

Ivan Brown is a NYSE lifer, having joined the exchange group immediately after graduating from New York University's Stern School of Business, where he was valedictorian. 

After starting as a business analyst working across the company, he soon jumped on the options team and has helped to essentially build the business from the ground up. For Brown, it represented a chance to immediately have an influence in an area of the market the NYSE was looking to grow. 

Brown would continue to climb the ranks, eventually being named head of options in April 2016. He wasted no time building up the NYSE's options markets, NYSE American and NYSE Arca, growing market share from 14.9% in the beginning of 2017 to 19.2% in earlier this year. 

A major focus of Brown and his team will be preparing for the transition of the options markets onto NYSE's new trading-technology platform, Pillar. 

Lucy Dobrin, 31, Providence Equity Partners

Lucy Dobrin is a vice president at Providence Equity, where she is responsible for a variety of technology and advertising investments. 

This has included the acquisition of the ad-tech company DoubleVerify, an investment in the data company EdgeConneX, and the acquisition and subsequent sale of Learfield, a sports-marketing company. 

Dobrin joined Providence in 2011 after working as an analyst in the financial-sponsors group at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. 

Dobrin points to several mentors who have provided her with guidance and trusted her with job responsibilities that she says have been critical to her professional growth: Harold Varah, who she worked under at Bank of America, as well as Providence Equity executives Davis Noell and Chris Ragona. 

Dobrin is a director on the boards of DoubleVerify and EdgeConneX. 

Thomas Sozzi, 29, Citadel Securities

As Citadel Securities looks to make a bigger push into acquiring more Wall Street clients, Thomas Sozzi will play an important role.

Sozzi is vice president of institutional equities at the Chicago-based market maker, leading the business development of Citadel Securities' equity and exchange-traded-fund (ETF) businesses for over 200 clients, including hedge funds, asset managers, and banks. 

Sozzi joined Citadel Securities after spending just over four years at JPMorgan, where he started as an analyst on the equity-derivatives desk and eventually spent time in institutional sales in the complex products for a variety of strategies. 

A graduate of the University of Chicago, Sozzi played on the football team and earned a bachelor's degree in economics. He has returned to school and is working on obtaining his MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business while continuing to work at Citadel. 

Matthew Alfieri, 33, Centana Growth Partners

Matthew Alfieri blazed his own path to make his way on Wall Street. At the State University of New York at Albany, Alfieri cofounded the university's first student-managed investment fund. Despite not attending a school traditionally targeted by Wall Street's top firms, Alfieri was still able to nab a full-time position at Goldman Sachs as an investment-banking analyst upon graduating with a bachelor's degree in business administration.

Alfieri spent nearly a decade at the bank, eventually serving as vice president at Goldman's principal-strategic-investments group, which makes strategic long-term investments in technology companies. While with the group, he led eight investments for the group and served on the board of directors of six companies.

In 2017, he moved across the aisle and landed at the growth-equity firm Centana Growth Partners, where he serves as a vice president with a focus on fintech investments and works with two of the firm's portfolio companies, Quantitative Brokers and Alaia Capital.

Peter Yongvanich, 33, UBS

The seed of Peter Yongvanich's fascination with markets was planted in childhood, when his father, a stock-market enthusiast, would send him to the store to buy him copies of Barron's. Flash forward a couple decades, and Yongvanich is running an entire stock-derivatives sales team at UBS and the youngest managing director in global equities at the firm. 

After studying engineering at Cornell University, Yongvanich started out right away with UBS in the Stamford, Connecticut, office in 2007 providing derivatives solutions to North American hedge funds, asset managers, and other financial institutions. Rather than focusing on maximizing any single trade, Yongvanich's strategy hinged on accruing sticky long-term relationships that would pay dividends over the long haul. 

It's paid off, as he's been a perennial top producer on his team. Early on, he helped boost tier-two US clients into top clients, and he had the foresight to raise his hand and shepherd an initiative to boost coverage of Canadian pension funds and asset managers, which proved lucrative for the firm.

More recently, he's led efforts to provide more bespoke, exotic derivatives and become one of the firm's specialists in executing complex transactions for investors. He's now the head of US institutional-equity-derivatives sales. 

Amanda Deckelman, 32, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Amanda Deckelman, a standout sales professional in Bank of America Merrill Lynch's fixed-income division, is a lifer at the firm, interning at Merrill while she was an undergrad at Notre Dame and then joining in 2008 as a first-year analyst in repo and short-term rates trading. 

That means she had a front-row seat as Wall Street, and the broader global economy, crumbled amid the financial crisis. Deckelman didn't just survive the chaos — including Bank of America's takeover of Merrill and the culling of thousands of jobs — she seized the opportunity and vaulted her career forward, working long hours trading the firm's debt book as a junior staffer amid the fallout. 

Her efforts gave her not only valuable experience, including an appreciation for liquidity and how quickly it can evaporate, but they also impressed superiors and set her up for greater responsibility. In 2012, she transferred to Chicago and moved over to the sales side on the same desk, quickly becoming one of the top revenue generators. Now a director running the repo-sales team and managing key relationships, she's the No. 1 producer in short-rates sales and a top-10 producer across fixed-income, currencies, and commodities sales. 

Wilson Handler, 34, Apollo Global Management

Wilson Handler is a principal at Apollo Global Management, and his nine years of deal experience with the private-equity behemoth has placed him on the boards of a handful of companies within his area of focus: the energy sector. 

Handler joined Apollo in 2011 and hit the ground running, immediately working on what would be his biggest deal during his time there. 

Apollo had just made a splashy hire from Riverstone, bringing on board Greg Beard to head up a fund dedicated to energy investing, and Beard hired Handler to be his associate. 

The first deal they worked on together was the backing of Athlon Energy, a fund that would acquire oil and natural-gas properties in the US. 

Apollo invested hundreds of millions of dollars into Athlon before selling it in 2014 for a huge profit to the Calgary, Alberta-based Encana Corp.

Handler said it remained the biggest deal he's ever worked on and set the groundwork for a nine-year working relationship with Beard, who led Apollo's natural-resources private-equity business until recently. 

Handler's background suits him well for any kind of transition period. He started off as an investment-banking analyst at Lehman Brothers in 2007 and worked there until its bankruptcy in 2009. The experience taught him to take things in stride. 

"When things are good, they are good but probably won't last forever," he said.  

Handler serves on the boards of Jupiter Resources Inc., CSV Midstream Solutions, American Petroleum Partners and EP Energy. 

Benjamin Pike, 35, Ares Management

Benjamin Pike is a principal at Ares Management and a key player behind the private-equity firm's push to profit from combating climate change.

Ares, which is raising money for a fund to support infrastructure projects that cut greenhouse-gas emissions and promote better use of natural resources, is relying on Pike to travel to places like Alaska to scope out investment opportunities. 

"I'm chasing things like electrical-vehicle charging, energy efficiency, and waste to fuel," Pike said.

One company Ares is eyeing, he said, takes the waste from oil, fat, and grease from food chains and turns it into diesel fuel that is better for the environment.

"There is a real dearth of folks who are doing this, which is why there is an opportunity," Pike said of his specialty, which he has honed ever since he was an analyst at Merrill Lynch in its energy and power investment-banking division in 2007. 

Pike spent almost two years at Merrill before joining Energy Investors Funds, a private-equity firm focused on energy and infrastructure investments. In 2015, Ares bought the firm, giving Pike an opportunity to bring his specialty to a larger platform. He hasn't let it go to waste. 

Talk to Pike, and he will give you the skinny on anything from how Alaskans pay way too much in taxes for their utilities to how there's too much pollution from oil and gas producers who burn gas into the sky. "You fly into North Dakota, and it looks like people have lit candles," he said. 

Pike thinks private equity can offer a solution by financing promising projects that help the environment. 

Sachin Bavishi, 35, Blackstone Group

Sachin Bavishi is a principal in Blackstone's private-equity group, where he focuses on new investment opportunities in technology, media, and telecom (TMT). 

This year, he was part of the deal team that put together the massive $27 billion merger between the data company Refinitiv and the London Stock Exchange this summer.

Bavishi joined Blackstone in 2013 from Wharton after spending two years at the private-equity firm Olympus Partners as an associate. 

While Bavishi works closely with Blackstone's other TMT dealmakers, one deal he was responsible for sourcing himself was the firm's acquisition of Vungle, the mobile-advertising company. 

Bavishi's childhood was split between the US and India. He grew up in Wisconsin until he was 11 years old and then moved to India with his family. It was the mid-1990s and a turbulent period for the country, marked by bombings and economic reform.

"I had to adapt to that environment," Bavishi said. "I didn't speak the language."

The ability to adapt is something Bavishi has kept with him throughout his career.

Sometimes, though, he's found it's worth it to be stubborn.

After working as an electrical engineer in college, he decided it wasn't for him and wanted to explore a career in finance. At the time, his university's career-services center was for business-school students only. 

"I showed up every day asking them to make an exception," Bavishi said. "I think they got tired of me showing up. I guess that paid off." 

The investment bank Piper Jaffray was the only firm that made a bet on him. He started there in summer 2007 as an analyst, beginning what would become a promising career in finance. 

Chloe Duanshi, 29, Rockefeller Capital Management

At Rockefeller Capital Management, Chloe Duanshi, the firm's head of quantitative research, pulls from her math and engineering backgrounds — as well as her love of fiction — to help clients understand their portfolios. 

Her role, simplified, is "to paint a picture of the considerations clients need to take into account" across asset classes and construct an all-weather portfolio.

"Every portfolio I build is a story about the investor," Duanshi said, since portfolios are tailored to investors' risk preferences and other considerations. A colleague praised her knowledge of every asset class. 

Because investors of all stripes have behavioral biases, "having a blueprint for the portfolio introduces discipline. Quantitative methods make this more tangible," she said. 

Duanshi, who is trilingual, joined the fast-growing firm in March after five years at Morgan Stanley and three at BNP Paribas before that.

Samantha Tortora, 32, BlackRock

After a March promotion to head of BlackRock investor relations, Samantha Tortora may be the youngest in her role across Fortune 500 companies.

She's had a quick rise at BlackRock, where she started as a summer intern. After finishing her applied-math degree at Columbia, she joined full time as an analyst in scientific active equities.

After 18 months, she started looking for a more entrepreneurial role and became the first employee on the investor-relations team. She now leads the group, which has grown to about six people, and takes pride in overseeing BlackRock's investor day, seen as a model for other companies.

And if leading investor relations for the largest asset manager wasn't enough, Tortora launched a corporate-sustainability program to engage with a wide group of stakeholders to advance sustainability at BlackRock. 

Henri Pierre-Jacques and Jarrid Tingle, 28, Harlem Capital Partners

Henri Pierre-Jacques and Jarrid Tingle built résumés that could have landed them at the finance jobs of their choice after graduating from Harvard Business School. They chose to go the entrepreneurial route instead, turning their experience in angel investing into a formal venture-capital shop, Harlem Capital Partners. 

Pierre-Jacques, a Northwestern University alumnus who started two businesses while in college, started off in investment banking at Merrill Lynch, while Tingle, a Wharton grad, did investment banking at Barclays. The duo worked in private equity at ICV Partners before business school.

ICV, a black-owned firm, proved a formative experience for the pair, in which they learned about the business from the front through back office. 

"Given the firm was minority-owned, I saw myself in the team," Tingle said. "The benefit of being at a middle-market private-equity firm was that we got access to everything. We were doing initial diligence on deals, we presented to the investment committee, and we met with CEOs and CFOs of companies one-on-one." 

They started HCP in 2015 to do angel investing and formalized the business with a fundraise. They're hoping to invest in 1,000 diverse founders over 20 years across industries. HCP focuses on women and minority entrepreneurs, demographics that Pierre-Jacques said receive only 3% of venture-capital funding. It's a big market, and they're not shy about being ambitious. The pair plans to invest in about 30 companies out of its first fund, with seven deals done so far. 

"We want to raise $1 billion in the next 10 years to tackle this mission," Pierre-Jacques said. 

They're not going it alone. Based on a connection from one of HCP's investors, the private-equity giant TPG said in June it would invest in Harlem Capital and Fund I. The firm also partners with KKR, First Round Capital's Dorm Room Fund, and the Consumer Technology Association.

David Haber, 32, Goldman Sachs

David Haber grew up a long way from Wall Street — and Silicon Valley, for that matter. The vice president in Goldman Sachs' corporate-strategy department was raised in Chula Vista, California, 10 minutes from the Mexican border. He was entrepreneurial as far back as high school, selling tacos at his public high school's football games, among other ventures, to make a couple extra bucks for gas money. 

At Harvard, Haber made friends with people who would go on to work at Airbnb, Facebook, and throughout the venture industry. And after several years post-graduation working with Rory Riggs, the serial entrepreneur and founder of Royalty Pharma, he took a job at Spark Capital, a Boston-based venture firm focused on media and consumer-internet startups. While there, Haber helped source and seed an early investment in Plaid, now one of Silicon Valley's hottest startups.

Eager to try his hand at his own company, Haber left Spark in 2013 to found Bond Street, a startup focused on small-business lending. The next year, Haber met Omer Ismail, a Goldman managing director then exploring a foray into digital banking. In October 2017, Haber sold Bond Street to Goldman for an undisclosed sum.

At Goldman, Haber took a role in strategy for its fledgling online bank, Marcus, and used the perch to meet for brainstorming sessions with senior execs. One of those was Stephanie Cohen, who was recently tapped by CEO David Solomon as head of strategy. Cohen asked Haber to make more than 50 Silicon Valley introductions as she put together her plan for Launch With GS, the bank's commitment to invest $500 million in women-led startups and investment managers. Haber later moved from the Marcus strategy team to Cohen's firmwide strategy team.

During his time at Goldman, Haber has deepened the bank's connections to the startup and venture communities — helping source an investment in the Argentinian banking app Uala— and explored how the investment bank could best deploy tech for its strategic advantage.

Jonathan Bailey, 34, Neuberger Berman

When Jonathan Bailey joined the $333 billion investment-management firm Neuberger Berman two years ago as the first head of environmental, social, and governance (ESG), some of his colleagues were skeptical about his role, which centers on integrating ESG factors across asset classes. 

One team said ESG didn't apply to their strategy. Fast forward two years, and Bailey has won them over — the group now integrates ESG into stock-buying decisions and "has come on a journey of understanding what this means and how it can help them improve that performance," Bailey said. 

So far, Bailey has built a team of seven to work specifically on ESG, and the firm now has about 140 employees globally that sit on various ESG groups. He has integrated ESG into asset classes that hadn't traditionally considered the factors, such as fixed income, and continues to build out new strategies. That work has helped win multibillion-dollar mandates "that we would not have won three years ago." 

Because ESG is still an emerging area of finance, there are few traditional career paths to Bailey's seat. His own trajectory started with a history degree from Oxford, followed by two years of consulting with McKinsey, where he modeled climate change for major companies. 

Then his career took a turn: He went to work for the president of Rwanda for a year, focusing on economic-development issues. After that, he went to Harvard for an MBA and master's in public policy. Next was two years at Al Gore's Generation Investment Management, then back to McKinsey and an affiliated nonprofit before joining Neuberger Berman.

Alexandra Wilson-Elizondo, 33, MacKay Shields

The recession taught Alexandra Wilson-Elizondo about the importance of prudent financial management up close. 

One of the few industry jobs the economics major could find during the downturn was working the call center at Vanguard. The finance giant needed Spanish speakers to assist 401(k) clients, so she helped investors facing economic difficulties decide how they could make hardship withdrawals and other choices.

"It was a scary time and a very humbling experience," she said. 

Wilson-Elizondo then completed an 18-month rotational program, where she realized she wanted to work in the markets directly, rather than evaluating external managers. She joined the growing index desk, then went to the money-markets group. At Vanguard, she also learned how to code, a skill she uses in her current job to work on an ETF risk-management system. 

Coding "is something that helps distinguish me from everyone else because not a lot of people know how to put the tech with the portfolio management together," she said. 

Family took her to New York, where, in 2015, she joined MacKay Shields, a division of New York Life Investments. There, she is the firm's youngest portfolio manager and oversees approximately $7 billion for a global client base. In addition to her work on the active side, she helped launch the global fixed-income team's ETF business, which she manages.

Wilson-Elizondo and her team have overseen the creation of several strategies for Mackay, such as a high-yield ETF, an ESG corporate-bond portfolio, and a suite of enhanced products. 

Outside work, she's training for her second marathon — running provides her best ideas — and enjoys gardening and travel.

Becky Baker, 28, Fidelity

Covering consumer stocks like McDonald's was the luck of the draw for Becky Baker, who started at Fidelity after an undergraduate internship. Sectors are randomly assigned, but she couldn't be happier with consumer — or have performed much better.

