Day: November 12, 2025

• Ford’s CEO has some advice for ambitious execs: take a supply chain job.
• Jim Farley told the “Office Hours: Business Edition” podcast that supply chain skills are transferable to the CEO role.
• Ford has been battling supply chain disruption this year as US tariffs have rocked the auto industry.

The boss of Ford has some advice for up-and-coming executives: ditch CEO for CSCO.

Speaking on an upcoming episode of “Office Hours: Business Edition,” Jim Farley said people should aim for supply chain roles if they want to change the world and climb the corporate ladder.

“I would say of all the C-suite jobs that people should aspire to, if you want to make a difference in our society, I would pick one — supply chain,” the Ford CEO told host Monica Langley in the interview, which is set to be released Wednesday morning.

Farley said that at large companies such as Ford, supply chain leaders must have a firm grasp of everything from technology to geopolitics.

“It’s no surprise to me that Tim Cook and many of the CEOs in great companies today come from a supply chain background,” said Farley, referring to the boss of Apple.

“No surprise at all to me, because the leadership required to be world-class at supply chains is the same capability you need to run a company,” he added.

The role of chief supply chain officer, or CSCO, has become increasingly important over the past few years. Some of the world’s largest companies are now led by CEOs with a background in supply chains.

Cook first joined Apple as a supply chain executive and played a vital role in building the tech giant’s global manufacturing prowess. Mary Barra, the CEO of Ford’s crosstown rival GM, also oversaw the company’s global supply chain before becoming chief executive in 2014.

Farley’s comments come as the global auto industry grapples with a wave of supply chain disruptions.

The tariffs introduced by the Trump administration earlier this year have forced automakers, which typically have factories and suppliers spread across the globe, to reshuffle their supply chains and production plans.

Ford said in its latest earnings that it expects the tariffs to cost it around $1 billion this year, while rival GM has projected a tariff hit of $3.5-4.5 billion.

Farley’s manufacturing jobs warning

Farley has regularly warned that not enough attention is being paid to manufacturing jobs in the US, telling the “Office Hours” podcast that the country is in “deep trouble” compared to China.

In an opinion piece for TIME in August, the Ford CEO called for more vocational training programs to address workforce shortages in the construction and manufacturing industries.

Speaking to “Office Hours,” Farley warned that the US was also far too dependent on other countries, such as China, for vital materials like rare earths, which are used to manufacture advanced magnets that are critical to the auto industry.

China imposed restrictions on imports of rare earths earlier this year amid the trade war with the US, sparking supply chain chaos at automakers and other manufacturers across the globe.

“I don’t think most Americans have any idea how scary our dependency is on certain countries,” said Farley.

The Detroit executive also told the podcast that he was “humbled” after taking apart EVs from Tesla and Chinese upstarts, and that it spurred him into shaking up Ford.

• Deepa Purushothaman left her Deloitte partner role due to severe health issues and burnout.
• Her health issues led her to question her previous definitions of career success and purpose.
• She worried at first if she’d made a mistake quitting, but she realizes now that she grew from it.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Deepa Purushothaman, a 51-year-old founder and author in Los Angeles who previously worked at Deloitte. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I joined Deloitte after graduate school in 1999 as a senior consultant. I’d been recruited out of the Harvard Kennedy School and thought I’d spend a year or two in the private sector before entering politics or policy in DC.

Twenty-one years later, I was still there and had become a partner. I was at the height of my career — then my health caused me to come crashing down.

I worked long hours at Deloitte

Looking back, my superpower wasn’t that I was smarter than anyone else; it was that I could outwork almost anyone.

I advanced quickly within the firm, becoming a partner at the age of 34. Becoming a partner at Deloitte was deeply meaningful, both professionally and personally. I grew up in a home where arranged marriage was often discussed, and early on, I believed a big career would save me and set me free.

Yet, I never saw myself there forever. I was one of the only non-MBAs in my cohort, and I often felt like an odd duck who would eventually go on to something else.

In 2014, I married my husband, who was also a Deloitte partner at the time, and I relocated from Washington, DC, to San Francisco. I transitioned from telecom to tech within the firm. The hours ramped up: 100-hour weeks, leaving at 4 or 5 a.m. for the client site and getting home near 1 a.m., a routine that went on for months.

My health took a hit

The symptoms started small: headaches, rashes, constant infections, stomach issues, and adrenal fatigue. At the height of my symptoms, I got shingles multiple times. I saw 15 doctors. The 15th one, a rheumatologist, finally diagnosed me with late-stage Lyme disease, likely latent since my New Jersey childhood and triggered by extreme stress.

In 2019, I took a leave of absence and spent eight months in bed. I developed full neuropathy, losing feeling from my elbows down to my knees. It was an extremely severe situation.

I’d always had a question about purpose, given my background in policy and politics, and my health crisis became a kind of reckoning.

Eventually, I realized I couldn’t go back, and I officially left the company in May 2020.

Leaving at the partner level after 21 years was odd; I had worked so hard for it. But I had to ask a different question: If success doesn’t include health, is it really success?

I sold a book and started new ventures, but my health suffered again

Before I got really sick, I’d started organizing gatherings of women, in some ways looking to answer my “purpose” question. In one of those gatherings, a CFO of a public company said, “I sit in a seat of power and I don’t feel powerful.” I felt that way too, and I wanted to study that.

Six weeks after I left Deloitte, I sold a book, The First, the Few, the Only: How Women of Color Can Redefine Power in Corporate America, to HarperCollins. Over the next two years, I interviewed 500 senior-level women of color for the book and spoke on hundreds of corporate stages about the importance of inclusion.

In 2020, I launched nFormation, a vetted membership community for women of color, and in November 2023, I became an executive fellow at Harvard Business School.

