Impact Initiative 2024

The Impact Innovator Awards were introduced this year at the Fortune Impact Initiative 2024 conference. These awards honor standout companies from our Change the World list with under $1 billion in revenue but immense potential to create a transformative global impact.

Recognizing Companies Shaping a Better Future at Fortune Impact Initiative 2024

Photography by Rebecca Greenfield/Fortune

Conferences

The Impact Innovator Awards were introduced this year at the Fortune Impact Initiative 2024 conference. These awards honor standout companies from our Change the World list.

Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us this evening and thank you for making the 2024 impact initiative. A fabulous gathering so far. Our conversations today have been the perfect blend of fresh perspectives and actionable concepts and we appreciate all of your cellar insights. So, thank you. We would also like to thank our founding partner Fi from Black Bod for Cohos tonight's program. This evening, our focus is on people and organizations that are having a positive impact on their worlds and beyond. In just a short while, we'll talk about the effort to end the epidemic of gun violence in America. We'll hear from three people who have had heartbreaking and alarming personal stories on how gun violence changed their lives forever. Family members of the rapper takeoff who was shot and killed almost two years ago. And Greg Jackson junior, the first ever Deputy Director of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. We'll learn how they're using their experiences to help create safer communities for us all. Also, this evening, we're pleased to recognize organizations that have been doing notable and impactful work every year. Fortune releases our change. The world list, which is we're proud to say is now in its 10th year, this year's list just published on September 25th. So please check it out online and you can also find it in our latest magazine issue which is on newsstands next week. The change the world list highlights companies that have achieved measurable, innovative, sustainable social impact as part of their profit making activities. This year, Fortune selected 52 companies out of a pool of more than 250 nominees. They're making a difference by protecting the planet, enhancing public health and expanding human rights and economic opportunity. Congratulations to all of the organizations on our list that have done so. And in addition to this year's list, we are thrilled to announce the Fortune Impact Innovator Awards. The recipients of these awards are up and coming innovators actually, from our change, the world list that have under $1 billion in revenue but have the potential to make a big impact globally. This is the first year that these awards are being presented and we're pleased to have with us, Dale Strange, president and SVP of corporate impact at Black Bod to do the honors. So welcome Dale to the stage. Thank you, Kristen. Thanks so much and hello, friends. It's great to be with you all. As Kristen mentioned, my name is Dale Strange and I have the honor of being the president of Black fd's Corporate Impact Division, which is made up of two amazing companies ever five from Black Bod, as well as your costs from Black FWD. And it is an honor to be with you all. Uh Tonight. One thing that we know is that social impact is not about just one particular initiative. True, social impact is comprehensive. It's holistic and it's engaging communities as well as engaging employees. And I think we could all agree in this room that a corporation has an obligation, not just to its shareholders, but also to all of the other stakeholders, customers, employees, suppliers and members of the communities that we all live in and serve within Black Bod. We have an institute, the Black Bod Institute and that institute does a lot of work on the trends of particular giving. And we've recently done work to examine the behaviors and trends of Gen Z stop by our booth. By the way, if you want to learn more about that, we have an amazing team here who would love to talk with you about it. But one of the things that we know is younger generations agree and are absolutely expecting companies to be serving their communities, millennials as well. Millennials and Gen Z want to buy from and work for companies that share their values uh within the work that we do as an institute. We recently learned that after learning a brand supports a social calls or is socially responsible. 85% of Gen Z consumers are likely to trust it. 84% are likely to buy its products and 82% are likely to recommend that brand to friends and family. But millennials also care about this work. 64% of millennials won't take a job if their employer doesn't have a strong CS R policy, and 83% would be more loyal to a company that helps them contribute to social and environmental issues. So the work that all of you are doing is so incredibly important. We also know that almost eight in every 10 gen Z workers say it's important for them to work for an organization for which the values are aligned, making purpose. The number one driver in career decisions amongst this group, so never has the work that we all do been more important than where we are today. And the work that you all are doing day in and day out for all of us here at Black Ball. It has been an incredible honor over the last few years to be a founding partner of the Fortune Impact Initiative and to be part of this group of amazing and dedicated professionals like all of you, we believe that social impact is a business imperative and that's why I am so incredibly honored tonight to be here with you and to be able to present the winners of the Fortune Impact Innovator Awards. Our first recipient this evening is a company that works to protect pollinators. And in turn is working to help sustain the global food supply. Be wise, uses artificial intelligence and precision robotics to monitor and care for bee colonies in real time in autonomous beehives. And in doing so, the company says that its hives have saved more than 150 million bees which are helping to pollinate more than yes, we can applaud for that. And that work is helping to pollinate more than 250,000 acres of crops every year. Joining us to accept the award tonight is Ty Nikolopoulos, Vice President of Marketing at Be Wise Ty. Please join me on stage. Congratulations for you. Perfectly placed. Thank you so much to Fortune for recognizing be Wise's work to save bees. It's such an honor to be in this room full of so many leaders doing so much to impact our world positively. So what am I doing here with you? I think that we all have heard that we have to save the bees. But why? Well, 75% of the crops that we eat depend on bees for pollination. But every year, 50% of those commercially managed hides that pollinate your food collapse. And it's a lot of things that's causing it. We all experienced extreme weather as we were planning our trips here to Atlanta, that kind of climate change related once in a lifetime event and it happens all the time. It's catastrophic for bees. But it's other things too. It's monoculture, it's pesticides, it's poor nutrition. It's really contagious pests and parasites. And what's worse is beekeepers aren't in a good position to help. They have a skilled labor crisis where they can't find the right talent to help them and their hives can be hundreds of miles apart. So, the help that they get is bees get is always too little or too late. And, you know, that's been devastating until today at BW. We're using computer vision and advanced robotics to be able to remotely scan and inspect hives, take action when there's threats automatically and respond in real time. The net results that we've seen is a 70% reduction in colony loss and we've been able to save millions of bees and what's even better and what makes me so happy to come to work every day is that we do well by doing good. So I want to dedicate this award to the growers who pollinate with us, to the beekeepers who produce honey with us and to the Corporates who are bringing our bee homes to their campuses as part of biodiversity initiatives. Thank you and good night. Thank you Ty for that. Amazing and impactful work. Congratulations. Our next recipient is a digital platform that helps consumers compare prescription drug prices. You probably are all very familiar with the name that I'm about to mention. Good Rx, collaborates with insurance providers and pharmacies to secure discounts for its customers. And according to Good Rx, these efforts resulted in $15 billion worth of savings for patients. In 2023 alone, we congratulate Good Rx on making the list and we are so pleased to honor the company's impact this evening. Accepting the award is Good Rx co founder, Doug Hirsch Doug. Please join me on stage. Thank you up here. Yes. Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you everybody. Thank you, Fortune for this, this wonderful award. Um You know, I've heard a lot this week just or today about just how people teach this and how people learn and bring it and make it part of your company. And I guess we were just born that way. I mean, I started go X because I walked into a Walgreens in Santa Monica, California and they wanted 500 bucks for a prescription. And I just said that's crazy. And I went to the Rite Aid down the street and I went to the CV S and found out the prices varied and my first thought was ok, you know, 500 bucks is a lot for me. But think about how many Americans simply just won't fill their medications and then have all the follow on effects, which is not just about them. It's about the entire economy, it's about, I mean, literally the entire populations. And so here we are 15 years later, good or excess, save consumers. I think about 75 billion now. Um we, uh you know, um we are just literally doing our part every day. We work very closely with doctors. We work very close. We have a, a nonprofit arm called Good X helps. That helps people who just can't even afford the few dollars when we can help you. Even when we can help you save, there's more that can be saved. But for me, it all just comes down to that initial experience. You know, I'm just trying to connect people with the health care because we all deserve quality health care. And we're just going to continue to do that. And that's really the mission of the company will always be the mission of the company. So thank you guys and I'm going to get back to work.

Pinky Cole, Founder and CEO, Slutty Vegan, Brice Klein, Co-founder and COO, Choppy, Brent Young, The Meat Hook Moderator: Indrani Sen, Fortune

