PASSIONS ARE CEO SABBATICALS THE ULTIMATE POWER MOVE?

WHEN VENTURE capitalist Jeremy Liew and his wife were dating, they talked about how one day they would take a year to travel the world. "That's how we'd know we'd made it," Liew says.

- SARA CLEMENCE

He went on to become a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, and during his first 16 years at the firm, Liew told colleagues he planned to take a sabbatical. His successes included a seed investment in Snap Inc. But when the parent of messaging app Snapchat went public in 2017 at a valuation of $24 billion-a sign, one might think, that he had "made it"-Liew continued to work at the same intensity.

Then COVID hit. Liew stopped traveling three weeks out of the month. And, he says, he realized what he'd been missing at home: "Having dinner with my family. Unstructured time with my kids. Having the time to train." Liew cut his time at Lightspeed to 20%, and in 2022, with his eldest child about to start high school, the family set off on a yearlong adventure. The plan was to spend a month in each of 12 destinations. They started in Tanzania and continued to Kenya, Australia, Singapore, and Italy.

Call it an executive sabbatical or a grownup gap year.

From CEOs to celebrities, examples abound of leaders at the top of their professional game taking a step back for reflection, connection, and R&R.

Matt Mullenweg, CEO of tech company Automattic, announced in 2023 that he was embarking on a three-month sabbatical, unplugging from work to focus on his chess game and learn how to sail. The pop star Lizzo posted a video of herself in Bali to Instagram in August, announcing that she was "taking a gap year & protecting my peace." (She clarified at the recent Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit that it has been more of a "grind year," spent working out of the public eye.) And before she took the helm of TaskRabbit, CEO Ania Smith moved for a year with her husband and children to Buenos Aires, where they took up dancing, horseback riding, and photography.