We spoke the day after Levi’s reported a stellar first quarter in which net revenue rose 14%—and those results may have quieted Gass’s critics for good. When Gass was first announced as Levi’s president in 2022—spending a year under the tutelage of CEO predecessor Chip Bergh before taking over a year later—many in the peanut gallery pointed to her previous struggles at Kohl’s as reason for skepticism.

But two years in, Gass’s tenure at Levi’s has been an unequivocal win. Revenue grew 3% in her first year, then 4% in 2025 and growth is now accelerating. Shares rose 11% on Wednesday and have almost doubled in the last year. And Levi’s is very much in the cultural zeitgeist: its 517 women’s jeans have been featured prominently in Love Story, the fictionalized TV series chronicling the Carolyn Bessette–JFK Jr. saga. 

Same executive, same human being, but two different outcomes. What gives? 

For one thing, the Levi’s role taps into the consumer brands exposure Gass gained earlier in her career at Starbucks, which sells mostly its own products and where she honed her analytically rigorous and brand‑oriented approach to management. Kohl’s, on the other hand, is a retailer that mostly sells other companies’ merchandise and operates in the challenged department store sector. That experience is now proving vital as Gass pushes Levi’s to open more of its own stores and rely less on other retailers.

For another, Kohl’s needed a turnaround CEO, whereas at Levi’s, Gass inherited a company turned around years earlier by Bergh but where her zest for innovation and experience in running stores could help Levi Strauss grow at a critical juncture in its long history. (Gass has made selling more tops, more women’s products, and more high-end denim her priorities, and Tuesday’s earnings report shows the plan is working.)

“I feel like coming into Levi’s, I could tap into all of that when it was ready for its next chapter, which was turning the company into a retailer and bringing that capability to bear,” she told me.

To be fair, at Kohl’s, Gass was forced into four battles with activist shareholders in her final years, siphoning her attention and energy. Since she left, Kohl’s has had three CEOs, none of whom have made a big dent in the company’s problems.  

Top leadership news

The delicate ceasefire in Iran 

The fragile ceasefire in Iran is not breeding confidence among energy experts. “We think this is going to get worse before it gets better,” former White House energy adviser Bob McNally told Fortune. Rystad Energy chief economist Claudio Galimberti also warned that the “normalization of the Strait of Hormuz is still far, far away.” 

AI rollout sabotage 

A new report from enterprise AI agent firm Writer and research firm Workplace Intelligence suggests some employees are trying to sabotage their company’s AI rollout by refusing to use the tools or entering proprietary information into them. Twenty-nine percent of the 2,400 knowledge workers polled—including 44% of Gen Z respondents—reported engaging in such tactics. 

In conversation with Hachette CEO David Shelley

David Shelley, CEO of Hachette’s U.K. and U.S. operations, is going on offense to prevent AI companies from scraping the work of the publisher’s authors. But he tells Fortune that publishers can’t ignore Big Tech. “As business leaders, we need to be able to hold lots of contradictory ideas in our head at once, and we need to have nuanced relationships,” he says.

The markets

S&P 500 futures are down 0.36% this morning. The last session closed up 2.51%. The STOXX Europe 600 was down 0.69% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was down 0.21% in early trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 0.73%. China’s CSI 300 was down 0.64%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down o.54%. South Korea’s KOSPI was down 1.61%. India’s NIFTY 50 is down 0.95% today. Bitcoin was up to $72K.

Around the watercooler

The New York Times says it found Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin. Not so fast by Jeff John Roberts

Morgan Stanley’s Bitcoin ETF began trading. An analyst put it in the top 1% of ETF launches by Jack Kubinec

Meta unveils Muse Spark, its first AI model since hiring Alexandr Wang and a bellwether for CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s multibillion-dollar AI push by Jeremy Kahn

Jamie Dimon warned high taxes would push business out of New York, but the city is honing its edge over Miami in attracting top talent, report finds by Sasha Rogelberg

Housing is so expensive, even an $87 billion Wall Street bank is giving workers $6.5K in cash to get on the property ladder by Emma Burleigh

CEO Daily is curated and edited by Joey Abrams, Claire Zillman and Lee Clifford.