Fortune Global Forum 2021

The Secretary of Commerce encourages CEOs to consider factors other than a four year college degree.

Secretary Raimondo's message to CEOs: "They need to be willing to hire differently"

Conferences

Raimondo to CEO's: "need to be willing to hire differently"

the question that people have is can we do something that's big enough and effective enough, that actually connects the training to the jobs that are available? How are you feeling about that? Yes. Not only can we we must f for it's not an exaggeration for me to say that every ceo I speak with when I asked them, you know, what are your greatest challenges and how can we help list? Uh job training and the need for greater access to skilled workers in their top three. Everyone this week. Of course during select Usa I have the opportunity to talk to many. Um Ceos and since I've been Commerce secretary, I have talked to many. So we have to I mean if we're going to improve american competitiveness and the ability of our companies big and small to grow and increase increase their productivity, increase their innovation, they need the talent. Um By the way, alan this isn't rocket science, it really isn't. We just have to get to the business of doing it. And in this regard, I'm very optimistic. I have already started working closely with the secretary of Labor and Secretary of Education. Were all three committed coming together on the same team. So business is at the core from the very beginning which is the key. And you know, other countries do it this morning. I was on the phone with Ceo from uh company in Austria. You know, they have a great apprenticeship model. Certain companies are doing this, community colleges are doing this, we just have to scale it as you say. And I believe that we will, what do you need from the CEOs in this group in order to succeed on this. What would be your top request of them first? They have to engage with us. They have to come to the table and put in the time and effort required to tell us in some detail uh what are the skills that they need and that does take time and it is a detail oriented exercise but it's necessary, secondly they need to be willing to hire differently. You know if you go and this also takes time. But so often um if you go to the hiring department, hR departments of companies, they are still um looking for people that check the boxes, four year college degree, five years of relevant experience, even though that's not technically necessary for somebody to do that job. And if you're going to stick to checking those boxes, we may not be able to sign for your college degree graduates if that's what you're saying you need but you might not need that. And also I would say this is really in the weeds so tell me to be quiet. But a lot of these big companies use the same software to screen resumes and they search on these keywords and they've been doing it the same way for a long time. You have to do it differently, has been open to someone who has the competencies, but maybe not a full four year degree.

Chuck Robbins saw innovation grow exponentially during the pandemic.

Cisco CEO believes employees are more productive in a hybrid work model

Julie Sweet - CEO, Accenture; Chuck Robbins - CEO, Cisco

Cisco CEO: Workers are more productive in hybrid work model

what are you seeing in terms of innovation and your team coming up with novel ideas for new projects or brainstorming? How's that going Check? You know, one of the many surprises that we had during the pandemic was that the innovation that we continue to deliver was incredible. And we saw code drops, which basically new software releases that were in excess of what we would traditionally see when people in the office. And I think it's a combination of a couple of things. I think number one, I think people just generally have been working more hours and it's something about you, when your home is your office, you tend to stay in it longer or you go back to it more. You don't have that separation point of leaving the office and going home. And then also think in many of our areas where employees work, they have very long commutes. So you're kidding, like three hours of your day back or two hours of your day back and that was going to work as well. I think if we can this is one of those examples if we can capture those benefits but then also couple them with that occasional time or whatever time that is that you need collaborating in the office together, we think those two together we can actually accelerate innovation even further. So again, it's about learning what what happened during the pandemic and what we learned during the pandemic that we need to hold onto and then coupled with what we, you know, did pre pandemic to actually have a stronger methodology going forward.

Michael Wirth shares how his company's strategy allowed them to be adaptable.

