Key Takeaways

1. Aesthetic intelligence is a skill set, not a sensibility. Pauline's core argument isn't that some people are born with taste — it's that the capacity to perceive, interpret, and apply sensory experience to business decisions can be taught. The reason it isn't taught is that business schools optimized so hard for quantitative rigor that they actively crowded it out.

2. The tension between art and commerce shouldn't be resolved — it should be managed. She's not arguing for creativity over analysis. She's arguing that the best leaders hold both in productive tension. If either side wins completely, the business dies — one from irrelevance, one from inefficiency. The CEO's job is to be the translator between the two.

3. Luxury is being hollowed out by the very growth it chased. The three original pillars — hard to make, hard to find, built to last — are being eroded by massification, commoditization, and scale. The brands that survive will be the ones that held discipline (Hermès, Chanel). The ones that chased the Chinese market without restraint are quietly becoming irrelevant.

4. The human advantage AI can't replicate is aesthetic. She frames aesthetic intelligence as "the other AI" — not in competition with artificial intelligence but as its complement. Empathy, emotional resonance, envisioning possibilities that aren't rooted in past patterns — these are specifically what machine learning can't do, and will remain the competitive moat for businesses and people alike.

5. The next generation of business leaders is arriving with a fundamentally different orientation. Between 2016 and 2023, she saw a marked shift in her students — more humble, more curious, less credentialist. The executives who were trained in the old data-first paradigm are still in the senior seats, but the cohort coming up behind them is already wired differently. The shift is coming, just on a generational clock.

Brian Gold

Welcome Pauline.

Pauline Brown:

Thank you. Thank you, Brian. Great to be here.

Brian Gold

I am delighted to have you. You are really, if I may call you, one of the few strategists that I know that is able to bridge business, creative strategy, and brand in such a refreshingly holistic way. And that's what we're all about as well. Where am I finding you today?

Pauline Brown

So I live in New York. You are staring at me with a window in the background that is showing we're about to have a downpour. Hopefully that won't interfere with my wifi or with our sound quality. But other than that, I'm in sunny, muggy New York this summer — this is where I live.

Brian Gold

Oh, wonderful, wonderful. So, you know, you've had an incredible career in fashion, cosmetics, luxury goods. You were the head of strategy at Estée Lauder, a partner at the Carlisle Group, and the former head of LVMH North America. But before we dive in, who is Pauline today? What is she thinking about? Who is she about today?

Pauline Brown

Well, she's not that different than who she might have been well before that resume took hold. She's a free spirit, likes to follow her nose, very curious about the world, a survivor in multiple ways. I'm first generation American. All four of my grandparents were refugees in World War II — they had fled Nazi Germany. And so I grew up in this household where, while my parents had met in New York, they were very much of an immigrant mentality. Number one, we didn't take anything for granted. We knew forces could change very quickly, as they had for my family. Number two, the best we could do was invest in our minds and in our skills, and that would give us agency. That's very much how my grandparents and my parents were able to pave their way and reinvent themselves after a lot of trauma. And for all that, which sounds like a very heavy history, I'm incredibly optimistic. I feel like it's just a great time to be alive, a great time to be observing the world around us and seeing all the possibilities.

Brian Gold

Can you tell me a little bit about how you grew up? You went to Dartmouth, you studied at Wharton and got your MBA. It seems like you were an academic, a diligent student and hard worker. Can you tell me a little bit about that prehistory?

Pauline Brown

Yeah, well, yes — a hard worker. My ex-husband was a PhD guy, he loved to be in school. My son will probably ultimately get his PhD in politics or international affairs or history. They're natural learners. I'm a pragmatist. But I do work hard. And I do value education, not so much as a pursuit that's interesting to me in isolation, but I feel like through learning, I'm able to make sense of the world.

When I went to Dartmouth, I had no vision of what my career might look like or what path to pursue. My mother was an at-home mom. She raised four kids and was very happy to do so. She was a very, very bright woman, very well-read, but didn't have any interest in working. With the exception of financial security, the idea that you could actually get enjoyment in a career was very foreign to her. And so I really didn't have models. I also feel like I was coming of age at a time where there were so few career women. There were women who were working — whether they were teachers or even doctors — but there weren't really women in the business world who were reaching the highest levels. And if they were, they weren't really women I identified with. I wanted children, I liked fashion, I had a strong feminist and feminine pull. So when I went to school, I think the only conviction I had was that I was going to have to figure it out, but there were no answers that were readily available to me.

