7/27/24 - Weekend Listening from Intercontinental Exchange

See you down the road…

After nearly seven years of sharing this note with you on Saturday mornings, this will be your last wakeup call from me. In August, I’ll begin a new role with another firm.

It has been my highest privilege to meet and converse with leaders and visionaries on the Inside the ICE House podcast. It has been an even greater honor to share those conversations with you, our weekend listeners.

As of today’s count: 428 episodes, stretching back to #1, posted on February 5, 2018, with then-NYSE President Tom Farley . Tom’s successors, Stacey Cunningham and Lynn Martin , took multiple turns at the mic. So did ICE Founder, Chair and CEO, Jeff Sprecher, first in 2018 and next in 2020. My valedictory third conversation with Jeff will drop in the coming weeks as the show goes on.

It’s just the tip of the “iceberg,” as it were, made possible, initially, by Jeff and Kelly Loeffler in their decision to bring me aboard to lead ICE's communications team. It continued through collaboration with my extraordinary group of ICE colleagues around the world. At the core is ICE’s corporate content team, constantly elevating the evolving story of capitalism through ever-burgeoning high-quality content.

What began as a simple podcast, rigged up by Pete Asch , Ian Wolff and Ken Abel, has grown to a team-built information platform sitting on the flagship of NYSE TV, the bulk of it archived on YouTube. I recorded my last “Last Word” on NYSE TV to cap of Wednesday’s show.

On the YouTube archive you’ll find every episode of NYSE TV Live, Floor Talk with Judy Shaw, Taking Stock with Trinity Chavez and, yes, Inside the ICE House. Distribution of these stories will expand in the coming months.

I’m often asked: “What was your favorite ICE House episode?” I don’t have one. They all are.

Each time I mine the stories of high-achieving CEOs and entrepreneurs, I learn something new. The added bonus for me, since 2018, has been passing on their lessons on through these weekly notes, a repository of which are preserved on my LinkedIn page.

While I can’t pick a favorite, over our seven seasons we’ve explored a few recurring themes. I’m always inspired by one particular theme in which those who hail from humble origins achieve their definition of American Dream. Below is a list of one selected episode curated from each season, chronicling a rise from ordinary roots to extraordinary heights:

1. 2018: John Doerr, one of five siblings from a St. Louis family, joined Intel in 1974 as it was developing the 8080 8-bit microprocessor. His firm, Kleiner Perkins, helped hatch Netscape, Sun Micro, Amazon, Intuit, and Google.
2. 2019: Tope Awotona hails from Lagos, Nigeria and immigrated to the United States as a teenager. A former salesman for tech firms, he bootstrapped his Atlanta-based firm, Calendly, to a valuation of over $3 billion.
3. 2020: Chamath Palihapitiya found refuge in Canada when his father sought asylum after criticizing the Sri Lankan Civil War. Earning his first fortune with Facebook, he’s now a podcast king as a co-host of All-In.
4. 2021: Michael Arad was born in Israel and began to ply his trade as an architect after graduating from Dartmouth. He found meaning in absence through his design of the 9/11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan.
5. 2022: Sharon Bowen earned her degrees from University of Virginia and Northwestern Law and trailblazed a path to becoming the first African-American woman CFTC Commissioner and Chair of the New York Stock Exchange.
6. 2023: Vinnie Viola’s dad was three years old when he emigrated to Brooklyn from Italy and fought for his adopted country in World War II. Vinny went on to West Point, founded Virtu Financial, and now owns the Stanley Cup Champion Florida Panthers.
7. 2024: Farooq Kathwari, raised in the mountains of Kashmir, arrived in the United States to help his dad at the 1964 World’s Fair and then found his fortune in the canyons of Wall Street. He has led Ethan Allen since 1985.

For the last note from me, I return to another familiar theme we’ve explored many times on the show: the men and women whose centuries of service and sacrifice to their country make possible what we do every day at ICE and the NYSE .

Few know the names of Issac Gomez, Ephriam Hart, or Charles McEvers. They are three of the 24 signatories of The Buttonwood Agreement, which gave rise to the New York Stock Exchange 232 years ago on May 17, 1792. You don’t really need to know them, but the institution they wrought has changed the world. Capital raised at the NYSE has created millions of jobs, sent millions more to college, and hatched innovations that have saved millions of lives.

It’s more important to know the stories of John Parker at Lexington Green, Edward Preble at Tripoli Harbor, Joshua Chamberlain at Little Round Top, Alvin York at the Meuse-Argonne, Jimmy Doolittle on the USS Hornet, and Dwight Eisenhower at Supreme Allied Headquarters. Without these heroes of history, and millions of others in uniform doing what they did, the American Dream, and the engines of capitalism driving it, would have long since ground to a halt.

Michel Paradis is another two-time Inside the ICE House guest. He first joined us on the show in 2020 recounting the harrowing Doolittle Raid chronicled in his first book, LAST MISSION TO TOKYO. This week, Michel joins us once again to discuss his second book, THE LIGHT OF BATTLE: Eisenhower, D-Day and the Birth of the American Superpower. In my view, the path from the beaches of Normandy to the doors of 11 Wall Street is inexplicably linked.

I hope you’ll take a listen, and continue to listen to Inside the ICE House.

The view from 20 Grosvenor Square, London:

• Saving the World: Michel Paradis Reconstructs Dwight Eisenhower's Greatest Triumph On June 5, 1944, Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower addressed 150,000 soldiers boldly poised to invade France and liberate Europe. “The eyes of the world are upon you,” the general intoned. Eighty years later, Michel Paradis’ new book, THE LIGHT OF BATTLE: Eisenhower, D-Day, and the Birth of the American Superpower, shines a new spotlight on Ike, from humble beginnings in Abilene, Kansas to his command of Operation Overlord. Following his chronicle of Jimmy Doolittle’s daring raid on Tokyo, Paradis returns Inside the ICE House offering a fresh take on Eisenhower and America’s rise as the indispensable nation.

If you’re on a smart phone, all of our Inside the ICE House podcast episodes are available wherever you get your podcasts, including the Apple Podcast App, Spotify, and Stitcher, and other audio platforms. Instead of me, feel free to reach out our producer, Lance Glinn, with any feedback about our show, or suggest any guests for future episodes.