"It's hard for me to imagine a group I could be more passionate about than the stocks that I own," she said.

Now an analyst and portfolio manager running the $560 million Fidelity Select Leisure Portfolio, her fund climbed 17% over the past year, putting it in the top 1% of funds in its Morningstar category. Baker makes bets on companies like McDonald's, which she reaped the benefits of overweighting, basing her thesis on how the company would climb from initiatives like mobile ordering and menu upgrades.

Baker can see firsthand how companies are implementing technology as a consumer herself. Last year, during a work trip to China for Starbucks' investor day, she visited multiple stores on the ground. 

"I went to buy a coffee, and they had to go back to the store and open a drawer and get a credit card reader out bc nobody had paid by credit card that day," she said. "That showed me how fast China is moving on technology."

The former collegiate runner has hung up her competitive racing shoes but still enjoys running for fun, including the Boston Marathon a few years ago. 

Gal Krubiner, 31, Pagaya

Gal Krubiner is accustomed to having hundreds of direct reports. 

The young entrepreneur leads teams in New York and Israel. But well before he cofounded the artificial-intelligence-focused Pagaya, teenage Krubiner had 700 kids reporting to him and his partners as a scouting leader in Israel. From that experience, as well as competitively flying radio-controlled helicopters, he fell in love with leadership, discipline, and "the ability to have big dreams and execute them."

Finance attracted him not long after his scouting days, when he started buying bonds, largely of Israeli companies, in his early 20s to learn more about markets on his own. Krubiner went on to study economics and statistics and then worked in London, where he learned about electronic trading before moving to Zurich and advising wealthy families and institutions.  

Read more:Investing startup Pagaya just raised $100 million in a bet that technology can reshape the consumer credit markets

Krubiner wanted to correct what he viewed as asymmetric information between the buy side and the sell side, with the latter sometimes having the upper hand. The best way to attack that problem was to "build the right machine that knows to spot good investments," so Pagaya was created.

Now the firm, led by Krubiner as CEO, uses artificial intelligence to evaluate and buy individual loans in the US, a departure from the traditional process of pooling debt and then selling it. Pagaya has issued $515 million of asset-backed securities, investing on behalf of pension funds, insurance companies, and banks. The company plans to enter other types of lending, including auto loans and corporate credit, and eventually a real-estate fund.

Sam Powell, 32, Gamut Capital

Sam Powell is a principal at Gamut Capital Management, a fund launched by two former Apollo Global Management executives in 2015. 

The firm has raised $1 billion and is busy putting all that money to work, this year buying a US iron-casting business from American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc. for $245 million. 

A big part of Powell's role is expanding its technology-investment practice. So far, he has been assessing data centers and telecom companies, among other businesses, as possible investments.

"We have a whole list of companies on our watch list," Powell said. 

Powell started at the firm in January after spending four and a half years at Silver Lake, departing the company as a principal. Silver Lake, known for its technology investing, provided Powell with some useful expertise to support Gamut. While there, he helped managed companies like Red Ventures, a Charlotte, North Carolina, digital-marketing company Silver Lake co-owned alongside General Atlantic. 

"I'm trying to bring my technology experience at Silver Lake and employ it here at Gamut, but from a different perspective," Powell said, adding that Gamut is focused on value investing more so than growth investing. 

Powell is a graduate of Princeton University and a member of the Economic Club of New York, as well as the Milken Institute Young Leaders Circle. 

Seema Amble, 32, Andreessen Horowitz

Seema Amble would be forgiven for not becoming a doctor. Both of her parents, born in India, counted themselves as such, and there wasn't a lot of finance talk at home. But Amble was largely interested in government and politics throughout high school and into college at Harvard, and that soon morphed into a fascination with financial technology. 

At Harvard, she began to recognize the global nature of economics, studying trade flows, global migration patterns, and development, and her curiosity was piqued. She joined Blackstone's financial-institutions group after graduation, back when the private-equity firm had an advisory arm. (She also interned at Goldman Sachs during her sophomore year at Harvard.)

After two years at Blackstone, she jumped to Altamont Capital Partners, a middle-market private-equity shop, to get more operational experience. In her time between jobs, she worked at a venture fund in India. While at Altamont, Amble was approached to help build an insurance business in Ghana. It was a perfect fit — she wrote her college thesis on how families in South Africa were able to smooth their income, a practice akin to insurance. 

In 2013, Amble returned to the states to sign up at Harvard Business School. By the time she left in 2017, Amble had also gotten her law degree. Despite the added workload, Amble was named a prestigious Baker Scholar, the highest academic award given by the school. She also spent time working for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 

From Harvard, Amble joined Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, the firm's growth-equity team, out of San Francisco. One of her tasks for Goldman was to lead their activities in Latin America, where she saw tremendous opportunities for the democratizing force of financial services. In August, Amble joined Andreessen Horowitz as a partner to focus on fintech.

"Life is long, and you put together interesting experiences that make you a smarter, more well-rounded person," she said, explaining her career progression.

• Avery Pennarun is a software engineer, executive consultant, and cofounder of Tailscale.io.
• He discovered that the role of an executive was well-defined in the 1980s, by Andy Grove of Intel fame. 
• The two jobs of an executive are to ratify good decisions, and define and enforce company culture/values. That's it.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

An executive with 8,000 indirect reports and 2000 hours of work in a year can afford to spend, at most, 15 minutes per year per person in their reporting hierarchy ... even if they work on nothing else. That job seems impossible. How can anyone make any important decision in a company that large? They will always be the least informed person in the room, no matter what the topic.

If you know me, you know I've been asking myself this question for a long time.

Luckily, someone sent me a link to a really great book, "High Output Management," by Andy Grove (of Intel fame). Among many other things, it answers this key question! And insultingly, just to rub it in, it answered this question back in the 1980s.

To paraphrase the book, the job of an executive is: to define and enforce culture and values for their whole organization, and to ratify good decisions.

That's all.

Not to decide. Not to break ties. Not to set strategy. Not to be the expert on every, or any topic. Just to sit in the room while the right people make good decisions in alignment with their values. And if they do, to endorse it. And if they don't, to send them back to try again.

There's even an algorithm for this.

It seems too easy to be real. For any disagreement, identify the lead person on each side. Then, identify the lowest executive in the corporate hierarchy that both leads report into (in the extreme case, this is the CEO). Set up a meeting between the three of them. At the meeting, the two leads will present the one, correct decision that they have agreed upon. The executive will sit there, listen, and ratify it.

But ... wait. If the decision is already made before the meeting, why do we need the meeting? Because the right decision might not happen without the existence of that meeting. The executive gives formal weight to a major decision. The executive holds the two disagreeing leads responsible: they must figure out not what's best for them, but what's best for the company. They can't pull rank. They can't cheat. They have to present their answer to a person who cares about both of their groups equally. And they want to look good, because that person is their boss! This puts a lot of pressure on people to do the right thing.

(Side note: this has parallels with the weirdly formal structures in eg. Canadian parliament, where theoretically all decisions must be ratified by the seemingly powerless Governor General, who represents The Queen by just always ratifying everything. The theory is that if the decisions were bad, they wouldn't be ratified, so there'd be no point proposing them, and therefore all the decisions proposed are worthy of ratification. Obviously the theory doesn't match the practice here, because bad decisions get ratified, but it's nice to think about.)

SEE ALSO: Steve Jobs constantly asked Apple's former head of design what he said 'no' to that day

Failure modes

What happens when an executive doesn't follow this model? One of several things we've all seen before, depending what the executive does instead.

• If the executive makes their own decisions and forces them downstream: the executive doesn't have enough information to make good decisions in detail, so the decision won't be optimal. And there won't be much buy-in from people downstream. This also encourages politics: people whisper in the executive's ear to bend it one way or the other. It encourages "brown-nosing."

• If the executive chooses not to be involved in conflicts that are "not important enough; you figure it out": political power games ensue. Whoever can force their way will win, killing morale. Or half the people do one thing and half do the other, and the company loses focus.

• If the executive accepts escalations, then tries to make a tie-breaker decision: non-optimal decisions get made, because again the executive is, out of the three people, the least qualified to decide. Offhand, you might think this is fine, if the decision isn't very important anyway. That part is true. But the indirect effects are disastrous: it allows the two leads to abdicate responsibility. They don't have to remind themselves what's good for the company, because you did it for them. It lets them be selfish. It lets disagreement fester. It leaves at least one side not fully bought in.

  (I'm wary of "disagree and commit" for this reason. Real people don't commit when they strongly disagree; they only pretend to. In service of a value like "move fast and break things" it can work, because speed overrides wisdom or consistency. That's a legitimate value, like any other, if it serves your strategy.)

• If the executive brings in more people to discuss the issue: this is something the two leads should have done already. If they didn't, they are failing at their job, and need to learn how to do it better. Step one is the executive sends them a message: "Go back. Include these additional people/groups in your decision. Come back when you've thought it through properly." If it continues, people have to get fired, because they are bad at making decisions.

Enforcement of culture and values

According to the book, which makes a pretty compelling case, the only other responsibility of an executive is to enforce company values.

What does that mean? It means if someone in the company isn't acting "right"— not acting ethically, not following the conflict resolution algorithm above, playing politics — then they need to be corrected or removed. Every executive is responsible for enforcing the policy all the way down the chain, recursively. And the CEO is responsible for everyone. You have to squash violators of company values, fast, because violators are dangerous. People who don't share your values will hire more people who don't share your values. It's all downhill from there.

Real values aren't what you talk about, they're what you do when times get tough. That means values are most visible during big, controversial decisions. The executive ratifying a decision needs to evaluate that decision against the set of organizational values. Do the two leads both understand our values? Is the decision in line with our values? If not, tell them so, explicitly, and send them back to try again.

What about strategy?

One of the book's claims, which I found shocking at first, was that in a large organization, executives don't set strategy. Not even the CEO sets strategy. Why? Because it's an illusion to believe you can enforce a strategy.

Employees, including executives that report to you, follow company values first and foremost. (This is by definition construction. If they don't, you fired them, see above.) Of course, they're human, so as part of that, they'll be looking out for themselves, their friends, and the people in their organization.

Maybe one of your organizational values is "do what your boss says." That's a thing you can do, and you can enforce. It works. The military works like that supposedly (although I have no experience with the military). But command-and-control is not very efficient for knowledge workers, because of the fundamental problem that for any given situation, the people who know the most about it are the people at the bottom, not the people at the top.

If the people at the bottom can't agree what to do, then great! That's why we have a hierarchy. Use the decision process above until the answer is obvious.

But if the person at the top is trying to "set a strategy" by making operational decisions, those decisions will be based on insufficient facts, because there are simply far too many facts for one person. That means, if your decisions should be based on facts, you will make worse decisions than your subordinates. That's scary.

So what, then? A company just drifts in the void, with no strategy?

Not exactly. It's harder than that. What executives need to do is come up with organizational values that indirectly result in the strategy they want.

That is, if your company makes widgets and one of your values is customer satisfaction, you will probably end up with better widgets of the right sort for your existing customers. If one of your values is to be environmentally friendly, your widget factories will probably pollute less but cost more. If one of your values is to make the tools that run faster and smoother, your employees will probably make less bloatware and you'll probably hire different employees than if your values are to scale fast and capture the most customers in the shortest time.

Why will employees embrace whatever weird organizational values you set? Because in every decision meeting, you enforce your values. And you fire the people who don't line up. Recursively, that means executives lower down the tree will do the same, because that itself is one of the values you enforce.

Unless it's somehow impossible to hire people who agree with your values, you can assemble an organization that aligns with them. It might be a terrible organization that ruins your business, but then ... well, those values weren't a good choice.

I can't believe nobody told me this before. It's all so simple, and it's all been documented since the 1980s.

• According to statistics from Harvard Business School, financial services and consulting are the most popular paths for its graduates.
• That said, there are plenty of other career paths you can take after getting an MBA.
• Business Insider spoke with graduates of Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, and more to learn about the steps they took after getting a degree.
• These graduates ended up in unique fields such as nonprofit, medicine, sports marketing, and retail.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

People tend to get their MBA for the same reasons: career advancement, leadership training, and a strong network. But once MBA students graduate from school, there are many ways they can use their degrees.

According to statistics from Harvard Business School, financial services and consulting are the most popular paths for its graduates. Liz Chilla, the senior director of Emory University's Goizueta Business School Career Management Center, told Business Insider that she's "seen an increase in [students interested in] consulting" over the seven and a half years she's worked in business education, in both admissions and counseling positions. 

However, while consulting and finance jobs may be more popular than other options, they are by no means the only tracks business school students can take. 

Business Insider spoke to five MBA graduates who used their degrees in unique ways, and have gone on to find great success in their respective sectors. 

I became the cofounder and director of a nonprofit

While Chesca Colloredo-Mansfeld's first job out of business school was rather typical for an MBA, consulting was never her end goal. 

Growing up the daughter of a diplomat, the inequality that existed between Colloredo-Mansfeld's family and those she drove past in Somalia and Malaysia was always apparent to her. Early on, she assumed one day she would work in international development. 

After working in investment banking for two years after college, she got a job with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Pakistan.

"I had never planned on going to business school. I thought I'll do that year [with the IRC] and apply to public policy school," she said.

But as she spoke to leaders with successful international development careers, she was told to go to business school if she wanted to make a real impact, and ended up attending Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, which has a public management program.

Read more: Here's exactly what it takes to get accepted into Stanford Graduate School of Business, according to 6 grads and the assistant dean of admissions

After graduating, getting married, and realizing it would be too hard to move abroad, Colloredo-Mansfeld started working at the Boston Consulting Group, and then at tech companies like Citysearch and eToys at the dawn of the dotcom bubble. 

"I got the entrepreneurial bug at that point," she recalled.  

When Colloredo-Mansfeld's husband got a professorship at the University of Iowa, she started working at Iowa's business school. It was there that she heard about Dr. Ignacio Ponseti and his nonsurgical treatment for clubfoot.

She watched a video of a boy in Uganda with untreated clubfoot, and it brought tears to her eyes. That night she told her husband, "I've figured out what I need to do with my life."

Unsatisfied with another business school job and hoping to fulfill Dr. Ponseti's wish to treat clubfoot in children worldwide, Colloredo-Mansfeld started MiracleFeet. With the help of two cofounders, the nonprofit has been helping to bring the nonsurgical treatment for clubfoot to children globally for nine years now.

She approached it like any business problem, explained to investors the return on philanthropic investment, and spoke the language of business executives, said Colloredo-Mansfeld about starting the organization. 

Uniquely positioned with a business background, "We've done things a typical NGO might shy away from," she added. For example, MiracleFeet has partnered with companies like Clarks and Suncast to innovate its technology.

Colloredo-Mansfeld is thankful for her degree and the network she built along the way. "For people leaning toward nonprofit and entrepreneurship," she said, "I think an MBA gives you a really good foundation."

I propelled myself into a director role in the medical profession 

After 10 years of practicing as an ER doctor, Benjamin Lee started to notice a disconnect between the decisions hospital leaders were making and what was happening at the patient bedside. Lee questioned why clinicians weren't more involved in decision-making, and then looked at what degrees hospital leaders had. He decided that holding an MBA or MPH seemed like "an unspoken rule."

"You had to have some kind of management skills," Lee said.

Ultimately, Lee enrolled at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business in their executive MBA program. He was initially attracted to Fuqua's health sector management program, but never ended up taking classes in it. Nonetheless, he feels that his degree and the network he made have been invaluable.

"Business school opens up doors that otherwise might be difficult to open," Lee said.

At Fuqua, Lee met classmates who helped him start a company to facilitate patient transfer via cloud-based software. During his customer discovery phase, Lee spoke with a healthcare services company called Adeptus Health, to see if it might be interested in his product.

Adeptus was in charge of staffing for a management role at a hospital operations organization called Dignity Health. According to Lee, "the guy [on the phone] said jokingly … it seems like you're a fit." He invited Lee to take the position, and Lee accepted.

He shelved his startup, and is now overseeing emergency departments in the Phoenix market at Dignity Health as the facility medical director and and regional medical officer — the kind of position that originally motivated him to seek out an MBA.

Lee advised MBA students to figure out what their strengths are in business school, but in terms of a career, keep an open mind — because "one opportunity may lead to another."

I bounced from public policy to working at Sweetgreen headquarters in search of a people-facing role 

When it comes to his career, Parker Sheedy's willingness to put himself out there has been the key to his success.

Throughout college, Sheedy cold-called his way into internships first in British Parliament, and then with the Premier of Bermuda. After working as a consultant one year out of college, he used this tactic once again — this time to get a job at the White House under Barack Obama.

