{"id":17255,"date":"2026-01-30T15:59:45","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T15:59:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=17255"},"modified":"2026-01-30T15:59:45","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T15:59:45","slug":"kevin-warsh-went-from-selling-racetrack-pencils-to-trumps-new-fed-chair-pick-his-advice-for-gen-z-merit-is-the-ultimate-currency-in-the-workplace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=17255","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Warsh went from selling racetrack pencils to Trump&#8217;s new Fed chair pick. His advice for Gen Z: merit is the ultimate currency in the workplace"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img src=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/GettyImages-2223719472-e1769786680392.jpg?w=2048\" \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Kevin Warsh is President Donald Trump\u2019s pick to serve as the next chairman of the Federal Reserve, replacing Jerome Powell when his term expires May 15. While he still faces a complicated Senate confirmation before securing the job, Warsh\u2019s early lessons in leadership came from an unlikely first job: a horse track.<\/p>\n<p>At 14 years old, Warsh worked setting up kegs and hauling ice at the Saratoga, New York, racetrack before later earning a promotion selling programs and pencils to bettors streaming through the gates.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI learned a lot about hard work,\u201d the 55-year-old recalled to the <em>How Leaders Lead<\/em> podcast. \u201cI learned a lot about trying to keep track of your pencils because there was good margin in pencils; we billed them as lucky Saratoga pencils that would go with the program\u2026 And at the end of the day, if the number six horse won, that would be the guy who\u2019d come back and give you a tip.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Warsh would later go on to study public policy at Stanford and law at Harvard before climbing the ranks of Morgan Stanley. Along the way, he said, he learned that how hard you work matters far more than anything else in the workplace.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMerit really carried the day,\u201d Warsh said. \u201cAs you show up in your job\u2014in government or in the private sector\u2014with skills, with knowledge, with insight, and also huge amounts of humility, age and rank seem to matter a lot less in almost every place where I\u2019ve been.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTitle was the least important thing,\u201d he added. \u201cAbility to contribute to the team, to execute, were much more appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Kevin Walsh\u2019s advice for Gen Z: Skip the leadership books\u2014study real leaders instead<\/h2>\n<p>Kevin Warsh\u2019s career has put him in rooms with some of the most powerful figures in finance, government, and business (after all, his father-in-law is Ronald Lauder, a billionaire businessman and heir to the Est\u00e9e Lauder cosmetics fortune). And when it comes to leadership, he doesn\u2019t credit management books or business school\u2014he credits that proximity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe key to being a better leader is to go find better leaders and learn from them,\u201d Warsh said. \u201cWe only come to know who we are, we only come to reveal ourselves by interacting with other people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a lesson that didn\u2019t come naturally for Warsh. He has described himself as a long-time introvert and thus, early in his career, he had to push himself outside his comfort zone to engage more directly with those he could learn from.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI guess there are people that are probably born great leaders,\u201d he said. \u201cBut for most of us, we end up being around really good leaders and really bad leaders. And it\u2019s incumbent upon us to try to pick up those good skills and to avoid the bad skills.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s why Warsh is skeptical of the idea that leadership can be mastered from a bookstore shelf.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve never been one who thinks that you can go into the Barnes &amp; Noble section of the bookstore on leadership and read a few books and have it figured out,\u201d Warsh added. \u201cThat\u2019s just not my experience, either from my own experience, or from the people that I\u2019ve been around. They have learned from the best and frankly, learned from the worst.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Jerome Powell and Janet Yellen: Experience is a \u2018hard but irreplaceable teacher\u2019<\/h2>\n<p>It\u2019s not just Warsh who argues leadership is best learned through lived experience; It\u2019s a view echoed by both the current and former heads of the Federal Reserve.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn a world that will continue to evolve quickly and in unexpected ways, you will need to be agile,\u201d Powell told graduates of Georgetown University Law Center in 2024.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEmbracing change and taking risks can be an important part of your development as a professional and as a person,\u201d Powell added. \u201cYour formal education may end today, but you are not done learning. Many of the important things you will need to know can only be learned through experience. And experience can be a hard but irreplaceable teacher.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Powell\u2019s predecessor, Janet Yellen, shared her own version of that lesson\u2014emphasizing that growth often comes from discomfort.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou often have to do things that are scary at some level,\u201d she told <em>The Washington Post<\/em>. \u201cYou just have to force yourself to face up to it and do it. You have to pull up your socks and do what you were hired to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>#Kevin #Warsh #selling #racetrack #pencils #Trumps #Fed #chair #pick #advice #Gen #merit #ultimate #currency #workplace<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kevin Warsh is President Donal&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[119,1555,3984,2005,542,1339,5807,486,901,1542,304,300,7356,2187,3564,11148,1055,3989,8701,11150,26,11149,671,496,5609,3079,3265,1733],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17255"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}