August 10-14

Hi Gang,

Holy. Freaking. Cow. It’s been SO. SO. HOT here in California. How hot is it? It’s so hot that I tried to find funny jokes about it being hot, and nothing’s funny. It’s so hot that the sky is literally exploding. It’s so hot that I forgot to send Vital Signs this weekend. Oops!

This is when you Boston folks get to say… awe… gosh… are you guys sweating a little heat over there? (Don’t worry, Boston… we’ll have your number in February.) Yes, we are sweating it. Especially in Northern California, where (in typical Bay Area fashion) we smugly brag that we don’t need air conditioning.

UNCLE!

On days like these, we race into the office. But of course that recirculated COVID-VAC is problematic. So, for now we just sit. And whine. And roast. Ugh. Man it’s hot. And that is all.

News & Resources

Business, Leadership & Self

• Why You Need to Be Willing to Take the Heat If You Want to Be a Leader

• HBR: A Survival Guide for Leaders

• Retaining the best people is the most critical approach to successful corporate performance: RRA’s CEO Clarke Murphy

News of Interest

• Digital Health 150: The Digital Health Startups Transforming The Future Of Healthcare

• CVS, Salesforce team up to unite return-to-work platforms

• Mark Cuban Wants to Fix Health Care, the N.B.A. and Maybe Everything Else

Diversity & Inclusion

• Some cool news from RRA, which has not been released publicly. There’s no press release…consider yourselves in the inner circle 😉 Very proud to share this!

  • Black Executives: RRA leaders will be serving as faculty in the McKinsey Academy’s “Accelerating Black Leaders of Today and Tomorrow” program. This is a virtual leadership program McKinsey is making available at no cost to clients to support rising Black executives. RRA will be McKinsey’s exclusive executive search partner to drive the career-planning modules of the program.

  • Future Black CEOs: RRA is partnering with Black Fortune 500 CEOs to build a next-generation Black CEO accelerator program. This program will focus on developing and mentoring Black executives at Fortune 1000 companies (and beyond) who are on the final climb to the role of CEO.

From the Community

• Plotting to be the BridgeBio of AI, Atomwise lands $123 million Series B for hype-heavy platform

• How Adaptive Biotechnologies and Microsoft are working to 'decode" our immune response to COVID-19

Food Fight – Send me yours!

This week’s winner is the Jumbo Jet Star, my all-time favorite popsicle. No chef required.

Point of View – What are you seeing out there? (Share anonymously if you prefer.)

This week’s photo comes from Phil Gutry, Chief Business Officer at Kronos Bio. Awesome Dad move, Phil! 😊

Phil’s perspective: “Sunday night camping trip in Uinta mountains with a 5-year-old and 3.5-year-old (first one for them). Key learning is that my ‘backpacking’ tent does not fit all three of us, so I spent the night sleeping under the stars and enjoyed being out of cell phone range for a day.”

A Little Levity

• Letterman’s Greatest Moments - How Hot is it – awe, I miss Dave… and Rupert!

Stay cool,

Jackie