After 23 years working for Jeff Bezos, the CEO of a $1.3 billion skills platform shares lessons he learned from Andy Jassy and the Amazon founder

Many of the changes Hart brought to Coursera-and its more than 1,000 employees-will be familiar to Amazon alumni. Hart said that Bezos’ practice of interviewing every employee in the early days set the tone as Amazon grew, explaining, “He wanted to make sure that the passion, customer focus, the high standards, and the move fast traits that the early set of employees had stayed true as the company grew in scale.” So it made “perfect sense” when Bezos penned his now-famous letter to shareholders outlining the leadership principles and priorities of the business, because they “reflected” the day-to-day conversations in the office. Hart wanted to embed a similar mindset at Coursera, he said: “I wanted to really transform the company and make it move at a faster rate and do a better job of serving our learners. I felt that one of the most critical things in doing that was ensuring there was really good cultural alignment, and so we introduced a set of leadership mindsets. We looked at some of the most successful companies in the world, we looked at either their values or their principles ... and we created our own that we felt were very specific to both our business and our history as a company.” That speed became critical as the AI boom transformed the skillset businesses wanted, with employees and job seekers racing to keep up. The platform is now home to more than 12,000 courses, 1,100 of which are based on generative AI-a 44% increase year-over-year. GenAI is significantly the most popular topic on the platform, both from individual learners and from employees with a subscription paid for by their employer. The CEO was also keen to do away with unfocused company all-hands, and instead dusted off the Amazon playbook of focusing each of the meetings on a single leadership principle: “One of the things that I’ve just recognized over my time leading different businesses in different industries is no matter how clear something is in your mind, or your leadership team’s mind, you cannot repeat it frequently enough to the rest of the organization. They might not be paying attention, they may not understand it, they might have been in a customer meeting at that time, whatever, they might have missed it. “Every month, one of my direct reports sends out an email with a video that talks about just one of our leadership mindsets. Every all-hands, we do the same thing. We’ll pick one, and have examples that speak to it, because it helps make it real for people and helps people have better context around it.” How Hart uses AI at work A key focus for every CEO at present is how they can leverage AI at work, either within their business or in their own personal use. KPMG’s 2025 U.S. CEO Outlook found 74% of leaders said investing in AI was a top priority despite economic uncertainty, with 79% saying they were confident they were ahead of the curve on...

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