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NewslettersCEO Daily

TIAA CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett is undertaking a retirement revolution—with $1.5 trillion to back it up

Alyson Shontell
By
Alyson Shontell
Alyson Shontell
Editor-in-Chief and Chief Content Officer
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Alyson Shontell
By
Alyson Shontell
Alyson Shontell
Editor-in-Chief and Chief Content Officer
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June 17, 2026, 5:50 AM ET
Under CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett, TIAA has scaled to over $1.5 trillion in assets under management.
Under CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett, TIAA has scaled to over $1.5 trillion in assets under management.Jeff Kowalsky/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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  • In today’s CEO Daily: A sit-down with TIAA CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett
  • The big leadership story: Robinhood slashes jobs to avoid being a ‘heavily-layered’ organization.
  • The markets: Mostly up as investors await the Federal Reserve’s rate decision.
  • Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning. Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell writing from New York. When Thasunda Brown Duckett got tapped to run Fortune 100 company TIAA, it was the middle of COVID. She didn’t meet with her board in person for over a year, and mission No. 1 was to get the company through the pandemic, one Zoom call at a time.

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But beyond that, she had a plan to modernize and expand the retirement behemoth’s offerings via a product dubbed “guaranteed lifetime income,” and five years into her tenure, it’s delivering.

TIAA has scaled to over $1.5 trillion in assets under management. Last December, it secured a partnership with Vanguard to put its lifetime income annuities in front of millions of American workers, expanding TIAA’s reach from its traditional nonprofit institutional market into the much broader 401(k) market.

Brown Duckett and I spoke about her CEO playbook on the most recent episode of my podcast, Fortune 500: Titans and Disruptors of Industry, which is out today. We also covered the leadership and life lessons that have helped her succeed at the highest levels in business. A few that stood out:

Live life like a diversified portfolio. “You only have 100% [of your time] to offer. You do not have 110%,” she says. “You have to allocate it to the things that define who you are. I’m a philanthropist, a mother, a sister, an auntie, a wife, an executive. The reality is, my children don’t get 100%—they get 30%, and I have to divide that across three kids.”

You rent your title and own your character. “Yes, I am the CEO of a Fortune 100 company, and I am jealous of me in terms of what I get to do every day,” she says. “But it is rented. There will come a time when I will no longer be the CEO of TIAA. But I am always Thasunda Brown Duckett.”

Pursue joy, not happiness. “I try to live a life of joy, not happiness,” Brown Duckett says. “Happiness is a reaction: The kids are happy, I’m happy. Joy comes from within.”

On leaving JPMorgan and what it’s like to be recruited for a Fortune 100 CEO job. “Timing sometimes is not perfect. But behind the scenes, you get the call from a recruiter. You do not not take the call. You start asking a ton of questions, and then you get to the point where you’re like, ‘This is something that I can’t pass up,’” Brown Duckett says. “This was an opportunity to make a different impact. It was an opportunity to run the entire company and make history at the same time.”

Check out the full conversation with TIAA CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett on Fortune 500: Titans and Disruptors of Industry. And if you enjoy it, please leave a review of our podcast on Apple here.—Alyson Shontell

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

Top leadership news

Robinhood job cuts

Robinhood announced it will cut 10% of its workforce as a broader crypto slump drags on trading activity, even as the company reported a $350 million profit and $1.07 billion in revenue in the first quarter. “We cannot default to operating as a heavily-layered organization," CEO Vladimir Tenev said in a memo.

PayPal shuts down venture arm

PayPal is unwinding PayPal Ventures, its 10-year-old corporate venture unit, as new CEO Enrique Lores restructures the fintech firm. Lores has pledged to accelerate AI adoption and deliver at least $1.5 billion in savings over the next two to three years.

Yum Brands’ Pizza Hut sale

Yum Brands (No. 474 on the Fortune 500) sold Pizza Hut to private equity firm LongRange Capital for about $1.5 billion as the chain continues to fall from its peak in the 1990s. Yum China Holdings (No. 375 on the Fortune 500) will acquire the chain’s mainland China locations in a separate deal worth about $1.2 billion.

The markets

S&P 500 futures are up 0.17% this morning. The last session closed down 0.57%. The STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.27% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was down 0.13% in early trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up 0.72%. South Korea’s KOSPI was up 1.58% today. China’s CSI 300 was up 0.97%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down 0.74%. India’s NIFTY 50 was up 0.40%. Bitcoin was down at $65K.

Around the watercooler

Filling up your car won’t feel normal until next summer, S&P says by Tristan Bove

‘Making China the elephant in the room’: The G7 confronts its reliance on U.S. AI and Chinese energy supply chains, experts say by Mia Osmonbekov

SpaceX just surpassed Amazon’s market cap, overtaking the 31-year-old company on day three of public trading by Eva Roytburg

College students are voting with their feet on AI. Goldman has the receipts by Nick Lichtenberg

Michaels CEO tells young workers to stop daydreaming of success and ‘get moving, take some action, take some risk’ by Emma Burleigh

CEO Daily is curated and edited by Joseph Abrams, Jason Ma, Claire Zillman, and Lee Clifford.

This is the web version of CEO Daily, a newsletter of must-read global insights from CEOs and industry leaders. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
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Alyson Shontell
By Alyson ShontellEditor-in-Chief and Chief Content Officer
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Alyson Shontell is the editor-in-chief and chief content officer at Fortune.

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