"I managed to find somewhere online … the switchboard number [for the White House]," Sheedy said. He still has that number memorized.

He worked there for almost five years, managing business relationships as a confidential assistant for the Under Secretary of International Trade, and eventually as a special assistant and associate director for the Secretary of Commerce.

When the Obama administration finished in 2015, Sheedy had to decide what to do next. He contemplated public policy programs, but eventually enrolled at Harvard Business School.

Read more: Here's exactly what it takes to get accepted into Harvard Business School, according to 5 grads and the managing director of admissions

"DC has no shortage of policy people, so I thought business school could be a great asset for me" Sheedy noted. Additionally, he had gotten a taste of business school years prior when he attended Stanford's Summer Institute for General Management Program.

When Sheedy started at Harvard, he had no idea what he would do after graduation, but was moved by a class called Authentic Leadership Development (ALD). He remembers one of his classmates in ALD calling him "the LEGO builder," because he loved to connect people and build on those relationships.

After graduating in 2018, Sheedy found a job where he could do just that — as an associate in the office of the CEO at Sweetgreen in Los Angeles. He recently left this role to once again pursue a position where government and policy are involved, but is eager to stay in a people-facing role where he can use his social skills.

For other MBAs looking to find their paths, the best lesson Sheedy has learned is "to be patient, and not be afraid to try new things and not like them."

I put myself on the track to the C-suite in the sports industry

The sports fan that she is, Teresa Naff always knew she wanted to go to USC — where she was rejected for college. In fact, when Naff applied to executive MBA programs, USC's Marshall School of Business was the only one on her list. 

Luckily, she got in, and it was the perfect program for her. She was able to learn from and work closely with David Carter, the executive director of the Sports Business Institute. Carter offered Naff great opportunities, such as a meeting with Manchester United's staff and consulting on a project for the NFL Players Association.

While Naff had studied marketing in college and already worked for Fox Sports, NBC, and the Oakland Raiders, she's always had her eye on joining the C-suite and knew an MBA could help her get there.  

One of the most valuable, yet unexpected things Naff got out of business school was learning about herself.

"When I played sports I would always be the captain on the team," she said. "Whenever we would do things internally [at work] I would always be the one leading it, but never knew why."

Through a class called Leadership and Executive Development, Naff uncovered her innate capabilities and motivators. She learned she was a natural leader. 

Today, she is the associate director of sports brand marketing at Ticketmaster, and is just getting started. "My goal in the past was to be the CMO of the 49ers, and now I think that's too small," Naff said about her future plans.

"Take advantage of being a student" because people are more likely to respond to informational interview requests from that position, Naff advised to prospective MBA candidates.

I opened my own clothing store after years of toying with my love for retail

Brooke Richman's first experience with retail was at age five, when she came up with the idea for "Brooke's Looks Fine Department Stores." 

Once she graduated from college and took a job as a sales and trading Analyst at Citibank, it seemed natural for her to cover retail companies. But Richman soon decided the grueling hours of banking were not for her, and became a buyer for Theory and Helmut Lang. 

At Theory, she had the opportunity to visit different retailers. It was on these site visits that Richman started to work directly with customers and realized she had a passion for selling. However, she also loved the idea of working with a variety of brands and saw a gap in the market.

"Besides Intermix … there were no longer any boutiques in the city [of New York] that sold a variety of different brands and also had very hands-on customer service," Richman said.

From then on, Richman knew she wanted to open her own store. It didn't hurt that both her father and brother were also entrepreneurs and had told her "you always want to be your own boss." But Richman was only 25 at that point and knew she had more to learn, so she decided to get an MBA.

Eager to stay in New York City, Richman attended Columbia Business School, where she could write her business plan for course credit. Keeping her eye on the goal of opening her own boutique, she graduated from Columbia in May of 2013, got an LLC in June, and hired her first employee in September of that same year — with the help of private investors.

Read more: Here's exactly what it takes to get accepted into Columbia Business School, according to 3 alumni and the director of admissions

Coop & Spree, named after Richman's two lively childhood golden retrievers, is a boutique in the Nolita neighborhood of New York City that sells a variety of emerging brands for women and kids. In addition to working on the floor and running the business side of her store, Richman interviews candidates for the Columbia Business School as an alumni ambassador.

For hopeful entrepreneurs, she advised that "if you have the drive … and are dedicated and hard-working … that's more important than having any kind of finance background."

Alana Pockros is a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist. Her local and national reporting has appeared in places like Greenpointers, Kaiser Health News, CNN, and NPR. She holds a bachelor's degree in political science and predictive health from Emory University. You can reach her by email at apockros@gmail.com and follow her on Twitter at @Apockros.

SEE ALSO: BUSINESS SCHOOL PREP: The ultimate guides to getting into the top MBA programs in the US

READ MORE: Harvard and Stanford MBA grads reveal the most important benefits they got from business school, besides their education

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• The United Auto Workers labor union is entering its fourth week on strike as they continue to negotiate with General Motors.
• Throughout world history, strikes have had the power to make substantive change to better working conditions. Roman plebeians used strikes to get better government representation. 
• Australian stonemason demonstrations paved the way for the 8-hour workday. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Unionized auto workers for General Motors are entering their fourth week on strike as they call for better wages and higher quality healthcare.

A refusal to compromise from both sides could mean the strike becomes one of the longest in UAW history.

The last time the United Auto Worker went on strike against GM in 2007 was one of the largest in US history. Though they only rallied for a few days, as many as 73,000 members stopped working after failing to negotiate a fair contract.

Throughout history, laborers have used strikes to pressure their employers to provide better working conditions. While some strikers got fired or went back to work empty-handed, some demonstrations have driven substantive change. 

Read more:California's gig economy bill won't just impact Uber drivers. Here's how the landmark decision is a major win for janitors, truck drivers, and other low-wage workers.

Here are a handful of the largest, most powerful strikes in world history:

Áine Cain contributed to this report.

SEE ALSO: LeBron James might be America's most visible labor activist right now — and he's garnering support from Bernie Sanders

The first recorded labor strike occurred in ancient Egypt in 1156 BC, when workers stopped working to protest late payment from the pharaoh, Ramesses III.

Tomb-builders and artisans began complaining of month-long payment delays in 1159 BC, as they prepared for a festival to honor Ramesses III, according to renowned Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson's analysis of ancient record keeping. 

Government officials largely ignored the tomb-builders, and they eventually stopped working and took to the city streets yelling "we are hungry." They blocked access to the Valley of the Kings, barring others from bringing sacred food and drink to the dead.

The pharaoh and ancient workers eventually compromised and they got their paychecks — and the strikes led to greater awareness of corruption within the Egyptian ruling class. 

Source: Ancient.eu

From 400 to 200 BC, Roman laborers halted the entire economy for days during the Secession of the Plebs.

The Roman plebeians class represented builders, bakers, and common laborers that were one step above slaves on the social hierarchy. They sometimes stopped working en masse during "secessions" to demand fairer treatment during the Republic.

During the first secession in 494 BC, plebeians walked off the job to protest a law that would increase their debt. The strike resulted in a repeal of that law, as well as a government representative position for plebeians. 

The final secession in 287 BC resulted in the formation of the Plebeian Assembly, meaning the class could now pass their own laws the elect their own representatives.

Source: History Daily

The first worker strike in the Americas occurred in Real del Monte, Mexico in 1766.

In 1766, miners working for Spanish colonists protested wage reductions and poor working conditions. The two parties eventually negotiated a better labor contract.

The strike began on July 30 after the mining management would not respond to a list of worker grievances. The strike lasted approximately one month, and ended when the administration agreed to increase wages and meet other demands.

Source: Culture Trip, Libcom

The first US strike of 20,000 of carpenters, coal workers, and public works employees occurred in Philadelphia in 1835, resulting in a sweeping victory for all workers.

The first US general strike — or one that involved workers from different industries — occurred in Philadelphia in 1835 to call for shorter workdays. The strikes began when coal workers went on strike to call for ten-hour workdays in early June. They were soon joined by carpenters, painters, bakers, and more. 

Three weeks after the general strike, the city imposed a 10-hour workday and raised wages for some workers. 

Source: Pennsylvania Magazine

The 8-hour day is a result of an Australian stonemason strike that occurred 1856.

The 8-hour workday was first proposed by Scottish socialist Robert Owen in 1817. Owen called for a day that consists of 8 equal hours of work, recreation, and rest. 

Australia's labor union, the Operative Masons' Society, decided to call for 8-hour day based on Owen's viewpoint. After negotiations failed with building companies, stonemasons put down their tools and walked off their job at Melbourne University in April of 1856.

Months later, employees and the government agreed on an 8-hour workday without a dip in wages.

The 8-hour workday came to the U.S. first in the state of Illinois, where the state legislature passed a law mandating it in 1867. Many employers refused to cooperate, prompting a massive strike — and earning the nickname "May Day," Business Insider's Shana Lebowitz reported.

The 40-hour workweek wouldn't go national until October 24, 1940.

Source: National Museum Australia

A 1894 strike resulted in 30 people dead, cost $80 million in damages, and led to the creation of Labor Day in the US.

The Pullman strike represented a culmination of the rifts between labor and business owners in 19th century US, Business Insider's Áine Cain reported.

The strike occurred after workers for The Pullman Company, a luxury rail car service, called for better living conditions and higher wages. 

Former President Grover Cleveland called in the federal soldiers to enforce an anti-strike injunction. Strikers and soldiers got into a violent clash in Chicago, resulting in 30 people dead. 

Cleveland's later decided to declare Labor Day as a holiday for workers likely to please his constituents after the controversial handling of the strike. 

Source: Business Insider

The US Postal Strike of 1970 brought mail delivery to a halt as 210,000 letter carriers stopped working for 8 days.

Before the strike, letter carriers worked physically demanding jobs for long hours and with limited breaks. Many workers did not receive substantial pay raises even after decades on the job, according to HISTORY.

Despite laws that prohibit federal workers from striking, USPS letter carriers defied their union and 30% of them went on a nationwide strike for eight days, the largest walkout of federal employees in history. The event disrupted millions of mail and package deliveries, eventually resulting in a national emergency. Former President Richard Nixon even deployed the National Guard to deliver mail.

The strike eventually ended, and Congress approved a 6% wage hike for postal workers.

Source: HISTORY, APWU

In 1981, 12,000 air traffic controllers walked out after contract negotiations fell through — and Ronald Reagan fired nearly all of them.

During the height of summer traffic, 7,000 flights were canceled after thousands of air traffic controllers went on strike to demand better pay.

The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization had called for reduced work-weeks and a $10,000 pay increase across the board, a package that would cost the Federal Aviation Administration $770 million. In response, the FAA offered a measly $40 million.

About 13,000 air traffic controllers went on strike, prompting former president Ronald Reagan to threaten to fire them if they don't return to work in 48 hours. About 11,000 continued to strike, and Reagan made good on his word. 

While the mass layoffs delayed flights initially, supervisors and non-unionized controllers had managed to bring 80% of flights back to schedule. The strike was considered a failure, and Reagan banned the demonstrating the air traffic controllers from working for the FAA again.

Source: NPR, POLITICO

Over 100,000 miners in Britain went on a year-long strike in 1984 after the government, led by Margaret Thatcher, announced job cuts.

Conservative right-wing leader Margaret Thatcher sought to make the British coal industry more efficient. In March 1984, Thatcher and the National Coal Board announced 20 mines would close, erasing 20,000 jobs.

Days after the announcement, 165,000 miners, led by the National Union of Mineworkers, went on strike. Thus began a tense, year-long strike, where men would throw pickets — known as "flying pickets"— at pits where miners still worked at.

The strike grew violent during a confrontation at a coking plant in June 1984, when police and strikers through bricks and fought each other. In December, two strikers killed a taxi driver by hitting him with a concrete block intended for a working miner.

The strike eventually ended in March 1985, and is considered a victory for Thatcher and her Conservative Party. The event also shrunk the NUM's influence in politics, according to PBS.

Source: National Coal Mining Museum for England, BBC, PBS

In 2016, millions of Indian workers protested Narendra Modi's labor reforms and called for higher wages in a one-day strike.

Workers in banking, telecom and other industries protested Modi's economic reforms that scaled back labor laws and shut down some companies.

The strike caused state banks and power stations to close and public transportation to stop, according to The Guardian. Schools and colleges closed, hospital procedures were delayed, and railways halted. 

Unions called for higher minimum wages and universal social security.

The one- or two-day strike is form of mass action that Indian workers have used with some regularity since the 1990s.

In January 2019, 150 million workers went on a two-day strike.

Source: Reuters, The Guardian

• It's National Hispanic Heritage Month, and Latino-owned businesses have become a major asset to the US economy. According to a Biz2Credit study, more Latinos in the US are applying for small-business loans and shrinking the funding gap. 
• In a city with increasingly expensive rent, a small shop in NYC's East Village stands out for its vibrancy and longevity.
• La Sirena captivates tourists and locals with colorful paper banners (papel picado), Frida Kahlo ornaments, and Día de Los Muertos skulls (calaveras).
• Owner Dina Leor had little knowledge about running a business when she opened in 1999. She's struggled to pay rent at times, but continues to find ways to keep her Mexican folk-art store open without raising her prices.

• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. 

When people walk into La Sirena in New York City's East Village, they're either looking for a very specific piece of Mexican culture, or they've stumbled upon its captivating menagerie by chance.

In a city with increasingly expensive rent, it's clear that owner Dina Leor, who is Argentine-American, doesn't take her real estate for granted. Inside, she makes use of every square inch to display thousands of pieces she collects, primarily handmade by artisans in Mexico. There are colorful paper banners (papel picado), Frida Kahlo ornaments, altar candles, and Día de Los Muertos skulls (calaveras).

Leor has been in business for 20 years, despite almost losing her store to exorbitant rents. The median annual rent for a storefront in the East Village is $132 per square foot, according to 42Floors. Leor declined to share how much she pays in rent. 

Leor said she had no idea what she was doing when she started a small business in 1999, and she still does many things the same. She does her own accounting on a lined notebook, doesn't have an online store, and has never kept inventory. She went to art school, not business school. Customers may be attracted to her shop for the bright colors and array of pieces, but they stay for Leor's knowledge of Mexican culture and passion for supporting local artisans.

Latino-owned businesses like Leor's have become a major asset to the US economy. According to a study by the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Latino-owned businesses contribute more than $700 billion to the economy each year. A Biz2Credit study also found that more Latinos in the US are applying for small-business loans and shrinking the funding gap.

Business Insider visited her store to find out how she turned her devotion to Mexican art into a brick-and-mortar that keeps people coming back. 

SEE ALSO: 16 craft breweries that are shaping the American beer landscape — and boosting their local economies along the way

The store immediately welcomes customers into a celebration of Mexican culture.

Garlands, paper flowers, and string lights dangle from the ceiling. Shelves are filled to the edge with figurines and sculptures. The light yellow walls are covered in ornaments, jewelry, and tons of thumbtack holes. Leor calls them her "holy walls." 

The wide array of decor, clothing, and art evoke what it's like to walk into a gift shop in Mexico.

Stacks of clothes and textiles line the rough, wooden floors and remnants of old, blue linoleum tiles. An aisle of walking space gives just enough room for two people to awkwardly side-step to switch places.

Leor is a self-proclaimed shopaholic, but only when buying for her store.

 "Right now it's less breathable than it used to be," said Leor. "I don't want to get rid of stuff because I want everything to show."

The moment customers walk in, Leor jumps up to show them around and teach them about Mexican culture.

Alex Hunter, from London, was on a work trip when he found La Sirena. "You get a real sense for the art," said Hunter. His children are fascinated with Mexican culture, so he bought luchadores masks to bring back home for them.

Leor taught one woman about the Mexican symbols and traditions of the pieces she liked.

Alina Chigri, traveling from Germany, came into the store with a friend to find a memento of her trip. "I felt welcomed, really warm," said Chigri.

A costume designer came in to find Mexican dresses for a play.

Linda Cho is a costume designer for "Chasing Rainbows" at the Paper Mill Playhouse. She needed costumes for the production, and Leor helped her sift through stacks of traditional embroidered dresses.

We need more stores like this, but the only resources we have left now are online," said Cho.

La Sirena is celebrating 20 years in business this year, but Leor started collecting Mexican art much earlier.

When Leor was nine years old, she joined her Argentine mother on a trip to Mexico. She had such a good time, she didn't want to leave — and it began a life-long interest in Mexican culture.

Leor became a carpenter and art therapist. She made trips back to Mexico any chance she had.

"I'd always feel like my heart was being torn out on my way home," said Leor. 

Most of all, she loved visiting artisans and buying their pieces to take back home.