I took a couple of years off, as everyone does, before they go to business school. And I would say even when I went to business school, I didn't envision the way my career would come together. I just knew that it would open opportunities and that I had a lot more to learn. Even today I teach, as you mentioned earlier, but I teach for reasons other than a simple love of intellectual discourse. I teach because I think it helps me make sense of the world outside of the classroom.

Brian Gold

You also had such a great career in luxury, cosmetics, and fashion, and you seem to have this balance between business and creativity — a holistic way of understanding the world. You're well known for this concept of aesthetic intelligence. Can you tell me a little bit about how you developed that concept, what had spurred it — what was the moment in the boardroom, something you weren't seeing in the business world, that made you want to manifest this framework?

Pauline Brown

I think even when I was at Wharton for business school, I instinctively knew that there was something missing in what was being taught. Wharton is among business schools on the extreme side of the spectrum in terms of quantitative analysis and data-driven decision-making. What I felt was missing is this idea that there's a part of business — whatever business — that's art and that's judgment. Judgment around human behavior, judgment around possibilities that can't be measured sometimes until after the fact, vision and imagination and all of that. Most of my classmates didn't come in with a well-developed skill in those areas, and the coursework doubled down on what they were already good at, while I was needing to get better at understanding financial markets and accounting — what they called hard skills. But in the process, it forced me to park so much of who I am and what I enjoy and what I fundamentally believe drives a lot of business.

It was only years after Wharton, when I landed at Estée Lauder, that I realized a company like that could never be built out of the kind of deck I was creating as a consultant at Bain. A company like that was really built out of a very profound understanding of aspirational values and of how to delight customers who could get the same functionality much cheaper — but were being given something that felt like real value in the form of prestige cosmetics. So that started me on the path of understanding there was more to business than I was trained for.

I spent about a decade at Estée Lauder and while I was there, I drove all of their M&A activities. I was always struck that these businesses — in some cases founded by hairdressers or makeup artists — had a big idea, a lot of passion, natural salespeople, good taste, and they created businesses that made them far wealthier than I'll ever be. And that wasn't coming from training at Wharton Business School. So over many years I started to deconstruct what made these people so special and so gifted. What was the difference between them and their ability to sell their companies for sometimes a few hundred million, versus all the other entrepreneurs in the market selling very similar products, who never found a buyer, who never went anywhere?

I realized they had a bunch of things. I used this concept of aesthetic intelligence as a catchall. It consists of a lot of sub-intelligences — probably seven or eight different forms that expressed themselves through their entrepreneurial productions. When I started teaching post-LVMH, I was just teaching a course called The Business of Aesthetics, built around case studies of companies that had broken through on the backs of these really differentiated strategies. But what I realized at the end of my first semester is that the students weren't necessarily more skilled at delivering on it. I needed to do more than just teach the theory. I needed to think about what equips a leader or founder. That was where I came up with this idea of aesthetic intelligence — a skill set that isn't taught, but that is very powerful when people like Steve Jobs or Howard Schultz or Walt Disney have it. And it can be taught.

Brian Gold

Right. You know, I want to hit on a couple of things there. There does seem to be a continuing gap between the business school of thought and the art world. You have this lovely story in your book about when you were meeting with Fred Langhammer, at the time the chief operating officer of Estée Lauder, and you basically had brought your Bain consulting toolkit to him — and he basically told you that what you weren't interested in is clinically describing the historical performance of businesses. Data can only look at the past. Financial modeling can only forecast so much. Do you think that gap between the consulting strategy school of thought and the creative agencies will ever be resolved? Or is it mostly going to be up to independents like us to fill that void?