Impact Initiative 2024: Green Cuisine: The Future Of Sustainable Meat

Great to see everyone again. Um So we're gonna start uh with a few questions that I have, but as always, I would love to have some questions from the audience. So please think about your uh what you would like to ask our um our our guests here. Um You know, I think everybody knows the companies that you're that you're from, but there you're doing such innovative and interesting work each of you and so different from each other. I'd love to start by just asking you for kind of the 32nd elevator pitch to explain the idea behind your company. Um Pinky, could I start with you? Um You've built an empire slutty vegan based on making delicious vegan food accessible. It's a movement as much as a chain as Brent found out on his way in because he was hearing about it from all the cab drivers. Um And I wonder if you could tell us about the idea that started it for you. Um Great question. First of all, everybody, hello, I got married in this room last year. So this is my first time back here. OK. Um So it feels good. I'm still married. God is good back there. So, um I started this concept in 2018 and at the time I had my dream job. I was a casting director and a former producer for the Maury Show over three years wild. Um But I did a lot of production work. Um And in my two bedroom apartment in 2018 is when I came up with this wild crazy idea. That was so good that I didn't want to share it with the world. And it was creating a concept that would merge sex and food. And I'm like, oh damn, this is a good idea. And from that moment, not even knowing what I was doing, I came up with Flo and in six years, we've graced the covers of almost every magazine. I have 12 plus locations. We've had great partnerships. We built a concept that was just bigger than burgers and fries, but something that rallies the community together and I'm proud of the work that I get to do every single day and it gets ghetto sometimes. Um But the beautiful part of entrepreneurship is we get to do it and inspire people every day. So that's lady loves that. Um I'm gonna go to Brent um The Meat Hook which is a butcher shop in Brooklyn and in the Hudson Valley champions ethical and sustainable meat production. Can you elaborate on your approach to butchering whole animals um rather than buying parts and how that contributes to a more sustainable meat industry. Yeah, absolutely. So, um, Meat Hook is now 15 years old and we are a whole animal butcher shop, which means that we buy whole animals from local farms, butcher them on site and sell them to customers. It's a retail business and it's as simple as that with the simplicity being, you know, the foundation of the business, we wanna know our farmer, we wanna know our customer and we want there to be transparency along the way. Um utilization is the foundation of our business. So we work with regenerative farms. So the product is very expensive. Um It's very sustainable, very ethical. Um But we got to use all of it. It's very expensive. So, um you know, from an entire cow, maybe only 20% of that cow is actual steaks, 50% of it is bones, the other 25% 25 to 30% is ground beef. So with that, OK, what do you do? You make cheeseburgers? So therefore I started a restaurant pork. Same thing. Our specialty is sausages. So what is like the, you know, the through line with all, all of us, we make a whole variety of sausages. If you have an idea, like we probably made it into a sausage. We make a Banh Mi sausage, we make a Philly Cheesesteak sausage. We make a beaten onion sausage and, and uh like all of these things are to infuse different flavors, you know, into the product that we have so that we can sell all of it because we don't make any money unless we sell the entire animal. Um The mission of our company is rebuilding agriculture one cheeseburger at a time. And Bryce, uh Chappy offers hybrid protein options. Could you explain that? And, and then also tell us a little bit about what problem that solves for people who are looking to eat more plant based foods in their diet. Yeah. So we're making products that are like 90% plant proteins, 10% beef fat, bone broth and collagen. And in particular, focusing on kind of the processed meat category and what you get there is you get a product that tastes like it should is high in protein most importantly, pre seasoned and you just have to throw it in a pan to heat it up. And so with that, you're then no longer focusing on appealing to a consumer on sustainability reasons, but you're then able to treat or excuse me, Trojan Horse sustainability by appealing to consumers for actual consumer problems. Things like I've got hangry kids at home. I wanna make a quick case you got a car, I thought I can throw into it. And so trying to again, Trojan Horse, the sustainability problem of food, right? So it might look like we're about to have like a brawl on stage between all these different ways of eating, but there's actually so much in common um between your three businesses, high quality, healthy, ethically sourced food comes at a premium. Um At the same time, customers are experiencing sticker shock in this high inflation era. What are your thoughts on balancing sustainability and affordability for your consumers while also trying to run profitable businesses? Um I can go first. Um Can I be honest? Absolutely, because that's the only thing I can have it any other way. Um The the the plant based world is at a consistent decline just holistically, if you pay attention to the tickers, right? Plant based companies, it's just not in a good space right now. Um And I don't know if it's specifically because the trend a trending like how it used to be, right? Or if you know the the beef companies are like putting out messaging like who knows? Right. But the reality of it is, is as an entrepreneur in a plant based space. Obviously, it's affected us. The reason why I say that is, is because just quite naturally plant based foods are more expensive. So at the height of the business where, you know, pre and pro um right after COVID, we got lines down like every single day, people are willing to pay $18 for a burger. But then when you have all of these plant based companies and non plant based companies, now everybody got a burger and you go to Target and you look on the shelf. And if 10 companies are selling the same thing, there's so much saturation in the market. So now people aren't willing to pay $18 for a burger like they used to because they can get the same thing $3 over here. Or if they can go to Burger King, they can get it for four dollars. So there's been a challenge in trying to navigate through those things and what I've been focusing more on which I've always done. But I'm putting more of an effort on the experience because people pay for good experiences and if you can get people to pay for good experiences, it don't matter what the food costs, what we're gonna promise you is we're gonna give you a quality product, you're gonna be happy when you leave and you'll get the ultimate experience that'll make you wanna come back. Alright. Yeah. Can I um just a um piggyback on that? I feel like um everybody kind of wants to know your butcher and that is why we've started more retail locations because so much of what we do is built on trust. So we can tell the stories of the farms and we can look you in the eye whether you had a really good experience and you had like, you know, amazing short ribs. Ok. Those were fantastic or if your steak sucked, like there might be a reason for like, did it hang long? Did it hang long? Enough. Was there another issue in the animal itself? Like we're here for that? So, um the hospitality experience is very, very important to us. But to answer your question, like, I don't think the prices are going down. Like the beef industry, you know, the big three packers learned that they can control way that we eat meat in this country through COVID and it was maniacal and like really freaking messed up and the way and so those prices aren't going down and beef commodities in general, like you can't grass fed and commodity beef are like calves are the same price, finishing same price. Ok, so like why would you necessarily go grass fed well, because it's better for the environment, it tastes better and you know, it's better for the earth. Ok. The those are, those are great reasons to do it but like the New York Times did a great little article last week about the environmental costs of um lots of foods, but most specifically beef because if, and it's a really easy cool little infographic, please check it out that um the hidden environmental cost. The cheapest beef in Walmart across the United States right now is $5.38. You can't buy anything cheaper than that. The environmental cost is an extra $22. So that actually should be, you know, whatever. I'm not gonna be able to do math on stage. I'm sorry. Thank you so much. That's 20 $27 for ground beef. Like the meat hook, like ground beef is a loss leader for us. Like I keep the price low because I want to have something that everybody can afford. Sausage is the same way. Steaks aren't going anywhere. They're easy to sell, keep selling them. But like the hospitality aspect of making sure that people are met where, where they are at and understand the costs behind it and where their money is going is super important to me. And then my, my thoughts there are that the alternative, the beat industry has made a lot of, I think perhaps missteps in this realm and trying to sell products at a premium under the guise of being more sustainable, which when you have a worst tasting product that's nebulously healthier is a really hard pitch. And so we see there's white space. Then in that we think we need a strategy shift and see a lot of white space again in processed meats, ground beef, heavily subsidized, hard to get the cost on processed meats. There's an upcharge for them because they're more convenient for the end user. So it's easier for us to get to parity. And then also we are solving problems for the consumer and saying, hey, it's convenient, it's healthy and with that, you can have a bit more flexibility in terms of price as opposed to again, ground beef, which is more ubiquitous, ok. Um You know, that people often say you are what we eat, you are what you eat, right? Uh Increasingly food and the food choices that we make aren't just consumer choices. They're becoming kind of central parts of our identity, parts of the tribes that we belong to, whether you're a vegan or a carnivore or a flexitarian. How do you think about and speak to those identities and your customers? Or, you know, you may even, you may dispute the premise of my question also, I'll, I'll dispute it. Uh I like these guys but I, we have so many customers that come in that were, you know, vegan or vegetarian, say my doctor needs, you know, said that I need iron in my, in my diet. I need to introduce something and they're like sheepish to come in. So like we're, we're here for it. Come come talk to us like the all of these solutions need to exist in our food system. Like, you know, I am definitely not a 100% carnivore diet like that's crazy. No, no one caveman didn't eat like that. Like, you know, we've always had vegetables in our diet. So like how can we promote better farming practices to raise cleaner food, not mono crop it but you know, create more biodiversity and better farming practices to raise more high quality food for all of the things that we support. Yeah, I would agree that very much there aren't really these tribes like, you hear a lot of Liver King or Joe Rogan on one side of the spectrum. But in practice people, they just want things that taste good, meet the right nutritional profile and are sufficiently convenient. And if you can meet that, it's great. I was doing a demo at a grocery store in Omaha and sold a bunch of product to a guy wearing a backwards mega a F hat who, you know, ostensibly wouldn't be excited about this, but like was with his family, like our teriyaki steak because it was easy for his family. And so I think where you can provide the value would provide that experience, you can cross party lines. You know, it's interesting. I did a mckenzie brand equity study. Are y'all familiar with? Ok. Um I did a mckenzie brand equity study. Um, and what they said is 70% of the people who come to flooding vegan are not vegan. Right. And I knew that just with my simple math. Um, but, but what's interesting about why slutty vegan has been able to sustain so long is because I'm not attracting the vegan. Right. Right. I don't care if you eat vegan. I don't care if you are a meat eater, if you would like to eat pork. That's your prerogative. I married to somebody who got a chain of meat restaurants. I know it makes no sense. It would be a great TV show, by the way. But the reality of it is, is, uh, it's almost like we've been to the hospital before, right before you go into the back, before they admit you, you go into the triage, right? So everybody slutty vegan is like the triage. So you come as you are and however you come, we will meet you where you are. And I think that that is a part of the reason that has allowed us to just really navigate as a brand because our audience is not, we want the person that's just eating salad all day. That's not a person. We want the person who's eating vegan for the first time and wants to see what the hype is all about. And then when it tastes like the vegan, like, OK, I could do this right. And then tomorrow they can go to his restaurant and then they can go to grocery store and buy some teriyaki uh from him. And, and that is the person that is going to keep the business to continue to grow. And I like to keep it that way. Absolutely. We in our last couple of minutes. Um What do you see as the biggest challenges ahead for sustainable food? And, and also what makes you feel optimistic? I said one of the biggest challenges for us has been funding. Um and uh like we tried our hand at AC PG brand a couple years ago and it was actually a very disheartening um experience because everybody loved the product. We make all of these interesting sausages, like the green chorizo. Cool. My kids will eat this, like, it's bright green. But, um, the only funding available for these products was venture capital funding. And everybody wanted to know, you know, our pathway to 5 million in five years. It was like, we're the exact opposite of the type of agriculture that we're supporting here. So everybody loves the idea. But they just, you know, the finances just don't work like banks, like just don't want to take a big risk on that. And it's slow money and there's some slow money, angel investors out there. But, um, it, you know, when you need a million dollars and someone's willing to lend you 10,000, not particularly helpful, um which is, you know, why I just wanted to start more retail locations so that people know the brand, trust, the brand, know the butcher and hopefully we can see it grow from, from there. I think very much agreed on the funding side. And then that ties in. I think one of the biggest challenges right now is consumer trust. There has been a lot of venture capital or fill in the blank dollars thrown at various companies across the alternative meat landscape, many of whom have not met consumer expects stations. And it's hard to convince people to come back and try something that might be notably better when they've already had a slightly soured experience. And so overcoming that is a challenge. I think things I'm optimistic about are a lot of these kind of more regenerative approaches. There are now many more brands taking that strategy. And then also, you know, there are a lot of somewhat more upstream companies doing things like algae based feed to give the cows to reduce emissions. And so I think there are a lot of compelling solutions across the value chain there. I think the story line is that we all need money. Yeah. Ok. I see. Um very much so. Um I think that uh access to resources and financial resources especially is a lot different today than it was in 2020 21. Would you all agree? Right. People are clutching their money more than they did before. Back in 2021 everybody was throwing out cash, throwing out valuations. It was great like it was a party. But now people are unsure because the economy, there's so much instability that's happening. So for me in my industry here I am, I asked chat GP T by the way, I said, who's the most notable vegan restaurant? And they said slutty vegan. I'm like, ok, cool. I'm cool. But I see all of my peers closing their doors. Yeah. Every week there's a different vegan restaurant closing. So it's a blessing and a curse. The blessing is like, ok, I get to monopolize but the curse is that like, am I next. And it's, it's a hard reality that you have to ask yourself. But it's because people, especially private equity firms and investors. I don't honestly believe that they believe in the plant based movement like they did before because there's not many comps like I am the only cop left, right. So I'm creating a blueprint by, by also trying to make people feel comfortable and it's difficult, but it's worth every step of the way. And I wouldn't stop it for anything in the world. Love that. All right, we're gonna end on that note. Thank you so much to our team panelists and to our audience for engaging.

Jainey Bavishi, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and Deputy Administrator, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Carla Peterman, Chief Sustainability Officer, PG&E, Sanjay Wagle, Co-founder and Managing Director, The Lightsmith Group Moderator:  Molly Wood, Founder and CEO, Molly Wood Media; Co-chair, Fortune Impact Initiative

Impact Initiative 2024: Climate-Proofing The World: Adaptation And Resilience Strategies

Jainey Bavishi, Carla Peterman, Sanjay Wagle, Moderator:  Molly Wood, Founder and CEO, Molly Wood Media; Co-chair, Fortune Impact Initiative

