In a recent podcast interview with David Senra, Mackey recalled one of his most challenging moments: firing his father from the Whole Foods board in 1994 after nearly 15 years of advising Mackey on the direction of the company.

“That was the most difficult thing I ever did was firing my dad from that board,” Mackey said. “It took all the courage I had. I love my dad so much, and it hurt him so badly. It was so hard to do, but it was also a pivotal event in my own evolution.”

Mackey, who served as co-CEO of Whole Foods from its 1980 founding until his 2022 retirement, described his younger self as a “shirtless hitchhiking hippie” who dropped out of college. A man of contradictions, Mackey has called for marriage equality and claimed that taking psychedelics helps him find business inspiration, and in the same breath, has touted capitalism as humankind’s greatest invention while ripped labor unions, once comparing them to herpes (“It won’t kill you,” Mackey told the New Yorker in 2010, “but it’s very unpleasant, and will make a lot of people not want to be your lover.”)

In 2022, the business leader claimed “socialists are taking over,” and that young people weren’t willing to work anymore because they want to find meaningful work, something that eludes most people in the early stages of their careers.

His relationship with his father, as it relates to business, is no less complicated. As a younger man, the free-market vegan was looking to take risks to grow his wealth, even if it meant breaking from the guidance of his father, an original investor in Whole Foods. Mackey described his father as always being a man who preferred to conserve his cash, even if it meant sacrificing the growth of his wealth. As he aged, Mackey’s father became more rigid in his beliefs, which Mackey attributed in part to an Alzheimer’s diagnosis, made a couple years after his father’s departure from the board.

These diverging philosophies were most salient during the grocery chain’s 1992 IPO, when Mackey’s father encouraged the cofounder to sell company stock. Mackey, trusting his father, obliged, but later regretted it. He said the growing differences in doctrines around money fractured their relationship, leading Mackey to seek out independence from his father.

“That was when my mentorship was over,” he said. “He still advised me but from that point onward, really I was on my own. I was not going to follow him any longer. Before then, I pretty much did whatever my dad suggested.”

Mackey was largely responsible for transforming a single boutique health food store into a grocery giant. Founded in Austin in 1980, Whole Foods soon expanded across Texas and grew nationally, with 12 locations coast-to-coast at the time of its IPO, when the company was valued at $100 million. In 2017, Mackey sold the grocery giant to Amazon for a cool $13.7 billion. Whole Foods now has more than 500 locations across the U.S. and UK.

Mackey’s evolving business philosophy

At the core of Mackey’s businessperson identity is his doctrine of “conscious capitalism,” the flavor of free enterprise he said should operate with strong ethical foundations with the goal to create more than just profit in service of all business stakeholders, from customers to employees. Mackey first identified this value in 1981, when only a year after opening the first Whole Foods, the store flooded, severely damaging nearly everything inside. He recounted getting help from friends, customers, and suppliers, and was able to operate the business again 28 days after the flood.

Mackey said he internalized some value in making conservative financial decisions from his father, whom he said was a child of the Great Depression. Mackey’s father reached adulthood in the midst of World War II and operated under fear of another financial disaster for most of his life.

“He was always thinking there was going to be another Great Depression,” Mackey said. “So he was always trying to protect himself from that because it was such a traumatic experience for him.”

Mackey himself has admitted that making money isn’t everything. In 2007, the CEO said he felt financially secure and slashed his own salary to $1. (According to Forbes, he has a net worth of more than $75 million.)

However, the cofounder’s “expansive” philosophy of business increasingly diverged from his father, particularly in the way he kept shares of the business. When Mackey asked his father to step away from the board, he encouraged him to sell half his company shares and watch what happens to the other half. Whole Foods doubled in stock price over the next year.

While Mackey and his father were able to reconcile their differences, he recalled 1994 as the moment in which he prioritized his own business tactics over his mentor’s.

“I’m not going to do what you tell me to do any longer, particularly when it comes to growth,”  Mackey recalled telling his father. “We’re going to grow this business.”

In the memo, previously reported by Bloomberg, Fraser told Citi’s roughly 200,000‑plus employees “the bar is raised” and stressed performance will be judged on outcomes rather than intentions or long hours.

“We are not graded on effort. We are judged on our results,” she wrote, adding she expects “the last vestiges of old, bad habits” to disappear as the bank pursues a leaner, more commercially aggressive culture in 2026. The language marks one of her sharpest internal messages since she took over in 2021, underscoring a shift from transformation planning to execution.​

Fraser’s approach also demonstrates why Fortune contributor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, the Lester Crown professor of leadership practice at the Yale School of Management, chose the Citi CEO as one of his top performers of 2025. Fraser’s “Project Bora Bora” restructuring resulted in full-year revenues tracking toward $84 billion in 2025, the highest since 2010, with records for all five business segments in the last quarter. The latest earnings quarter saw all five business segments hit quarterly records. The stock’s performance ranking, up 67% in 2025, made it the best among major U.S. banks, in a year when Fraser was elected Chair of the Citigroup Board of Directors and was named Euromoney “Banker of the Year 2025.”

1,000 jobs now, 20,000 over time

Citigroup is poised to eliminate about 1,000 positions this week, as previously reported by Bloomberg, a move that follows earlier rounds of layoffs and brings the bank closer to a broader plan to cut roughly 20,000 jobs by 2026, or about 8% of its global workforce, according to people familiar with the matter. The reductions are tied to a sweeping restructuring unveiled in early 2024 that aims to simplify management layers, streamline businesses, and deliver up to $2.5 billion in cost savings. Citi has already shed more than 10,000 roles under Fraser’s overhaul.​

Culture reset on Wall Street

Fraser’s memo signals a cultural reset at a bank long criticized for lagging behind rivals on profitability and efficiency, and she explicitly called time on what she describes as legacy behaviors that dulled Citi’s competitive edge. She urged bankers to adopt a more “commercial mindset,” telling staff to “ask for the business,” fight for a “full wallet” with clients, and stop settling for secondary roles or missed opportunities.

Automation, AI, and ‘roles no longer required’

The job cuts are being accelerated by investments in automation and artificial intelligence that are changing how work is done across the bank. Fraser told employees and investors as Citi completes more than 80% of its massive “Transformation” program, technology and process simplification will mean some roles evolve, new positions appear and “others will no longer be required.” Outgoing CFO Mark Mason said he expects headcount to keep falling this year as AI tools and streamlined processes take hold, even as Citi continues to hire top talent in key areas like investment banking.​

High stakes for 2026

Fraser has framed 2026 as the year a “more disciplined, more confident, winning Citi” must fully emerge, arguing the transformation and painful cuts are laying the foundation for stronger, more consistent returns. But the strategy carries high stakes: Citi must prove to investors the layoffs, technology spending, and cultural shake‑up can close its long‑standing performance gap with Wall Street rivals while maintaining morale among the staff she is now bluntly reminding that effort alone will not be enough.

For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.