Pauline Brown

I think in the most successful companies, it doesn't get resolved — it gets managed at the leadership level. The skill set is going to be different. What I look for in a creative agency is going to be very different than what I look for in a strategic planning group. But if I'm at the top, I need to understand both ways of thinking. I need to balance the recommendations and pressure test them. People always ask how you reconcile the tension between art and commerce. Inevitably, there is tension. And I say, if there's no tension, you have a problem. Because if you're so commercially driven that you've lost all inspiration, you'll go out of business — there's too much competition to just be the lowest cost manufacturer. Eventually there'll be someone lower. If you've invested so much in the art of what you're selling that you don't pay attention to the fundamentals, you'll also go out of business.

So the ideal is that the two have to come together. And I would say what I'm teaching is not a replacement — for example, AI, which is why I call aesthetic intelligence the other AI, it's a complement. It's the responsibility of a good CEO to recognize the power in both and to manage the conflict so that at any given time, one is not prevailing over the other. In my opinion though, we've gone as a society, as a business society, so far toward the analytical and data-driven that we've lost our sense of meaning in companies. We've lost our sense of beauty, and we've lost our sense that we should actually provide anything other than functionality for customers. It's a very dangerous way of thinking, because customers really don't need better functionality. What they need is something much richer and more emotionally resonant.

Brian Gold

Amen. I had come across your work because, looking at the landscape of business, it did tend to over-rationalize — data became almost a new religion in its own way. And what I realized is that taste and aesthetic is going to be one of those last things that can actually be a competitive advantage while technology, business, media, and even design gets more commoditized. So how do you define aesthetic intelligence as a concept, and where does it fit in the broader landscape?

Pauline Brown

I always start with the language, with the words. The word aesthetics often gets simplified as meaning "beautiful." It's not, actually. It comes from the Greek word aestheticos, which is about perception of the senses. It's related, for example, to another word we use commonly — anesthesiologist. The role of an anesthesiologist is to numb our senses so we don't feel pain. The role of an esthetist is to bring your senses forward so you feel pleasure more powerfully and more sharply. So aesthetics is really about how different objects or experiences make each of us feel — through their visual design, but also through the way they feel tactically, meaning tactile. Brands, good brand voices have a rhythm to them, much like a good song does. A beautifully designed line of clothing isn't just how it looks on the website — it's how it feels on the body.

And that's how we go through life. We might spend more hours with our digital interfaces than ever before, but we still live in our bodies. We have learned out of necessity how to block a lot of our sensations — living in a big city as I do in New York, I don't want to hear and see and smell everything around me 24/7 — but to live fully, we need to get back in our bodies. We need to know how to tap into how things feel, and stop making decisions purely out of linear logical reasoning. The power of that is not just that you can live more joyfully — it's that you have the empathy as a business person to create products or work environments that bring delight to other people. And that, to me, is a winning strategy.

Brian Gold

Right. I think there was a study done showing that if there were an index of design-led or aesthetically-led companies over the past 20 years, they've basically outperformed the S&P 500. So it's even manifesting in markets, and as things become even more intangible, it becomes more and more important.

Pauline Brown

And I think where that's going — because often when we think of design or design thinking, it's around designing a product, a campaign, a store. But we don't think enough about designing an experience, a human experience. And often when we do talk about human-centered design, it's about doing things seamlessly — about getting rid of friction. We don't talk about how you can make it delightful in its design. A company that has historically done this really well is Disney. If you think of the Disney parks — the fact that I can be with young children on a 40-minute line with lots of crying babies around me, a hot Orlando sun, and still have a smile on my face — they have designed it for delight really well. And I'll go back and I'll pay a lot of money to be on that line again next year.

Brian Gold

Yeah, just the scale of the world-building and consideration at every single interaction and touch point is something I think a lot of brands have also taken heed on. In terms of this framework manifesting — you've been teaching at Harvard and Columbia Business School, and you also have a workshop that teaches this framework. What has your experience been like teaching this in the USA? Where are some of the challenges and roadblocks you're facing with students in particular, or even executives at these companies?

Pauline Brown

Yeah. It's a hard thing to teach in that it's very personal. And particularly in business environments, which are often very impersonal cultures. The first step to understanding the principles well and applying them to your brand or strategy is to understand it for yourself. You cannot separate out somebody who has good taste in how they live their life from someone who has good taste in how they lead a team to create a new collection or whatever the task is. So the first step is always to try to close that gap and infuse a bit more personal insight into the class.