In New York, people stopped her on the street to ask about her mercado bags.

She'd take their numbers and promise to grab them one on her next trip to Mexico. 

A mercado bag is a tote bag usually made with woven plastic. It's typically used for shopping at the market or grocery store. 

Leor collected so much art that one of the rooms in her home became a storage space.

While teaching at Bellevue Hospital, she held lunchtime markets in her classroom to sell pieces to other teachers.

'I'd never thought of having a store. Ever.'

Leor says she was laid off from her job at Bellevue in roughly 1997, and she planned to start up an at-home daycare while selling her pieces elsewhere in the East Village on the weekends. 

Then she came across an empty storefront. "I never thought of having a store, ever," said Leor. Yet, she found herself asking if the space was available.

She rented the front of the space for $500, while a designer rented out the back.

Leor didn't have much knowledge about building a business, but what someone may see as a disadvantage, she sees as her advantage.

"I feel like all my ignorance throughout all of this has been fabulous because it let me do things that I wouldn't have done otherwise," said Leor.

Before she accepted credit cards, she kept a little box for her money.

On one of her buying trips to Mexico, Leor spent $9,000 on 11 crates of art she shipped to the US.

"I was spending everything I made, because I didn't know when I could go back again," she said.

While the crates were on the way, she said the landlord ended her lease about a year after she opened her shop. Leor went back to selling her pieces around the East Village and at street fairs. Meanwhile, 11 crates of Mexican art took up her entire living room. 

About a year later, Leor found a real estate company looking for first-time store owners who couldn't afford spaces on their own.

She applied, took out a loan of $5,000, and got her current space at 27 East 3rd Street right before the holidays.

She painted the walls yellow and covered the floors in blue linoleum tile. She says that if she'd known most of the tiles would break over time, she would have chosen wood.

With 10 crates of products left in her apartment, she didn't need to go back to Mexico before opening.

It took just two days to set up her store.

Hiring and managing employees is one of Leor's biggest challenges.

"I have great people and I've always really appreciated them and we've worked well together, but it's a lot of work," she said.

Owning a Mexican folk-art store, Leor feels an obligation to hire Spanish-speaking employees.

"If a whole family comes in, they can't feel comfortable because they can't speak the language that you're speaking to them," said Leor. "It just feels important to me."

Affording rent in New York City has been a persistent battle for Leor.

"I've been really tight, but I've always managed," she said. "The rent goes up and I'm not raising my prices. I just feel that if I do, I really think I'll lose more business that way."

About four years ago, she struggled with her management company (which has since changed) as it negotiated a new lease. She said that they wanted more than she could afford, sent her a 30-day notice to leave, and she prepared to look for a new place.

But then she called her local councilwoman, who knew Leor's landlord. The councilwoman called him to vouch for her. "I don't know what happened, but I ended up getting a clear lease," said Leor.

Business Insider reached out to the councilwoman for comment.

Her rent increases each year, but Leor said she'll likely stay because the rents in other parts of New York City are so exorbitant.

"To move to something else that's the same size doesn't make sense to me. I'd rather stay here unless I could get something bigger," said Leor.

It's her dream to move to a larger space where she can have a cultural center to host classes and events.

When Leor struggles financially, her strategy is to have big sales.

"Unfortunately, they don't seem to be as successful these days," she said. "Maybe my customers are Mexican folk-arts shopped out."

Community and art events also help boost her sales.

Brooklyn Museum purchased T-shirts from Leor for its Frida Kahlo exhibit, and she held a pop-up in the museum's gift shop. 

She's having a shopping event for Día de Los Muertos on October 12 and 13; then she'll have tables set up at the Museum of Natural History's Día de Muertos festival in November.

Leor has noticed other stores in the area closing.

She used to hold an annual Mexico walking tour. It started at a Mexican restaurant and brought people around to other stores. She hasn't done it this year, partly because many of the stores have closed.

She couldn't pinpoint what's kept her store going, but said she doesn't know of any stores like hers that carry the same variety.

"I think just what we're doing attracts people," she said. "It's very heart-based."

"The fact that it's all handmade, people like that."

Advertising isn't worth the extra money for her, so Leor relies on social media and a 5,000-person email list to market her sales and events.

"I know it's kind of funny cause I am a business, but I probably don't think as business minded as most people do," she said.

"I just kind of do what I do and keep trucking."

• The freelance economy has grown immensely in the past couple of years and is on track to expand. According to Upwork and Freelancers Union's Freelancing in America 2019 study, 57 million Americans are now freelancing.
• If you're considering making the move from full-time work to freelance, you're not alone. Many freelancers earn more than in a 9-to-5, and many freelance jobs can command six figures.
• But how do you get started — and become successful? To find out, we spoke with a wide range of freelancers in various industries who make more money now than they did in their previous roles.
• Below is an inside look at the process from start to finish, including details about resources and infrastructure, how to budget your money and time, and how to find clients and recurring gigs.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

For many, the American dream is no longer a corporate job, but working independently as a freelancer. The numbers are huge and continue to balloon: Over a third of US workers have been identified as part of the gig economy (about 57 million people), and it's been predicted that by 2027, over half of American workers will be freelancers.

Yet one thing has traditionally held some back from ditching their day job and becoming a full-time freelancer: financial fears. Freelancers often get lumped in the "starving artist" category in the collective psyche, considered something that people do more for love than for money.

Research has found that freelancers make more than 9-to-5ers in many countries, and some freelance jobs can command six figures; the annual mean wage of independent artists, writers, and performers was over $104,000 in May 2018, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Other types of freelance jobs, like web developer and graphic designer, can also be lucrative. According to a recent 2019 study commissioned by Upwork and Freelancers Union, freelancers contribute nearly $1 trillion in income to the US economy, which is almost 5% of the US GDP.

But even knowing that you have the potential to rake in more money than you do in traditional employment, it's tricky to make the shift from a regular, reliable paycheck to independent, client-based work. There's a lot you need to understand first — from infrastructure and budgeting to finding new clients and setting up a support system.

For behind-the-scenes guidance, Business Insider surveyed a wide range of freelancers in various industries who make more money now than they did in their previous staff position. Read on to learn what the process is like from start to finish, and what you need to know to make the leap from having a boss to becoming your own.

What infrastructure do you need to put in place to become a freelancer?

The freelancers we surveyed agreed that it's not smart to go cold turkey when making the transition to independent work. Creating a sustainable infrastructure should include a solid financial position, as well as setting up several standard business systems to avoid reinventing the wheel.

• Financial footing. Kenzi Wood, a writer and the owner of Kenzi Writes, emphasized the importance of getting out of debt before quitting a full-time job.
  
  "I knew this would help me grow the business without fear of my personal finances," Wood said. "That meant putting full-time writing on the back burner for a year, but today I'm more successful because of it."
• Administrative systems. Wood also recommended creating systems for accounting, client communication, task tracking, and building up a stream of regular clients, so that you can rely on solid processes rather than approaching each project piecemeal.
  
  Hannah Attewell, who recently became a freelance success-and-business coach, agreed with the importance of automation: "Automate everything you can — admin can eat up a lot of time that you then can't use to profit from."
• Tools of the trade. Equipment is another vital part of your infrastructure, and this will vary depending on your industry.
  
  Stacey L. Vaselaney, a public-relations and social-media freelancer who quit her job as a senior PR specialist with a large Cleveland advertising agency in 2013, said a computer, a printer, a scanner, and a website were all she really needed to launch.
  
  Attewell explained that she was able to get started after setting up some solid SEO on her website, along with PR for backlines and carefully placed advertising. Many freelancers also recommended investing in accounting software before you begin freelancing.

What resources do you need before leaving a full-time job to go freelance?

Being prepared rather than naïve about what's to come is critical to getting your freelance business started on the right foot.

• Cash reserves. In addition to getting out of debt, many freelancers homed in on the importance of building up some cash reserves before collecting your last paycheck from your employer. Marc Andre, the founder of the personal-finance blog Vital Dollar, set aside about $30,000 as an emergency fund when he left his full-time job as an auditor.
  
  "We didn't have any kids at the time, and my wife was still working, so that money would have lasted us for a while if needed," Andre said. "I'd recommend having at least a few months' worth of living expenses, and I think it's good to be more cautious if you have dependents."
  
  Lance Beaudry, who previously worked in youth ministry and now owns a small SEO and content-strategy company called Avalanche Creative, advised having at least six months of your desired income in the bank, not just six months of expenses.
• Support system. When you leave an employer to become a freelancer, you also abandon an in-house support system that you may have taken for granted. Kathleen Osborne, who recently gave her notice at her full-time job and is preparing to kick off a freelance business, said that ensuring she had positive references was her initial priority.
  
  "The first thing I considered before making the decision was deciding on whether or not I had the strong network I needed that would vouch for me in terms of the quality of work that I do and/or be a resource for me with networking for new business," Osborne said.
  
  Max Kops, who left a job as an IT consultant to freelance in blockchain, agreed with the importance of ensuring you can obtain initial references when starting out. "What is most important is that you are not only an expert in your field, but you can also convey your value to your prospects," Kops said.
• Understanding of benefits and tax implications. You'll be leaving behind employer benefits and tax structure as well when you give your notice, so an important consideration is how you'll account for these changes. For health insurance and other benefits, some independent workers opt to join freelance unions for group plans and advocacy, but most of the freelancers we spoke with didn't feel this was a necessity.
  
  "I don't belong to any freelance unions at the present moment, and I don't really think it's necessary when starting out," said Drew DuBoff, whose freelance specialty is online business management.
  
  It's critical, however, to have a strong understanding of the difference between being a W-2 employee and a 1099 contractor when it comes to tax preparation.
  
  "There can be a fine line with laws of employment versus contractor," said Nicole Gallicchio, whose freelance background includes serving as a virtual operations consultant. "It is important to account for taxes as soon as you get an invoice paid. I have learned that you should put away at least 35% of each check."

What's the process like of leaving your job to start a freelance business?

Once you have your ducks in a row with infrastructure and resources, be prepared for some challenges as you shift your work life from employee to freelancer.

Our panel shared a variety of experiences leaving their employer, some of which were difficult. Many said they entered the situation with jitters and reservations but pushed through the fear.

• Weighing costs and benefits.Beverly Friedmann, who works as a freelance content manager, said it was a difficult choice to leave her corporate position to embark on an untried path as a freelancer. Friedmann was among those who found themselves tallying possible pros and cons before deciding to take the plunge.
  
  "I was told by friends, colleagues, and even family that I was making quite a risky move," she said. "The obvious downsides? Potentially losing benefits without joining a union, including health insurance, workers comp, and unemployment. The upsides? Setting your own hours or working additional hours if desired, increased autonomy, the potential to make even more money by taking on more clients, less travel (depending on your position), and the ability to actually thrive in an industry you enjoy."
• Facing politics. Telling your employer that you're quitting can be uncomfortable, even when it goes well. Some respondents said that while they were excited about delivering the news, it was met with mixed results from their unsuspecting boss and teams.
  
  "I absolutely loved leaving my job," Attewell recalled. "There was definitely a big drama with the job I was in — I imagine because they didn't see it coming. In my case it was more exciting than scary because I was right at the beginning of my career so didn't feel returning to full-time employment would be too tough if it didn't work out."
• Losing healthcare. Vaselaney too had a difficult time pulling the plug on her steady job, paycheck, and benefits — particularly because of her health situation.
  
  "It was a very difficult decision," she said. "As a cancer survivor, I am considered high-risk for insurance coverage. Ensuring I'd have healthcare coverage was my biggest concern. After I discovered that I'd be able to be on Cobra for 18 months, I felt confident enough that I could quit my job."

How do you budget your money and time?

The specter of a paycheck-to-paycheck existence is often evoked when freelancing is mentioned, but most of the freelancers said they avoided this fate through proper budgeting and planning. Having enough time to get everything done as a freelancer, though, was flagged by many as a significant issue.

• Put clients on retainer agreements. Some respondents said that to avoid feast-or-famine syndrome, they sought retainer-based client relationships to ensure a steady stream of income. Requiring clients to agree to a retainer fee allows you to receive a rate that's either fixed or variable, but is negotiated in advance.
  
  Brett Downes, a freelance SEO consultant, said retainer contracts were "peace of mind, as I know I get a minimum payment each month."
• Save to avoid overreliance on current payments. Friedmann said that while she had occasionally found herself living paycheck to paycheck, she mitigates this possibility by ensuring that she always keeps a savings account as well-funded as possible.
  
  "I would definitely recommend freelance workers take on as many clients as they can and always save," she said. "Savings accounts become key when you're in freelance, as months can be very hit or miss."
• Master self-discipline. With no boss breathing down your neck for that assignment, it can be easy to let things slide too much and find yourself in a constant last-minute crunch. Our sources said that successful freelancers are savvy about building in time to manage their whole business — including for invoicing, marketing, accounting/taxes, and other administration.
  
  Tom Wills, who shifted from a sales role in a digital agency to freelancing as a pay-per-click and SEO specialist, said it's vital for aspiring freelancers to learn to manage their time successfully.
  
  "You need to be very self-disciplined," Wills said. "So if you don't have this trait, I would seriously reconsider going freelance, as getting up for work is easy when you have to, but much more difficult if you are your own boss."

How do you find clients and get recurring gigs?

Once your freelance business is off the ground, you have to find ways to keep it up and running. According to our experts, there are a variety of ways to generate a steady stream of new business.

• Build up referrals. Many of the freelancers we spoke with said they get most of their repeat clients through word-of-mouth referrals. This requires first doing great work so that you stand out in a crowded field of freelance talent.
  
  "Just do a Google search to remind yourself that freelancers are a dime a dozen," said Kristi Grigsby, a freelance marketing consultant. "You've entered a field where you are truly replaceable — within hours. That reputation of exceptional talent and integrity starts now and is crucial to your success as a freelancer."
  
  "It comes down to being a good person to work with," Wood said. "If you deliver a quality product on time with a smile on your face, you're a unicorn; it's so hard for businesses to find that in a freelancer. Be so good that they want to keep working with you."
  
  This strategy can lead to positive outcomes, said Alice Donoghue, a writing, marketing, and communications specialist: "If you do great work, you'll get repeat business from your clients, plus referrals."
• Use Facebook groups. Some freelancers, including DuBoff and Lindsay Stead of Gilded Blooms Communications, said they found all or nearly all of their clients by networking online through niche Facebook groups.
  
  "People are always shocked by this, but almost every single client of mine has come from being active and engaged in Facebook groups," said Stead, who left her job with the local school board five years ago and now employs a core team of seven. "Having said that, in order to find new clients, you need to get very clear on who your ideal client is and go hang out where they hang out."
  
  For example, since Stead's ideal client is a woman who is a wedding professional, coach, or creative entrepreneur, or works with a not-for-profit, she found Facebook groups that support these women. "I show up regularly, I give value freely, and I make connections," Stead said.
• Get creative. By necessity, freelancers are a driven bunch — complacency in identifying new opportunities can leave self-employed workers with little to no income if they lose a key account. Respondents highlighted a wide range of additional ways they gain new and repeat business, including traditional in-person networking, researching companies they want to work for and offering services to them, joining industry associations, attending events, offering thought leadership, and using different freelancer platforms such as Upwork and Fiverr.

How do you make more money than you did in your full-time job?

After all is said and done, the bottom line still matters: If you can't pay your bills as a freelancer, you may end up back in the rat race. Fortunately, we found many freelancers who reported having the opposite experience.

"Within six months I was earning more than my full-time job, and within a year I had more than doubled my earnings," said Attewell, whose timing of rapid income ascension was typical of those surveyed.

Our experts shared thoughts about how they managed to make more than they did before and how others can too.

• View freelancing as a business. Attewell pinpointed her approach to her vocation as the key to her financial success as an independent worker.
  
  "So often people diminish their position by calling themselves 'freelancers' and not treating their freelancing as a business that needs marketing, budgeting, and proper systems like any other business," she said. "The key to making money was that I tracked what I did and reinvested in avenues that were producing clients and revenue streams. Similarly, I would regularly trim out anything that wasn't making enough money to justify the time and expense."
• Parlay freelancing into an actual business. Some freelancers go even a step further. Andre said he added $20,000 to his salary in his first year of freelance writing but felt he could make even more money by managing his own websites — so he used freelancing as a bridge to get him to that point.
  
  "It's been a great full-time business for more than 10 years now," Andre said. "I had a salary in the low $40,000s at my old job when I left in late 2008. In 2009, I made about $60,000 in my first year of self-employment. Every year from 2010 to 2018, I had a six-figure income."
• Find a niche. While some freelance fields are very specialized by nature, others, like copywriting or graphic design, leave the door open to many possibilities. By identifying a target niche market that you can specialize in, you could build your income faster than you could as a generalist.
  
