5 top leaders share career advice for grads - and anyone navigating change

Jensen Huang, NVIDIA: AI is not likely to replace you. But someone using AI better than you might.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: Welcome to Meet the Leader, the podcast where top leaders share how they’re tackling the word’s biggest challenges. In today’s special episode, we go to this spring's graduation ceremonies where top leaders from NVIDIA, Walmart, Goldman Sachs and more share their advice for new grads – advice that any of us can take to heart.

Subscribe to Meet The Leader on Apple, Spotify and wherever you get your favorite podcasts. And don’t forget to rate and review us. I’m Linda Lacina from the World Economic Forum - and this is Meet the Leader.

David Solomon, Goldman Sachs: Cultivate what fuels you, and don't let it go

Kathryn McLay, Walmart International: Embrace the discomfort and the joy it brings. Embrace the warrior emotion of hope. Embrace the unexpected. And embrace a wonderfully imperfect world.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: Today’s no-fire, low-hire job market is tough any way you slice it - But it's one of the worst in years for new grads. These new workers will face the typical uncertainty all folks do when they're figuring out themselves and their careers all at once, but they're doing it AI reshapes how companies think about everything from hiring to what a human job even looks like.

There’s a lot of reason for optimism, though. Less rote work might mean entry level workers might enjoy more responsibility. And big transformations have their way of levelling playing fields.

Which brings us to this year's commencement season. Top leaders from across the World Economic Forum community spoke to this year's new grads at graduations across the US to help the next generation get their start.

Whether you are just entering the workforce or considering your own pivot during this very disruptive, tumultuous time, these leaders share how to think about big change, the mistakes that they've learned from, and and how to keep it all in perspective to build an amazing life that matters. We can all have a little more of that.

We’ll start with Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA, the trillion-dollar chip designer whose products are helping to make the AI revolution possible. He spoke to Carnegie Mellon -- a fitting start to our episode, given the university's role in helping to develop top technologies and top talent.

Jensen Huang, NVIDIA: Carnegie Mellon is one of the true birthplaces of artificial intelligence and robotics. In the 1950s, researchers here created the Logic Theorist, widely recognized and considered the first AI computer program. In 1979, Carnegie Mellon founded the Robotics Institute.

This morning I visited This morning, I visited with Robo Club, the first academic institute devoted entirely to robotics. Artificial intelligence has gone on now to reinvent computing completely.

I have lived through every major computing platform shift, mainframes, PCs, the internet, mobile, and cloud. Each wave built on the one before. Each expanded access, each transformed industries and society, but what is about to happen now is bigger than anything before.

Jensen Huang, Nvidia: We should not teach fear of the future, we should engage it with optimism, responsibility, and ambition. Only a fraction of the people in the world know how to write software. Now, anyone can ask AI to build something useful. A shopkeeper can create a website and grow a business. A carpenter can design a kitchen and offer new services to clients. The AI writes the code. Everyone is now a programmer. For the first time, the power of computing and intelligence can truly reach everyone and close the technology divide. For the first time.

AI will change every job. But the task and the purpose of a job are not the same. Many tasks will be automated. Some jobs will disappear. But many new jobs and entire new industries will be created. Software coding tasks are increasingly automated. But using AI, software engineers can expand the search for solutions, allowing them to tackle far more ambitious challenges. AI does not replace human purpose. It amplifies human capability.

AI is not likely to replace you. But someone using AI better than you might.

No generation has entered the world with more powerful tools. Or greater opportunities than you. We are all standing at the same starting line. This is your moment to help shape what comes next. So run, don't walk.

Carnegie Mellon has a motto I love. My heart is in the work. So put your heart in the work. Build something worthy of your education, your potential, and the people who believed in you long before the world did.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: Katherine McLay is the former president and CEO of Walmart International - she’s a woman who just handed back the reins last month for a role where she led 500,000 associates and served 80 million customers weekly across the globe.

Landing that role wasn't straight line. As she reminded students of High Point University in North Carolina, in her career she’d worked for an accounting firm, an airline, two separate retailers on two separate continents, been an auditor, been a strategist and even worked a butcher's assistant. You can't always control the outcome. But you control is your attitude and try to enjoy the ride.

