Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.

When Brian Doubles became CEO of Synchrony in 2021, a global pandemic had upended the way companies thought about work. Remote options became ubiquitous, and many employees, when possible, were given the tools they needed to do their jobs from anywhere. Now, even as other financial services companies and banks have issued return-to-office mandates, Doubles is making a different bet: Stamford, Connecticut–based Synchrony allows its more than 20,000 employees to work from home or in a company facility (or a mix of both) with in-person gatherings for training, leadership meetings, innovation sessions, and culture-building events.

The decision appears to be paying off. Turnover is down, job applications are up 30%, and this year Synchrony climbed to No. 2 on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list, up from No. 37 in 2021.

The recognition caps four years of key gains for the company, which is the nation’s largest issuer of private-label credit cards. In June, Synchrony announced it would power a new credit card program with Walmart, winning back business the company lost to rival Capital One in 2018, and adding to a roster of clients that includes Lowe’s, Verizon, and Amazon. Last year, the company reported net interest income of $18 billion, an increase of 26% from 2021. Since Doubles became CEO, the stock has risen more than 60%, outperforming the S&P 500. (Disclosure: Synchrony was a sponsor of the recent Fast Company Innovation Festival.)

Synchrony’s growth comes despite some headwinds in the world of consumer credit, which former Synchrony parent General Electric helped popularize when it started financing appliance purchases in the 1930s. (GE completed the spin-off of its credit business in 2015.) Store-branded cards once dominated credit card issuance. Now, as big brick-and-mortar retailers such as JCPenney and Macy’s have contracted, store credit cards account for just 4% of purchase volume in the U.S. Well-heeled consumers, meanwhile, are opting for rewards cards such as........

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