  "I think the key to making money freelancing is niching down," DuBoff said. "When I first started, I offered a lot of services, but I didn't do any of them particularly well. Once I refined my offerings, I began to attract the right kinds of clients that valued my expertise and skill."

Along with all of the advice above, keep timing in mind, and your financial and emotional readiness to make such a big change in your career path.

"It doesn't matter how cruddy you think your full-time job is, or that the work isn't fulfilling," Wood said. "If you jump off to freelance at the wrong time, there's a good chance you'll have to go back to a full-time job working for someone else."

If you time it right, though, the sky can be the limit.

"Being a freelancer has been great for me," Vaselaney said. "I can't imagine ever going back to an office job."

This story was originally published 7/3/2019.

SEE ALSO: One email I wrote brought in 100% of my clients after I started my business — here's the template

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• Laura Garnett is a performance strategist and TEDx speaker who works with CEOs and executives to identify their unique genius and purpose, and craft an actionable plan to leverage them.
• In her work, she's identified four traits that reveal someone will be able to make the changes that they want. And luckily, they can all be learned.
• You need to be disciplined and curious, and have an appetite for growth and confidence.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

As a performance strategist, I work with high-level executives who have a strong desire to up their game at work. Most come to me with specific goals, like spending more time on the work they enjoy, ramping up their productivity, and becoming a stronger leader. And everyone starts with enthusiasm and a deep desire for change. 

But being a leader today is challenging. The nonstop nature of work, the unpredictability of an ever-changing economy, and the number of meetings that fill our calendar mean most of us are incredibly overwhelmed and that getting off the hamster wheel of our day-to-day lives is difficult. I can't change our work culture, of course, so my job is instead to help people get connected with who they are, become clear about what they do best, and learn how to prioritize effectively. 

Most people soar, but there are always those who don't. What's the difference? Over time, I've identified four traits that demonstrate to me that someone can make the change they desire. The good news? With a little effort, you, too, can cultivate these traits and move toward the success that you desire. 

SEE ALSO: Bill Gates's biggest fear is his brain not working — here's how to make yours the most productive it can be

Trait 1: They're disciplined

When it comes to creating behavioral change, working on yourself, or changing habits, discipline is key. You have to do what you say you are going to do — over and over and over again. It's those who are disciplined who I see get the most results in the shortest period of time — which feeds positive energy into the process. 

How to build it:

When you set a goal, mean it. The first part of this is making sure you're setting the right goals — ones you're excited and energized to work toward. The second? Embracing the structure that will allow you to stay on track. Gretchen Rubin's book "Better Than Before" is a great resource for this.

Trait 2: They're curious and open to thinking differently

When it comes to shifting how you operate, you have to be open to doing things differently — for example, prioritizing your well-being (something that is critical for success, but few people actually do), booking time in your calendar to think (which can feel awkward at first but reaps tremendous results), and being open to new career possibilities (rather than thinking inside the box you've always operated in). Without curiosity, it's more often the case that people stay stuck in the work-behavior habits that they've had their entire lives.

How to build it:

Most people think curiosity is an innate trait, but in reality, you have to rewire your brain to cultivate it. Try this: When someone makes a suggestion that sounds "too hard" or "too out of the box," pause, ignore the messages your brain is sending you about why that's a bad idea, and force yourself to stay open. Or, set up interactions with people you know think differently than you and listen to their ideas. Don't share why they wouldn't work or how you think differently — just listen. By building your curiosity muscle, you will learn that your resistance is often the only thing preventing you from trying something new. 

Trait 3: They have a voracious appetite for growth

You need energy and perseverance to accomplish anything significant, which is why those who have a lot of it are destined for greatness. You need to be energized by your own growth and have a lot of drive for never giving up.

How to build it:

We all have drive — in fact, it's part of being human. But if you feel like you're lacking hunger or ambition, it could be because you're not doing activities that tap into your "Zone of Genius." In short, that's the work you're doing when you are using your top talents and abilities to work toward your purpose. (You can read more about the concept here, or explore the exercises in my book "The Genius Habit"). Explore what your Zone of Genius is and see if doing work that's more aligned with who you are ramps up your intrinsic motivation.

Trait 4: They're confident about the value they have

Those who get the furthest fastest believe in themselves. When I am working with people, I help them see their own Zone of Genius. Those who can grab on to this and run with it are the ones who end up achieving their career visions faster than they ever thought possible. With these people, I often end up helping them craft a long-term career vision every year because they've already achieved in one year what they thought would take them five.

How to build it:

Nobody is born 100% confident — instead, it's a practice. Whenever you're feeling a lack of confidence, see if you can reverse your thinking and build a positive mental messaging muscle. Remind yourself that your negative thoughts about yourself are just that — thoughts — and focus on your unique strengths and talents instead. Your confidence is intimately connected to this process of proactively creating positive thoughts about yourself.

Want to maximize your potential and blow through your career vision faster than you think is possible? Build the above traits or work with a performance strategist to help you. Knowing who you are and how to create the success you want is a skill. But once you learn it, the sky is the limit.

• Carlos Ghosn, 64, amassed a $120 million net worth while he was the head-ranking official at the Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi Motors automotive alliance over the past two decades.
• The former CEO was accused of misreporting his salary and compensation in November 2018. Nissan and Ghosn settled the case with the SEC by agreeing to pay a $15 million fine, The New York Times reported September 24.
• Hari Nada, the Nissan executive who reported Ghosn, was found to have also improperly overpaid himself during an investigation by an outside law firm, Bloomberg reported on October 7.
• Nissan is now struggling. The automaker's first-quarter profits are down 98.5% from last year and it will cut at least 12,500 jobs by March 2023, The New York Times reported on July 25.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Nissan and its disgraced former CEO Carlos Ghosn settled their case with the SEC nearly 11 months after Ghosn was first arrested for underreporting his compensation, The New York Times reported September 24. The company will pay a $15 million fine, and Ghosn himself will pay $1 million, The Times reported.

Carlos Ghosn's rise as chairman of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance took years. His fall? Quicker, and greater, than any other industry executive with his caliber. 

For a long time, he was known as the man who was able to usher in a new era of profitability and relevance to the automakers he helmed. Yet, to Japanese persecutors, he hid his earnings from regulators for years and used company funds to further decorate his lavish lifestyle. 

Now, one of the Nissan executives who reported Ghosn has been accused of the same crimes: Hari Nada, a Nissan vice president, is facing pressure to resign after was found to have improperly overpaid himself during an investigation by an outside law firm, sources told Bloomberg October 7.

Read more: 'I have been wrongly accused and unfairly detained': Ousted Nissan exec Carlos Ghosn makes his first public remarks on financial misconduct allegations in Tokyo court

Prosecutors in Japan have also alleged that Ghosn earned a salary of about 10 billion yen, or $88.7 million, from 2011 to 2015 but reported only half of that. Ghosn, 64, could face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to 10 million yen if found to have committed any wrongdoing.

Keep reading to learn more about the rise and downfall of Carlos Ghosn.

SEE ALSO: How Jeffrey Epstein, the mysterious hedge-fund manager arrested on sex-trafficking charges, made his fortune

DON'T MISS: Bernard Arnault just became the 2nd-richest person in the world. These 5 mind-blowing facts show just how quickly the French billionaire's fortune is growing.

Ghosn started at Nissan in 1999, when "The Alliance" was formed — where Renault and Nissan each had a stake in the other. In 2016, Mitsubishi joined. The three act as separate entities, while also identifying as a global grouping.

Source:BBC

Ghosn was known for his cost-cutting methods — closing factories and cutting jobs while increasing profits and output. Nissan quickly surpassed Honda as the No. 2 automaker in Japan under Ghosn's leadership ...

Source:BBC, The New York Times

... for which he was greatly compensated. According to BBC's review of company records, Ghosn made over $17 million in 2017 in salary, share options and bonuses. As company success grew, so did Ghosn's net worth. As of 2018, his net worth was around $120 million.

Source:BBC, Bloomberg

Ghosn flew around the world using a series of Nissan-owned Gulfstream private jets, including a G650, which can seat up to 19 passengers, sleep up to 10, fly more than 8,000 miles, and can cost more than $67 million.

As chairman of Renault, Nissan, and Mitsubishi, three car companies located on two continents halfway around the world from one another, Ghosn spent a considerable amount of time flying on Nissan's corporate jets between France and Japan. He also had frequent stopovers in the United States, Brazil, and Lebanon.

Source:Business Insider

According to a report from Bloomberg, Nissan paid over 8,000 euros a month for an Amsterdam apartment that was used exclusively by Ghosn.

Source:Bloomberg

And in Beirut, Nissan reportedly paid nearly $9 million in 2012 for a salmon-hued mansion for Ghosn to live in when he traveled.

Source:Bloomberg, The New York Times

In Tokyo, Nissan paid nearly $9,000 a month for Ghosn and family to live in a flat for only "few days each month on average." But then, all of a sudden, Ghosn's world came crashing down.

Nissan would soon begin seizing keys and blocking access from six of its properties frequented by Ghosn and his family. 

Source:Bloomberg

On November 19, prosecutors surrounded Ghosn’s Gulfstream after it touched down in Japan. Prosecutors alleged that Ghosn hid his earnings from Nissan filings for years.

Source:The New York Times

On November 19, 2018, Nissan CEO Hiroto Saikawa confirmed the arrest of Ghosn after a months-long investigation into alleged financial crimes, like underreporting compensation to regulators. The Nissan board voted just two days later to remove Ghosn from his position as chairman.

Source:Bloomberg

A week after Ghosn's arrest, Mitsubishi Motors Corp. Chairman and CEO Osamu Masuko announced the company would be ousting Ghosn from his role, too.

Source: Bloomberg

Ghosn was reportedly kept in the same facility that previously housed death-row inmates and given limited access to the outside world. Reports indicate that he was allowed to bathe twice a week and had 30 minutes a day of exercise.

Source:Bloomberg

In a January court hearing, Ghosn denied any wrongdoing on his behalf, and said he was “wrongly accused and unfairly detained based on meritless and unsubstantiated accusations.” The next day, his detention appeal was denied.

Source:Bloomberg

On January 23, Ghosn resigned as chairman and chief executive officer of Renault, French finance minister Bruno Le Maire told Bloomberg Television in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Source:Reuters, Bloomberg

Bloomberg reported in February that Ghosn may have used Renault funds inappropriately to "pay for his wedding party at the Chateau de Versailles"— marking the first indecency reported by the company toward its former head executive.

Source:Town and Country Magazine, Bloomberg

At the end of February, Ghosn hired lawyer Junichiro Hironaka, who said Ghosn's arrest was a result of a conspiracy inside Nissan. Hironaka said he believes Ghosn is innocent.

"The prosecutors have made a criminal case out of an issue that should have been handled inside the company," said Hironaka at a press conference. 

Source:The Wall Street Journal

In March, Ghosn, wearing blue workman's clothes and a baseball cap, was released after 108 days in a Japanese jail and after paying a nearly $9 million bail.

Source:Business Insider

According to The Wall Street Journal, Ghosn went to a court-approved residence in Tokyo. A trial is said to be happening later this year.

Source:The Wall Street Journal

He is to have no contact with anyone outside of the country by phone or computer. "I am extremely grateful for my family and friends who have stood by me throughout this terrible ordeal," Ghosn said in a statement released in March.

Source:The Wall Street Journal

Ghosn was rearrested on April 4 on new charges and then released on a $4.5 million bail later that month.

Source: Business Insider

Nissan is now struggling. The automaker's first-quarter profits were down 98.5% from last year, and it announced that it will cut at least 12,500 jobs. That's about 9% of its total workforce.

Source: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal.

Ghosn and Nissan settled their case with the SEC on September 24. The company will pay a $15 million fine, and Ghosn himself will pay $1 million, the Times reported.

Source: The New York Times

Hari Nada, the Nissan senior vice president who reported Ghosn and is set to testify against Ghosn in a Japanese trial, was found to have also improperly overpaid himself during an investigation by an outside law firm on October 7.

Source: Bloomberg

Meet the 2019 class of Wall Street's rising stars.

From starting a hedge fund before age 30 to running their own alternative-data shops and helping lead $27 billion investments, this group of young finance leaders is in a league of its own.

It was harder than ever this year to select just 25 people. We received hundreds of entries from bosses, colleagues, recruiters, and others working in the finance industry.

Our selection criteria: We asked that nominees be 35 or under, based in the US, and stand out from their peers. Editors made the final decisions.

We've included people with a variety of roles and experiences from companies including Apollo Global Management, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, and the New York Stock Exchange.

Here's our list of the next crop of Wall Street leaders.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This is the shortest route for a road trip across the US to see 50 national landmarks

• SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son told Nikkei Business that he is embarrassed of his investment record.
• Two of SoftBank's investments, Uber and WeWork, have seen their valuations drop recently, and WeWork cancelled its planned IPO.
• Son says he now has been telling founders to "know your limit," to prevent issues like this in the future.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Masayoshi Son, founder of SoftBank Group, told Nikkei Business in an interview that he embarrassed and impatient with where some of the company's investments are at in 2019.

Two of SoftBank's flagship investments, Uber and WeWork, have both been disappointing recently. Shares of Uber have dropped over 30% since the company went public in May, Fortune reported. WeWork fared even worse, cancelling its planned IPO earlier this month. Softbank invested nearly $11 billion into the co-working company, which was once privately valued at $47 billion. On September 26, Son led the move to oust WeWork CEO Adam Neumann, and the IPO was pulled soon after the company was considering a valuation as low as $10 billion.

Read more: WeWork's had a terrible month, and now CEO Adam Neumann is stepping down — here's everything that has happened since the embattled company filed to go public

Son says he's now warning founders that they can't do everything.

"Recently, I've been telling founders to 'know your limit," he told Nikkei Business, seemingly referencing WeWork founder Adam Neumann and Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick, both of whom were pushed out. "Knowing your limitations will help unleash limitless possibilities." Neumann, the charismatic yet controversial former CEO, helped WeWork score massive investment's like SoftBank's, but has also been a source of scandal for WeWork, and was partially blamed for the cancelled IPO.

WeWork's botched IPO and questions about the company's business model and leadership under Neumann have damaged Son's reputation. Now, he's struggling to raise money for his second giant technology investment fund, Vision Fund 2. But Son is still optimistic about his investments and SoftBank's future.

"It only just began and I feel there is tremendous potential there," he told Nikkei Business. He claims that he has a 30-year plan, but also has ideas looking as far ahead as 300 years in the future. His strategy is to invest in companies that see a world shaped by artificial intelligence.

SEE ALSO: Some WeWork employees are now worried that they have a 'black mark' on their résumés

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why Apple's Mac Pro 'trash can' was a colossal failure

• Automation and AI will disrupt — meaning kill or replace with lower-paying work — 4.5 million jobs held by African Americans by 2030, the consultancy McKinsey estimates.
• African American workers are at a 10% higher risk to losing their jobs from automation than the general population.
• Black men without a college degree are particularly vulnerable to job loss, while black women will fare better than even general white and Asian American populations.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Automation and AI are coming for jobs — and African American workers are particularly at risk.

African American workers will have higher rates of job displacement than the general US population due to automation, according to a new report by the consultancy McKinsey. 

"There is an elevated risk to the African American workforce to modernization, automation, and the global shift that exists in this modern economy," McKinsey partner and report co-author Jason Wright tells Business Insider.

While 22% of all jobs in the total workforce will get "disrupted," meaning either killed or replaced by lower-paying work, it's 10% higher for the African American workforce. That means 4.5 million black jobs could be displaced by 2030 without any intervention, according to McKinsey.

Read more:8 startling facts that show just how hard the student-debt crisis is hurting black Americans

African American workers are at greater risk for job loss due to being overrepresented in the jobs that will face the most cuts after AI and automation take over, like office support secretaries, fast-food and service workers, and  mechanics and other practitioners of production work. About 34% to 36% of jobs in those three sectors will get disrupted, McKinsey says.

The disproportionate impact of automation could exacerbate the already widening racial wealth gap. The wealth gap between the median black and white families in the US has jumped $54,000 since 1992. White Americans own disproportionately more homes and hold less student debt than African Americans — factors that can be traced to historic redlining and discrimination in job hiring.

Automation and AI will impact black men and black women differently.

College education and gender will all impact how severely black Americans will face job loss, McKinsey finds.

While the general black population is 10% more at risk for job disruption, the number jumps to 30% for African American men without a college degree. In fact, the researchers estimate that 28% of jobs held by black men without a college degree will get disrupted by automation and AI by 2030.