I knew I was onto something when I started about seven years ago, in 2016. I assumed when I offered the course that I would get the classic marketing major who wants to work in the beauty industry. I didn't remotely expect that I'd get students from the military, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, engineering — I had a much bigger mix, both from a career and training perspective. So that told me the concept I was offering was touching a nerve among a broad sector of the business class.

I think I've gotten better with each passing semester at translating, because some of what I teach became very intuitive to me after 30 years of working in and around businesses that do this day in and day out. I always forgot the transition I had to go through — like when I first got to Estée Lauder and tried to pull out my Bain toolkit, and my then-boss slammed the deck down and said "this is useless." My students are only with me for a few short months. So I've gotten better at deconstructing the principles to something relatable. I have many students who stay in touch with me, and now years after they've graduated, they appreciate the dialogue we had far more than when we were in the classroom, because the application of it is where the value is found and experienced.

Brian Gold

Tell me about LVMH — working there, what you did. But I'm also curious: as an organization with so many, like 70-plus brands in this kind of luxury house, is it as embodied and intuitive within that organization? It seems like the operating system there would be — they're living it, right? And they might be one of the best to do it.

Pauline Brown

For sure. One of the reasons it works so well — and there is no comparable, and I don't think there ever could be one coming out of a non-French or Italian market — is that the people at the top live it, whether they work in the finance function or in supply chain. Those cultures are so embedded in their aesthetic appreciation and the richness of their stories and their heritages and cultural values, that the vast majority of people come into the company already starting with an orientation that's very hard to teach as an adult. I could not take a few tens of thousands of people working at the likes of Google and get them to create something that remotely looked like an LVMH portfolio. It's such a different wiring and philosophy toward business and value creation.

When I worked for American companies like Estée Lauder, you had that kind of mindset, but typically only in the creative functions — product development, merchandising displays, naming products. If I talked to somebody in finance or legal, they would have come from more traditional worlds and were not as sophisticated as their comparables at an LVMH because of the cultural backdrop. Which is not to say that LVMH and its European competitors do everything well. It can be very challenging for an American to work at these European houses. Americans are very direct. When it comes to business, we're very unromantic. We've written the rules on industrial development. We're good at invention, but invention in the form of technology — not product design. I wouldn't say Americans are best in class on that, certainly not in soft goods.

I felt a big part of my job as an American was to be a translator — translator to the Europeans about why certain things that worked so well in their home market were not resonating with American consumers, and translator to the American organization about what the Europeans were trying to convey and why they were doing things the way they were. And if I hadn't come from a European home and studied in Europe on two different occasions, I wouldn't have been well equipped to carry out that function.

Brian Gold

Right, there are these little nuances and idiosyncrasies that you have to tune into in order to function within that organization. Using LVMH as a kind of backdrop — I loved your perspective on how luxury came to be and then how it's evolving today. Can you talk a little bit about that historical arc, obviously from Europe and the Ateliers, and also now through globalization and what we're seeing in Asia, China, and beyond.

Pauline Brown

Yeah, so historically luxury came down to three basic tenets. Products that are hard to find, hard to make, and last forever. If you go back to a Cartier necklace, it's hard to make because in these ateliers, many of the jewelers apprentice for a few decades before they'll make a piece beginning to end. Hard to find — not just because historically you'd have a few shops in Paris and other world centers, but you'd have to work harder to get there. You'd travel, or if you were a woman of means living in Houston, you'd come to New York twice a year for your big shopping sprees. It was also hard to find because maybe the products that went into it had more scarcity value. The reason diamonds are so expensive is because of their rarity. It's not simply their physical beauty. There are many gemstones that could be as beautiful, but they're not as rare and therefore not as expensive. And last forever — there was a sense of permanence. If you go to the Costume Institute in New York, you'll see clothing built in maybe the 18th century, still intact.