Chevron's CEO believes preparation was key to success during pandemic 

Chevron's CEO believes preparation key to success 

Chevron's CEO believes preparation was key to success during pandemic

So let's talk about the pandemic for a minute. Uh we'd all prefer not to have to talk about the pandemic anymore, but it's hard to ignore. Um and and specifically in your industry, it had uh devastating effect. Oil industry. Oil and gas industry was one of the hardest hit as economic activity shut down last year. Will demand plummeted. The price of oil plummeted um at one point was even negative and trading value. Um I'd like to hear, you know, your reflections on how that has changed your strategy or not changed your strategy and just how it might have changed the way you're leading, you know, massive corporation that's global with so many employees going through that experience the oil and gas industry, you're used to bust and boom cycles. But this was something kind of different. Yeah, I think the pandemic reinforced a few things brian number one is you have to always be prepared and we manage risks of many different kinds of while a pandemic I think was viewed by many as a tail risk unlikely to happen. We had a pandemic response plan on the shelf. We have drilled for pandemics and we were prepared to keep our people and operations as safe as possible to institute appropriate safeguards and protocols very quickly, which worked well. We were also prepared for a down cycle and commodity prices. We had a very strong balance sheet. Uh, we were prepared to take advantage of acquisition opportunities as other companies uh felt the stress of the pandemic. And so I think it reinforced our commitment to preparation. I think the other thing that we learned from it is you need to be adaptable. And uh, as we're coming out of the pandemic, we're seeing demand for certain products like gasoline and diesel fuel recover very quickly. Aviation fuel, not so much. And so we need to adapt our approach to our business to be sure that we can continue to operate reliably and safely, even as economies are on different footing and, um, and moving forward at different rates. And it it really calls for that flexibility and adaptability in in planning and execution in markets, in all the activities that it takes to operate our business every day.

Kevin Johnson joins Fortune Global Forum.

Starbucks CEO: ‘People around the world are craving that human connection’

Starbucks CEO on people craving a human connection 


Starbucks CEO: ‘People around the world are craving that human connection’


you've talked about the great human re connection that's underway right now. What do you mean by that? Well, you know, think about it, all of us have had to change both our personal lives and our professional lives over this last year and a half, and fundamentally all of humanity around the world has been living this past year in isolation. You know, we've had to to stay within our bubble. We've had the socially distance uh facial coverings and and you know, basically as human beings living in isolation, you know, we are now craving human connection. We're craving to socialize with other human beings and and you know, as human beings, this is what, you know, what humanity is meant for by by connecting with other human beings face to face. It's how we, how we get energy, it's how we overcome adversity is how we share the joy in our lives. And so right now, people around the world are craving that human connection, they are craving, wanting to be a part of community and connected in society again. And we call that the great human re connection and that's what we really worked to orient our stores. And the store experience that we create is to be that place, that third place where people can come and socialize and reconnect uh and and start to feel. And you know, some of the feelings and emotions they had before the pandemic so that together we can heal, we can reconnect and we can look to the future.

Brian Chesky says the way we travel will be different.

Airbnb CEO: Travel will have the biggest rebound the industry has seen

Airbnb CEO: Travel will rebound in a big way


Airbnb CEO: Travel will have the biggest rebound the industry has seen


for those who haven't heard you talk about this yet, Can you just very quickly in a nutshell, share what your view is right now of travel and where we're heading in the next year. Yeah, I would say a year ago people thought travel would take him for a long road to recover. I think though sometimes in life you value things when they're taken away from you and you want them even more travels. Probably that. And so what we think is going to happen is probably have the biggest travel rebound this industry has ever seen in a century, probably the last 100 years. And the reason why is people just desperately want to connect again. They want to go places connect, but the way they're traveling is changing. So not only is travel back, it's going to be different than before, the pandemic. And it's really three things. Number one people are traveling. Um, you know, really they're more flexible so they're traveling any time. They don't always have to be back to the office. They're saying, I might want to go in july august september. The second thing is people are willing to go anywhere. It used to be, people went to London paris room now they're going everywhere. And the final thing is that people are traveling and staying longer. About a quarter of our business by nights booked are actually monthly stays. So this actually means people aren't just traveling Airbnb, they're now living in Airbnb. So the short answer is travels can be back bigger than before, but totally different than we've ever seen it before.

LA Mayor Eric Garcetti is joined by the Mayor of Stockholm to discuss the mission to fight climate change. 