I feel like we should probably open by taking a tiny bit of issue with the title of the session that we're on right now, which I'll take responsibility for. Um I think I, I think we're seeing this week, right? We're seeing at this exact moment in real time that climate proofing is, is not a promise that anybody can make. We are also seeing in real time over these last weeks just in the United States that adaptation of resilience is no longer optional. Um It has however, been a very small part of the conversation and more importantly, a very small part of the funding environment. So let's start by kind of trying to quantify what's been missing. Um And Sanjay, I'm going to start with you. I know you've done some research on this. Yeah, sure. Um So, you know, the background is I've spent the last 20 years focused on investing in renewable energy and clean technologies and about five years ago, shifted to investing in climate adaptation. And I was prompted by realization that climate adaptation is a now thing, not a future thing. And I think it's apparent to everyone now that the impacts of climate change are playing out all around us all the time, disrupting every sector, whether it's um disrupting shipping on the Rhine River or through the Panama Canal from droughts or worsening storms and wildfires, disrupting electric utilities. Uh everything is getting disrupted. Um But the realization was also that um there's a lot of spending happening now, whether they call it climate adaptation or not, businesses, communities are already spending by our count tens of billions of dollars in the US alone every year dealing with these disruptions and they may not call it climate adaptation. The challenge is to find smart ways to adapt um that go beyond just minimizing the damage but actually delivering real value to customers, perhaps even growing revenues. And so that's what we look for. What are the solutions? And we found companies in about 20 different areas of technology that have solutions for the disruptions affecting different sectors. It totaled about $300 billion of spending and that's growing a lot faster than the base spending because that's just driven by physics by the disruptions coming from climate change. Carla, I feel like adaptation and resilience must be simultaneous, must be a hugely reactive part of your business. And I wonder if it has become increasingly proactive, how are you approaching that? As is it a separate line item and, and planning mechanism for you? Yeah. So as Molly mentioned, I'm with Pacific Gas and Electric and we serve electricity and gas to one in 20 Americans and we've been impacted by climate change. And so for years, we've been working on investing in clean infrastructure to help mitigate climate change. But now we're also having to adapt. And as wildfire was mentioned, wildfire has been an acute climate threat that we've experienced. And what we've been able to see is that through a series of measures, we reduce wildfire risk by 94% in our system. However, there is so much, you know, climate threat that we need to be making investments that not only address one aspect of climate change, but multiple ones. And the more time you have to plan the better. So to address our wildfire risk, for example, we really leaned into tree trimming vegetation management, but you have to do that every year. So we made a commitment a couple of years ago to underground, uh, the power lines in our highest wildfire risk areas because not only does that address wildfire risk, but it also addresses reliability. So getting more bang for your buck will allow you to address the immediate issues, but also really plan for long term resilience. And then Jamie, how does this, how do you think about this as you incorporate this into your work at NOAA and the, you know, the department at large? Yeah, sure. So, um, you know, I I helped to run the agency whose airplanes hur hurricane Hunter airplanes are currently flying into Milton to help forecast that storm. By the way, we did the same thing for Helene and the forecast was exactly right. But we still saw the devastating images of the destruction in Western North Carolina as well as the loss of 200 lives, probably even more. Um What does this tell us? You know, Asheville was previously known as a climate safe haven. Um But now we know everywhere it rains, it can also flood. Um And we need to say, take a very different approach to thinking about how we prepare for these impacts. Um You know, I'm gonna invoke Sanjay's partner here. Um uh But at the beginning of the summer, we didn't know what was going to happen with the presidential election. We didn't know what was gonna happen with inflation rates. We didn't know how many gold medals vile was going to win, but Noah predicted that it was going to be an incredibly hot summer. And Noah also predicted that it was going to be an incredibly active hurricane season and both of those things have been true. So there's, you know, we often talk about uncertainty when it comes to adaptation, but there is actually more certainty here than there is uncertainty and it's just time to act, you know, let's dig into that a little bit. Sanjay. Your organization produced some, some research, some attempts to quantify the investment opportunity with in a paper called the unavoidable opportunity. Pointing to this kind of certainty. Talk about that a little bit. Yeah. And um the unavoidable opportunity was the idea that adaptation is something we will have to do. And, you know, just stepping back to Jamie's point, as an investor or as business executives, there's really very few things we know for certain about the future, but we know that the earth will be at least as warm as it is today. And we'll have at least as many severe disruptions to different sectors as we're having today. Probably more the unavoidable opportunity paper was based on the IP C's fifth assessment report showing that no matter how aggressive our decarbonization path is over the next 15 years, we should expect just about the same level of warning warming, meaning that level of warming is pretty much locked in no matter what we do and we're going to have to adapt to that warmer world. Um And so it goes on to outline what the opportunities are for addressing that in smart ways and the opportunities for investing, give us some examples if you would. Yeah. So we were talking about this in the green room that everything is getting disrupted and everything is going to need solutions. And so our latest investment was actually in health care in Brazil because climate change is causing booming mosquito populations throughout Latin America, warmer winters, more standing water and there's now 10 million cases of dengue fever so far this year in Brazil compared to a few 100,000 in a typical year. It's a real crisis and it's not just Dengue fever, it's Zika, it's malaria, it's other mosquito borne diseases and waterborne illnesses. And so we invested in a at home health services company that does vaccinations and lab tests at the home and their business is booming. They were already growing 40% a year. They're now growing even faster because there is a shortage of not enough people in Brazil are vaccinated for Dengue fever. And this is one of the ways to increase the capacity of the health sector to deal with yet another climate disruption. Um We could spend a little time at the end of the panel probably talking about the the future that we all imagine, right, the more time you spend, I think studying the IPCC reports, right? It's not, it's not hidden information. The more you start to realize how different the future we may live in is going to look. Um Carla on that note though, I wanna ask you, how do you plan for the disruptions that we are certain climate change is going to bring on top of the increased need for electricity as a result of A I and data centers, the increased need to electrify everything. It's like you're having to adapt to lots, lots of things all at once. Well, I think the good news is when we look at what the energy system needs to look like to address dangerous climate change. It's actually it's the better cheaper system for customers. It is cleaner, cleaner in terms of air quality, it's lower cost because electricity as a dominant fuel is a more efficient fuel, it's lower cost, but we just have to get there, we have to get to 2040. And so as we think about that, we think about what are some of the milestones. And for us, we're really focused on electric transportation because we see the opportunity for not only decarbonizing the transportation sector, which is challenging, but also that those s can provide a grid resource. As we're focused on having a really good grid and having reliable power, those vehicles can provide power to the grid be really mobile batteries at times that have not been driven. And so about a month ago, we were able to support the city of Oakland in electrifying its school bus fleet. It's the first fully electric school bus fleet in the nation and over 70 vehicles and these vehicles are not only electric but they're bidirectional. So they're able to plug into the grid and provide power to our system um at times of day when the power is needed and the sun is plentiful. And so we're doing this also in a community that can benefit from the air quality benefits. And in one of our communities which is historically disadvantaged. And so finding those opportunities that really also are proof points in making the system more affordable and accessible to some of our lower serve populations is really key. We are going to geek out later about decentralizing power generation and this whole I'm calling it, bring your own power and it's my obsession and I will stay off of it for the moment. Jamie. Um Anytime anyone says bidirectional charging, I just get like way too excited. Um How Jamie that, you know, I think there's probably a tendency when people hear Noah and they think about adaptation resilience, they just think sea walls. Um and I know that it is so much more than that talk about the investments that the agency is making and also just thinking about this in a, in a much different way from sort of moment to moment protection if you will. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, before I came to Noah, I was actually the chief resilience officer for New York City and we would beat ourselves over the head trying to figure out how to attract private sector investment into the sea walls we were building and I think we were asking the wrong question, right? I think that it's about strategically finding opportunities to bring different capacities together and really leverage each other's investments. So some of the investments we're making right now with Inflation Reduction Act and bipartisan infrastructure law dollars are things like, you know, $10 million into a climate, climate ready workforce program because we're trying to understand what resilience jobs actually look like and, and share that learning widely um $60 million into ocean based accelerators so that we can help entrepreneurs and small businesses commercialize climate resilience solutions that are built off of marine and ocean data. Um I'm gonna tell you the demand for these programs is off the charts. We have another program, $575 million into a climate resilience regional challenge. A one time program we received over $16 billion in eligible applications. Um And so, you know, and I think the the we're putting so we're certainly investing into different kinds of solutions into different kinds of learning that we'll be sharing. Um But the, the demand is huge and um certainly not, not one that we can meet with the limited dollars we have even in this moment of, you know, unprecedented funding. Uh Sunday that gets us back to you and that private sector funding and try to cat trying to catalyze that funding and also the good ideas that come out of it. The start up talk a little bit about Lights Smith uh for people who don't know and how this has been part of your investment strategy for a long time. Yeah, so uh Lights Smith is manages a growth equity fund. We're a private investment firm based in New York. Uh We manage a growth equity fund. We invest in growth stage technology companies pretty standard growth equity, the new part was investing in climate adaptation. And just at the time, five years ago, institutional investors were starting to get familiar with investing in climate mitigation, renewable energy efficiency, electric vehicles, et cetera. Um But nobody knew what we meant by climate adaptation. And um it required, there isn't a track record of investing in this strategy. Um And so it required um or it was very helpful to have um some junior capital um from some uh philanthropies foundations um and uh other investors um to take a first loss position and um show that the perceived risks were not uh were bearable and that helped mobilize um other traditional institutional investors. Uh No, of course, there's a, a bit of a track record. Um And a bit more definition to the space. Can you help us put some dollars behind this? Like how big is your fund? You're, you're still there aren't that many peers investing in adapt and adaptation and resilience solutions that I know of. Um But talk about the, maybe the comparison, the comparative size of these two markets, how much money has gone into decarbonization versus how much money has gone into adaptation and how big we think that market could be. Yeah, I mean, I I think um um climate policy initiative does a global landscape of climate finance? They track about $600 billion a year being invested into climate finance globally in all categories. From venture up to big projects. And about 5% of that is for climate adaptation and some of that is dual purpose, it's both climate adaptation and climate mitigation. So it's a really small part of the whole um Carla when you make these investments, uh it seems that there's a little bit of a you have climate impacting clean infrastructure, right? We're in the middle of an energy transition, building renewable energy assets that themselves may end up in addition to the existing assets vulnerable to the effects of climate change. I mean, how much of this is a hamster on a wheel? Well, it's definitely top of mind and one of the things that we did last year earlier this year actually was submit to our regulator, a climate vulnerability assessment. So we assessed our assets from a 10 to 50 year time horizon to see what the vulnerability is to a range of climate risk. And we have exposure to everything, subsidence, drought, flooding, heat, wildfire. And so that's allowed us to better understand which of our assets are more at risk than others. And another part of that assessment was to meet with our communities to understand what is their adaptive capacity to respond to any disruption in power because dealing with one climate risk may be more feasible for one community than another. So now that we're armed with that information that does help us to prioritize where we spend customer dollars and where we need to have some partnerships. Um And we're also providing that information to our communities as well. And so what's key is making sure then that the next infrastructure one puts in the ground is resilient and on the right time horizon. So yes, there is a lot of focus and need to grow infrastructure. We're seeing that need in order to uh increase electrification, but it's not going to be productive if we're so quickly building it based on old standards. And so, for example, when we had to replace some transmission towers on one of our coastlines, the standard was to do it to a certain depth. But when we looked at what sea level rise will look like in 50 years, I said, let's make it longer and deeper now. So that's actually going to be able to last the entire time for which it was intended to be built. And then Jamie, as you look at this part of the climate solution, that what do you think we need, whether that's, you know, specific dollar amounts or political will or innovations or anything else you can think of? I think we need partnerships. Um And I think, you know, um a a absolutely innovation is gonna be needed whether it's building materials or, you know, different methods of um uh growing our food or um uh health care innovations. I mean, like, i it's these challenges are gonna cut across all sectors and I think Carlo is getting to that Um, so, you know, whether it's businesses looking at their own operations or seeing a market opportunity. Um, I think both exist and, but both things are required and, and, and um both things are necessary. I think of those, you know, you know, those like headphone, like fans that like people wear now they look like headphones but they're jack fans that you wear on your neck. I, I don't know if they work, I don't have one but you know, those are things that didn't exist any, it exists a couple years ago and now we see them around. That is an adaptation, right? That is some entrepreneur realized that that was an adaptation. I think we're gonna see a lot more like that and a lot more that's gonna be absolutely critical to our quality of life and let's face it, our survival. I mean, I keep telling this to people like bring me the start up that is reimagining the fashion timing supply chain, like stop filling Uniqlo with sweaters in September in most places at this point, Molly. I see a public, private partnership opportunity between the fashion industry and Noah's seasonal and subs seasonal forecasts. You got a difference, fix it, fix it. Uh And before I go, I'm just gonna make one comment and then I'll let our panel go, which is I I do want to address the elephant in the room, which is that for the longest time, nobody talked about adaptation and resilience because there was a sense that if we did talk about it, we were giving up on mitigation or giving up on decarbonization. And I just want to point out that Al Gore in an inconvenient truth said that adaptation was a kind of surrender. And by 2013 said that in fact, it was a moral imperative. And so there is a, a justice part of this that we can never ignore. Thank you so much. I appreciate you.

Stacey Abrams Moderator: Diane Brady, Fortune

Impact Initiative 2024: Profits, Politics And Purpose - Stacey Abrams On The Economics Of Diversity