Most things today that call themselves luxury really don't fit those three definitions. Most clothes made today, especially with any amount of polyester blend, are not going to last. In 200 years they'll be long disintegrated. In terms of scarcity value — there are so many stores and so many markets. Just a few years ago, 90% of Chinese consumption of luxury goods happened outside of China. Some of that changed because of COVID, some because of e-commerce, but also because a lot of malls opened that didn't exist outside of Beijing and Shanghai. It's been a boon for luxury companies economically, but except for the best houses, it's also really diluted their ability to stay relevant and viable for the long term. If you're a first-tier luxury brand — a Dior, a Chanel, a Hermès — you're fine. In fact, you're more valuable than ever because of the discipline you've held onto. But if you're a third-tier luxury brand that still has a rich history but isn't snapped up by one of the big conglomerates, you might not be around much longer.

Brian Gold

Yeah, my sense is that for the first time this year in the Chinese market, China watched more movies coming out of China than from the US. So although there has been this massification of luxury that the fashion houses have benefited from, we're seeing China evolve and become a more sophisticated luxury consumer far faster than we even predicted.

Pauline Brown

Yeah. The one thing that's always going to be a limitation — and this is true for America as well as China — is you can't make up history. So I can create a great movie. If I have artistic talent, I can do it out of Nigeria, out of India, because that's about where my imagination can go and the cost of equipment isn't a barrier. But when I'm talking about what a lot of these luxury houses are really selling — it's not just beautiful product. They're selling a connection to a cultural past. That's going to give continental Europe, and to a lesser extent England, an advantage that some countries can start to tap into. China certainly has a very rich history if you go back to the pre-Maoist years, and there's a lot of artisanship — but it was destroyed. None of it's left. So the best you can do is recreate it. And I think the absence of that cultural heritage is what gives a lot of Chinese consumers that extra yearning to connect with brands that offer it.

Brian Gold

You mentioned in the past that you have a love-hate relationship with luxury. Can you explain a little bit about what you mean?

Pauline Brown

Yeah. What I love about it — what I took great pride in while I was at Estée Lauder, and even more so at LVMH because it's so much more diversified — is the amount of artistry that goes into many of those brands and many of those products. Surrounding myself with just such sheer glorious beauty was a real treat. It's why people work there willing to often forego the money they would make with the same talent at a Goldman Sachs, because there's value in just being in an environment that makes you feel enriched and excited and inspired. I also loved the storytelling. Really good brands are doing much more than selling product. They're telling stories that make other people dream — much like what we see in Hollywood. Coco Chanel was a character. Louis Vuitton is a character. And just like the movies, how those stories are being told is very different — less literal, no script, but still an immersive environment with a certain art to it.

The part that I really loathe about luxury — number one, I think almost all the brands have gotten really greedy in their pricing. When I look at a brand like Louis Vuitton, the cost of goods on something like the monogrammed Neverfull bag — it's actually treated canvas, not leather, which is why it's so durable — and on a product like that, the cost of goods is closer to 10% than the 30% we might see in ready-to-wear. So what you're buying is not what's coming home with you.

I think there has to be a balance, and there comes a point where it's just not fair pricing. A really discriminating customer who knows — and some people naturally have it — they can touch a fabric and feel the quality difference between not just cashmere and wool, but maybe a really extra fine cashmere and a more rudimentary one. But most of us are not trained to understand the difference, and that's where the exploitation comes in.

I also think there are a lot of luxury brands who are playing what I call the luxury game. They're opening a store on Rodeo Drive or Madison Avenue, advertising in Vogue or Robb Report — telling stories that would suggest a deep history, but they're fake. The actual quality of what they make is not good. The history behind them is very shallow. They're basically playing the game without the integrity. That part of the luxury industry I find objectionable, because there's a real transfer of wealth among people who don't know to ask the questions, to tell the difference between those that really hold their value and those that don't.

Brian Gold

Right. If you could change anything about the industry right now, what are the few things that you would do?

Pauline Brown

I would like it to be less consolidated than it is, because there's so much creativity, but it's become prohibitively expensive — to go into an A-tier mall, to train people at the level required. That drive for scale, which is what's essentially spurred the acquisitions and the consolidation, has diluted the breadth of brands. There are some old houses that have not been snapped up and therefore you'll never hear about them. That to me is a shame. It's a little bit like a species that dies out because nobody thought to preserve it.