How LA plans to be the transportation tech capital of the world 

LA plans to be the transportation tech capital of the world 

with the expansion of Ella's Metro can L. A. Ever be a city where people don't need cars for day to day life like Manhattan for example. Well I sure hope so and people forget the biggest thing to do that is not building out necessarily the billions of dollars of new transit, which we're doing. Um It's not necessarily, you know, making everybody have to take public transportation. It's building more self contained neighborhoods. Good urban planning. Stockholm knows this is a beautiful city. You can walk to where you can work, eat, Play live. We need to have communities that aren't just built for cars. So in the old days when I grew up in Los Angeles, it was only 20 minutes to drive anywhere. So it's okay if you had a job in this neighborhood, you want to eat in that neighborhood, your friends lived over there, you lived here. Um increasingly you can't do that. And so good urban planning that mixes uses put those things together. Things like telecommuting, which I think will come out of the pandemic. Doing much more of these things can help us contribute to making sure that we don't always just get in the car for everywhere. Everything that we do while we build out a system that for instance when we finish our subway line that will go from West Los Angeles to downtown, it will be 20 minutes From the campus of useless to downtown. You couldn't flora car at two am on a freeway and get there in 20 minutes. So that will help and contribute to folks having some options to. Absolutely. Um I'd love to talk a little bit more about partnerships with the business community. Obviously we have a big audience full of ceos here. How can they help you? What do you need from them? Mary your meals. Do you want to talk about that first? Just to work together with the cities and the policymakers and academia together to create uh, roadmaps with specific targets and goals are measurable that we can set and work together to fulfill. And we do that, for example, in our city we have a climate pact together with 300 companies and organizations where we work to get together both to share best practice, but of course also to work to solve solutions within the city uh and also to work to innovate because as men, we often want our cities to be testbed And it's much difficult in a on a national level, but we can really provide, you know, citizens engagement for example. Now we have sensors that are on people's bikes together with a project with the 40 where the citizens are very active to measure quality, for example, and then they bring it to one of our universities and the city and we can collaborate and that is a business idea. So that's just one example to use the city? S test that to work together with partnerships with packed and to have this clear set gulf. I think that it was me that ahead because I think that now the engagement from the business community is so great. So we need to use that momentum. Yes, I agree on and I share that same vision of really letting cities be these, these hotbeds of experimentation. My ambition is to make Los Angeles the transportation technology capital of America, if not the world, um to be able to offer, for instance, through our urban mobility labs, which is a cutting edge initiative where we literally are giving companies different environments, a closed campus, like an airport, a semi closed campus, like a university residential neighborhood and then a part of downtown where we literally say, you can test your project, you can test your product, you can test your technology on real streets that mirror all sorts of different environments around the world. Um, we're doing this at the port of L. A. We're working with incredible companies on the hydrogen side and on the battery technology side to revolutionize trucks in this world and to work with a green ports coalition that we've convened around the world to look at how we can make the supply chain much greener as well. We also are doing things around new mobility. I mentioned micro transit, but other examples are, you know, are Blue L. A. Um, uh, car sharing system, which is electric cars for our lower income residents parked in some of our densest neighborhoods and capital projects is the last place I would say come to Los Angeles and do P threes with us, where we say, here's the problem we want to solve. We're not going to prescribe the engineering solution you bring the brilliance of your ideas. Maybe it's a different mode of transit, Maybe it's a different way to engineer it through this pathway and tell us how you would get there. And it's been immensely successful to really unleash a lot of creativity from the private sector to help us get to those goals of revolutionizing transportation. And we're doing that with energy as well.

Liz Hilton Segal of McKinsey & Company discusses

44% of workers have a negative mindset about returning to the office

44% of office workers have a negative mindset about a return

the lines between work and home have literally been blurred, both in time and in physical space and the natural boundaries that used to exist before. Whether that was the concept of a week in a weekend, or the concept of a physical place for work, in a physical place for home, the boundaries are completely gone and that has been our reality now for months. But you also have a generational shift going on, where you have a generation of the, of the workforce, who really is approaching the question of mental health and mental well being was a different, with a different perspective and a different set of standards. And, you know, one of the markers of that is the gen Z employees. Three and five of them say that when they think about either joining an organization or debating whether or not to stay, three and five of them say that the approach to the organization takes the mental health factors into their decision. And that's, that's quite a shift from, from earlier generations. Some, you know, some of the research that we have done very recently, um would suggest that about a third of folks look at the return as something that will be great for their mental well being. And they are genuinely and truly looking forward to the connectivity into the opportunity to come back to the structure as they knew it pre covid, but in fact 44% they were either somewhat or significantly negative in their mindset towards what return will mean for them. And and if you look at that population that 44% they are twice as likely to be looking to switch roles. And so the sense of an imperative for an employer to really take on the concept of well being and the language I like to use for that is to think of well being as a skill that can be developed just like any other professional skills, communication skills, analytic thinking, uh, strategic thinking. The way in which your employees manage their own well being is a matter of competitive advantage in your organization. It's a driver of business performance. And so the question is, how can you use this return as an opportunity to really build the skills of the next generation upon return?

“Green fits very well with Africa. It will change people’s lives,” says Mo Ibrahim.

