Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Claudine Gay is out as Harvard’s president, tens of thousands of women who aren’t pregnant are ordering abortion pills, and new Levi Strauss CEO Michelle Gass says her demotion was worth it. Have a wonderful Wednesday!
– The right fit. The path to the CEO job can take many forms—an uninterrupted climb straight up the ladder, lateral moves to build skill sets, and leaps of faith to lead new businesses. A rarer way to make it to the top? A demotion.
But that’s just what Michelle Gass, the former CEO of Kohl’s, did on her way to becoming the new chief executive at Levi Strauss. At Kohl’s, Gass was a Fortune 500 CEO atop a struggling $18 billion-in-revenue retailer. Besieged by activist investors and up against giants like Amazon, she announced at the end of 2022 that she would join Levi’s, the legacy denim brand.
The one catch: Levi’s already had a CEO—a well-known one at that. Chip Bergh took over the brand 12 years ago and led it back to the center of the cultural zeitgeist. In sketching out a succession plan, he announced Gass would join Levi’s as president, with the expectation that she would replace him within the next 18 months—but it was no guarantee.
Levi’s announced that Gass officially had the CEO job at the beginning of December; the Starbucks alum is set to take over on Jan. 29. Bergh and Gass joined Fortune CEO Alan Murray for a conversation late last month about their unusual succession plan.
“It took a level of humility,” Gass said. “We had to check our egos at the door.”
Bergh said that Levi’s board of directors wanted an insider to take over as CEO, but he believed that the company needed a retail background only an outsider would have with direct-to-consumer now up to 40% of Levi’s business. He said that he was the “right guy” for the job 12 years ago “when the brand was broken.” “But now, more and more of our business is retail,” he said. “I felt we needed somebody with a different skill set.”
Gass, he realized, was that person. The pair knew each other from their overlapping time at P&G. He persuaded her to accept a demotion—from CEO of a Fortune 500 company to president at a largely family-controlled business—on her way to the job.
The pair hope that their succession plan will be replicated. “I think we may be creating a new model for succession. At least we’d like to believe it will be a model,” Bergh said.
And for those who questioned her career move, Gass urges them to take the long view. “People have to see the big picture. This was just one year across many years,” she said. “It’s been a privilege to have a year to go deep into the business, in the brand, traveling around, deeply understanding the opportunities to accelerate the business and the values of the company…Who wouldn’t want that?”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Alicia Adamczyk. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Out of the League. Embattled Harvard president Claudine Gay resigned Tuesday. She held the position for just six months and two days—the shortest presidency in the school's history—and was the first Black woman to lead the institution. Over her brief tenure, she faced allegations of plagiarism as well as intense national backlash against her administration’s response to the Israel-Hamas conflict. Her testimony on antisemitism in front of Congress in December drew harsh criticism and calls for her to resign. Harvard Crimson
- Population decline. Fewer than 10 million babies were born in China in 2022, a precipitous fall from the 16 million born in 2012. The decline in birth rate is so great that the country’s population is expected to fall from 1.4 billion this year to less than half a billion by 2100, per some calculations. Officials are blaming women, but many women are holding firm against having more, or any, kids. Wall Street Journal
- Sexual abuse allegations. Paula Abdul filed a lawsuit against former American Idol producer Nigel Lythgoe, accusing him of sexually assaulting her multiple times. Abdul filed the suit on Dec. 31 in Los Angeles, just before the one-year window closed for a California law that allowed victims to seek justice for sexual abuse claims after the original statute of limitations had expired. Lythgoe denies the allegations. Fortune
- Restricted access. A new study published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine finds that tens of thousands of women in the U.S. are ordering abortion pills even though they’re not pregnant—instead, they worry about their access to the procedure. The study found rates of request for the pills were highest in states where abortion bans were expected to be implemented. New York Times
- A new king. Taylor Swift has officially bested Elvis. The singer now has the most weeks at the top of the Billboard 200—which ranks the most popular music albums and EPs—of any solo artist in history. With 1989 (Taylor’s Version) spending a fifth week at No. 1, Swift’s albums have now topped the chart for 68 weeks over the course of her career; Elvis previously held the title with 67 weeks. Only The Beatles are ahead of her now, logging 132 weeks at No. 1 from 1964 to 2001. Billboard
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Nadia Calviño is the new president of the European Investment Bank. She is the first woman and first Spaniard to lead the institution.
ON MY RADAR
How Mayim Bialik lost her role as the main host of Jeopardy! The Ringer
When being a spokeswoman attracts leering internet trolls New York Times
Tagwalk takes on the hemline index The New Yorker
PARTING WORDS
"The purpose of money is to be able to give people I care about the opportunity to expand and grow, without worrying about where they’re going to live and how they’re going to eat."
—Tiffany Aliche, a.k.a. “the Budgetnista,” on living and working with her sisters
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