He said his openness, resilience and ability to develop connections were shaped by experiences at Brown, where he concentrated in engineering and learned “how to solve complex problems” but also explored the humanities and other disciplines through the Open Curriculum that “just captured my heart.” 

“The Open Curriculum for me was gold,” he said. 

“One of my secrets also is — really, I do give Brown credit for this — this balanced education that I kind of stumbled on,” Khosrowshahi said. “Learning all of the… really important basics of engineering, but then marrying that with liberal arts, that really taught me to communicate in a compelling way, which is an absolute necessity when you’re in a leadership position.”

During the hourlong conversation, Paxson asked Khosrowshahi a wide range of questions, including prompts submitted by students, alumni, faculty, staff and community members on topics ranging from career advice and economic uncertainty to whether artificial intelligence will supplant jobs for young professionals.

Khosrowshahi noted that AI is part of the bedrock of Uber’s operating systems that enable the company to provide more than 30 million rides a day in 70 countries. He views AI as a tool that can strengthen professional skills and an employee’s resumé — and he believes it should be embedded in teaching.

“There’s a perception that AI is a tech thing, [but] it’s a broad tool to be used for everybody,” he said. “I think there’s a transition that needs to happen, which is to train students to use AI… You’re not going to be put out of work by AI, you’re going to be put out of work by the person who knows how to use AI better.”

Khosrowshahi discussed autonomous vehicles as the wave of the future for the ride-share industry and offered his perspective on the keys to good leadership: honesty, transparency and challenging people to try new things.

He also shared memories and reflections from his personal life, including the pain and his profound sense of failure when he went through a divorce, and the lessons of resilience and hard work he learned from his parents when they emigrated from Iran to the U.S. when he was a child.

“We had a big business in Iran, a big family business, and we had to come to the U.S. to flee, and we lost everything,” Khosrowshahi said. “I do think that there is an immigrant mentality, and that I think served us… I’m incredibly thankful that this country took me and my family and allowed us to rebuild our lives. It’s pretty extraordinary.”

Despite his three-decade career that’s taken Khosrowshahi to the far reaches of the world and introduced him to luminaries and leaders, he said his best friends are still the people he met on College Hill, with whom he studied with in the SciLi and sprinted around the College Green. Before the event, he found a minute for a quick photo in front of his former residence hall on Wriston Quad. 

“My best friends in life are my friends from Brown,” Khosrowshahi said. “And they didn’t become my best friends because of one thing, they became my best friends because of all the little moments that you kind of take for granted. But it’s all those little moments that, in the end, connect you.”