Dr. Mo Ibrahim: The importance of Africa’s green economy 

why should global companies invest in Africa right now? And where are the greatest opportunities? And I'm curious if there is a green element to this in your mind? Absolutely, because we need to recover not only sustainably and equitably, but also need to recover green. The green economy is going to generate more jobs for our people. And Africa is very suitable for for for for renewable energy. I mean we have so much fun and so much rural areas, rural area areas will be very suitable to supply power through independent uh power systems of grade because it's africa is used. You cannot just build a grid across africa. It is huge. What we need is to drop in. It's just like mobile radio, how we drop in capacity where people exist. That is the efficient economic way of doing it. So, green really fits very well with africa and it's gonna change people's lives, brings a lot of people into the production uh zone, uh people with education, health, It changes people's lives and we need, we need that. So the map is clear. What you need to do is very clear. And of course, we need better governance because better governance is also essential for investors.

CEO Poppy Gustafsson discusses why cybersecurity should be top of mind for every CEO.

CEO of Darktrace weighs in on Colonial Pipeline attack

I want to start with something I saw this morning, we're all following the colonial pipeline attack and the follow from that watching Ceo say that, you know, the hackers kind of had to get through one password uh to make this happen. I wanted to ask you, how often does this happen? The one password it happens all the time, whether it's one password or whether it's just human error or whether it's people trying to deal with the modern complexity of all of these exciting technologies and they're under resource that shifting to the working from home. There's always a single reason that these attacks happened. But these single reasons are many and varied and what we're trying to do our best to protect what they might be and for in process is to prevent them, they are being exploited. And we see that time and again, whether it's things such as colonial pipeline or other less impactful but still very significant to those businesses attacks that happen day throughout the world. I saw another interview did you sort of mentioned some of the really wild ways that a company's could be attacked from the, you know, the peddlers in the parking lot to the casino fish tank. Really stuck out to me. It was one, I mean, what what's the craziest way that you've you've seen hackers gain access to company your system? I think it's just very, very wide and varied and put your eyes put your mind into thoughts of a security professional and they're trying to deal with protecting businesses that are increasingly complicated. Like think about this pandemic was all shifted to working from home and seeing these new exciting technologies or how technologies or whatever it is that they're using and it's their job to protect them. But you can't always imagine the ways that they will get exploited. So for example, the proliferation of things like IOT and he's very non traditional devices. These are introducing potential deficiencies and organizations. So for example, we've seen Kessler's parked in the office car park trying to, you know, the poor owners sort of using the company wifi to run the update or whatever it is that they're doing and they're potentially being leveraged to find their way into a business. We think I saw one really obscure example where it was a smart city in the U. S. And they had these amazing sort of parking meters that, you know, the ones that tell you when they're parking spaces available or not. And they're very intelligent and show us the park except a hacker has used that and broken into that and connected these parking meters into a pornography site. Why on earth would you do that? Like there's no even display on these that could display the pornography. But of course, it introduces a whole bunch of potential risk into that because of all the malware that we know exists on this. So you've got that real spectrum of your plastic bedroom hackers that are looking to exploit and showcase their skills, which I suspect was the case in the culture of the parking meters all the way for these very sophisticated nation state attacks that are using really dynamic attack technology, which is able to make its way into an organization and then worf and changes it, navigates its way through that business. Such that if you're trying to track it and identify it, it's constantly changing, constantly evolving that attack. And then you also see this middle piece which is this very, very business abide. Criminal gangs are breaking into organizations for their own financial gain as this case, in terms of the colonial pipeline attack.

CEO Warren East joins Fortune Global Forum.

How Rolls-Royce is preparing for the electrification of the aircraft 

Rolls-Royce prepares for the electrification of aircrafts


How Rolls-Royce is preparing for the electrification of the aircraft 


what's interesting to me is that your core business is building gas turbine engines. Um, they, in a world where we're able to fly back and transatlantic flights. These are obviously the thing that gets us from new york to London. Uh, the, they, what happens to that core business in an age of electric electrified flight? Well, you know, we see uh, flight um, you know, very much continuing um, and continuing to grow flight is an important part of the world economy today. Um, we think that over the last 100 years it's been incredibly beneficial to society generally. Uh, and um, you know, we can see that continuing, but it must continue in a way that doesn't damage the environment. Uh, and so we need to find appropriate new technologies to enable that to happen, electrification. And pure electric aircraft will be for small airplanes, relatively short distances, you know, perhaps Perhaps 20 or so passengers or less for a few hundreds of miles at best. Um, when we go further than that, then we're going to get into, uh, electrification. So more electric flight, but probably hybrid planes where we're taking the fuel in, in some other form than a battery. Um, we're converting it into electrical energy and we're propelling the aircraft electrically that hybrid aircraft, uh, and then as we go bigger and longer distances will get into synthetic aviation fuel.

Roger Goodell joins Fortune Global Forum.

