Kevin Warsh: From Selling Racetrack Pencils to Trump’s New Fed Chair Nominee, Advises Gen Z Merit Is Key in Workplace

Even as challenges persist for many Americans, one individual is on the cusp of securing one of the most influential positions in the global economy—and this role brings both opportunities and responsibilities.

Kevin Warsh is President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as the next Chairman of the Federal Reserve, succeeding Jerome Powell when his term concludes on May 15. Although he still faces a Senate confirmation process to secure the post, Warsh’s initial lessons in leadership stemmed from an unexpected first job: working at a horse track.

At the age of 14, Warsh was employed at the Saratoga, New York, racetrack, where he set up kegs and hauled ice, later getting promoted to selling programs and pencils to bettors entering the gates.

“I learned a great deal about hard work,” the 55-year-old reminisced. “I also learned to keep track of my pencils because there was good profit in them; we marketed them as lucky Saratoga pencils that paired with the program… And at the end of the day, if the number six horse won, that was the person who’d come back to give you a tip.”

Warsh would later pursue studies in public policy at Stanford and law at Harvard before climbing the ranks in finance. Along the way, he noted that how hard one works matters far more than anything else in the workplace.

“Merit truly prevailed,” Warsh stated. “When you show up for your job—in government or the private sector—with skills, knowledge, insight, and substantial humility, age and rank seem to matter much less in nearly every place I’ve been.” 

“Title was the least significant thing,” he added. “The ability to contribute to the team and execute tasks was far more relevant.”

Kevin Warsh’s Advice for Gen Z: Skip Leadership Books—Study Real Leaders Instead

Kevin Warsh’s career has placed him in rooms with some of the most powerful figures in finance, government, and business (after all, his mentor is Ronald Lauder, a billionaire businessman and heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics empire). When it comes to leadership, he doesn’t attribute it to management books or business school—he attributes it to proximity.

“The key to being a better leader is to find better leaders and learn from them,” Warsh said. “We only come to understand who we are, we only come to reveal ourselves by interacting with others.”

This lesson didn’t come naturally to Warsh. He has described himself as a long-time introvert and thus, early in his career, he had to push himself out of his comfort zone to engage more directly with those he could learn from.

“I suppose there are people who are probably born great leaders,” he said. “But for most of us, we end up being around really good leaders and really bad leaders. It’s our duty to try to pick up those good skills and avoid the bad ones.”

That’s why Warsh is skeptical of the idea that leadership can be learned from books alone.

“I’ve never been one to think that you can go to the leadership section of Barnes & Noble, read a few books, and figure it out,” Warsh added. “That’s not my experience, either from my own life or from the people I’ve been around. They learned from the best and frankly, learned from the worst.”

Jerome Powell and Janet Yellen: Experience is a ‘Hard but Irreplaceable Teacher’

It’s not just Warsh who argues that leadership is best learned through lived experience; this view is echoed by both the current and former heads of the Federal Reserve.

“In a world that will continue to evolve rapidly and unexpectedly, you will need to be agile,” Powell told graduates of Georgetown University Law Center in 2024.  

“Embracing change and taking risks can be an important part of your development as a professional and as a person,” Powell added. “Your 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.”

Powell’s predecessor, Janet Yellen, shared her own version of this lesson—emphasizing that growth often arises from discomfort.

“You often have to do things that are scary to some extent,” she told [an audience]. “You just have to force yourself to face it and do it. You have to roll up your sleeves and do what you were hired to do.”