Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
4 Shout-Outs: Jensen Huang, Tim Cook, Haley Jones, & Geoffrey Cockrell 6-3-25
Tue, 03 Jun 2025
In this episode, Scott Becker highlights the leadership and resilience of standout leaders in business and healthcare.
Chapter 1: Who are the leaders being honored in this episode?
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Today's discussion is going to be four shout outs to four different business leaders from four different places. You're going to get Jensen Wang. You're going to get Tim Cook. You're also going to get Jeff Cockrell. And you're going to get Haley Jones. So we'll call this four shout outs of the day. Haley Jones, Tim Cook.
Chapter 2: How are Tim Cook and Jensen Wang navigating political challenges?
Jensen Wang, and Jeff Cockrell. So I'll take these in no particular order. The first shout outs I'll give to Tim Cook and Jensen Wang. Each of them, I think, are doing about as good as they can in trying to manage the very complicated political situation and dynamic situation we're in. Now, this is not a knock on President Trump.
Chapter 3: What is the importance of trade policy in today's business?
I'm a big believer that we needed a reset in some of our trade policy. Yes, I believe we should be running at deficits in total, but I'm also a huge believer that other countries should not put tariffs on us that are higher than we're putting on them. I don't care about all the different literature and thoughts about why that's a good idea.
I just think if they have a 30% tariff on us and we're buying more from them, screw them, and we needed a reset of trade policy, so I'm on board with that. Bear with me on that. But what I do give credit to is Jensen Wang and Tim Cook are right in the middle of this because their companies do a lot of business with China.
Chapter 4: Why is Jensen Wang considered a strong leader?
In fact, a great book on Apple in China written recently, it's been recommended to me. I've got to read it. Also, Jensen Wang, a Taiwanese-born American immigrant and as good a leader as they come with that beautiful drive of an immigrant. I read the bio on him. I love almost everything that Jensen Wang does. And he's trying to fight these curbs on sales of chips to China. Now, here's the deal.
Chapter 5: What are the challenges of relying on China for manufacturing?
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with President Trump that we have to be very careful what chips we sell to China. I'm also in agreement with President Trump that we've got to be careful in how much we buy into all of our manufacturing to China versus spreading that out to India and some other countries so we're not so reliant on one other country that it sometimes feels like an enemy.
So I give Jensen Wang and Tim Cook tremendous credit for trying to navigate this political situation and what a difficult political situation it is to measure and to figure out. So that's my first shout out today. Go to Tim Cook and Jensen Wang for having the backbone to try and navigate the situation with President Trump and not easy to do.
Chapter 6: Who is Haley Jones and what is her impact?
Our next shout outs are going to go to a couple of professionals I've been fortunate to work with for a long time. They, by the time they hear this, because I've already gone through this whole first part on Trump, Jensen Wong, and Tim Cook, might already hate the podcast for believing that I wasn't hard enough, or I was too nice to President Trump, or that I should have been very positive.
I don't know what their politics are, but sometimes if I don't bash President Trump enough, people are upset. But we're not in that business, so bear with me. But two professionals, and I'm probably throwing a third here too. Haywood Jones joined Packers Healthcare 10 years ago. She has been nothing short of spectacular as a professional. She's brilliant. And she does big ticket sales.
And what happens is you find people that have this great ability to think and have great personal skills and have great drive. It can connect dots. And that's what you need in a senior level driver of business. She has been nothing short of a leader, a fighter starter, just an incredible professional. And God bless her.
As long as I'm talking about Haley Jones, I'll touch very quickly on two other great professionals. And there are so many at Becker's Healthcare. So I'm always cautious when I shout out some that I'm missing lots because there are so many great professionals. And that's a tribute to Jess Cole and the entire team and Katie Atwood, who have built a remarkable team at Becker's Healthcare.
But I'll give two other quick shout outs today. Allison Warner, who adds up the sales department, just a fantastic professional, one of the best in the business. And to Emma Bola, who's also been with us, I think, about 10 years or more. And both those two are also just remarkable leaders and professionals. So the shout out starts with Hayley Jones today.
We're going to throw out a quick shout out also to Emma Bola and Allison Warner, who are just doing an incredible job, just incredible professionals. Finally, the last shout out of the day goes to Jeff Cockrell, who for a long time had up the private equity group at McGuire Woods. And this is one of the things that you like to see.
Jeff was in some ways a mentor advisor to me, but he could never be a mentor advisor to me because he's He was so smart and so motivated out of the womb that you could never really mentor or advise people like that, but maybe a little bit of advice here or there. I had sort of toyed around with starting the healthcare private equity practice at McGuire Woods.
And what Jeff did is nothing short of remarkable in taking the initial seeds of that practice and turning it into a mega practice. That's one of the most important practices at McGuire Woods. And there's a lot of people in this, in this group too.
Tom Zahn, who also built this incredible healthcare private equity practice, Holly Buckley, Amber Walsh, but today's shout out goes to Jeff Cockrell and amazing what he has done. The last thing I'll note about Jeff, and this is so much we think about when we see people evolve and grow is the It's almost like the old Forrest Gump statement.
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