Well, thank you. I've never gotten a cheer like that before, but thank you very much. They read your bio. You know, you know what I love about your bio and thank you so much for joining us is when we were said, how would you like to be described? I said she'd like to be described as author and activist. I thought that was very interesting. So, is that how you think of yourself right now? I mean, of course, we've had the whole pantheon of what you're doing. But I know you've written a lot of books, but the activist part I'm interested in. So when I was growing up, my mom, one day I was about 14, she said, you don't want to be a jack of all trades and a master of none. What she meant was Stacy picks something you're doing too much stuff. What I heard was try everything, which proves the importance of communication. But to your question, I see the, the path that I have the work I'm trying to do. I know what my end goal is, but it's a freeway. And so my job is to pick the lane at the time that gets me where I need to be and be able to shift lanes depending on the traffic, depending on the obstacles and depending on the need. And so right now, my strongest utility is in the space of activism. And what are you in? Which lane is that? I'm in activism? I wanna say I was saying Fast Lane, but give me some sense of um you know, even that the whole idea of public office versus public service and I think, you know, obviously a force in the private sector as well. Tell me a little bit, how do you think about public office? Now? How are you doing? Because, you know, you get out a lot of people, I asked them, would you ever run for us? They'd be like no. And how would you run for office again? Of course. But public service is the intention. Public office is a tool. And so for me, public service is always the responsibility. Sometimes you think you have the right tool. Someone says no, we don't like yours. So you don't get to use it that day. But that doesn't mean you decide I'm never gonna hammer again. You just figure out when it's the most appropriate tool. But it's also, I think the tendency of us to conflate politics and policy, I believe in policy and politics should be a tool for the policy you want. Unfortunately, too often policy is the tool for the politics people want. And so the reason I don't conflate the two is that I'm always very clear that politics is something I do policy is the reason I do it. Let me ask about all the work that you've done around, you know, voter suppression, getting people out. How do you think about Georgia right now? Even the fact I'm reading that an individual can now basically point to their neighbor and say, you know what? I don't think that person should vote. So give us a lay of the land, Georgia, unfortunately continues to be a leading edge of voter suppression. And if you've heard me talk about this before, I'll say it very quickly. Voter suppression has three components. Can you register and stay on the rolls? Can you cast a ballot? And does that ballot get counted? We have become very fixated in the last four years on that last piece, but that has not diminished the intention of those who would like to silence voters who have used the issue of, can you register and stay on the roll? So the mass challenge is what you're speaking to in 2021 Governor Brian Kemp signed into law an expansion of mass challenges and then in 2023 expanded it further. And so you don't have to be a neighbor. You just have to know how to spell. You can challenge any person and you can challenge multiple people. And now counties which used to be able to dismiss these. Basically, they knew it was a sham. They didn't want to spend the time because they had other things to do, like administer elections. They now have to parse through all of these challenges. And there have been more than 100,000 challenges in the state of Georgia just brought by people saying I don't think this person should be able to vote. That's a diminution of our democracy. This who you pick when you go into the ballot is partisan. The process should not be. And anytime the ability to cast a ballot depends on who's in office. Democracy is imperiled. And so in Georgia, unfortunately, we're still fighting. Not only can you register and stay on the rolls, we also have bad actors who are trying to make it hard to count the ballots, which is the hand, the, the state election board again and it sounds innocuous. Oh, we're going to count the ballots. Sure. They are more than 5.5. So right now it's, it's about 5.5 million likely voters in November. They are saying that you have to that by precinct three people have to count those pieces of paper. Do you know how long you can count grains of sand a little faster? And so the problem is it's not the intention, it's the process and the way the process is being designed, it will delay the counting of the ballots. Therefore, delaying the certification, which means that certain precincts will not be included in the final tally of the vote, which means it could invalidate Georgia's electoral college uh participation, which could alter the outcome of the election. This is intended as an act chaos, not an act of integrity. Let me ask you, but what are you? Obviously, the race is very close here. What are you seeing and, and let's start with that. Do you, do you have a sense that uh which way the election is going to go? Georgia is a purple state. And what that means is that you have to fight every election. We used to be blue for 100 and 30 years. Then we were red for about 25 years. Now, we're purple. And what purple means is that sometimes Democrats win, sometimes Republicans win, but every time you have to fight and that's really what differentiates a swing state or a battleground state from any other state when you don't know the outcome, waking up, you have to fight. And so we know it's gonna be a close election. It's, it's a toss up. And so it's a question of who is doing the work to turn out voters and on the nonpartisan side, those of us who are also trying to do the work of making sure that anyone who wants to cast a ballot, regardless of who they intend to vote for has the ability to do. So you know, it's interesting. I think you just came from Vermont. You've been going around the country. You were a storyteller. I said you are a prolific author actually. Can I just start with, when do you write? Usually when somebody either wants a book or their money back? Uh, what's your next book? Can you tell us your next book? Yes. So, it's called Code of Justice. It's the trilogy. It's the third book in my Avery Keane series. And thank you. And it's about, it comes out next May and it's about A I and health care and um the fact that we have no rules. There you go. It sounds like a dystopian non fiction. I, I don't know, I don't do dystopian iii I do improbable but very possible. So you should be mildly frightened. I think that we're going to call that the theme of our, but, but let's go to where we are today. You know, when you think about, you know, Biden really was supposed to be the bridge, you know, and, and tell me some sense of what is the story. How do we tell the story in a way that doesn't keep us so divine? What do you think when you go out, you're around the country to your point? It's a nonpartisan effort that you're making? What is the story that isn't being told? But let's be clear. I, I am very partisan. You're totally partisan. But no, no. But, but that's the reason I say I'm very partisan is that there's the process should be nonpartisan, but the fight to save our democracy should be bipartisan. That's an act of patriotism. And so the conversation I have is we may have different value systems, we may want different things, but we should have as a foundational fundamental uniting value, the protection of our democracy. And if we are willing to give that value, primacy, then we should all be voting a certain way. Everything else follows. But if we lose the foundational responsibility of preserving our democracy, nothing else happens because then we have descended into autocracy and authoritarianism and America is not immune. We have been on the cusp before and we pulled ourselves back. We are on the cusp again and we have to recognize it. But the other reality is part of the division is not just a question of who wants democracy or not. It's also a question of what country do we want. And this gets to the de I question the US has been in a corrective action state since its inception. When we started, we got it really, really, we got it right on paper and really wrong in every other way. And so we spent 248 years in this active engagement of writing the record, we call that diversity, equity and inclusion. And it's a movement that encapsulates so much. I know Elizabeth and Neil talked about it from the perspective and vantage point of race. But it's also the fact that it took until 1990 for persons with disabilities to get coverage. And because of the Chevron decision, the, the um Supreme Loper decision that eliminated Chevron deference, the AD A is in jeopardy because the AD A is actually written to be almost entirely determined by statute and by regulative like regulatory decision making. Meaning if you now have to take every single question to court. If you are a disabled person, the protections you enjoyed the day before that decision are now imperiled. And if we think it's not going to happen, look at the rob list versus Domino's Pizza case. When Domino's Pizza said they didn't have to fix their website to allow the visually impaired to use it because it wasn't in the law. But private sector, you know, like whether it's climate there is this instinct that the private sector may continue to do the right thing regardless of what's happening on the policy front, we have a room full of people here that for example, corporations are less inclined to talk about what they're doing, but they say they're still doing it. How important is it to be talking about the issues that you're, it, it's absolutely critical because we take for granted that we have shared values. But what the last few years have shown us is that if we don't talk about those values, we can't believe that they are implicit and shared completely by others. And the reason I use the AD A as an example is that right now, all of our attention is focused on race as a proxy for DE I. But if you can, if you can destroy DE I through race, that implicates every other protected class LGBT LGBT Q plus women title nine is in jeopardy. When you see these NCAA cases being brought, regardless of what you think about the outcome, they are attempting to weaken title nine. Because if you can weaken one facet of title nine, you can, you can completely eliminate it. That's why the case against Fearless Fund used the 1866 Civil Rights Act because you take the very law, you despise and try to invert it to justify destroying the entire infrastructure. I told you I do improbable. That's possible. That's what they're doing with the E I only. They're making it more possible every time. So coming back around to your question when I think about this election and what we can do together is we have to talk about it. We have to talk about the implications beyond the, the discomfort of. Well, I don't wanna talk about race or I don't wanna talk about gender. We should be talking about how do we protect each other? We should be talking about how do our stories unite us? We should be talking about the American dream and there are three pathways to the American Dream education, what you know, the economy, what you do and elections who's in charge de I has been absolutely essential in removing barriers to those three pathways to the American Dream. The Voting Rights Act was AD E I law. The AD A is AD E I law title nine is AD E I law title one which allowed, oh, I don't know. Some kid growing up in the Appalachian Mountains 30 years ago to go to a public school that was fully funded and who's now running for vice president? He's a beneficiary of de I, so we have to talk about it because people don't understand how they benefited from it or how this takes. I wanna ask, it sounds like a non sequitur a little bit. But what is your mindset? Give me a sense of I wanted to ask, you know, where you get the most joy, but I also don't want to diminish how are you just generally feeling right now about how things are going on? Are you hopeful less? I'm ok. So I, I don't do hope or, or, or optimism or pessimism. I describe myself as an Amelio risk which I know is an entirely made up word. So to ameliorate is to mitigate Amelia risk is not in the dictionary yet. No, here's the thing, I'm determined. I, I don't do, I, I don't know what's going to happen, but I know what I can do and So I focus on what are my actions, the way I put it is, the glass is half full but it's probably poisoned. So my job is to find the antidote. Don't drink anything at your table. Well, no, you can drink it. Just be prepared to do something about it. If it isn't what you think we spend so much time hoping that things will be the way they should be. I spend my time doing the things to make the world the way I think it should be. And that I think is what is so important about this room in rooms like this. There are very few rooms that are filled with people with the power to actually manifest what the outcome should be. And each of you has that ability through tweeting and retweeting and or whatever we call Xing. Now through using social media, through conversation, through amplification of the best intentions of America. We should be celebrating foundational values like diversity, equity and inclusion. We should not be afraid of them. We should be celebratory, we should be protecting them and we should be expanding them because it makes more money. It makes us better people, it makes the country wealthier. It increases the likelihood of our collective success and it increases the bottom line for every company that engages in it. So I believe that we celebrate it, we defend it, we expand it and if we do the right thing and we vote, please. God. Vote. Um, unless you're voting wrong. Which case stay home. No, I'm joking, I'm joking. I, I do not want people to stay home. Um, I just want you to change your mind and do the right thing. But we've got to, we've got to defend education, the economy and our elections and then we can get one quick last point. Where do you get the most choice? Is there a word? I have nieces and nephews who are extraordinary people who I want to see live the best lives imaginable and they have no filters, but they also have no limits to their imagination. And so my job is to make it possible. Please join me in. Thanking agent. Well, deserving of a standing ovation.

 Elizabeth Gore, President & Co Founder, Hello Alice Neal Katyal, Partner, Hogan Lovells Moderator: Phil Wahba, Fortune