NFL Commissioner addresses 'race-norming' concussion lawsuit

So another subject that's been front and center for the NFL and for all sports over the past year is the social justice movement, you know, which really took center stage, you know, about a year ago with the killing of George Floyd. Um, the NFL announced earlier this year that you've reached more than $95 million change social justice program, which donates to nonprofits. You yourself have said that the league was wrong for silencing players who were peacefully protesting and in particular, that you wish you had listened earlier to Colin Kaepernick, The former 49 ers quarterback, and what he was saying after he began kneeling during the national anthem. So you've taken a lot of steps, uh, in a lot of different directions to address equity, you know, in a public way. Um, at the same time last week, the NFL said it would end the use of what's called race nor ming a process which assumed that black players started out with lower cognitive function In evaluating retired players who make claims for brain injuries under the settlement, $1 billion dollar settlement You made it in 2013. And that practice may have denied some of these players benefits based on race. That news has kind of shocked and outraged many people and lead to new accusations of the week acting in a institutionally racist way. How do you respond and how do you explain, you know, where the process went wrong here? Well, brian, uh, you have a lot of facts that you've thrown into their, which I would take issue with. But let's go to the core of what you just said at the end there, which is we entered into an agreement and a settlement under the court supervision. So the court supervised all aspects of the programs including today. So we don't have any control over who gets those benefits and who does not get those benefits. That's determined by experts that are determined by the courts. That includes the process of which individual players and their families are evaluated during that process. We were very open and willing to change any aspect of that process that the courts wanted us to change. We have worked with the experts to make sure that that change occurred and we've made that change to make sure that the people who should be getting the benefits, get the benefit and that they're done with the best practice is possible. And these practices are the ones that wore the standard uh, for everyone in this field. So what we've really done is look at this and say, how can we improve on that? And how can we make that better? And I think that's what I think all parties are proud of because all parties work together to try to accomplish them. But do you I mean, if you're looking back at it, I mean, there was a negotiated process with the settlement, um there's, you know, a lot of this was based on, I guess theoretically, you know, uh standard practice in neuroscience and things. But I mean, do you think like the process could have been negotiated better? I mean, you're in the position of of saying we need to end this practice now. Uh Do you have sort of regrets about, you know, what led you to that point, brian, again, I'm trying to make it clear to you that we were only one party to the settlement and the settlement was overseen by the courts. The courts are the ones that ultimately make the decisions about the processes that are used to evaluate players to receive benefits. So we're just a party to that. We participated in saying yes, we think this should be changed. If there are better processes, we support that, and that's what we've done.

Cristina Junqueira discusses her company’s potential growth.

Nubank CEO: ‘There’s so much opportunity’ for fintech in Latin America

Nubank CEO on fintech in Latin America


Nubank CEO: ‘There’s so much opportunity’ for fintech in Latin America


you mentioned latin America, you are operating in a few countries. Now, obviously you're native brazil, but also in Colombia and Mexico. Are you setting your sights on any other countries in the area soon? There's so much opportunity in the region. We like to say that the combination of great population, horrible customer experience or a lot of customer pain in very big spreads or you know, high fees is unmatched ng when you look worldwide, like there's no place that is better suited uh, in terms of having a great opportunity for fintech companies to tackle. Um, having said that we have replaced pretty awful with Mexico and Colombia, we would love to go to other countries. But for now, like when we look into 2021 2022 there's still a lot of room for us to really scale operation Mexico and Colombia has just begun. Although we're seeing a lot of early traction customers are very excited about finally having an alternative in those countries to, um, but we got to make sure that we're well positioned to deliver on their expectations before we venture into another country.

Fortune Global Forum 2021

Secretary Raimondo's message to CEOs: "They need to be willing to hire differently"

Latest video

The Secretary of Commerce encourages CEOs to consider factors other than a four year college degree.

Videos (12 videos)

Secretary Raimondo's message to CEOs: "They need to be willing to hire differently"

Cisco CEO believes employees are more productive in a hybrid work model

Chevron's CEO believes preparation was key to success during pandemic

Starbucks CEO: ‘People around the world are craving that human connection’

Airbnb CEO: Travel will have the biggest rebound the industry has seen

How LA plans to be the transportation tech capital of the world

44% of workers have a negative mindset about returning to the office

Dr. Mo Ibrahim: The importance of Africa’s green economy

CEO of Darktrace weighs in on Colonial Pipeline attack

How Rolls-Royce is preparing for the electrification of the aircraft

NFL Commissioner addresses 'race-norming' concussion lawsuit

Nubank CEO: ‘There’s so much opportunity’ for fintech in Latin America