The other thing that's worth watching in the industry is that a lot of the craftsmen who have created these great products — the ones that take a long time and very special skills to make — are dying off. Their kids and grandkids don't want to be leather workers or watchmakers. There's a societal push to have everyone hypereducated, everyone vying for the same small pool of schools that will give them a credential, whether or not they're suited to it. The son of the cobbler says, "With my capabilities, I'm so much better off going into banking." And sometimes that's an extreme case and I don't hold it against people. But in the process, a lot of people have forfeited what they would love doing. And I think if the industry shared its riches throughout the organization a little more generously, it would get the best and brightest not just at the senior management roles, but at the maker roles as well.

Brian Gold

Yeah. I'd like to revisit your career a little bit. You worked at Bain & Company, the Carlyle Group — investment firms and consulting firms. What were some key lessons and takeaways from that world?

Pauline Brown

Well, from Bain, I think I saw the value of surrounding yourself with really smart, ambitious people. I've always felt I don't need a lot of people working with or for me — a few good people can move mountains. Because they're in the business of hiring and training the best, it was just so uniformly smart and gifted and hardworking. That was something very exciting, even though I actually didn't care for the work much.

Carlyle is incredibly disciplined when it comes to the art and science of making money. They have really mastered wealth creation — above and beyond what I cared about, which is why I'm not there now. I left wanting a much more creative environment. I don't care enough about wealth creation to say it would be my only measure. But given the people who are there, and how clear they are that wealth creation is the measure, they do it very, very well. They're very disciplined in their ability to make money, not just for themselves, but for their investors and management teams.

I certainly saw the power of focus. They are very focused on a certain type of thinking and operating. But from my industry experience — primarily Estée Lauder and LVMH — I really saw the power of creativity, which I think is also under-invested. At the end of the day, the businesses that last don't last because of great patents, which eventually terminate. Companies built on great ideas that give people the ability to defend and continue to evolve them — that engine will never go out of style. It speaks to such a fundamental human need on the consumer side. And because there are fewer and fewer companies that do it well, the ones that are — the Apples, the Teslas, the LVMHs — they get disproportionately rewarded for it.

Brian Gold

Yeah, it almost accelerates the winner-takes-all dynamics in this world. And I ask because it seems like even both worlds are being affected by the media landscape today — this massification, brandification of everything, and even the fragmentation of content has disrupted both the business and the creative world. Where do you see things headed right now? In luxury, how is the game adapting? And in this race to the bottom and the race to the top, there does seem to be a decentering of what is valuable — like who are the new taste makers? It seems more confusing than ever. What is your sense of how businesses or leaders are adapting to this new landscape?

Pauline Brown

Well, I think the trap is to follow this old mindset where scale and share are the ultimate goal. And in the end, if you try to appeal to everybody, you appeal to nobody, at least not sufficiently. I always say, first of all, if you can shut off the noise, know what you stand for, and say, "If I can just do this well for 5% of the population — a population I understand and am obsessively focused on" — you'll do fine. It's a big world. Even 0.5% will give you a good, viable business opportunity. But because everyone is looking at the macro and diluting themselves across so many different initiatives and audiences, trying to keep up with a pace that's humanly impossible, they are driving themselves into extinction.

A lot of what makes us human hasn't changed that much. If I'm in a food and beverage business and I can deliver really good tasting food to people who enjoy what I have to offer, they'll keep coming back. But the minute I say, "Now I want to be Kellogg" — and I think that worked for Kellogg 100 years ago when it started with one box of cereal, it just wouldn't work for Kellogg today.

I have a lot of people who look at elements of my career and want to replicate what I did to secure different roles. I would say if I did the exact same thing today, it wouldn't have worked out the same. The world has changed. The trick and challenge for any entrepreneur or business executive is to remember why they're in business in the first place, to double down on what they do supremely well. If they do nothing supremely well, then question what could or should they do — or decide to just call it a day. And not try to chase growth at all costs. It's a really suicidal path.

Brian Gold

Right. I think we often forget, even as people, or brands and companies, that things work at different scales. Well, you also have this concept of attunement — this ability to attune to your surroundings. What are you feeling these days? What are you paying attention to? Not the business stuff, not the rationality stuff, not even the media stuff — what are you feeling, Pauline?