Interestingly, while black men face greater risk of job disruption from AI, black women will see relatively fewer job losses. Black women might lose jobs at a lower rate not only compared to black men, but also when compared to white and Asian Americans of all genders.

Black women are currently overrepresented in jobs that will see growth in the next decade, like nursing assistants and home health aides. 

However, black and Hispanic women are still paid the least out of every racial-gender pairing. 

Wright said understanding the unique ways automation will impact different racial-gender groups will allow for better understanding of which policies to advocate for. Black men might need more job re-skilling training to prepare for job disruption, while black women might need better access to education to attain higher-paying work.

"There's a real benefit to the evolution the economy is going through," he said. "Being smart, especially as a person of color, on the unique risk to you is helpful."

SEE ALSO: Robots could wipe out 1.3 million Wall Street jobs in the next 10 years

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of Slack and Flickr, says 2 beliefs have brought him the greatest success in life

• Let's be real: Your boss probably has a favorite employee.
• And it could be you, if they constantly ask for your input and allow you to take risks.
• Experts say that if you suspect you're getting special treatment, keep it professional and talk to your boss if it's interfering with the team's work.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Favoritism is alive and well in the workplace.

"Given the complexities involved in relationships at work and the myriad of factors that determine how much we like someone or respect their talents, it's simply human nature that we are going to — no matter how subtly, and despite our best intentions — play favorites," says Michael Kerr, an international business speaker and author of "The Humor Advantage."

Lynn Taylor, a national workplace expert and the author of "Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant: How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior and Thrive in Your Job," agrees. She says there's often a fine line between bosses who appreciate an employee's good work and want to empower the person with more projects, and bosses who favor that employee to the detriment of others.

"If bosses are brazen in practicing favoritism, they can seriously hurt team morale and increase turnover — not to mention cause legal trouble by creating a hostile work environment," Taylor says.

Plus, she says, the more you're singled out and given special treatment, the more risk associated with securing the cooperation you need from your team. "It can put an overall strain on your productivity because your work should always be the focus," Taylor says. "Your office is not a popularity contest — and when it is, your days of glory can be fleeting."

If you suspect you're being favored, take a second to feel flattered — then stay humble, remain professional, and talk to your boss if things get out of hand.

Here are 14 signs you're the boss' favorite.

SEE ALSO: 24 signs you have a terrible boss, and how to stop them from crushing your happiness

They include you in more meetings than your colleagues

This is a key sign, as it shows they respect your judgment and wisdom, and they recognize that you have positive contributions to make, says Kerr.

"No one enjoys being in meetings with people they don't have an affinity toward, so it's a reasonably good sign they also like you as a person." 

You're chosen for all the plum projects

When you're elected the boss' "fave," you often feel like you're on a roll and can't lose; one great project follows another.

"Your boss feels like you have a proven track record and is almost doubling down each time you get more responsibility because you're a good bet," says Taylor.

You are their go-to person in a crisis

If you are the first on your boss' radar for getting things done or dealing with a crisis, it means they have an enormous amount of trust in your abilities, Kerr says. 

They invite you to accompany them on out-of-town trips or to conferences

Again, this demonstrates deep respect for your talents, and a desire to share travel experiences or opportunities for learning shows a commitment to furthering your professional development, says Kerr.

They ask for your input more than they ask for anyone else's

"Asking for input is a surefire sign that your boss respects your ideas, judgment, and wisdom," says Kerr. If you seem to be the only one they ask for input from, there's a good chance you're the favorite.

They let you be forthright

Another sign: You can be more candid with your boss because they have more of an open mind to hear your constructive input, says Taylor. "If you speak on behalf of the staff, telling your boss he was harsh, he or she might actually listen; they respect your opinion."

You have unique freedoms

Unlike other employees, you may find that your schedule has less scrutiny, or your work is not as micromanaged; you can speak up more without as much criticism, and so on, says Taylor.

"You may feel that, overall, you have more license to act a little more like a peer than a subordinate. The boss has empowered you with little censure and may even let you speak on their behalf at times. They trust your judgment."

They trust you more than everyone else, so they are more hands-off with you

"If you get more latitude than other employees — more freedom to take risks, to work your own hours, and make your own decisions — that's an excellent sign that you're in your boss' good books," says Kerr.

You tend to be first in line for perks

When there are extra tickets to a ball game or concert, does your boss always offer them to you first? "This is where you may begin to feel guilt — when your influence strays outside business acumen," says Taylor.

They give you the inside scoop

Sharing key business information, particularly when it's delivered under the heading "don't tell anyone but ..." or "let's just keep this between you and me" means they view you as their most trusted confidante, Kerr explains.

They share a lot of personal information with you

If your boss takes the time to share family details and personal information with you more so than with other employees, there's a good chance it's because you're their favorite, says Kerr.

"If you're the 'teacher's pet,' you'll have the coveted role of inner-circle adviser on matters that typically go beyond your scope," says Taylor. "Your boss values your insight and sees your contributions as exceeding your job function."

You feel very comfortable taking risks

If you feel there's little downside to taking smart risks, it may say something about how your boss treats you. "If you believe your boss will be supportive as long as you don't screw up in a big way, it's probably because your manager has given you a feeling of autonomy based on past successes," says Taylor.

They invite you to personal social events and include you in family gatherings

Does your boss invite you to their home for Thanksgiving, or birthday parties, or family dinners? If you're the only one in the office who gets these invites, you're most likely the favorite.

They're nicer to you than anyone else

Does your boss smile at you more than anyone else? Are they more patient and flexible with you? Are they more lenient with you, or friendlier to you than all of your colleagues?

If they are just nicer to you overall, it's probably because they like you best.

• Billions of dollars are invested in startups every year.
• Whether a startup seeks to raise money from angel investors, venture-capital firms, or other backers, the presentation — or "pitch"— about the business is critical.
• The most effective pitch decks deftly weave data, imagination, and storytelling in a captivating slide presentation.
• Business Insider regularly interviews startups about fundraising strategies and collects the pitch decks that helped them raise funding. You can read them all by subscribing to BI Prime.

Following is a list of some recent startup pitch decks published by Business Insider, organized by the funding round that each deck was used for:

Seed

• AceUp: Here's the pitch deck that's helping this 28-year-old first-time entrepreneur raise over $2 million in seed funding to make professional coaching more accessible
• Airbnb: The first investor pitch deck for $31 billion startup Airbnb, which has raised over $3 billion and is nearing an IPO
• Alto: This is the pitch deck that helped convince Blackstone's Tony James, NerdWallet's cofounder, and Sequoia Capital to invest in the seed round of a startup disrupting retirement investments
• Careem: Here's the pitch deck Careem used to secure its first round of venture capital, which led its first investors to a 100x return when Uber bought the company this year
• Foursquare:Foursquare is 10 years old and has raised over $240 million. Here's what the startup's first investor pitch deck looked like in 2009, before it raised any money.
• Holloway: Here's the pitch deck that Holloway used to raise $4.6 million from NEA and the New York Times for its online 'how-to' manual business
  
• Include:The deck a 23-year-old Croatian entrepreneur used to raise 2 million euros to turn its smart benches into a worldwide ad network
• K-Zen:Here's the pitch deck that cannabis beverage startup K-Zen used to raise $5 million from seasoned Silicon Valley VC firm DCM Ventures
• Lunchclub:The founders of Lunchclub, a startup for making better professional connections, used this pitchdeck to raise $4 million in funding
• Octi: The deck an LA entrepreneur used to raise $7 million for his new social-network idea
• Osano:The deck a Texas entrepreneur used to raise millions for a startup inspired by Zuckerberg's congressional testimony
• Pillar: The deck that Pillar, a student-loan-management startup, used to score $5.5 million from Kleiner Perkins and an A-list of Silicon Valley backers
• Public Goods:This deck helped a New York startup raise millions to build a direct-to-consumer marketplace that fills the gap between Amazon and Walmart
• The Predictive Index: This deck helped a 65-year-old company raise $50 million, and show investors why its personality-testing service was suddenly growing like a hot startup
• Swit: Here's the pitch deck that convinced investors to pour $6 million into a startup trying to take on Slack and Asana despite entering the market years late
• Uber:Uber's original deck from a decade ago shows just how much the ride-hailing giant has changed
• UpTop:The deck a New York startup used to raise $5.5 million to expand its apartment-rental service
• Voro:The deck that the healthcare social network Voro used to raise a $2.5 million seed to help people find doctors
• Winnie: The deck that raised millions for 2 ex-Googlers whose startup helps new millennial parents find childcare
• Zestful: The deck that helped employee-rewards startup Zestful raise a $1.2 million seed round before it had any customers
• Zoe Financial: Here's the pitch deck for online client-adviser matchmaker Zoe Financial that attracted millions in backing from execs at big asset managers like BlackRock

Series A

• Alyce: Here's the pitch deck that helped this Boston-based entrepreneur raise over $11 million to help sales reps form better relationships with clients through gifts
• Amify:The pitch deck a Virginia startup used to raise $6 million after 7 years of bootstrapping its business
• Arcus:The buzzy fintech startup Arcus has raised nearly $13 million. Here's the pitch deck that's helping it woo top VCs like Andreessen Horowitz.
• Bind:We got a look at the slide deck of Bind, a startup that's raised $70 million to upend the way we pay for healthcare
• Day One Ventures:The deck a 29-year-old Russian-born VC used to persuade investors to contribute millions to her fund
• Divvy: The investor deck that helped the real-estate startup Divvy raise a $30 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz
• Headset:We got an exclusive look at the pitch deck buzzy marijuana tech startup Headset used to raise $12 million and ink deals with Nielsen and Deloitte
• Hometalk:The deck a New York startup used to raise $15 million to expand the services it offers its community of 17 million DIYers
• Pixeom:The deck a Silicon Valley startup used to raise $15 million to promote its edge-computing service
• Recogni:This founder's startup developed a super-efficient chip to help self-driving cars 'see' the world around them. Here's the pitch deck it used to raise $25 million to get the chip in production.
• Sandbox VR:Check out the deck that Sandbox VR used to get Andreessen Horowitz as lead investor in a $68 million round, and watch the investors discuss the pitch
• Seedo:Here's the pitch deck that's helped this Israeli tech company raise $11 million in private funding to build automatic, at-home weed growing machines
• Sempre Health: We got a look at the pitch deck of buzzy Silicon Valley health-tech startup Sempre Health. It reveals how a $4 billion industry is ripe for disruption.
• Skymind:The deck AI startup Skymind used to scoop up $11.5 million in funding
• Strong Roots: Here's the monster 47-slide pitch deck this buzzy vegan startup used to raise $18 million to disrupt the frozen-food market
• Thinknum: Read the comic book that data analytics startup Thinknum used instead of a pitch deck to win over investors for its $11.6 venture capital round
  
• Verbit: The deck this New York startup used to raise $23 million to expand its hybrid transcription service

Series B

• Arrcus: Here's the pitch deck this Silicon Valley startup used to raise $30 million to take on Cisco and Arista Networks
• Brex:A buzzy startup raised $57 million from Peter Thiel and Y Combinator using these 19 slides
• Capacity: This CEO didn't want to go with traditional venture capital, so he challenged his employees to use this pitch deck to find individual investors. They raised $13 million from 70 people.
  
• Cardinal Analytx:We got a look at the pitch deck that buzzy AI startup Cardinal Analytx used to raise a $22 million round led by famed investor John Doerr
• Clearbanc: See the pitch deck that nabbed Clearbanc, a startup that provides funding to other startups, $300 million in Series B financing less than a year after its first venture round
  
• Devoted Health: We got a look at the deck that buzzy startup Devoted Health used to hit a $1.8 billion valuation before it signed up any customers
• DivvyCloud: The deck Virginia's DivvyCloud used to raise $19 million in VC funding
• Fivetran: See the pitch deck that data-analytics startup Fivetran used to convince Andreessen Horowitz to lead its $44 million Series B and join its board
• Front:A hot startup raised $66 million in 5 days using these 24 slides
• HealthJoy: We got a look at the pitch decks that buzzy $40 million startup HealthJoy used to snag early investors and then execute a huge strategic shift

Series C

• Canndescent: The deck that California cannabis company Canndescent used to raise $27.5 million as it muscles into new markets
• Ethos: Ethos wants to make signing up for life insurance a pain-free process. Here's the pitch deck that convinced Alphabet's GV investing arm that it's worth $500 million.
• Fungible: A founder of Juniper Networks and a co-creator of Apple's Mac operating system used this hand-written pitch deck to raise $200 million from SoftBank for their new data center startup
  
• Kong:Kong is capitalizing on one of the big trends in software. Here's the pitch deck it used to raise $43 million to build out its service.
• Lola.com:The deck corporate-travel service Lola.com used to raise $37 million in funds
• OpenFin:The deck that hot Wall Street startup OpenFin used to raise $17 million from Barclays and Wells Fargo
• Trumid:The deck Trumid, a Wall Street trading startup backed by George Soros and Peter Thiel, used to raise $53 million

Series D

• Carta:The investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital
• Signpost:This New York tech founder's startup raised $52 million to save small businesses from nightmare Yelp reviews. Here's his pitch deck.
• SmartRecruiters:Recruiting-software startup SmartRecruiters raised $50 million at a valuation above $300 million. See the deck that sold Insight Ventures on leading the startup's Series D.

• Tipalti:Here's the pitch deck payments-automation startup Tipalti used to raise $76 million from investors, including former top Twitter execs Adam Bain and Dick Costolo

Series E

• Cloudian:The deck that helped an enterprise storage company raise a $94 million round of Series E funding
• ThoughtSpot:Here's the pitch deck $1.95 billion ThoughtSpot used to raise $248 million for an AI-powered analytics tool that's challenging Salesforce's Tableau

SEE ALSO: The first-time founder's ultimate guide to pitching a VC

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: The incredible story behind Slack, the app that's taken over offices everywhere

• The average age for sitting a GMAT test to get into business school is trending downwards. So when exactly is the right time to get your MBA degree?
• Business Insider interviewed five successful MBA graduates who went to business school at different stages of their lives to understand why they decided to go to school when they did and how their degree led to their next moves.
• The graduates, at ages anywhere from 25 to 45 to 60, all argued that going to business school at the right time is more important than going at a certain age. Their stories prove that's the case.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

The average age of people sitting to take their GMAT test for business school is trending slightly downwards, from 26.5 in 2014 to 26.0 in 2018.

Whether education should come before experience — or the other way around — is an age-old question (pun intended).

Business Insider spoke to five successful individuals in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s who went to leading business schools in the US to find out what led them to embark on an MBA when they did, whether they would have done it differently if they had their time again, and what they learned from their experience.

Business school in your 20s: I had the chance to build and refine the leadership skills that'll serve me later on (without giving up too much of my career)

Lexy McGranahan had only been out of college for three years, but at age 25, she decided to leave her job to go to Michigan Ross for her MBA.

"I was progressing quickly in my career, having been promoted after less than a year in the role. However, I found there wasn't enough time in the day to advance my management and leadership skills at the same rate as my technical skills, which would be required as I moved to the next step in my career," she said.

In an unconventional move, McGranahan decided to go to business school after having been offered another promotion at global cosmetics giant Sephora. "It was about the escalation of commitment. It becomes harder and harder the further you are in your career. I knew that I wanted to go back and get an MBA, it wasn't a question, and I felt like this was the last time that I could walk away from an opportunity to do it," she said.

She wanted to focus on her management and leadership development by revisiting the academic subjects she had studied during her business degree within the MBA environment. 

"The focus wasn't just on the topics themselves, but how to manage and lead teams through them, with an emphasis on how they manifest in the 'real world,'" she explained. 

McGranahan, who graduated in 2017 and now works as a global retail manager for Nike, believed that anyone who's interested in going to business school shouldn't be guided by age, but by what they're prepared to contribute.

"Going back to school with the right mentality was the driver of my ultimate success," she explained. "I was personally and professionally prepared to contribute all of my energy to the program, as I believe this translates to the most enriching experience — not just for the individual, but for the entire class."

She added: "A full-time, on campus MBA program is all-consuming in the best way possible, so an individual has to be ready for that commitment. And at the time I went back to school, I was ready."

Business school in your 30s: I was more established and confident, but young enough to still learn a thing or two

When Anjelica Jones started her full-time MBA at Michigan Ross, she was already a successful electrical engineer — but she wanted to do more.

"I really wanted to change the landscape of engineering and tech and increase the diversity within it, because I rarely saw anyone who looked like me," she explained. "I knew an MBA would give me the leadership skills I needed to effect such change with or without authority, and to do so within a corporate structure that was — and still continues to be, quite frankly — stacked against underrepresented populations."

