Mellody Hobson on why more firms should embrace co-CEOs like Ariel Investments: ‘You have a shoulder to lean on’
Good morning. Although most firms don't deploy co-CEOs, at least one that does is happy to sing the praises of such a setup.
“I tell people, I don't understand why there aren't more co-CEOs,” Mellody Hobson, co-CEO of Ariel Investments, told me. “I think this is an underutilized way of leading a company.”
I recently sat down with Hobson to discuss the firm’s new documentary, “Ariel at 40,” produced by Crystal McCrary McGuire Productions. An internship led to her more-than-30-year career at Ariel, the first Black-owned mutual fund company in the U.S. Ariel was founded in 1983 by John W. Rogers Jr. when he was just 24 years old. He's now co-CEO.
Headquartered in Chicago, with offices in New York, San Francisco, and Sydney, Ariel holds $14.9 billion in assets. It is a global value-based asset management firm serving individual and institutional investors. Among the top 10 holdings in Ariel’s Small Cap Value strategy are OneSpaWorld Holdings (OSW), Mattel, Inc. (MAT), and Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL).
“John and I can cover so much ground, both separately and together,” Hobson said. “You also have a shoulder to lean on.”
She continued: “We're very clear about our responsibilities in the firm, and they're separate and distinct. So, the areas that I manage and oversee, John always says his goal is to be like a board member advisor to me in those areas. But he does not overrule or veto because those are my areas, just like I don't tell him what stocks to buy.”
What really stands out in the firm's documentary is the story of how Rogers, who graduated from Princeton in 1980, recognized Hobson’s talent and how she could help take the company to new heights—and how Hobson, a 1991 Princeton grad, charted her path to becoming one of the most influential business women in the world, landing on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women list every year since 2019.
Hobson went on to spend nearly two decades as the firm’s president before becoming co-CEO in 2019. In addition to her career at Ariel, she's Starbucks board chair and a director at JPMorgan Chase. She also participates in philanthropic endeavors through The Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation, cofounded with her husband, George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, whom she married in 2013.
I had an interesting conversation with Hobson about everything from how her tenure at Ariel began to what Rogers told her at lunch on her first day of work to how she navigated the global financial crisis, which she called “the worst time in my career.”
You can read the complete article here.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
