The CNBC Changemakers and Power Players podcast features conversations with leaders shaping the future of business, policy, and culture. In this episode, CNBC's Julia Boorstin sits down with Luana Lopes Lara, co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Kalshi and a 2026 CNBC Changemaker.

Kalshi co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Luana Lopes Lara talks about how her path — from growing up in Brazil and training in ballet to studying at MIT and working on Wall Street — shaped her discipline and her comfort with high-stakes bets. She opens up about the years she spent pushing through regulatory roadblocks to legalize Kalshi in the U.S., and how she and her co-founder set out to build something fundamentally different: a platform where people trade on real-world outcomes, not stocks. She also explains why she believes prediction markets will be bigger than the stock market.

Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a commercial relationship that includes a minority investment.

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The CNBC Changemakers and Power Players podcast features conversations with leaders shaping the future of business, policy, and culture. In this episode, CNBC’s Julia Boorstin sits down with Mary Powell, CEO of Sunrun and a 2026 CNBC Changemaker.

Powell shares her unconventional path to leading the nation's largest residential solar and battery storage company. She also opens up about leading with intuition, why culture "eats strategy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner," and how to help solve America's growing power demands.

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The CNBC Changemakers and Power Players podcast features conversations with leaders shaping the future of business, policy, and culture. In this episode, CNBC's Julia Boorstin sits down with Johanna Mercier, Chief Commercial & Corporate Affairs Officer at Gilead Sciences and a 2026 CNBC Changemaker.

Mercier discusses Gilead's groundbreaking HIV prevention innovation (a twice-yearly injection with 99.9% efficacy) and how her team moved within months of U.S. approval to expand access across Sub-Saharan Africa, where the need is greatest. She shares why impact (not title) drives her leadership, how personal loss reshaped her sense of purpose, and what it takes to lead through global health crises.

Follow and listen to the "CNBC Changemakers and Power Players" podcast on Apple and Spotify.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.