At 33, it felt like the right time to go back to the classroom. "It [had been] 10 years since I'd been at college, and in that time I'd done a lot of living," the now 38-year-old recalled. "I was at a crossroads in my career. It was a pivotal time for me to take that leap. I went at a time when I was old enough to impart some life knowledge onto younger classmates, but still young and humble enough to be taught a few things." 

To her surprise, she found that many of her classmates had either just entered their 30s or were already in their early 30s like her, so she didn't feel completely out of place.

The most important thing that she learned at business school was her worth. On top of that, she has learned technical skills that have enabled her to move to work in finance for Netflix as a finance operations business partner.

"My MBA gave me the courage to properly and confidently navigate a corporate world that was not built to be to my advantage. As an African-American female with an MBA from a top school, I still have to fight for a rightfully-earned place at the corporate table. But since I graduated, I do not shy away from the fight — I instead go in ready, prepared, and expecting to win it," she said.

Business school in your 40s: I found that an MBA could help me more easily carve my path 

Andy Pechacek began his career as a business manager for schools in Texas. At age 45, he decided to enroll in business school to help with his job at the time, but he had no idea that it would lead to a whole new trajectory for his career.

"I decided to go back to school because the work I was doing had become more about helping lead entrepreneurial efforts within our organization, and I believed that the concepts learned in the program would help me be better at my job," he said.  

Pechacek was part of the first executive MBA class that graduated from MIT Sloan in 2012. The program requires students to be on campus for all of the classes, which is roughly every second or third week for two years. 

"While I was in class, I had the idea of starting my own business. So I quit my job in mid-spring, right before I graduated, and started an education company that we then went on to sell, and now I'm working on a new startup. So I guess I'm saying that it made me into an entrepreneur," he said.

Pechacek, who is currently chairman of two startups, Cooperative Resource Management Group LLC and Nahsai LLC, described his decision to go back to school as "a perfect storm" that gave him the insight to realize his own capabilities.

"Where I was in my career really started to make sense. I began to put things I was learning into practice, rather than understanding it conceptually as you might at an undergraduate level," he explained. "If I could do it all over, I wouldn't change a thing. I don't think I would have gone back to school any earlier, because I wouldn't have been ready to implement as well all of the things that I have learned. I found the business strategies and processes they taught particularly valuable, and have been able to apply entrepreneurial skills, such as looking for creative ways to fulfill customers' needs, to the government sector." 

Business school in your 50s: I was able to continue to grow and move up after raising a family 

Anita Carleton had wanted to go to business school all of her professional life, as she saw it as the most significant step she could take toward developing the skills and perspectives she needed to be a more effective executive and to take on the next leadership challenges of her career.

But she decided to wait until her sons started college to pursue her degree, as balancing her time between her career, family, and helping to support her husband through law school was challenging enough. While she raised her family, she served as the deputy director at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. "Our mission is software engineering, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence for national defense," she said.

Read more: The Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon has one of the top online MBA programs in the US. Here's why — and how to get in.

At age 55, she embarked on her full-time MBA at MIT Sloan, which was a combination of on-campus and remote learning. Even after spending 30 years in the workforce, Carleton still found value in learning how to build an innovation ecosystem strategy, pitch ideas in a Hackathon, and create innovation loops.

"Since I graduated, I pivoted from technical leadership to strategic and executive leadership," she said. "I now lead that division and am a part of the executive leadership team responsible for assembling a national strategy for software for the DoD."

One pleasant surprise since graduating has been that her combination of work experience and MBA qualifications have led to her being invited to serve on several boards.

"I wish I could have pursued my MBA earlier, it would have been better, but I don't regret the decisions I made because they were right for me and right in terms of our family priorities. Having more time for the return on investment in business school would have been nice, but I'm just happy that I made the decision to do it," she said.

Business school in your 60s: I was able to secure the future of my business while mentoring those below me 

Michael Kim started his business 180° Snacks in his home kitchen in 1998, and today his healthy bites are stocked at Costco. Now, the 60-year-old wants to prepare to hand the business down to his sons. His first step was enrolling in an executive MBA at Berkeley-Haas to learn everything he could about business and finance to make sure his company was in proper shape. Having built it from the ground up to a $30 million business, Kim wanted to ensure that he had done everything right, and that it will be able to survive without him.

"I like to study, so I thought it would be interesting to see what an MBA teaches. The theories are interesting. I have applied some of the things that I've learned to my company directly, but they have to be customized," he said. 

As someone who read Confucius and Taoist teachings growing up, Kim found it especially useful to embed the leadership principles taught at Berkley-Haas into how he ran his company, such as continually questioning the status quo and maintaining ethics and responsibility by taking a long view.

Kim argued that 60 is as good an age as any to go back to school.

"A lot of people will say, why would you go back to school when you're over fifty? But I think it's a fine age to go to school. What else are you going to do with your time — go and waste it playing golf? I'd rather spend my time and money challenging myself," he said. "I wish my mind was a bit younger to compete with the 30- and 35-year-olds, but the right time for you is the right age to go. You will just apply yourself differently."

Kim added that he found a lot of value in collaborating with classmates of different ages, which is why he believed that having a diversity of age is important in the classroom environment.

"You can mentor many of the 30-year-olds who are up-and-coming, and share your knowledge with them. I like that there are ways to give back. When I was coming up, there was no one there to share that information," he explained.

SEE ALSO: BUSINESS SCHOOL PREP: The ultimate guides to getting into the top MBA programs in the US

READ MORE: The ultimate guide to whether you should go to business school or not, according to successful CEOs, founders, and execs who've had to make the choice

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Kylie Jenner is the world's second highest-paid celebrity. Here's how she makes and spends her $1 billion.

We asked our Rising Stars of Wall Street to recommend a book to our readers and their selections range from business "how-to" classics to memoirs about surfing, from biographies of John Adams to quantitative explorations of soccer.

The full selection of 22 books, and the stars' comments about them, are below.

And don't forget to read our list of the next crop of Wall Street leaders.

"Reminiscences of a Stock Operator" by Edwin Lefevre

Rising Star: Adam Parker, founder, Center Lake Capital 

The 1923 novel that has been a must-read for Wall Street titans for decades is something Parker bonded over with his old boss, billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller. 

The book is a fictional tale about a trader before the Great Depression, but Parker said it's a great insight "into the psychology behind managing money." 

Buy it here.

"Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make The Leap ... And Others Don't" by Jim Collins

Rising Star: Evan Feinberg, investor, Tiger Global

Feinberg, who invests in early-stage companies at billionaire Chase Coleman's hedge fund, recommends people read Jim Collins' 2001 book "Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make The Leap ... And Others Don't."

The book articulates the principles shared by successful companies and executives better than any other novel or article, said Feinberg. 

Buy it here.

"Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice" by Bill Browder

Rising Star: Becky Baker, portfolio manager, Fidelity Investments

Baker says that Browder's book, about investing in Russia in the 1990s, has more than just lessons about how to pick stocks. 

"He was an investor who invested in Russia in the 90s. The book is like a spy novel because he gets on the wrong side of Putin. It's total chaos. What resonated with me was that Bill's fund was up eight times and then down 90% and then up 12 times. It's good to have a strong stomach and not get complacent about stocks and markets. It definitely will keep you on your toes."

Buy it here. 

"Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike" by Phil Knight

Rising Star: Samantha Tortora, head of investor relations, BlackRock

"Coming from a founder-led company like BlackRock, the book's connection to purpose and passion behind it really resonated with me. I really enjoyed that, not just as a business read but as a personal read."

Buy it here.

"Humble Leadership: The Power of Relationships, Openness, and Trust" by Edgar and Peter Schein

Rising Star: Alexandra Wilson-Elizondo, portfolio manager, MacKay Shields

"There are a lot of people who think leadership is mandated or directed because of some organizational hierarchy that fits on an organizational structure page, and I don't find those people to be very successful. This book really homes in on that. It's about building trust."

"When you partner with people and recognize what they bring to the table, and even if you're their boss, they may bring along more to the table than you do. If you recognize that, you'll be wildly more successful than just saying, 'well, I'm your boss.'" 

Buy it here. 

"Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future" by Ashlee Vance

Rising Star: Gal Krubiner, co-founder and CEO, Pagaya Investments 

"If you're thinking about entrepreneurship, there's only one guy who did everything over and over and over again. There aren't a lot of examples in history story where you can take someone who built the company and did it again, not just once. It's a repeatable process. It means he cracked the math. If young entrepreneurs can go and read this book and learn three things about someone they haven't even met, it's worth the time." 

Buy it here.

"The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho

Rising Star: Jarrid Tingle, co-founder, Harlem Capital Partners

"One of the main themes is that if you're on your right path and you verbalize what you're doing, the universe will conspire to help you. That's what we've been seeing, because Harlem Capital started out as idea. But once we literally were bold and bullish and confident, even if it didn't make sense on paper initially, we found that people that will empower you and push you on your journey." 

Buy it here.

"Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World" by Adam Tooze

Rising Star: Jonathan Bailey, head of ESG investing, Neuberger Berman

"What I like about it is he links the European debt crisis and the subprime crisis here. He has perspective on how the financial crisis unwound across the following few years. It's reasonably political – he's quite left-wing, but it's interesting." 

Buy it here.

Rising Star: Chloe Duanshi, head of quantitative research, Rockefeller Capital Management

"I love fiction. The Goldfinch is a love song to New York City, a city I love, and the agonies you go through growing up. It's incredible." 

Buy it here.

"John Adams" by David McCullough

Rising Star: Ivan Brown, head of options, NYSE Group 

"A pretty amazingly complicated guy. Well-read, accomplished politician in a number of different ways, but also an interesting personality to say the least. ... The nice thing about historical biographies, it gives you that insight and what motivates those people and hopefully you take away something from each one. Hopefully how to be a better person in some ways and how to either better be aware of your own weaknesses or not to embrace the weaknesses of others."

Buy it here.

"The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy" by Dani Rodrick

Rising Star: Jonathan Bailey, head of ESG, Neuberger Berman

"This book was written by one of my old professors actually from Holland. He has this theory that a country cannot have all three of national sovereignty, democracy and hyperglobalization. Think about some of the Brexit discussion, some of the issues that we're having in the US right now around trade – you could argue that this book, which was written in 2011 and I read when I was at Harvard — was actually quite prescient."

Buy it here.

"Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcom Gladwell

Rising Star: Henri Pierre-Jacques, co-founder, Harlem Capital

"I wrote my Harvard Business School essay about it, and it's one of the few books I really like. One of my biggest pet peeves is people who think they are where they are because of them. That book spoke to my heart."

"It's being mindful that it requires more than you – it takes a village. I thought that book was just very well done. I'm a data person. I think data drives decisions, which is why I used it in my HBS essay and why I think I am where I am today." 

Buy it here.

"Factfulness" by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling and Ann Rosling Rönnlund

Rising Star: Ivan Brown, head of options, NYSE

"It just talks about the way in which human beings interpret data and think about the world...how your biases can shape the way in which you interpret data. It's about being aware of those biases, and how you create objectivity for yourself."

Buy it here.

"Principles" by Ray Dalio

Rising Star: Jennifer Lee, vice president, Edison Partners

"I have read that book about 10 times. I just have to name it because it is one of those things...I think it is an amazing book."

Buy it here.

"The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers" by Ben Horowitz

Rising Star: Justin Zhen, cofounder, Thinknum

"It's his story of building a very large startup from scratch, which was pretty inspiring. He is somebody I look up to."

Buy it here.

"Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone" by Satya Nadella

Rising Star: Ashley Serrao, head of US corporate development and investor relations, Tradeweb

"What resonated with me is it is a very personal book. From the standpoint you really learn a lot about Satya as a person. But then also, the bulk of the book is about the future of technology and the way Microsoft handed over the torch from Bill Gates to Satya and the challenges he confronted. A lot of it came down to culture and reinvigorating the Microsoft culture. I just found the book to be very informative and also very inspirational."

Buy it here.

"Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis" by J.D. Vance

Rising Star: Ivan Brown, NYSE Group's head of options 

"Just to have exposure to a different group of people in terms of the way in which they think about the world and their upbringing."

Buy it here.

"Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Spain, Germany, and Brazil Win, and Why the U.S., Japan, Australia - and Even Iraq - Are Destined to Become the Kings of the World's Most Popular Sport" by Simon Kuper

Rising Star: Jonathan Bailey, head of ESG investing, Neuberger Berman

"It's worth reading if you're British or like football. He basically just runs regressions to work out who should win the World Cup. And the answer is actually the USA — they should win this World Cup and then the next."

Buy it here.

"Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life" by William Finnegan

Rising Star: Peter Yongvanich, head of US institutional equity derivatives sales, UBS

"A few years ago I fell in love with the sport of surfing. William Finnegan gives us a glimpse into the ever ambitious mind of a surfer as he chases waves across multiple continents, his addiction intensifying with each great ride. I particularly related to the author's attempts to find a balance among his passions — family, work and surf and illustrates how harmony among all these passions enriched each one individually.

Buy it here.

"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change" by Stephen Covey

Rising Star: Jarrid Tingle, co-founder, Harlem Capital Partners

"I read that book on a plane when I was in private equity and it changed the way that I looked at everything‚ including the way I was looking at my downtime, the way I was looking at my productivity. I think that kind of was the beginning of starting a fire that allowed me to work at a high level through Harlem Capital." 

Buy it here.

"The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity" by Nancy Gibbs

Rising star: Amanda Deckelman, director in short rates sales, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

"Generally, my favorite books are historical non-fiction and biographies, particularly about relatively unknown happenings and how they impacted the course of history. I really enjoyed The Presidents Club by Nancy Gibbs, which talks about what US presidents since Hoover have done in their 'post-presidential' lives. It was interesting learning about the relationships among them — regardless of party, and how they have formed alliances in trying moments."

Buy it here.

"Scar Tissue" by Anthony Kiedis

Rising Star: Sam Powell, principal at Gamut Capital Management

"I really enjoyed Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis, the Red Hot Chili Pepper's lead singer. It took me so far out of my daily life to see this guy's rock star life in their eyes." 

Buy it here. 

• Research suggests life works a little better for conventionally attractive people.
• Attractive people get paid more, get considered for more jobs, and have stronger social skills than unattractive people, according to science.
• Here are 11 scientific reasons why attractive people succeed more in life.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

While we like to think that people get ahead because of some magical combination of effort, talent, and knowing the right people, research shows that success is partly skin deep. 

Studies show that you're more likely to get hired if you look well-groomed, that good-looking people make about 12% more money than less appealing folks, and that attractive real-estate brokers bring in more money than their less attractive peers. Indeed, according to a just-published paper on the 2018 congressional midterms, more attractive candidates are more likely to get elected. 

Read more:10 ways to trick your brain into being more productive, according to a neuroscientist

Psychologists call it the "beauty premium." Essentially, the income gap between attractive and unattractive people is comparable to the gap between genders or ethnicities. 

Here are all the ways attractive people can succeed in life:

SEE ALSO: 7 relationship experts reveal the questions you should avoid asking at all costs on a first date

Physically attractive workers are considered more able by employers.

We're inclined to pay people more depending on how they look. In a 2005 experiment modeling the hiring process, would-be employers looking at photographs of would-be employees were ready to give 10.5% higher salaries to attractive people over unattractive people.

Hiring managers carried that premium over to interactions that only happened on the phone. In other words, you only need to sound attractive to benefit from our biases toward beauty.

Physically attractive workers are more confident, and higher confidence increases wages.

We all suffer from the "halo effect" — without realizing it, we take someone's appearance to be telling of their overall character.

Experiments have shown that we consider attractive people "as more sociable, dominant, sexually warm, mentally healthy, intelligent, and socially skilled" than unattractive people. 

By the time cute kids become attractive adults, they've benefited from this bias for years, giving them higher levels of confidence.

It's a "self-fulfilling prophecy," say information scientists Markus Mobius and Tanya Rosenblat.

"Teachers expect better-looking kids to outperform in school and devote more attention to children who are perceived to have greater potential," Mobius and Rosenblat write in their 2005 paper "Why Beauty Matters."  "Preferential treatment in return builds confidence as well as social and communication skills."

That confidence, the literature suggests, translates into academic achievement and professional success.

Physically attractive workers have social skills that raise their wages when they interact with employers.

Attractive people had higher-rated communication skills than unattractive people.

"Physical attractiveness raises social and communication skills, which in return raise an employer's estimate of the worker's productivity," researchers Mobius and Rosenblat write. "We assume that the employer is unaware of these biases and hence does not correct for them."

This has a major impact over the course of a career. Research shows that raising kids' social skills is a better predictor of lifetime earnings than raising their intellectual ability.

