In this second installment of our two-part series on the stages of successful CEO leadership, Carolyn Dewar and Kurt Strovink, two of the authors of the upcoming book A CEO For All Seasons, share insights drawn from top-performing CEOs on how to navigate the middle two stages of CEO leadership – starting strong and sustaining momentum – and how to maintain long-term effectiveness while at the top.

A small improvement in pricing can often drive greater value creation than larger cost or volume improvements. However, Private Equity (PE) funds face unique challenges in identifying and addressing pricing opportunities across diverse portfolio companies, often lacking the dedicated tools and expertise to do so effectively. Join Brian Elliott, Jordan Jakubovitz, and Michelle Nguyen for a discussion on how PE funds can address these challenges and achieve efficient growth.

The first half of 2025 showed higher global activity as disciplined dealmakers reentered the market despite continued uncertainty. Join Luke Carter and Patrick McCurdy as they review dealmaking in the first half of the year and discuss how to prepare for a strong finish, building on our new article.

CEOs sit at the nexus of strategy, finance and operations, which makes them uniquely positioned to lead the charge to build resilience that protects their companies from – and finds opportunity in – disruption. Join Ida Kristensen and Linda Liu as they discuss insights from their recent article on how CEOs can use resilience as a strategic imperative.

Gen AI is poised to replace much of the manual activity involved in completing an outside-in diligence. Firms that adapt the fastest during this transition have the most to gain. Join Laura Borton, William Bundy, Chase Covington, and David Pralong as they discuss our new article on how the deployment of gen AI in diligence can give organizations an investment edge.

Worth over $2 trillion, the wellness and beauty sectors are being reshaped by evolving consumer preferences, breakthroughs in longevity science, and AI-driven personalization. Join Warren Teichner and Kristi Weaver as they explore how private investors can unlock opportunities and position themselves for growth in these dynamic markets.

As organizations increasingly deploy agentic AI, they face new risks that could disrupt operations, compromise sensitive data, and erode customer trust. Join Rich Isenberg and Charlie Lewis as they discuss these emerging risks and how leaders can proactively ensure security and compliance while also driving adoption.

Buy-side carve-outs represent more than a quarter of overall M&A activity and can create significant value while also presenting complex challenges. Join Kameron Kordestani, Anna Mattson, and Rui Silva as they discuss our article on how leaders—particularly CFOs, integration managers, and CHROs—can best balance financial structuring, operational planning, and people management to ensure a successful transition.

Transformations often falter due to internal dynamics that divide organizations, such as misaligned incentives, siloed efforts, and risk aversion. CEOs are uniquely positioned to address these challenges by tackling the root causes of collective-action problems and uniting their organizations around bold aspirations. Join Michael Bucy, Meagan Hill, and Kurt Strovink as they explore the role of the CEO in driving enterprise-wide transformation and embedding lasting change into the fabric of their organizations.

The eighth edition of Valuation has been out for several months. In that time, authors Marc Goedhart and Tim Koller have met hundreds of financial executives around the world. Learn what challenges those executives facing and how they are meeting them.