Pauline Brown

So in general, I say it's just a great time to be alive. There are certainly challenges — I wouldn't want to be a refugee trying to cross the Mediterranean, or near the wildfires of Canada. Things are happening quicker and a bit more extreme. There are less moderating effects. But there's also the ability to find solutions — I'm a technology lover, not because I'm an early adopter, but because the solutions we're capable of creating are open to allow more possibilities than ever.

But what am I feeling? I think the vast majority of people are overwhelmed, confused, fearful because of the uncertainty. And I think it's going to take a generation for us to completely heal from the PTSD of COVID, which is not being talked about enough. And I mean not simply the loss of lives — that was terrible for anyone who suffered a loss. But the idea that our world as we know it could shut down so quickly and so dramatically. The fact that all of those little behaviors changed overnight — well-stocked shelves in the grocery store, a safe haven in a classroom for our kids — for every person on the globe who was affected. I think inside we still don't feel our new normal. Here I am in New York going out to eat many nights, nobody's wearing masks, everyone has a smile on their face. But I think inside we still don't feel settled.

Going back to what I'm feeling — I'm feeling that this decade and the next two decades is going to favor the brave. People who are afraid of change and who aren't in touch with mechanisms for working through their fears and concerns are going to be crippled. And people who have a fighting spirit, who are resilient, who are imaginative — those people are going to be greatly advantaged. And going back to technology, while many people are fearful of AI, and there are reasons to be fearful of artificial intelligence, I think it could also be a huge unlock for those that know how to embrace it and don't treat the inevitable changes with dread, but with enthusiasm.

Brian Gold

Right. Yeah, I always say that AI can really help lift the weight of the old world. It can solve everything from aging to a lot of the crises we're facing today.

Pauline Brown

Yeah, but it won't come close to competing with us on what I continue to call the human advantage — our aesthetic genius, our ability to empathize, envision possibilities that are not based on past patterns, and our understanding of emotional resonance and how to tap into it.

Brian Gold

Absolutely. My worry is that we're getting more and more disconnected from that, especially in the business world. Are you seeing trends favoring reconnection? We can all feel that we need it. But in terms of how executives make decisions — is it becoming more of a growing trend among your peers and what you're seeing out there?

Pauline Brown

Yeah, yes — but I think that might be a generational effect. Many of the executives in senior positions were trained in a different time. I don't see it among my business students. I feel like the next generation coming up the ranks will bring a very different mindset to the role.

I see a big difference even between my first year of teaching in 2016 versus my latest class in 2023. They are so much more open, so much more curious, and a lot more humble. Back in 2016, I think having your top MBA ticket felt like you'd already won the race — you just had to play a part and see it through. I don't think students today take for granted that just being in the business class and eventually getting that credential is going to see them through. And that's a healthy assumption.

Brian Gold

Yeah. Even the weight of these institutions and the credentialization of the world — it's not necessarily falling apart, it's always going to be with us, but it's certainly evolving. There are new ways to quantify and qualify people. Well, Pauline, I think this is just as great a place as any to wrap up. Where can people find you? I know you teach a course — can you tell me a little bit about that?

Pauline Brown: Sure, well, thank you, Brian. It's really a pleasure, and I so loved the authenticity of this conversation. It really did feel like a conversation, not an interview. So I do teach a course — it's an offshoot of what I teach at Columbia now. It's out of a firm called Aesthetic Intelligence Labs. We're doing our final public cohort running from October through early December. We've historically had two tracks: one is open to the general public — anyone who wants to sign up for the course and be in a cohort which runs for eight weeks. And the second is we work with corporations who are interested in using our methodology to work on their own strategic challenges.

The corporate, B2B side of our business has grown much faster and is taking up a lot of our bandwidth. So we've decided to offer one final public cohort in the fall. If anyone is interested, they can sign up as early as now through https://aestheticintelligence.com/. And if anyone's interested in talking with me or my team about corporate or custom projects, there's a contact section with an email — they're welcome to reach out. We love to hear from people, even just to share their reaction to what they heard today. No agenda required.

Brian Gold: Great. Well, thank you again so much for your time. It was really a pleasure.

Pauline Brown: Thank you, Brian.