Katherine McLay, Former Walmart Exec: I could not have strategized my way into the life that I have lived. All I could control was effort and attitude.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: She also shared a humbling experience she had early in her career -- one that comes for us all and one that any veteran worker listening to this can relate to. It's a gut check that can help anyone step away from office politics and imaginary corporate ladders and focus on what really matters in our workday.

Katherine McLay, Former Walmart Exec: Early in my career, I was considered a high potential employee at a large company I worked for in Australia. I was included in development opportunities, important meetings, my star was on the rise. And then we had a leadership change. And almost overnight, I went from being a favored up-and-comer to a relic from the previous regime.

I will never forget attending a company event and looking for my name on a seating chart. In the past, I would have always been on table one near the front. This time, I found my name, finally, in the back, at table 86. I could quite literally and objectively calculate my fall from grace. It was a bit of a blow to my ego. But then I step back and I realize something: A job is effectively a contract between you and your employer to do certain tasks and to be paid a certain amount. That is it, nothing more. You're not guaranteed favor or fairness. But from that contract comes enormous opportunity to create satisfaction and joy.

I found my joy by helping others around me. And it was my first step towards understanding what leadership for me might feel like. I also discovered it can be a lot more fun on table 86.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist, New York University business professor and an expert on human flourishing. He's taught a course on that topic for last 12 years, and written a number of bestselling books like the Anxious Generation exploring how social media and tech are getting in the way of that. He touched on some of the themes on our recent Meet The Leader -- he talked to us about whether humans will finally crack happiness -- but for now, there's no one better to share 3 tips on how to have an amazing life. Here's his advice to this year's crop of NYU grads: Treasure your attention, do hard things, and connect with people in real life. I'll let him explain more.

Jonathan Haidt, NYU Social Psychologist: In 2014, when she was nearly 80 years old, the poet Mary Oliver wrote a short poem titled Instructions for Living a Life. It goes like this: pay attention, be astonished, tell about it.

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

So once you're in control of your attention, you can start to ask yourself one of life's most exciting questions, which is, what do I wanna do?

What should you do? You should do hard things. This is among the most universal pieces of advice from our ancestors. In the words of two great philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche and Kelly Clarkson, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

The psychological foundation of this great truth is that humans, and especially young people, are not fragile. They are anti-fragile, to use a term coined by NYU professor Nassim Taleb. Fragile things break when they get knocked over or challenged, so we need to protect them vigilantly. But anti-fragile things grow stronger, so we need to expose them to challenge.

Throw yourself into your next job or academic program or whatever your next adventure is. Take chances. Say yes to anything that will expand your capabilities. And I'm not just talking about your career. Devote your precious attention. To taking chances in relationships too. You've heard it said that tis better to have loved and lost than never to have love at all. That line becomes even more resonant once you understand that your heart is anti-fragile too.

And this brings me to my final point, because along with the question, what should I turn my attention toward, comes a related question. Whom should I spend my attention on? You should spend a lot of your attention on real people in the real world.

During your time at NYU, in-person connection was built into the architecture of your lives. You ran into friends constantly. Or maybe someone texted “Pizza?” and ten minutes later, you were having pizza. Shared experiences are easily launched in college. That's part of what makes this place so special. But today, one of the most common experiences of adulthood, especially in ambitious cities among high achieving people. Is a strange kind of loneliness.

You can be messaging people all day. You can see everyone's lives unfold in real time. And yet despite all this so-called connection, you may find yourself feeling increasingly alone. Friendship now requires much more intentionality than it once did.

So my advice, as you think about what does and doesn't deserve your attention, is reach out to others. Even when it feels awkward. Call someone you love just to say hi. Invite someone to dinner and say yes when someone invites you. Be the one who makes things happen in the real world and others will be grateful to you.

