In today’s edition: Kamala Harris’s California decision, another Ivy’s deal with Trump, and Fortune‘s Lila MacLellan on the first leadership lesson Accenture’s Julie Sweet ever learned.
– Ready to win. When Julie Sweet, CEO of Accenture, was a 15-year-old girl growing up in Tustin, Calif., she would often enter local debate tournaments and speech contests in the hope of winning cash prizes. She grew up in a working-class household, she explained recently, and at a Lions Club tournament, “you could earn, like, $500.”
Sweet’s father would drive her to the events in his beat-up VW bug, wearing the one sports coat he owned, and Sweet would regularly win at the podium—but not every time. One evening, she made it to the semifinals of a competition but lost to the daughter of the club’s president. On the way home, she recalled, “I was kind of complaining in the car to my dad, ‘Oh, she was so cutesy, and she was the daughter of the president.’
