Good morning, Broadsheet readers! JPMorgan’s Marianne Lake warns of checking account fees, the head of venture capital at the Women’s Tennis Association discusses the sport’s ties to Saudi Arabia, and the first woman to run a major U.S. airline is focused on delivering. Have a lovely Tuesday.
– Flying high. In February, Joanna Geraghty became the CEO of JetBlue. The promotion made the JetBlue veteran the first female CEO to lead a major U.S. airline. But to Geraghty, what could be called both a career and industry milestone is instead all about the business.
“It means that I’ve got to deliver,” she told me last month at a luncheon for Concern Worldwide U.S., a nonprofit she chairs. “It’s about results.”
Geraghty warned in JetBlue’s first-quarter earnings call, her first as CEO, that the company would miss investor expectations this year as competitors pour into Latin America, a critical region for the airline. In March, JetBlue terminated its planned merger with Spirit Airlines after a judge blocked the $3.8 billion deal. Its stock is down 36% over the past year. The airline’s priority is a return to profitability. With those headwinds, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Geraghty is focused on the business rather than the significance of her promotion.
Still, she acknowledges that a female CEO is meaningful in a historically male-dominated industry. “It was a function of, historically, you’d have a pilot who would leave the pilot ranks to become a leader. Pilots were mostly out of the military and it was mostly male. It’s a more technical industry,” she explains. “That led to a world where there were just a lot of men in the industry.”
Today, 6% of commercial airline pilots are women. “As women become mothers, the lifestyle is more challenging. You have a lot of trips overnight, you’re away from your family,” she says. “We’re working hard to bend that curve, but it is very, very slow.”
Geraghty got into the airline industry through her first career as an attorney; she represented airlines and aircraft manufacturers. She took what she calls a “leap of faith” to JetBlue in 2005, first as its director of litigation and regulatory affairs. Since then, she’s served as chief people officer, COO, and EVP for customer experience before becoming CEO.
“The leap of faith is taking a chance on something that you might not be comfortable doing,” she says. “If you’re focused on delivering, the other good things will come.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Joseph Abrams. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Storage fee. Marianne Lake, the CEO of consumer and community banking at JPMorgan, says Chase bank could start charging for checking accounts, a response to new regulations that limit how much banks can charge for overdraft and late fees. Fortune
- Rallying for investments. Marina Storti, chief executive of the venture capital arm of the Women’s Tennis Association, told the Financial Times that investments from Saudi Arabia and private equity firm CVC have primed the association to enter new markets. Despite being “really sensitive” about criticisms of Saudi Arabia's human rights record, Storti maintained that it is a “really, really good partnership for the sport.”
- Cursed inheritance. Rachel Reeves, the U.K.’s first female chancellor, said her new ruling Labour party has inherited public finances that are in their worst state since World War II. Reeves says the U.K. would face “difficult choices” in the autumn budget, seemingly a reference to spending controls and tax increases. Financial Times
- Text exits. Columbia University President Minouche Shafik has removed three deans from their positions for texts that “disturbingly touched on ancient antisemitic tropes.” Shafik described the messages as “unacceptable and deeply upsetting.” New York Times
- Settling up. Johnson & Johnson is trying to convince 75% of the 61,000 plaintiffs accusing it of selling baby powder that causes cancer in women to accept a $6.48 billion settlement. The move would allow the company, which denies the claims, to avoid bankruptcy and offload the settlement onto a subsidiary. Reuters
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Bain & Company promoted Laura Miles to chief client officer and global head of industries and Tamar Dane Dor-Ner to lead the Americas as regional managing partner.
ON MY RADAR
After beating Coco Gauff at Wimbledon, Emma Navarro could be the next U.S. tennis star CNN
How celebrity book clubs actually work Esquire
Google’s nonconsensual explicit images problem is getting worse Wired
PARTING WORDS
“The idea is to bring guests on so that a young woman and her dad could sit down and watch my show together.”
— Call Her Daddy host Alex Cooper on the Olympic “watch-alongs” that she will host this summer on Peacock