Impact Initiative 2024: DEI Defense: Battling The Chilling Effect

I, I mentioned this in a couple of other panels, like we've seen a lot of companies fall like dominoes in recent months saying, yeah, D I OK, we're done with that. Um caving to pressure or maybe using that pressure as a pretext. What do you think is behind that? And um you know, do these companies not have deeply held convictions? Like what, what do you think is or, or was there a lot more um uh backlash bubbling under the surface that we might not have seen? Um Well, how do y'all? It's good to be with you and always gray at fortune. Um So I don't know, I'm gonna flip my answer and say the ones that are staying will probably make the most money. And the reason I say that is in my world, in small business, um it is so critical that we're funding everyone in that ecosystem to ensure that they're growing, they get the capital they need and the Fortune 1000 in the room, they have the supply chain they need to be successful. And so I think when I think about it, I think of the other way those you know, like I saw today was whether it was Exxon or Delta or Whole Foods who are keeping to it. I think they're kind of come out with better stock prices, better employee retention. So I kind of think of it in the opposite way. So the naysayers are going to miss out. Yeah. Ok. And we're capitalists and I think that the naysayers they're going to lose money. Ok. Um, now you, of course, uh had your own battles with um people um on the screen is like Baltimore. Yeah. No, I mean, you can name them if you want. But um I mean, how can DN ID I initiatives uh be lost or approved a bit more or, you know, it's, it's uh um you know, with, with some of the, the uh the legal challenges to them, you know, you've seen maybe some of the weaknesses but how, how can they be lawsuit proofed in your opinion? Well, I mean, I've certainly learned a lot by amazing lawyers like Neil sitting here with me and I didn't think I would need to know any of this, but I think like any issue, um the, you know, the law is evolving and we have to evolve with it. And so any company in the room that is a good fiduciary is gonna have to keep watch on how they particularly with money and we're a credit company, we do credit loans and grants. So we have to keep evolving with the law and the interpretation of the law. And so it doesn't mean you have to stop these programs. It means you have to be smart about the language you're using, you have to great, have great counsel. Um I love that Sherman, the C hr O folks were here because I think they're a really key part of it. So I think you don't stop what you're doing. You evolved. Um And uh what about small companies with fewer resources? I mean, who might, who we are? But you know, you well then tell us maybe spend a few seconds on the the audience. Yeah, so we um hello, we serve 1.5 million small business owners with credit loans, grants, uh fiscal resources and um our largest customers are actually all of you. So we serve the fortune 1000 who have small business owners as their customers. So banks, large fintech, um everyone from Pepsico to Delta Airlines who have really critical supply chain with small business. So we help them engage transact and fund small businesses. So, but we're still a small but mighty company. Uh we're ac c venture back company and um we uh were sued a year ago for our programs for black owned small business owners, our philanthropic programs and um you know, like any company that gets hit by a Black Swan event, you know, you gotta, you gotta be careful and make sure you watch your budget your PNL hire great people and, um, fight like hell and get on the other side. We keep pointing to. Well, I mean, I have to, he's our hero in this scenario. So, um, well, what are your thoughts Neil on, on? Uh, so your first question? Well, first of all, thank you for having me here. It's a privilege to be with all of you. Um, your first question was why are companies caving? And, you know, I've been involved in every affirmative action case at the Supreme Court for the last quarter century. I think, why are companies caving because they're wimps? Um, and look, I mean, I think, I think if, if the company doesn't want to have a diversity or affirmative action program, that's fine. My view is not at all. They're constitutionally compelled or legally compelled to have such things. It's a free country, different companies can do what they want. But what really offends me is companies that stand up and say, oh, we really want to do diversity in affirmative action programs, but we can't be because of the law and that's just to use the technical legal term. Poppycock. The Supreme Court has not stopped de I programs. There's, and there are ways to do them right and ways to do them wrong and obviously you want to do them right? And what I found so troubling and I, I have the privilege of advising many of the Fortune 200 companies including, you know, some that I think in this room and some of them have thrown in the towel, even though they say in the board room with me, they want to do it, but they're just worried too much about either the litigation risk or the reputational risk and the like. And so then you have people like, you know, Elizabeth's company that's not, you know, a multibillion dollar cap company. You know, the legal expense alone is such a huge, huge percentage of their annual spend, but they're fighting to do the right thing. And, you know, if I have any message for you, it's that, that fight is important for those of you who want to have the fight. There is a fight to be had and there's a way in a path to getting affirmative action programs to be upheld by the Supreme Court. Yes, the Supreme Court in the Harvard case has restricted them in the educational setting that doesn't apply in the corporate setting directly. And so all you have is some innuendo that says the justices when they get these cases are going to strike down program after program. And I just don't think that's right. And I certainly don't think it's for pre for ordained and that you should throw in the towel and unilaterally disarm now because one day you might face an adverse result, should we, um, well, should we worry about three weeks from now? Um, if one person gets elected. We should worry about three weeks from now for many reasons. Yeah. But, um, uh, but, you know, just, do you see a scenario under which, uh, um, we would have more judges and put on courts who would then be favorable, um, to, to, uh, to affirmative action, uh, type cases? Sure. I think that Donald Trump would try and put additional judges like that on. But, you know, the justices he put on the Supreme court, for example, are ones that I am very convinced that were Elizabeth's case, for example, to go to the Supreme Court, we could win it in front of all three of those appointees. So I do not think, I think that there's a knee jerk reaction that's happened among some on the left to say this court is so out of step and will do so much to mess us over that. We might as well get ahead of it and throw in the towel now. And I just think that's wrong. And we've seen that in example, after example, of companies, if they do the right thing and do it in a responsible way, those programs can be upheld by the Supreme Court. So just out of curiosity, the company that you're speaking to and they say, oh, we're afraid of litigation. The does activist investor come up? Um Sure it comes up and there have been some letters and also state s come up too and then of course, the possibility that if there's a Trump administration, there'll be government investigations as well of affirmative action programs. So all of those are things that come up. But on the other side, I think you have to weigh what Elizabeth is talking about, which is how important diversity is to the bottom line of companies to better performance. Uh You know, so just from a purely instrumental internal perspective and, you know, someone like me and I think most of the companies that I'm privileged to represent in the board room care, not just about shareholder value, but they care about their impact on the world. Ok. Um We'll open it up to questions in a few minutes. I just wanna backtrack a little bit. I guess I have my own little stereotypes about the scotus. And um what's the case for thinking that a case like Elizabeth could be won if it went all the way up there? I mean, there, there's this idea that they're pretty set in their views or, or are we being a bit unfair? Yeah, I think it's unfair. I mean, there's certainly more set than when I started arguing at the court. My first case in 2006, justice Kennedy was on the court. You know, it was definitely much more of a swing justice feel to it than there is today. You know, sometimes today I do think it's pretty clear what's going to happen before argument and the question is, can I engineer a soft landing, a soft loss for my client or something like that? But I would say like for those who think like, oh, the Supreme Court's always striking down liberal things. Remember they voted against Donald Trump, you know, time after time in 2020 in the election, they called his citizenship question on the census. They said that his cabinet officials lied and struck it down. They saved Obamacare. Of course, you know, twice notably in Moore versus Harper, a huge election case that the Republicans thought they would, if they won, would entrench Republican rule for decades. They lost that 6 to 3. They just upheld Mifepristone the abortion drug last year. So, you know, example, after example of the court doing the right thing with Elizabeth's case in particular and I don't think it's going to go to the Supreme Court because it's just so obviously right that I think she'll win this and I don't think that the other side would want to try and take it to the Supreme Court. But um but basically, you know, they've got uh they, they, in the, in the case, there's a program that Hello, Alice administers with an insurance company where they give 10 grants to African American owned businesses. And the claim is that it's, you know, discriminatory and so on. Well, the guy who they found as their plaintiff to file the lawsuit couldn't even allege that he met the criteria for getting a grant in the first place like the capital thresholds and things like that. So, you know, it's conservatives who generally wanted to restrict access to the federal courts and say a plaintiff has to jump through a series of hoops first. So, were the case to go to the Supreme Court? I think it would appeal to the left and right of the court equally. So, what kind of programs do we think? Um, the opponents of all this could go after? I mean, I'm thinking, you know, the, the federal, all the different government levels have set aside for women and minority owned businesses, et cetera. And they're a pretty big part of it. So, are programs like that, um, eventually potentially threatened uh by this, you know, the, this, uh, well, I mean, the there is certainly, I think I, I can't speak on the of those who sued us, but there's certainly a movement and I wouldn't even say by conservatives. I mean, we're based in Houston, Texas. We had a lot of centrist republicans very much supporting our case. Um Our small business owners are about 5050 they were all very supportive of this. So, um, I think there is this alt, right, you know, extreme groups that, um, are just trying to stamp out anything that they don't recognize. And, and where the reason I brought up supply chain earlier is when I was an entrepreneur, residents at Dell we did 4 billion a year in supp diversity contracting. It was critical to our P and L. So that is an area where I, I just wanna encourage everyone to keep going. It's not new money, it's really important. Um Both to the small business ecosystem as well as the companies themselves. Those are the types of things that I don't wanna see next on the list. Um particularly I, I live in a US veteran household Air Force. And, um, if you look at the intersectionality of a lot of these issues, it does affect all of us. So my case, for example, it is not just Black and African American small business owners, the vast majority of us veterans now are people of color that are starting businesses. So if you say this doesn't impact veterans, it doesn't impact women, it doesn't fix, you know, your coffee shop, your dry cleaner, it's just not the case. So I want to make sure that it's not just Phil philanthropy and grants. I want us to think of this as supply chain as jobs. It is a lot bigger than that concept and just to pick up on something Elizabeth said about the politics, which I think she's absolutely right. I mean, it was an old line conservative principle when I was growing up that if you're running a business, you should generally be able to run it free government regulation. And if you think about what these lawsuits are that Stephen Miller and all these people are filing, I don't think they expect to win. I think they expect to just force companies to unilaterally disarm and throw in the towel. But what's the basis of the lawsuit? They're saying, look, you know, you shouldn't have this diversity program and look, if you want to have a debate about whether to have a diversity program or not, the company should have that debate but lost. Steven Miller has lost that debate. Companies want to have these programs. And so he then runs to the court to say, oh, you can't have this program even if you want to, he's trying to get the courts to do the work he was unable to do in persuading them to abandon their DE I programs. And so, you know, that, that, to me is the antithesis of the Conservative Party that I grew up with. So, is it unfair to surmise that the companies that dropped D I, um, a few months ago they didn't really want it to start with and just had, maybe jumped on. There's a lot of peer pressure and I think there's, you know, a range of different views from companies as there should be. I, I do not, I'm not someone who thinks you, you know, you know, you're immoral if you don't have a program or something like that. But I think, you know, Elizabeth's right, the numbers are in the studies on diversity contributing to shareholder value are really powerful, but I'm sure there are people in every company that don't want to have it or who want to have an extreme version of the program. Um, you know, in the other direction. Um You know, so it's all out there. But I do think, you know, that's where the debate should be, it should be in the boardrooms, not in the courtrooms. Ok. Are there any questions? Don't be shy? Ok. Can somebody bring our friend from R BC and Mike? There we go. Hi, thanks. First of all, congratulations for taking up this site. Thank you. Thank you. I never thought I'd be congratulated for that. But thank you or, or condolences, either work. Um, uh, you made a point about, uh, it's ok for companies to do what they like and they can still run or DNI programs, they just have to do it right? Can you say more about what you mean about that? And if we're practitioners who are looking to do it, right? What would that look like? Yeah, I mean, it's going to depend on the, on the various company and, you know, you'd want to articulate the reasons for doing it and, uh, and document them and, you know, and the like, um, you know, obviously things like quotas are impermissible. Um, but things that are goals and outreach are absolutely permissible. I think it's important often times depending on the nature of the company to do, like what Elizabeth's company does, which is not just a grant program for racial minorities, it's for women, it's for veterans, it's for the disabled. Um, and it's about what, what he calls building an inclusive economy. So for that company that I think program is structured really, really nice and is a wonderful example to look to, but it will depend obviously on the company. Another example I'll just give is I was really, I thought it was very thoughtful, the argument for ESD from Delta this morning on they, they want, you know, fuel emissions to lower because it saves them money, right? So I look at our, our business. So we're in, in credit and there's a $40 billion gap for bipoc community who applied for credit and got declined in the small business area that is terrible for business, for our banks, for everybody. So to me, some of these programs are very relevant to our P and L our bottom line. So that makes a lot of sense to me to run a program that's gonna benefit the business, right? So I also think it's very relevant to Neil's point to what is your core mission and then what fits in that and hopefully that is an inclusive economy. So in the, in our final moments together, um do you think we're going to see more of these kinds of losses as the one we saw that went after? Hello, Alice or um, you know, um, yeah, I think that that's the business model of some of these organizations that want to do it. I don't think we'll see successful ones because I think, you know, we've already won, you know, Elizabeth's case in the trial court. We're going to the Court of Appeals. Now, I suspect that when we win that, that will be at least something of a chilling effect on this, these lawsuits. And, and again, I think we should have this debate. It should just be a debate that's not as much legal policy and what we think is right for the future direction of the company final thought. Um I think again, if we can all look at the bottom line, you know, the, the new majority of the small business owners, we serve, they want to make money, they want to create jobs. And I think America is a capitalist society and if we concentrate on that fact, we're, we're all gonna move forward. Ok. Thank you very much. Thank you. So please join me, thanking uh Neil and Elizabeth for joining us today.

Francine Chew, VP and Head of Corporate Impact, The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America Ellen Patterson, President and General Manager, EVERFI from Blackbaud Moderator: Jane Thier, Reporter, Fortune 

Impact Initiative 2024: From Debt to Dollars - How Innovation Can Secure Gen Z's Financial Future

Francine Chew, VP and Head of Corporate Impact, The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America Ellen Patterson, President and General Manager, EVERFI from Blackbaud, Jane Thier, Reporter, Fortune 

Good afternoon. Good to see everyone. Uh The topic of Gen Z and uh their financial future is a really hot topic these days, particularly myself as the very oldest of the Gen Z. Uh cohort. Uh Francine and Ellen are wonderful people to have this conversation with, given their uh close involvement with corporate impact and social impact. Uh I'd like to start with Francine. Um based on your financial wellness research at Guardian. Tell us about the connection between financial stability and mental health, right? Thank you. Uh Guardian does this survey called Mind Body and Wallet. We've been doing it for quite a few years now and they are clear trends actually with Gen Z. Um they are the cohort and the generational cohort with the lowest mental health um, self reported mental health um data. They uh feel financially stressed and um that really bleeds into all facets of their lives, particularly causing anxiety, stress, et cetera. Ellen. You're a former educator. What kind of impact is financial literacy and education about financial literacy tangibly have on younger generations. Thank you for that question and thank you for having us up here. Um I was a second grade teacher and a school counselor. Uh, so these topic areas of mental wellness and learning and the ability to learn are really, really important. And at ever five, we're trying to tackle three main things for a better society, financial wellness, mental wellness and civic engagement and financial literacy. As, uh, we'll hear a little bit more from Francine, definitely lays the pathway for future success for students and we really see this as fundamental. Um You see about 26 states now mandating financial education, uh it to in order to graduate, these are unfunded mandates. And so we are really trying to build the platform and that education and get that out to a network of almost 30,000 schools across America. Um We have relationships we've built over the past 16 years with 750,000 teachers. Um and on a co curricular basis, we're getting financial education into that really important network of schools. Definitely. And uh the two of you both working at fi, which is a social impact firm and Guardian, which is life insurance firm. Um Francine and Ellen, you know, Fi and Guardian have had a partnership uh for the past two years seeking to materially improve the financial outlook for young people, particularly those from under resource backgrounds. Uh Francine, I'll turn to you first. Can you talk a bit about how that partnership is seeking to help? Sure. So about three years ago, I joined Guardian Um And part of my mandate was to really look at the kinds of investments that we make in community and to ensure that they were aligned appropriately with who we are as an organization. Guardian's purpose is to inspire well being. We do that through mind, body and wallet similar to the name of the survey. Um And that translates really to mental wellness, physical wellness, financial wellness was looking for partners that could really operate um across more than one of those pillars uh ever find in particular, could help us create a bespoke curriculum that helps to address mental wellness and also financial stability for young people. The two are so inextricably linked. And what's interesting is that as we've launched other partnerships um through our corporate impact team that really uh focus on different aspects of uh societal need. The mental wellness piece is so critical to really all the interventions. So whether it's physical wellness and mental wellness, then it feels differentiated and we, we aren't pushing for these initiatives to actually gain traction in our partnership with ever PFI. We found that the sponsored usage of the course ie the incidents when uh ever five staff talk to schools and share with them about the curriculum and then the teachers then adopt it. That's coming in at something like 40,000 students who have been using it in the first full year that it's been rolled out. The organic usage is more than double that um just teachers saying we don't really have a solution that really addresses the combination of these two things and we're not selling it, we're not um encouraging them. We're, we're, we're just offering it on the platform and there's such a need for the intersectionality between those two things that um teachers are just using it um on unprompted Ellen. I would love to speak about our partnership. I mean, um the beauty again of this is that we go into schools again. There are these unfunded mandates that are out there. So teachers need to have something, they need to have a curriculum that they can um offer to their students. And so we can use technology to get into the far corners of North America. So from the Mississippi Delta to rural Montana to large urban areas, these are all um pathways that we can get this mental wellness and, and financial education together in school and just to build on that a bit. Um It really was a bit of an education for me too as I looked at the landscape of financial education mandates across the US. Um not just school, not just states that have financial education mandates, but states that are in the process of legislating and um and requiring it, there are these laws that are requiring schools to teach financial education as a requirement for graduation, but there aren't the dollars or the courses or the resources that are put behind that and a partnership like ours can step in um into that gap and provide a course that then allows teachers to say, ah thank goodness, I didn't know how it was going to make this happen. And now here's this resource and it's good, which helps. Certainly we'll have a few conference workers going around with microphones. So shortly if anyone has questions, I'll be going around to take them. So start thinking. Um But in the meantime, can you each talk about the role that student debt in particular plays on financial wellness and on Gen Z's ability to get ahead. Would you like to start? Um But the corporate impact professional say young people are um they're, they're two, I think main drivers of financial instability um outside of inflation, one is uh student debt. Um um and companies are really working to address that in really innovative ways uh in prep in preparing for this panel, Ella and I wanted to make sure that we weren't just focusing on necessarily some of the challenges but the ways in which there is an increasing ecosystem of partners that are working to address that. But student debt, for instance, are preventing young people from saving for retirement. Um and not having even emergency savings, just money set aside to just manage anything that pops up is also a detriment to um financial stability. Um And there too, everyone from government, you know, secure 2.0 was a law that passed that allows even employers to offer emergency savings accounts and then match some of those um contributions. You have student debt. There's a similar process that's underway where um that's increasingly become an employer benefit. And there are mechanisms for lots of fintech also to step into the space. Um If you have young people who are working gig jobs because that too is an increasing trend among gen Z I think addressing uh student debt, we had a um and Francine was able to be at a conference that we were uh hosting a couple of uh weeks ago. And Doctor Corey C Miller spoke about Gen Z and um a little bit about their resiliency and how they're um looking to uh there. She, well, let me go back to her most formative piece of information that was from ages 14 to 24 have a profound effect on any child's life. And so if you think about uh in the intro, we heard the ages of, of Gen Z, they're right in that sweet spot. So we have an opportunity here to affect change to teach them more about debt and saving. And um what the other thing was that um Gen Z is very dependent on their parents for these conversations as well. So you think about the ecosystem of education and reaching that through technology into hard, hard to reach places today, we're in about 42% LM I communities So you get equal access to the education and then creating this ecosystem of career connected learning of mentorship of the ability to how to even open an account. These things are really important so that students can start to talk about and practice all of these good financial habits. You make a good point about the need for um particularly technologically savvy uh ways of reaching young people. Um How can tech implementations like the kind you're talking about make that education process easier, especially among the very tech savvy youth that we're talking about here. So, in the curriculum that um we co-signed with fi um the delivery mechanism is interesting. It's um it's, it's not flat content. There are lots of videos and interactive engagements and it's really based on uh uh a lot that we know about behavioral psychology. Um There's also a component of it that allows for conversation in the classroom. So there's, there are topics that we address um around how to spot financial abuse even, right? How to um have conversations that feel awkward, even with your parents about money. Um So going even beyond the fundamentals of um of budgeting and how to open accounts to the emotions that we have about money. Uh and how to recognize when those emotions can be a deterrent or can help us have positive behavioral change. Um Those are the kinds of uh that's the kind of content that you can deliver through technology by having videos and snippets and quizzes and, and um as much as we learn about what resonates and drives greater usage, we're integrating into the ways in which we teach and how students learn. We also recognize that sometimes the analog version also helps to reinforce the technology itself. And so there's a component that allows people to be able to speak to each other. And it's been clear to us that if one student is well off and another student is struggling financially or from families that are um they can be faced with this very same set of facts and make two very different decisions, both logical. So how can you get to a point where students understand that there are different actions that you can take that makes sense for who you are. Um strip away the shame. Um and um acknowledge that um um these are circumstances that they may face throughout the course of their lives. Um But technology is a tool to be able to showcase scenarios and then to actually talk through what those scenarios may mean for you? Fantastic. Are there any questions from the audience for our panelists? All right. Well, I'll close this out because we're coming up to the end of our time. I'm really curious in both of your perspectives. What is it about talking about financial well being and setting oneself up for success that remains such a hot button topic and just such a taboo topic for many, uh, parents. Uh, and for many need teenagers for everyone. Yeah. I mean, I would say it's not that taboo anymore. I think where the taboo comes in is when people feel insecure in their own knowledge. And it's why education for parents is equally as important as it is for the students themselves. So if you think about bringing, you know, learning into the schools where meeting people where they are and then the community surrounding students and facilitating conversation need to make sure that the people who are in there with the students, um, also have, have knowledge to share. Certainly. Um, I found that as we've gone on this journey with ever find the curriculum that, uh, everyone has a money story and it's people who you wouldn't expect, um, often times and I, I don't think I've ever introduced the topic of what we do with this curriculum and it hasn't become somewhat of a confessional. Right. I've learned a lot of things about a lot of people because the topic of money opens up windows into people's experiences in their lives. That's always fascinating to me. Um, I agree that it's becoming less taboo. Um, but strangers find it easier to open up than people who are familiar. Right. Um, it's probably that phenomenon where you, you tell people the truth on if you sit with them on the plane and you don't think you'll ever see them again. Um, but, um, Yeah, money. It's, it's, it's central and core to how we feel, um, about ourselves, how healthy our outlook is. Um, and I'm glad that it's getting more attention. I'm glad as well. Thank you both so much to our wonderful panelists. Thank you.

