A job interview with Richard Branson is nerve-racking enough on its own. But when then-31-year-old lawyer Josh Bayliss arrived at Branson's London mansion, the billionaire founder realized he had double-booked himself and was already running late for another appointment.
Rather than cancel, Branson invited Bayliss along for the ride. What was supposed to be a 45-minute drive turned into a two-and-a-half hour ordeal in traffic.
"We got stuck in traffic, and that was great for me," Bayliss told Fortune. "I got a chance to really interrogate Richard and find out a lot more about what made him tick."
Bayliss landed the job of general counsel in 2005. By 2011, he was promoted to CEO of Virgin Group. Just this year, he added company chair to his resume, putting him atop a sprawling portfolio that includes an airline, a telecommunications giant, a gym chain, and a commercial space-tourism business.
Bayliss, now 53, was born in Auckland, New Zealand, to a modest family — his father a guitarist, his mother a hairdresser. He studied history and Spanish literature as an undergraduate at the University of Auckland, graduating in 1996 before turning to law.
His first job out of law school was as a judge's clerk at New Zealand's Court of Appeal, where he says he was 'exposed to some of the greatest minds I've ever been among, disagreeing profoundly over matters of huge importance for huge numbers of people, but never falling out over that disagreement.' He later worked at a law firm in Barcelona before moving to London in 1999.
The further he advanced in the legal profession, the less satisfied he became with merely advising decision-makers. 'I wanted to be making decisions. I wanted to take responsibility, and I wanted to be accountable for improving things for people in a commercial sense,' Bayliss said.
He now says the traits that carried him from clerk to chairman — curiosity, adaptability, a willingness to challenge convention — are the same ones he screens for in hiring today. He singled out Gen Z interns for their 'moral fiber' and views artificial intelligence as 'an enablement tool rather than a replacement tool' that lets young workers move faster early in their careers.
Bayliss's climb is a reminder of what free enterprise still rewards when a founder is willing to bet on a person rather than a credential. Branson did not run a search committee or outsource the decision to a diversity consultant; he sized up a lawyer in a stalled car and made a call.
Two decades later, that judgment paid off in a chief executive who has held the seat long enough to earn the chairmanship too. Capital, in the end, rewards clear judgment as much as clear rules — and Branson's willingness to trust his own read on a candidate, rather than a committee's, is exactly the kind of merit-based bet that built Virgin's sprawling commercial empire.
