Suzy Welch was lost after her husband, former GE CEO Jack Welch, died. Then came her class on finding purpose

But let’s back up. An accomplished journalist and former management consultant, Welch was editor-in-chief of the Harvard Business Review in 2001 when she went to interview Jack Welch, undoubtedly the world’s most famous CEO at the time, who was just retiring from General Electric. Bottom line, the interview took an unexpected turn, and they fell in love. She didn’t mention that to the Harvard Business Review and got fired. They got married—what Suzy has called “the rightest thing I’ve ever done”—and spent 16 productive years together, writing magazine columns (including some for Coins2Day) and best-selling books.

And then, just before COVID reached the U.S. In 2020, Jack died. “I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life,” she says. “I had no way to conceptualize myself as separate from Jack.” After two years of walking the dogs and muddling, “I felt like there was something else for me, and I had been fiddling in my mind for years with this methodology to help you figure out your purpose.”

A friend was teaching as an adjunct at Stern, and Welch thought that was maybe something she could try, too. So in the fall of 2022, she marched into her first class—and looked out onto 20 students. She and the dean of New York University’s Stern School of Business had agreed that the new course, which Welch had created and intriguingly named “Becoming You,” should be offered to two sections of no more than 40 students each—one section for full-time MBA students and one for part-time students. Neither section had reached its modest limit. She recalls, “I went to that classroom saying to myself, ‘What made you think you could do this?’”

One week later, the full-time section alone had a wait list of 150 students, all from word of mouth.

From then until now, “Becoming You” has been a phenomenon. An administrator recalls, “People were breaking down the door trying to get into the course. I cannot tell you the impact.” Welch will teach the course again this fall, now offered to undergraduates, full-time and part-time MBA candidates, and all other post-graduate students, with one mega-section of 150. It will almost certainly be much over-subscribed.

Welch has tapped into a widespread modern-day yearning: to find one’s purpose in life. For most of history, earning a living and supporting a family was purpose enough. Now millions can afford to wonder why they’re here and what they truly value—and whether their job, where they spend most of their waking hours, aligns with their purpose. Welch, through rigorously developed academic instruments, guides them to the answers, which are often uncomfortable. As NYU discovered, her students of all ages overwhelmingly value the experience. For them and legions of followers, she has become the purpose doctor.

It’s a fascinating story—both about Welch’s journey and the journey she takes her students on. You can read the full story here.

Geoff Colvin
[email protected]

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PARTING WORDS

“Placing my own stamp on this is going to be the most important part of this being a success. There has to be a noticeable shift that makes this mine.”

—Chloe Malle, who will succeed Anna Wintour in leading editorial at Vogue U.S.