Lauren Riley, Chief Sustainability Officer, United Airlines Kristen Siemen, Chief Sustainability Officer, GM Moderator: Kristin Stoller, FORTUNE

Impact Initiative 2024: Clean Wheels, Clear Skies - Powering A Green Transportation Transition

I want to do something a little fun. So bear with me. Uh Please raise your hand if you got here by plane. Oh, wow. Ok. So this makes my next question. Maybe irrelevant. Um Raise your hand. If you got here by train, no one by car. Ok. For those of you gonna have your hands up, keep them up. How many by electric vehicle? None. Ok. Wow. All right. Got some work to do. We do some work to do clearly, we're all contributing to the problem, which is, I think it is so important. Um Lauren, I wanna start with you as you saw the overwhelming majority here, got here by plane. You work at United. Is there any lower carbon alternatives you are exploring right now? Um And what work do you think still needs to be done? Yeah. So it's great to be here and chatting with all of you about how aviation is going to transition. We're one of those industries, there's probably six or eight that are designated as hard to abate, which simply means we have the solution set. We know the technologies we need. What we do not have is a market. What we do not have is the commercial scale that's gonna enable us to transition right now. Um You know, today, we're responsible for about 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That number is going to go up. So as other industries like road transport start to decarbonize and shift to electric, our contribution is going to go up. So the scrutiny, the focus, the desire for transition plans execution against those it's going to increase over time. We do have plans for that. We have investments in this space. It is primarily around technology. So thinking about aircraft, thinking about engines, thinking about lightweight, thinking about all of those components that go into the aircraft that you flew here on. Um but then it's also about the fuel. So if you look at our greenhouse gas inventory, 98% of our emissions, 98% are from the combustion of jet fuel. So we have one very big single climate elephant in the room when it comes to aviation and that is fuel. And so we have been dogged in our attempts to create a market for sustainable aviation fuels. Those are chemically identical to conventional jet fuel, but it's derived from either waste or renewable feedstock. So uh today, those those fuels create um fuels that have 85% less emissions on a life cycle basis. We have the potential to go to net negative fuels in the future. So tremendous amount of innovation tremendous amount of technological advancement, tremendous amount of investment in the infrastructure which we absolutely need because we are global in industry, we connect communities everywhere. And thank you for those that flew in United. Um But you know, we, we need to make sure that we're able to transition responsibly with these fuels in every airport that we need to use them in so that we can simply continue to enjoy the travel that we also appreciate. But without the emissions associated that contribute to climate change, how long do you think it's going to get or take to get to that ideal future that you described? Oh, that's a great question. You know, the industry came together um under both the UN as well as an industry association and globally committed to net zero by 20 50 which was kind of a big deal. All airlines everywhere made this commitment. It's going to take us probably up until that point which we hope to push that timeline sooner. But it's really a question around what is the most appropriate timeline for aviation to transition when perhaps there's a more efficient use frankly, of that renewable power of that green hydrogen to put out in the economy to enable the clean energy transition to happen first. And so it's a lot of conversation about what is that time look like. Policy is the foundation of all of this and without policies that accelerate, like we saw in solar, like we saw in wind. Um We're not gonna, we're not gonna move as fast as I'd like to see us move. Yeah, I wanna come back to policy but Chris and I wanna talk to you. Um Clearly, we thought there's a lot of work to be done to transition to an electric vehicle future. Um But I think the biggest problem right now is we just need the grid to support it. So what do you think needs to be done here to improve access to a V for all? Yeah, for sure. So again, thanks for having us here today. Um I think when you think about this transition to an EV future, there's a couple of key components. One is having a product lineup that meets the needs of customers everywhere. I mean, if you think about where we've been, you know, EVs were either very small vehicle or they were a luxury vehicle. So it wasn't necessarily an option for everyone who was considering. So as we've expanded our portfolio at GM, we have everything now from family size SUV to full size pickup trucks, to luxury vehicles, to super trucks. So it really is becoming a choice for everyone. Um Then it's an an education issue. There's still a lot of concern around infrastructure, which is kind of the third piece. So from an infrastructure standpoint, we're doing everything we can do to expand that network. GM customers now have access to over 100 and 74,000 charging stations across the US and Canada, which is significant. We just recently announced that they have access now to North America charging standard Tesla's network and we've got partnerships across other um charging infrastructures. We have a partnership with other OES where we're trying to expand that network even more. And so that is going to continue to accelerate and happen. You know, these evs now have over 300 miles range. Our ev in our portfolio, our pickup trucks have over 400 miles of range. So you're now at a stage where pretty much everyone can do this, but it is going to take, it's going to take policy, it's going to take partnerships, it's going to take customer education. And, you know, I think once people get exposed to it and have the opportunity experience, it's a better driving experience. I mean, acceleration is instantaneous. The the thought of not having to go and get gas whether it's, you know, and I live in the Detroit area, obviously in the middle of winter, it's not a fun experience, but you just you change your behavior. So now understanding that not everybody can have a charging station or a charging um unit at home, but 80% of the customers currently do and that's really the best um application and the easiest just you come home at night and then when you talk about the grid, the only way that we get to zero, you know, similar to Lauren's challenge, our footprint, over 98% of scope three out of that 69% of the customer usage of our vehicles. So in order for that piece of the pie to get to zero, they need to be clean, sorry, charged with green energy. So we're doing everything from our perspective that we can do. We've made some really big renewable energy commitments. In fact, we announced last year that we'll be 100% renewable in the US for all of our operations. Next year, we just um cut the ribbon on our latest solar farm actually down in Arkansas that feeds the miso grid and powers the three of our assembly plants. So, so th that functionality is gonna continue to accelerate it over time, but we've still got a long way to go. Yeah. And I think, you know, for there's a stigma with, with electric bills at least in, in people of, of my cohort where they're just like, you know, we don't want to wait and, and wait around and gas is so fast. So you just get that. So how do you can change the consumer mindset to think that way because these people have been doing it this way for, for years and years and years. Yeah, I, I mean, I think if you think about your daily commute or what you do on a regular basis, most people take a trip that's gonna be over that 300 mile range once or twice a year, right? And, and that availability of charging along, you know, say from Detroit to Florida is continued to expand. We have a partnership with pilot and Flying J. So you're starting to see big large um charging stations along these major thoroughfares. But otherwise you're driving most people's daily commute is less than 40 miles. And so to come home and plug it in at night again, when the grid is cheaper and charging is cheaper, it really becomes a real ease of use. And then the other thing that EVs are going to do from a grid perspective is, you know, it is a huge battery source. Uh You know, when you think about the car park of the EV market that will be able to put energy back or, you know, or enable you to power your home or those things. So it really becomes a win, win in the long run. And I want to come to the audience if they have any questions. Um So think of those, raise your hand in just a second. Um But first Lauren, I want to talk to you a bit. Um I feel like a lot of airlines have been accused of, of greenwashing when they talk about this stuff, make these promises. How do you respond to, to critics? Um And, and address those challenges head on. Ok, we're going there. Um Well, you know, I think I think a couple of things are happening. And um first and foremost, the consumer today is a lot more sophisticated than they've ever been, which is great. So for everyone in the room, we want them to understand the complexities, we want consumers to understand the challenges and we want them to understand the solution set that we're gonna need to advance. And so that is a great development. I think also there's this push, there was a panel recently about um ESG and disclosures and how are we talking about progress that has been kind of the wild West for a while? I call it the alphabet soup of disclosures. Um lop of whatever framework you want to use to disclose it has not been consistent and that is starting to change too. So this desire to sort of normalize and that how we talk about progress and bring that to market, we're working through that turn right now, which is also good. Um I also think that there is a desire for different um regulators to lean in, particularly we're seeing this in the eu um around what does it mean to actually advance the sustainable agenda? Again, it's been a little bit wild west and up to some of the enterprises to decide how you describe that. And so they're starting to sort of define, help us define across industries. Now, what does it mean to advance the sustainable agenda? And so I think this is part of the evolution of us introducing climate metrics into business. And um I see that as a positive, I mean, I say all the time our roles and sustainability, we're change management people. That's what we do. We're asking our executive suite, our board, our peers, the industry, the markets to introduce a different kind of KP I into what we're talking about when we say successful business. And so I think part of this whole greenwashing skepticism that's out there is and parcel because we're actually starting to take a step back to say, OK, let's reset so that we can compare apples to apples and actually show that progress is happening because the last thing we want is to have unintended consequences or actually not progress the sustainability agenda because we never stop to say, are we working from the same sheet? And so that that's sort of what I think is going on now and all of this is very healthy, very healthy and it's good to talk about it too and address it. Head on and Kristen for you, it's different in your industry. I think, you know, there's many challenges. Some car companies are, are rolling back promises, some are going hybrids. There's a lot of different things. What do you see as the biggest challenge and how are you addressing it at GM? Yeah, I, I mean, I do think it's a little bit of market acceptance um as we talked about, you know, having that those options available and affordable options. You know, one of the things that has happened with some of the latest policies and the tax incentives around Ira, you know, we now have a product for the Chevy Equinox that starts at $35,000. You add on the, the tax incentive. You now have a, you know, family size SUV, that has over 300 miles of range, that's under 30 grand. That's something that didn't exist before. And so I I there's a lot of talk of the market slowing down, but look this, it was never thought to be a straight linear curve that its option was gonna just continue to accelerate at the same point. And so, you know, we're very committed and General Motors is committed to continue on this all electric future. We're, you know, we're focused on jobs and innovation and American competitiveness. And so as we look at our supply chain and the resiliency that we need there for battery production, you know, a lot of the work that we had done of building a sustainable, reliable supply chain was done even before these texts or, or policies were put in place. And so I think the challenge is there for, again, getting customers to understand having product portfolio that's available is gonna change that having the charging infrastructure that it's there, but it's gonna take time. It's not gonna happen overnight. And I think we've got to continue to educate, including everyone in the audience of what's available and, and that the transition isn't difficult. I mean, any questions and again, feel free to raise your hand. I'll, I'll come to you. Um, but in the meantime, we talked a lot about policy besides the Inflation Reduction Act, what other regulations or incentives would each of you like to see going forward? And Lauren, let's start with you. Well, I'll tell you, I think um market based incentives are crucial. Uh What we're starting to see is what was once really a space where we can innovate and lean in and drive strategy and, and frankly differentiate your company. It's becoming so highly regulated. I mean, from, from where I sit every day, it's a about uh now we have staff mandates a sustainable aviation fuel requirements. We've got to have a proportion of our fuel over time in certain markets, the eu the UK certain Asian countries um graduate into staff uh usage. We have emissions policies. So right now we've got Corsia which is a UN policy that sort of caps the amount of emissions from international flight. That's a good thing, but that sits on top of the staff mandates. And then we have ESG and all the disclosure requirements in different markets. So it's becoming almost inhibit. So really focusing on market based policies is super crucial. I know you said not the Inflation Reduction Act, but I am going to go there because the staff for sustainable aviation fuel. We were one of the very few industries that got a tax credit it for two years and that two year tax credit expires in December when they just got the guidance out, maybe Treasury got it out three or four months ago. Ok. What does that do to the banks in the capital market? Absolutely nothing except confuse them. And so we're working really, really hard right now to say you need to take that 10 year tax credit, which is the first ever established huge big deal, but make it 10 years. So then it becomes bankable, it becomes investable. There's confidence that the transition is going to happen right now. Capital is not flowing to aviation because they're totally confused about is this policy here? Is it going to go, what's it going to become? And how do we make sure that we get a return on our investment? And so there's a lot of work to do around policy improvement to build upon the foundations that we have right now that I do think is either going to enable a swifter transition or inhibit. That makes sense. Kristen, what would you like to see? Yeah, I I mean, I think Lauren mentioned it a little bit earlier too. The the transparency around reporting has is great and I think it helps drive standards, but we need to make sure that we're not report wording so much that we're not doing you know, and as we continue to see the complexity and II, I use the same thing of alphabet soup, you know, of whether it be the, you know, CS RD or, or potential sec rules, we've got to standardize those as much as possible. The, the transparency and the accountability is extremely important. But I, we were talking behind stage, I spent most of my career in product development and the best example was always the crash laws. And so in the US, we had us NCAP and in Europe, there was Euro NCAP. And what happened is they were different. One wasn't better, one wasn't, you know, they were just different. And so in order to design a vehicle that when we could sell in both markets, we had to design it twice and we can't, I mean, that's a huge example. But if we do the same thing in reporting, we're just spending so much time and money, time and money where, which, you know, again, it's not spent on the actual solving the problem. Right. Right. Well, thank you both and, and best of luck in that and appreciate you being here. All right. Thank you.