Think about your most memorable moments from your time at NYU. I'm willing to bet that almost none of them happened on a screen. Most of them probably happened while you were spending time with other people who made you laugh. Or help you grow, keep making those moments happen

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: Thasuanda Brown Duckett is the first woman CEO of TIAA, one of the world's largest financial services providers and a leading retirement system for millions of educators and nonprofit professionals. She's also one of only three black women today running a Fortune 500. She talked to Florida A&M University, an HBCU, or Historically Black College and University, about the responsibility to make opportunities for others. She explained how that's shaped how she sees potential and how she navigates change.

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

And this brings me to the most important thing I want to leave with you today. Your degree is not just a credential. It's a platform. And the question, the real question, the one that I hope stays with you long after today is this. Who else's life can you change with the success you will achieve? Success that stops with you is incomplete. Your success isn't yours alone to keep.

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

The HBCU tradition is one of the most powerful models of collective advancement in American history. You weren't just educated here. You were prepared to go back and give back. That's not a burden, Rattlers, that's a calling. Because when a door opens for you, it doesn't have to close behind you.

That's the choice I want to leave with you today. You can hoard success or you can extend it. You can protect your seat at the table or you could build a bigger table. You can treat your success as a destination, or you can treat it as a beginning.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon spoke to Wharton’s MBA class of 2026 about the values that have helped him in his career - like finding people whose opinion you trust.

David Solomon, Goldman Sachs: One of the things that has helped me enormously is finding mentors I trust, and then trusting them when they tell me I can do better. I learned a lot about this from my dad, who was a leading expert in what I could do better. When I was in high school I once complained to him that I didn't have enough money to do the things I wanted to do. His response? Get another job. I told him I can't. I had essays to write, I played three sports, I scooped 31 flavors of ice cream at Baskin Robbins.

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

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: And while he also shared other values, like investing in people and why he takes time to write thank yous by hand or call up friends he hasn’t talked to, he also stressed the need to find passions outside of work.

David Solomon, Goldman Sachs: Cultivate what fuels you, and don't let it go. It's important to choose a profession you're passionate about. I did. I love finance and I love the career journey I've been on. But it is also important and necessary, I think, to have passions away from your work. It was July 2017 when my own passion came under scrutiny, I felt serious pressure to give it up. Six months earlier, I had become the president of Goldman Sachs, and my visibility had increased. That day in July, the New York Times headline read, At Goldman, he's David Solomon, at the club, he is DJ D-Sol. I have always, always had a passion for music. In college, I was officially the social chair of my fraternity. And unofficially, I was the guy who made the mixtapes for parties.

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

I also never thought my list of personal references would include Hank Balson, Lloyd Blankfein, the Chainsmokers, Kygo, and Tiesto. There's something you do, each and every one of you, that gives you excitement and joy. Don't let it fall by the wayside. You have a long journey in front of you full of setbacks and tough days. It will be a lot easier to pick yourself up, dust yourself off. If you stay connected to what it is that lights you up.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: To close us out, I'll bring back Kathryn McLay, who spoke about hope and how to use it to battle uncertainty and anxiety, a reminder we could all use.

Kathryn McLay, Walmart International: Hope is the warrior emotion. I agree with that, I'm all in on that. Hope isn't easy. It isn't passive. What's easy, what's lazy and reactive is to face uncertainty with worry or cynicism. That doesn't take any work at all. Hope requires action. It demands effort and belief.

I think the warrior emotion comes in handy when you face a new beginning, a next chapter. You can't have new beginnings without endings, and all endings are a little difficult.

So embrace the discomfort and the joy it brings. Embrace the warrior emotion of hope. Embrace the unexpected. And embrace a wonderfully imperfect world.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: That's the advice for new grads.

Many of these CEOs and big names have been featured on Meet The Leader. I'll include our fireside chat with Jensen Huang at Davos and our one-on-one with Jonathan Haidt in the show notes.

Find a transcript of this episode - as well as transcripts from my colleagues’s podcasts Radio Davos at wef.ch/Podcasts.

This episode of meet the leader was produced and presented by me with Taz Kelleher as editor and Gareth Nolan driving studio production. That's it for now. I'm Linda Lacina from the World Economic Forum. Have a great day.