Beautiful people are more sociable than everybody else, the science says — or at least we're biased to think so.

Attractive people are more likely to get elected to public office.

Better-looking candidates fared better in the 2016 midterm elections, a 2019 study published in American Politics Research finds. Attractive incumbent candidates vying in male-only districts fared especially better.

"Our study thus lends additional support to the idea of a beauty premium: even when controlling for many relevant covariates, attractiveness still exerts an influence on House candidate's electoral performance," the study states.

Other research from Finland found both male and female political candidates who look better than their competitors are more successful, as voters enjoy watching good looking candidates.

Women who wear makeup appear more competent and trustworthy.

When comparing women who wore makeup versus what they look like bare-faced, participants in a 2011 Harvard study viewed the groomed woman as more attractive, competent, likeable, and trustworthy. 

"When inferring trustworthiness, likeability, or competence from an image, we are influenced significantly not only by the attractiveness of the inherited phenotype but by the effects of the 'extended phenotype,' in this case, makeup," the paper states.

Attractive people get called back for job interviews more often.

A 2013 study sent out 10,000 resumes changing only the name, address, and photo to analyze the call-back rates.

While the average call back rate was 30% of all resumes, attractive women got invited for an interview 54% of the time, while attractive men got called back 47% of the time.

Attractive women have a better advantage when negotiating with men.

Men are more likely to tolerate unfairness — such as a hefty salary negotiation — when dealing with attractive women, one study finds.

Researchers at Zhejiang University's School of Management in China gave 21 male participants 300 photos of women, and were asked to answer if they would accept each subject's offer to split a sum of money.

Results indicated men were more likely to engage in unfair negotiations with attractive women.

Good-looking CEOs bring better stock returns for their companies.

Joseph T. Halford and Hung-Chia Hsu, researchers from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, tested whether the appearance of a company's CEO is related to shareholder value.

They found stock prices rose higher for businesses with attractive CEOs after positive news about the company aired on TV.

Attractive teachers can better teach students, both in grade schools and in college.

One study from the '80s found that when comparing teachers who were better looking to those who were worse looking, about 100 students in the first and sixth grade reported they feel they would learn more from attractive educators.

The study's findings were somewhat replicated in a more recent study from 2016, which found college students retain more information when the lecturer is good looking.

Attractive women get better grades.

A study from 2015 analyzed 77,067 ID pictures of students who attended Metropolitan State University of Denver. The researchers asked volunteers to rate how attractive the student was on a 10-point scale. After rating each student, researchers found women perceived to be better looking had higher grades on average.

The trend did not hold true for male students.

Attractive people are more sought after as romantic partners.

Researchers at Chapman University studied what traits people view are "desirable" or "essential" in a long-term partner. The study found that 92% of male participants reported wanting a potential partner to be good looking, compared to 84% of women.

• Rob Siegel, a lecturer in management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and partner at XSeed Capital, details where WeWork went wrong.
• Specifically, the company lacked proper governance, which "everyone was willing to tolerate while the valuation kept rising."
• You don't have to break rules or norms to achieve massive growth, according to Siegel. 
• Here's what company leaders can learn from WeWork's example. 
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

WeWork has sparked many a conversation about the right way to build a business. In Rob Siegel's entrepreneurial-finance class at Stanford, students evaluate issues around governance, like the benefits and downsides to a leader's power over an organization. 

To Siegel, the most important lesson from WeWork is that of proper governance, or the system that's set up around how the business itself is controlled. This is complicated by the fact that there's no formal legal definition of what "startup" actually means and that corporate law does not yet have rules on the books about how they ought to be governed.

"WeWork doesn't appear to be fraud; it just appears to be horrific governance that everyone was willing to tolerate while the valuation kept rising," Siegel told Business Insider. 

WeWork's design and branding was unique, which allowed it to stand out among other companies that have operated in the shared-office-space segment for a long time, like Regus, which also offers office space. WeWork did a good job of hiring the right people and touted a culture where people hustled hard, then partied harder.

Is it possible to extricate the culture that was a byproduct of that governance from the growth that defined the company? In short, the answer is yes: "I do not believe, and nor have I seen, that great companies need to have horrifically toxic cultures," Siegal said.

Disproportionate growth could go hand in hand with proper governance 

There are plenty of examples of well-run companies that were able to achieve growth with good governance. Siegel doesn't buy into the belief that the only way to achieve disproportionate growth is by breaking rules and the law.

"It happens sometimes, and by the way, when there's great amounts of money to be pocketed, it creates potentially horrific incentives for people to cut corners," Siegel said. "But that doesn't have to be that way. In the end, leaders decide how they want to lead and what companies they want to build."

In order to be a great company in a crowded playing field, leaders have to make sure they practice good governance. 
This extends beyond growth in valuation: Leaders should also consider how they'll be perceived by other companies, potential hires, and their customer base. 

For example, according to how a University of Michigan professor characterizes it, WeWork serves as a cautionary tale against full executive control, such as the kind that former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann enjoyed — and before him, Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos and Travis Kalanick of Uber.

Why WeWork got away with it

The reason WeWork got away with poor governance was because it was built on a transformational idea. Companies found value in flexible business spaces that they could rent without signing long-term leases.

"The bottom line is, when you have things that are transformational, there's a hype cycle that goes with that," Siegel said. "And sometimes evaluations run ahead of the actual optics, and then, as gravity comes back, some companies will make a transformation and some companies won't."

WeWork was a transformative company, but it lacked defensibility, meaning its business model could be easily copied. Its message was appealing, but there was a low bar to entry for the field. WeWork's competitors could, and did, catch up.

"If you go to a Regus, it's more conservative, maybe a little older," Siegel said. "They've got this brand Spaces. I was in a Spaces in Sao Paulo last month, and it felt very much like a WeWork vibe."

So companies have already begun to replicate what made WeWork unique, while having proper governance in place. The question now is where WeWork can differentiate itself. 

"It's not that hard to recreate what WeWork has done," Siegel said. "What WeWork has done is the branding, the vibe, the people they hire. But there's nothing that prevents other companies from doing the exact same thing."

SEE ALSO: A top professor is already teaching WeWork in his venture-capital class. Here are 5 lessons that investors need to know.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Kylie Jenner is the world's second highest-paid celebrity. Here's how she makes and spends her $1 billion.

• The entrepreneur Sunny Lenarduzzi shares tips on how to use YouTube to build a business on her channel, which has 320,000 subscribers.
• Lenarduzzi helps clients figure out how they can use YouTube to sell products and programs, explaining how to take viewers and make them customers. 
• Lenarduzzi outlined for Business Insider how someone could build and scale a business using YouTube, from figuring out what to sell to creating content that will get views. 
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Sunny Lenarduzzi wants to inspire her followers to ditch traditional careers and be their own bosses online by using YouTube to scale their businesses. 

Lenarduzzi shares tips on how to build a business using YouTube with her 320,000 subscribers. The Vancouver, British Columbia, resident walks business owners through how they can build an audience, from marketing to sales tools, and turn that audience into paying clients. 

Programs like Lenarduzzi's are popular on YouTube, and creators like Kevin David, Benji Travis, and Amy Landino are among those who have built similar external programs off YouTube fame. 

In an interview with Business Insider, Lenarduzzi shared tips on how to build an audience on YouTube and direct that audience to whatever you are trying to sell online.

Ad revenue and brand sponsorships aren't the only way.

"I noticed that most people who were doing YouTube were talking about it from the perspective of being a creator and getting views and subscribers," Lenarduzzi said. "I've never approached it that way." 

Lenarduzzi approaches YouTube by thinking about how she can take her viewers and make them customers off the platform. She doesn't care about AdSense or sponsorships, she said, and prefers to create a consistent business from YouTube without relying on either method.

She's worked with a sponsor in the past and said the experience was "painful" because of how drawn-out the approval and payment process was, and that she still "had a boss" who was in control.

Figuring out what to sell.

The hardest part is narrowing down what you want to sell, she said, and knowing that it's actually profitable.

Lenarduzzi sells an online course, which she built using the website Thinkific, she said. There are a ton of great "plug-and-play" platforms online to help you build a course like this, she said.

Start with YouTube and the traffic that comes with having a channel.

Once you understand your product, you should build out a machine that consists of pieces and parts that will ultimately turn a viewer into a customer, she said. 

Start with YouTube and the traffic that comes with having a YouTube channel. Then use that to drive viewers to an email list, and then offer a free training over email. Lastly, pitch them your programs or other full product. 

Create an offer and don't worry if it's not perfect.

There's an issue around perfectionism when it comes to building offers, she said. You don't need to focus on making everything look perfect. Her webcam videos are her most successful videos because she cares more about reaching the viewer than how it looks, she said. 

Formulate an offer for your client based on what you know and can give. This should be a prototype that you continue to improve as you go along, she said, year over year.

Find your clients in multiple ways.

She said there are two main ways she finds new clients online: evergreen and on-demand. 

On-demand client attraction is about finding people who are interested in your topic by searching through keywords and hashtags on social media, she said. Once you have found them, you can build a relationship with these people (direct messaging or email, for example), and they will begin noticing your content and eventually start buying from you, she said. 

Evergreen client attraction involves using YouTube and its power as a search platform. If you can rank your video as the No. 1 result for your keyword, that is impactful, she said.

For example, you want to be looking at 100 to 1,000 "search per month, search volume" she said, which means how many videos exist within that search. Aim for fewer than 100,000, she said. There's less competition.

"Look up a keyword," she said. "See who the top-five ranking videos are and see if there's videos older than one to two years. If there is, you have an opportunity to pop to the top with brand-new content on that topic."

But make sure people are searching for the topic. If a video has been near the top for five years, and has only 40 views, then there isn't much demand for that topic. If it's been there for a year and has half a million views, then there is a huge demand, she said.

The ultimate goal is to turn these viewers into clients, she said. But YouTube search can be a way to get them in the door.

For more on how influencers are profiting from their success online, according to industry professionals and creators, check out these Business Insider Prime posts:

• A 5-step guide to making the most money possible from YouTube video ads, with advice from top creators: We talked to industry insiders about how a YouTube creator could monetize their channel through ad revenue and the tactics influencers are using.
• How Instagram influencers land their first brand-sponsorship deals: Influencers and brand execs share their tips for landing that first deal.
• 4 tips to getting your first 1,000 YouTube subscribers, according to a creator with millions of them: We spoke with entrepreneur Benji Travis on his four tips people could follow to get their first 1,000 subscribers on YouTube.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Alexander Wang explains how to wear all black without looking boring

• Technology leaders within organizations are increasingly tasked with overseeing sweeping digital overhauls. That is giving chief data, information, and technology officers new authority in the C-suite. 
• Business Insider is delving into the trend and uncovering how tech chiefs are navigating the evolving requirements of the roles.
• These reports can also give C-suites information on how best to structure the executive team and advice for all leaders on overcoming the cultural barriers that prevent the adoption of artificial intelligence and other advanced tech.
• Business Insider regularly interviews CTOs, CDOs, and CIOs about their role within organizations and best practices for the positions. You can read them all by subscribing to BI Prime.

Chief data, information, and technology officers are gaining new authority within the C-suite as they help guide their organizations through sweeping digital upgrade efforts. Business Insider is delving into this trend and uncovering how the rise of these formerly "hidden "members of the executive team is reverberating through companies — and what it means for firms as they pursue tech transformations. 

How tech chiefs can help hype your AI efforts: The head of IBM's Watson walks us through the exact model tech leaders can use to build excitement around any AI project 

What to look for in a successful chief data officer: Chief data officers are becoming key parts of the C-suite. Here are 3 things aspiring CDOs should be doing right now to prepare for the complex role

Why a CDOs are essential, and how to find one: Chief data officers are the C-suite's hottest role. Here's why your company needs one, and how to find a rock star to fill the post

Why tech leaders should seek a direct report to the CEO: A former General Electric CTO shares the top reasons 'tech chief' will soon be the most vital job in a company's C-suite

Making the move from CIO to CEO:'Everything is up for disruption': Why MuleSoft's founder thinks the digital revolution could lead more CIOs to become CEOs

How to push a data-driven agenda: A CTO who jumped from the grocery business to high fashion reveals how tech leaders can push a data-driven agenda to achieve big changes in any industry

How to think about defining tech roles in the C-suite: Healthcare companies staffing up on top tech talent should use Obama's leadership structure as a guide, says first-ever White House CTO

SEE ALSO: HOW TO START A BUSINESS: The ultimate guides for founders on launching a company, raising money, and becoming wildly successful

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Kylie Jenner is the world's second highest-paid celebrity. Here's how she makes and spends her $1 billion.

• Employers are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence-driven tools to carry out recruitment and hiring. Companies like Amazon, FedEx, Target, and Capital One have tested or used AI hiring software.
• These tools sift through heaps of resumes quickly, evaluate candidates' answers to written questions and interactive games, and conduct video interviews with candidates.
• Vendors tout AI hiring tools as a way to root out discrimination, but experts and activists warn that AI-driven hiring tools are just as biased as the humans who train them.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The next time you apply for a job, the fate of your application may not be in human hands — instead, an algorithm could determine whether or not you make the cut.

Employers are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence-driven tools to carry out recruitment and hiring. Target, Hilton, Pepsi, Amazon, and Ikea are among the companies who have tested or used algorithms to determine who to hire, and the list is growing across the employment spectrum from low-wage jobs to white-collar positions.  

Advocates say AI is the key to rooting out human bias and ending discrimination in the hiring process. But its critics warn that AI-driven hiring tools are just as biased as the humans who train them.

Predictive hiring tools are mostly used to weed out candidates deemed unfit for hire, rather than affirmatively choose who gets a job. These tools sift through huge numbers of resumes in short time periods, evaluate candidates' answers to written questions and interactive games, and conduct video interviews with candidates.

Read more:How AI is changing everything

Companies who sell the AI tools say they expect that the job of human recruiters will soon be entirely replaced by robots in some sectors, and investor interest in these vendors is growing. Researchers at Cornell found that there are at least 19 companies providing AI-driven hiring tools worldwide, with funding ranging from $1 million to $93 million per vendor. 

But AI experts have raised concerns about the technology's rapid growth.

"Technology is rapidly changing how people find jobs, learn about jobs, apply to those jobs, and are evaluated for those jobs," Aaron Rieke, managing director at tech equity nonprofit Upturn, told Business Insider. "The fear is if that is not done very carefully and thoughtfully, there could be problems down the road."

Meanwhile, AI-driven hiring tools haven't drawn much scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers. However, the House Education and Labor Committee is holding a series of hearings on the impact of AI on the workforce this fall, which could be a precursor to legislation.

AI hiring tools could automatically discriminate against certain job applicants

Just like all algorithms, AI hiring tools are trained by humans, typically using data sets from the real world meant to help AI recognize the features of a "good" or "bad" candidate. 

Accordingly, tech experts and activists have warned that AI hiring tools might pick up on preexisting human biases, especially in fields like tech, where progress towards diversity has been slow. 

In a report published in December, Upturn researchers highlighted how these assumptions could lead to unintentional discrimination by AI hiring tools.

"What can naturally happen is you build a model that identifies common characteristics of your current workforce, which isn't diverse," Rieke said. "Or might reflect the fact that hiring managers have traditionally given preference to male candidates over women."

AI hiring tools have the potential for bias, even if that's not a company's intention, according to Joy Buolamwini, a computer scientist based at the MIT Media Lab. Buolamwini founded the Algorithmic Justice League, which conducts research and advocacy on AI bias.

"Even if a company has good intentions, products that are trained on data collected from current employees deemed successful could learn discriminating characteristics that are due to identity traits instead of job competency," Buolamwini wrote in an email to Business Insider. "Data is not necessarily neutral."

Can AI be trained to root out human bias?

Vendors of AI-driven hiring tools argue the opposite, claiming that AI is the most surefire way to ultimately eliminate human bias in the hiring process.

Eric Sydell, the executive vice president of innovation at Modern Hire, told Business Insider he believes algorithms can be programmed with the specific goal of ruling out the unfair preferences that humans act on. Modern Hire sells a software that allows companies to put candidates through interviews and "virtual job tryouts," and is used by companies including Capital One, Allstate, SunTrust, and FedEx.

"AI has tremendous potential to make things more fair and more valid," Sydell said. "There's a million of those [biases] that humans are holding in their heads at all times … with AI we can eradicate human biases."

Rieke said it's too soon to tell whether AI-driven hiring tools are already working against bias, but he believes it's possible that such tools could one day prove less biased than human recruiters.

"The old-fashioned, human way of doing this is a process that has consistently yielded staggering bias against people," Rieke said. "I think there's the possibility for hiring tools to fairly and equitably hire people … but the devil's in the details."

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