Steve Ellis, A Managing Partner, TPG's Rise Funds Kentaro Kawamori, Chief Executive Officer, Persefoni Moderator: Sheryl Estrada, Fortune

Impact Initiative 2024: Tech Transformation - How Startups And Growth Investors Are Driving Change

Thank you, Steve and Cantaro for joining us today. Thanks for having us. Great. So I'm gonna dive right in with the first question to you, Steve for almost a decade. TPG rise has been investing in companies that drive environmental and social impact and change while making money by virtue of what they do um from the lens of private equity and for profit capital. How are you identifying and supporting companies that are using tech to tackle some of these large problems? Yeah. So first of all, it's wonderful being here, let me maybe start just with a quick definition of impact investing because sometimes it gets conflated with ESG they're, they're siblings, but they're different. Uh It uh impact investing is about finding companies that by virtue of what they do to make money are creating net positive social and environmental good. And while ESG can be a policy and a set of practices that apply to every business, there's only a subset of businesses that are inherently what we call co linear meaning that their business model is focused on not just making profit but in creating social and environmental good that can be measured that's sustainable. And that is ultimately going to address some of the world's biggest problems. So we start from that premise and when it comes to identifying where particularly technology can make a difference, we start with the fundamental premise of access that uh if you think about really the cornerstone of impact investing is finding ways innovative ways to improve access to uh really valuable resources and services that underserved populations have difficult time gaining access to. So if you think about it, um education, access to quality education, access to affordable and high quality health care, financial inclusion, quality jobs, food security, uh clean water, clean energy, even access to uh a sustainable environment. Those are all problems that can be addressed through commercial businesses. And oftentimes the innovation, in fact, most of the time, the innovation is anchored on the application of technology. Um Obviously, software has enabled an enormous um amount of innovation in areas like education uh in Ed Tech for K 12 adaptive personalized learning in the health care world. The advent of gene therapy, cell therapy, advanced diagnostics have dramatically reduced the time it takes and the cost associated with diagnosing and treating illness. Uh Even in material sciences, we've found ways now with advanced technology to dramatically reduce the cost of solar panels to find ways to create clean hydrogen, clean ammonia. We've even found ways to convert municipal waste into usable thermal plastic that can replace petroleum based solutions. So we start with these, what we call impact pathways that are driven by this view of creating access. Um And then we figure out where technology can inflect the ability for a business to grow and to expand the footprint of its impact. Now, you do this all over the world. Um Are you learning best practices based on different regions? Uh how to u utilizing technologies that can maybe be applied to other places? Yeah, I mean, it's, we are a global fund which is a little bit unusual. We invest literally all around the world developed and developing markets. And uh one of the things that we've seen is uh is that this application of, of new technologies, it needs to propagate. And interestingly, we're, we're in sort of a de globalizing world as we sit here today, given everything that's happening geopolitically uh and what that's creating is a void. Um you know, there used to be, you know, free flow of commercial ideas and intellectual property and talent and that's all now being restricted a little bit. And so one of the things that we found is that we can be um a conduit for that, a very efficient conduit for being able to take some of the best practices from the developing world that are doing technology skipping, bringing those back to more mature developed economy, uh business models and vice versa, bringing advanced technology from the developed world into the developing world. So we've seen that cycle accelerate, you know, very meaningfully just at a time when the world seems to be retreating from the power of globalization. Thank you, Steve. Um Cantaro, you're the CEO of Persephone and also a co-founder and one of TPGS portfolio companies. Uh Can you talk a little bit about why you started your company and how you are leveraging A I to help uh carbon accounting and corporations? Absolutely. We talked about it a little bit, you know, when we started persephone almost five years ago now, which is just wild. Um We, we really looked at the problem that we solve a little bit differently than most. And thankfully, Steve saw that along the way and decided to, to endorse that strategy. And that was looking at what was traditionally environmental disclosures, which had been the providence of, you know, I think state, local regulators, the EPA and heavy industries. And we really saw that becoming a financially material topic both for investors like Steve, for example, um or in the corporate side. So us as a oops as a portfolio company at TPG, we don't just build a tool to help companies do that. We actually do what we say. And so as part of the rise funds, for example, we provide carbon and climate disclosures to our investors like Steve. But the core of what we looked at was all this data that's required to calculate a carbon footprint. Looks a whole lot different than traditional environmental data for a lot of people. And what that means is we had to build a system that can take a huge variety of data sets by all accounts, the largest range of diverse enterprise data we've ever seen in a single system of record, be able to ingest that transform it and then publish it in a standardized format that could, that could meet regulatory scrutiny. You know, that was really the vision that we laid out, which was quite different than the rest of the market. That was saying, hey, you know, if you look at the previous cycles of ESG and sustainability, that was really CS R was driven by marketing and reputation. Now it's really become a financially material topic sitting very, very often now in the office of the CFO as well. Yes. And uh with uh SCC regulations in, in uh financial reporting when it comes to uh uh climate uh initiatives, um especially scope 12 and three. how do you explain to companies, you know, especially scope three? I know that's an issue that uh a lot of companies are grappling with. So can you tell us a little bit about that? Definitely the, the disclosure regulations that are either here already or about to be here. Topic, number one that, that we deal with in our customer base and like the, the, the advice that we have to dispense is quite diverse because companies tend to be in such a, a broad range of, of stages in this journey, right? And it's best to think about sustainability and climate as a journey. And, you know, it doesn't matter if you've set an S BT I target first. And now you're sort of realizing like we saw on the panel before, how do we get there? Maybe we have to rethink these targets or if you're just starting out and you're looking at, how do I set a target? What does good look like? You got to start with the fundamentals of understanding what you have and where you're headed. That's where we focus a lot of our time and advice. You know, there's a, there's a rightfully so a lot of excitement and desire to get to the end stage of that. So for example, in private equity or in Corporates, there's a lot of uh a lot of discussion about value creation. How do you, how do you create value from impact and sustainability and climate? But for a lot of people, I mean, look at what's happening in the news today. It's about getting the basics right first, value protection. But we're, we're dealing with a massive hurricane right now. We have people in our business that are out from that event. And so we, we very much advise our, our customers and our prospects that we deal with disclosure isn't just about sending something to a regulator. It's about understanding what you have and where you're headed. So you can actually manage the thing that you're trying to manage against. Yeah, I would say uh one of the things that has become very, very clear as we've gone through this journey is that um the market has been waiting for a lot of regulation to create top down um mandates for reporting. And obviously, those mandates have been more fragmented. Uh They've been delayed, they've been controversial. Uh And, but what we've seen happening now increasingly is that um people realize that they're going to need to be accountable for their carbon footprint and that they have going to have to have a, an accounting system to start so that they can understand exactly where their footprint is. 12 and three. Uh But more importantly, they're going to need actionable information from that system that gives them the ability to manage their footprint. And that's what is seems to be missing. A lot of people are getting the initial footprint. Um I like to call it sort of the, the blueprint of the house, but we need working drawings, right? We've got to understand specifically how we're going to address that um that footprint. You know, whether it means mitigation approaches, whether it means going into the uh voluntary uh uh carbon markets. And that's the, that's the tie that has, has been missing. But we're beginning to see now sort of an organic tipping point where that is um companies are doing it on their own. I am going to open the floor to questions in just a moment. If you have a question, you can raise your hand and someone with a mic will come. Um We can start now, this is Kwara Sheikh from IBM. Um When we look into the SCC regulations around the climate change and when we look at the VC investment, typically the venture capitalists have got uh high risk uh more patients long term orientation attitude. But uh the, we don't have the same mindset for the companies which are more short term oriented because the culture has to change uh for the new era where they need to be more long term focus. What advice would you offer if you are part of a business round table? Uh So that uh the CEO S can infuse the VC mindset where we, we just don't necessarily look at the SCC climate regulation standpoint, but also for the value creation for all stakeholders. Well, that's a, that is a great question and, and uh I'll start in and Kor will finish. Um This is one of the biggest challenges that we face, right? Because this concept of what is the method of change management to get organizations to stop just responding to the stick, which is regulation and start responding to the carrot, which is all the extraordinary benefits that flow from embracing this kind of management discipline and in principle, um and you know, it's in my mind, the most important thing is to just be crystal clear with how this aligns with your broader business objectives, to create the linkage between doing what's right from a sustainability standpoint with what's right for the important stakeholders in your business, whether it's your shareholders, whether it's your customers, your employees, and really spending time to understand what they want, what they need, how they measure it, how they uh how they metabolize whatever information or um or evidence that you provide them for what you're doing to contribute to a more sustainable world. And that's just good business, right? I mean, you don't want to be working against the grain of the organization. Let's take that focus on commercial success and profit motive and use it to our advantage to accelerate the change. Yeah. And I think the the regulatory piece is such a bear in our world, right? It's both this immense opportunity for acceleration and standardization and you know, a whole bunch of things in between. But at the same time, you know, if I come back to your question on how do you, how would I talk to a VC or a corporate board and sort of infusing the VC mentality, I would say, you know, building a business off of regulation alone is very risky. Like you need to look at what are the intrinsic macro forces happening and is there an underlying set of drivers that's gonna make this business or this product? Successful regardless. And a great example in our business, you know, Steve and I are very aligned on the vision of persephone, obviously as as investor and entrepreneur and our business is going to benefit massively from regulation, but it hasn't needed it yet. You know, we're seeing a huge groundswell right now, for example. So you have some some data to tie to this. We released a, a free to use first of its kind, what we call a premium type product that allows any company to do scope 123 and accounting completely free. And we've seen 3500 sign ups in six months. There's nobody's signing up because the regulation is live, they're signing up because their investors are asking for these disclosures, their customers are asking for these disclosures or some other stakeholder is forcing them to do this. So there's these intrinsic market forces already creating this market. So it's a small microcosm coming back to that, right? I think you have to look at macro developments and trends far beyond the regulatory side. And then regulation is either can go both ways, it can be a huge accelerant or it can be a huge inhibitor. Um So Cantaro, if you're a company that is having to do this type of, of reporting, um There's a lot of data, there's a lot of different technology that you can use. How do you actually figure out what is right for your company in terms of if I'm like for us helping the our customers. Um you know, fortunately for us, there's a very, there's a gold standard in our world, but here is probably familiar with the greenhouse gas protocol and it's sort of like what gap is to financial accounting. That's where the complexity starts, right? So the, the greenhouse gas protocol documentation in itself is over 600 pages in its various iterations, which is nutty. The best example I give to people is uh if you, if you really like have trouble falling asleep, go download the IRS tax code. And the IRS tax code is sort of like the greenhouse gas protocol uh in our world. So we, we have to have an immensely talented set of individuals that from a support and advisory perspective helps our customers interpret that our software has codified a whole bunch of that, right? So there's, there's a patterns and there are data driven ways that we can extrapolate what it is. You should be reporting that tends to be question number one to your, to your point on scope 12 or three. A lot of people say I know I need to do this, but there's 15 subcategories in scope three, which one's actually material for me. And there's various ways to answer that the data informs that the methodologies give the prescription of how to actually translate that data from one form into the other. And that's what our software does that's what our team does every day. Um And, you know, we've been fortunate, you know, we've been able to invest a whole bunch of cash into R and D frankly, which has allowed us to have a very strong set of IP both in our system of record. So the underlying software um workflows as soon as you come in, actually, we'll tell you here's what's material to you, how here's how you calculate this and then from an A I component, massive opportunity, massive Steve and I geek out about this all the time because where especially in the GP T world, where software really excels is when you have human readable language. And there's a great amount of, of data that sits in a company that is human readable that can now be read by machines. But in the past wasn't meaning a lot of data that sits in a SQL database, for example, isn't human readable, right? It's machine readable. But now the GP T world has really enabled a whole new set of use cases where we look, we can look at things like uh supply chain data in a whole new different light. When companies are getting small invoices from small vendors that say, you know, I was with a car manufacturer in Italy, you can take a guess which one and getting material welded at small shops and literally they're getting handwrit notes that now can be transcribed and read by A I which wasn't possible before. Yeah, I think just one of the things that we're seeing is it's a classic technology playbook which is to leverage the power of virality. And what's happening is um you know, uh many companies scope three is some other company, one, many companies scope one and two are other companies scope three. So if you can start to get the flywheel spinning where people are addressing the question of their carbon footprint on a common platform with a, with a really well designed and curated data layer. That's when you can start to really accelerate the adoption of practices that change behavior. Well, we're at time, that was an interesting discussion. Thank you so much, Steven Cantaro. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

