Positive Leadership
Positive Leadership has the power to change the world. By focusing on trust, empathy, authenticity and deep collaboration, leaders can energize their teams to achieve success for individuals, their organizations, and society as a whole. Yet, it remains relatively unknown outside positive psychology and neuroscience circles.
Join Jean-Philippe Courtois, former member of the Microsoft senior leadership team alongside Satya Nadella and co-founder of Live for Good, as he brings Positive Leadership to life for anyone in a leadership capacity—both personally and professionally. With help from his guests, Jean-Philippe explores how purpose-driven leaders can generate the positive energy needed to drive business success, individual fulfillment, and societal impact across a range of industries—from technology and social enterprise to sports and coffee.
Most importantly, you’ll learn practical tips to apply in your own life—so you can start making a positive difference in the world.
Positive Leadership
Rebuilding Trust in Technology with Mozilla CTO Raffi Krikorian
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What happens when one of Silicon Valley's most accomplished engineers decides the system he helped build is broken—and walks away to fix it?
Today my guest is Raffi Krikorian, CTO of Mozilla and one of the most civic-minded technologists I know. We explore why the fight for open-source AI isn't just a technical debate; it is really a fight for who controls our relationship with knowledge itself.
Raffi's career path is uniquely fascinating. He spent his early years scaling massive engineering teams at Twitter and launching Uber’s first self-driving fleet. But then he did something rare. He pivoted to public service, becoming the first-ever CTO of the Democratic National Committee to rebuild their cybersecurity from the ground up. He then went on to drive social-impact technology at Emerson Collective, applying his engineering mind to systemic issues like immigration and climate change.
At Mozilla, he is now on the frontlines of the AI revolution. We talk about what it means to be "technically optimistic" right now—which also happens to be the name of his excellent podcast. For Raffi, optimism isn't about blind faith in algorithms. It’s about demanding that our tools are trustworthy, transparent, and built to serve humanity, rather than exploiting it.
In our conversation, we explore:
→ The Twitter crash that taught him his job was not to be the architect, but to create the conditions for others to do their best work
→ Why he left Uber's self-driving program after discovering their models misclassified people based on skin color
→ How a week of Google Sheets transformed an asylum-seeker nonprofit more than any AI chatbot could
→ His conviction that we need seven billion AGIs—one for each of us—not seven controlled by massive corporations
→ Why patience, not speed, is the leadership skill that actually builds movements
"We have outsourced dreaming to a few people who are building companies and we all need to dream again." — Raffi Krikorian, CTO, Mozilla
If you have ever wondered whether the technology on your phone is truly working for you—or for someone else—this conversation will completely change how you think about what comes next.
🔑 Key Themes: Open-Source AI, Responsible Technology, Purpose-Driven Leadership, Digital Trust, Civic Tech, Cybersecurity, Technical Optimism.
🎧 Related Episodes:
- Kevin Scott — Empowering people with AI:
- Navrina Singh — Building Trust in AI: Leadership, Governance, and Human Values
- Rana el Kaliouby — Human-Centric AI (purpose meets profit in technology)
🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, jpcourtois.com
Subscribe now to JP's free monthly newsletter "Positive Leadership and You" on LinkedIn to transform your positive impact today: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/positive-leadership-you-6970390170017669121/