The book was released in March 2022, and from then until 2024, my days were packed; I was running my company, hosting space for senior women leaders, writing articles, doing interviews, speaking on corporate stages, and meeting individually with women who reached out for support. I sometimes had as many as six speaking engagements in a single day during the book tour.

At times, it felt as intense as Deloitte. I believed the success of the book was tightly tied to the hours I worked and the number of things I said yes to. I approached it as if I were launching a major client project.

With all the intensity of my book tour, I fell ill again; I got mono three separate times that year, and my Lyme symptoms crept back in.

That forced another reset; there was so much coming at me that I had to really figure out what I wanted to do and not just say yes to all the opportunities.

I had to rethink my approach to work and care for my health

First, I paused my 1:1 coaching work. I needed to learn how to support women without absorbing their energy or taking on more than I could handle.

Then I focused on deep spiritual work, worked with coaches and therapists to set both real and energetic boundaries, and rediscovered joy.

In 2024, my cofounder and I shut down n2formation, and I started re.write, a think tank focused on rethinking how we work.

Knock on wood, I haven’t been sick since early 2024. My Lyme disease feels under control, and I’ve learned how to recognize my limits. It’s chronic and will always be something I manage, but I’m much better at seeing the signs and knowing when to slow down.

I worried at first if I made a mistake leaving

At first, leaving Deloitte was hard. Work had been my identity and my measure of worth for decades. For the first few years, I kept looking back, wondering if I made a mistake.

Now I know, I didn’t lose anything.

I gained and grew. My reach and impact are greater than they ever were within one organization. My network is stronger, my voice carries further, and I know I’m on the right path.

And when I forget, my community reminds me through a note or a request, reminding me how my work has shaped how they see success and the choices they make.

In my book research, I had found that many women hit a reckoning at the very peak of their careers: a health crisis, a divorce, a missed promotion that was “promised.” They did everything right — worked hard, ate well, exercised — and they still ran into major health issues.

Two out of three women I interviewed reported chronic symptoms: migraines, hair loss, fertility issues, and much more. So many female senior leaders are burnt out and seriously ill. We don’t talk about it enough, and there’s a bigger question of success versus listening to our bodies. We must work differently if we’re going to survive and thrive.

Do you have a story to share about quitting the Big Four? Contact this editor, Jane Zhang, at janezhang@businessinsider.com.

• Applicants for an entry-level role at Blackstone have a 0.2% chance of getting a full-time job.
• Hiring is up, but the number of applicants has doubled since 2021.
• We spoke to a 2025 analyst about their path to the program and how it feels to be selected.

Blackstone, unlike some of its private markets competitors, has a long history of hiring straight out of college. Jon Gray, the firm’s president and CEO Steve Schwarzman’s heir apparent, started in 1992 after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania and never left.

But Blackstone hopefuls looking to land one of those coveted spots after senior year had a harder time than ever in 2025.

During a September presentation, Gray said the firm’s job acceptance rate for its 2025 analyst class dropped to just 0.2%, with 57,000 applications for just 138 entry-level roles. That’s down from the already incredibly selective 0.4% in 2021, when 29,000 people applied for 103 first-year analyst roles.

As the industry continues to grow in size — Blackstone, for its part, is managing over $1 trillion for clients — the private equity career path has stepped front and center for ambitious young people.

Job hunters, with their eyes set on six-figure entry-level salaries that quickly reach aspirational levels, are drawn to the industry’s increasing popularity and prestige.

But there’s also a more direct cause: the firm is increasingly turning to recruiting entry-level workers, and moving its direction with candidates earlier and earlier, with contact as early as sophomore year. The importance of its summer internship is paramount.

According to Taylor Kanfer, the firm’s head of campus recruiting, the “large majority” of the firm’s full-time analysts are hired through their summer analyst internship. Many of these 2025 jobs were already filled at the end of last summer.

The 2025 class started in July and is made up of recent college graduates from 65+ universities.

How one analyst networked her way to a job

One of these 2025 analysts, Brigitte Webb, started even earlier. After her sophomore year at Georgetown, she attended the firm’s Future Leaders program, a two-day event that gives undergrads an introduction to the firm.

She returned to the firm as an intern the summer after her junior year, spending 10 weeks working with the real estate teams before receiving an offer to come back full-time this year.

She told Business Insider that hearing the acceptance rate was “surreal” after all the work she put in to get her job.

“It underscores the importance of starting early and building your network early,” Webb said. She spoke to a few Georgetown alumni who worked at Blackstone — connections she made through professors and investing clubs— and one of them introduced her to the Future Leaders program, which ultimately brought her to the firm.

Networking was emphasized at Georgetown, which places many students on Wall Street. But as recruiting for these roles “branches out more and more to other schools,” she said, it’s worth emphasizing for any interested applicants.

Kanfer said that Blackstone engages with over 1,000 universities, whether online or on campus, up from just 9 in 2015. Webb, who is from Oklahoma, said she has already been receiving networking calls from students all over the country.

The firm remains a prolific recruiter of Associate-level candidates with roughly two years of experience in investment banking or related fields (although it has declined to participate in on-cycle recruiting in recent years, instead running its own process months later).

While Webb works in real estate, where the traditional career path of two years in investment banking before joining a buy-side firm isn’t as essential as in private equity or credit, she still interviewed for investment banking roles as well.

Her choice, Webb said, came down to culture. She didn’t want to work somewhere where many of her peers would spend two years and leave, Webb said.

“Whereas here, specifically at Blackstone, people tend to stay,” Webb said.

A firm spokesperson said that over a third of its real estate managing directors and senior managing directors started as analysts.