Alphonso David, President, Chief Executive Officer, Global Black Economic Forum Richard Edelman, Chief Executive Officer, Edelman Tensie Whelan, Distinguished Professor of Practice, NYU Stern School of Business Moderator: Phil Wahba, Fortune

Impact Initiative 2024: Recalibrating ESG - Mastering The Message Amidst The Backlash

Alphonso David, President, Chief Executive Officer, Global Black Economic Forum, Richard Edelman, Chief Executive Officer, Edelman Tensie Whelan, Distinguished Professor of Practice, NYU Stern School of Business Moderator: Phil Wahba, Fortune

Alphonso David, Global Black Economic Forum, Richard Edelman, Edelman Tensie Whelan, NYU Stern School of Business, Phil Wahba, Fortune

Well, hi, Richard, thank you for joining us. Um, and, uh, Toy, I'm afraid it's, um, I'm, I love this topic because, um, you know, earlier this year we saw one company after another pushing back on their de I and ESG initiatives and abandoning them. I'm the journalist here so I can name names. You don't have to be as polite but, uh, tractor supply, Harley Davidson, Lowe's Toyota, North America Ford. And I guess I'm, let's just start with, um, why has there been push back, do you think, uh, among the long, uh, a larger part of, um, you know, a big part of corporate America? What, what's behind all this pushback? Is it, is it just political stuff or is, or are there other factors at play? So, um, why don't I start with, uh, with Richard? So I think that companies have been, um, nervous about the politics. I think they took a look at what happened to a certain beer company last summer. Um, and I think they've taken a cue from, um, the idea that they have to be strong with their core customers and what that ignores is the impact on employees and on the other half of the customers and the reality is that, um, companies are easily picked off. If there's going one by one, there's power in numbers. You'll remember this from the Disney case a couple of years ago in Florida where people were opposing, um, piece of dean legislation as a group, Disney decided they weren't gonna do politics and then they waded into it late. Um, and then they were picked off by the Sanders because they were the lone gazelle. So my request to companies is operate collectively agree generally on a set of principles and fight for those any perspectives here. Uh I would say, I, I agree with Richard. Um I think this is a combination of lack of commitment, fear and misinformation and what I mean by that is we all know that corporations are in the business of making profit. And if we look at the concepts of DN I and ESG and we tie them to the core principles that support ESG and DN I revenue generation talent pipeline, uh innovation. For me, it's difficult to see why companies are taking a step back. If they actually understand the data and understand the relationship between ESGDN I talent pipeline, innovation and revenue generation. If they don't understand those connections, then to Richard's point, they're going to kowtow to political pressure. But there's a lot of misinformation out there because the majority of companies are actually supporting ESG and DN I but we have a few companies that are taking steps backwards and relying on the misinformation that I think is going to hinder them moving forward. And I would just add to, to both of these comments that um I think quite a few companies have um misunderstood the materiality of these issues and think of it as a nice to have rather than a must have and something that obviously can be jettisoned at any moment. But the reality is that when these issues are material for a given company, if you're a property and casualty insurance company, and you're not paying attention to climate change, you're not going to be in business. If you are a company that is focused on providing services and you need to hire the best and the brightest and you're not paying attention to what the younger generations want and also to diversifying your um employees. So they actually represent the people that they're selling services to you again, to build on your point about business case, you're not going to be effective as a company. So really understanding the business case behind these, I think is critical. And then finally, I would say um there's a lot of noise, but when you look at the research and we've done a lot of research around consumer purchasing of sustainable products and messaging around with, with Edelman actually, and messaging around environmental sustainability issues. We're now having the field something on social sustainability issues. So we'll be glad to, to share that. But basically, what we see is that consumers state, blue state, um young, old rich, poor, educated, less educated, care about these issues and are purchasing products and services that um uh embed sustainability core to those products, 28% premium on average and CPG growing twice as fast as conventional products, for example, is some of the pushback justified. Um You know, just to play the devil's advocate, I feel like in 2020 companies were falling all over the uh over themselves to quickly adapt. Um uh to, to say, well, we have a, a Chief Diversity Officer, we have this, we have that um it felt like there was a bit of peer pressure going on. And so maybe um some of these programs implemented weren't so solid. So is there, is there uh a a case for why some of the pushback might be justified in your eyes? Well, let's start with you, Richard. So Phil, I think what you observe through data from the trust barometer is by 2 to 1 employees say I'm more likely to work for recommend uh advocate for on social media companies that stand up on business and racial justice as an example. So if you're simply looking through the lens of, of satisfying your employees, um this is a must do. Um Similarly, we see a very substantial percentage of consumers by 2 to 1 who prefer to buy brands that make a case for sustainability. Uh And they want the brands to be equally priced, they want it to be about them, meaning it's better for my life as opposed to just good for society. But you give them those products and you show that you're sourcing sustainably, they will buy your products. So I think the argument moments are very compelling. Um And that there's a lot of evidence to go to the CEO and say stand up to the politicians don't allow them to push you around. This is about business. This is not about purpose, although we found in recent cases this was activist investors as well. So uh to some degree, they probably reflect a bit of a constituency. Um I mean, is, is some of this just uh a correction we're seeing where maybe brands and companies want to go back to where they didn't really have to talk about social issues and politics. Um or uh has that uh horse left the barn and, and it's just a reality now for companies, I think that there are certain issues which you must talk to your employees about and there are other issues you should talk more broadly about. So the ones to your employees only should be gun rights or election rights or abortion rights or things that are inherently more political, but things that have to do with your company, um whether it's who you hire what you pay them, where you source things like this, that's every bit the company's business. And the key part of this is that business is 2 to 1 more trusted than government to get stuff done. And, and that's why there's such an emphasis on, on business as the lead in this. And of course, business doesn't want to be politicized and, and jumped on by, by politicians as activists, but you're not being activist, you're actually um helping to make change and change is what's going to enable society to succeed. Yeah, it's, we're in a weird moment because I remember in both 2016 and 2020 getting countless pr emails from companies saying we're gonna give our employees um um half the day off to go vote and we're gonna encourage them to go do canvassing, et cetera. I haven't gotten a single email about that this time and I'm just wondering if these companies are like, yeah, you all know how to go vote. We're gonna stay out of this one. But uh a quick, a quick phone for, for Richard. Um and y'all can jump into it, the reputational risk to companies that back off because I, I can't help but think if you're an employee or an investor or a customer and you've heard a brand saying certain things for a number of years now, then all of a sudden they say, yeah, we're done with all that. Um We're just gonna focus on our, our core business. Um, does that hurt the credibility long term, uh, with those constituencies? And what's the risk to the company? Well, I think you see in the Disney case, that's exactly what happened. I mean, you, you, you saw the company, we're not gonna do politics, then they go into the case, then they're whip sawed by the governor. Then they react by saying, oh, you know, we, we, we'll reconsider. I mean, companies need to have a certain set of values that they stand, stand for and stand with. And it's, it's an urgent matter of delivering on what you promise. Trust drives growth and action earns trust. You've gotta do things in order to get trust. Um, a question for specifically, well, more directed for Alfonso is the fearless fund. Maybe you can just tell people what happened there and what are the repercussions do you think? Sure. And, and I, I wanna follow up on what Richard said as well. Um I think that often we're asking the wrong questions. What I mean by that is why aren't we asking why the majority of people in the C suite happen to be white men? Why is that not the right question to be asking? Why aren't we asking why companies decided to adopt ESG and DN I without actually tying it to performance? Those should be the questions we should be asking as opposed to. Why is the company taking a step back from DN I? Right because the reason why DN I and ESG exist is because people of color and women have been shut off from opportunities that they're qualified for. And I think we have to sort of shift and change the narrative as we talk about these issues because it still is a problem that women are not leading most of the fortune 500 companies 10%. And in fact, we only have two black women think about that. Why is that not the right question in this moment. And that's what I think we should be talking about, which leads me to the Fearless Fund. Um Fearless Fund was started by two black women and they were looking to uh get investments for their company and they couldn't find any investors. Uh Many people know about venture capitalism. So there's $288 billion that's allocated each year in the venture capital space and up to $288 billion only 0.036% goes to black women less than 1% to all black people. So they decided to start their own company. They created a venture capital firm as well as a charitable organization and they started investing in black owned and women owned and minority owned companies and they also created a charitable organization to provide grants. They were sued last year right here in the 11th circuit uh in the district court at first. And the argument is that by providing grants to women of color, you violate federal law, which is absurd when you think about the disparity that exists. But that was the argument. Uh So we litigated the case and we won at the district court arguing one that charitable organizations have a first amendment right to issue grants consistent with their missions. Think about Uni the United Way or think of Ford Foundation, any of the foundations that exist. And we won the case was appealed to the 11th circuit and two of three judges concluded that the plaintiffs had a likelihood of success on the merits. So the case went back to the district court and we had an opportunity to either litigate the case or resolve it. And we recently resolved the case, I think to the benefit, not only of the fearless fund but to every other charitable organization out there or every organization that wants to invest in Black and Brown entrepreneurs. And the settlement essentially says that the program that they sued under was ending anyway. So they wouldn't continue that program. But the settlement doesn't apply to any of their grants, any of their programs, any of their mentorship programs. It doesn't apply to anything that they do. And we were strategically and I think uh mindful that if we litigated this case all the way up to the US Supreme Court, it may be a different result given the current composition of the court. So ultimately, I think this is a great result for them and a great result for anyone who is interested in equity investments moving forward. Um And sorry, go ahead, Richard. Can I just pile on a little one thing we found in a, in a very recent study we did in uh September about uh employees in relationship to corporations is a huge mass class divide within the corporation. In other words, the people who work in the factories have a fundamentally different view of trust and institutions than the top quartile. And it's twice as large a gap in trust and institutions as in the general population. So it's 32 points versus 18 points. And it's all to do with a lack of economic optimism, a lack of belief in the system, a lack of sense of hope for the future. That's our job. We've got to show people a way forward that capitalism is working for them and not just for shareholders and key to this is sustainability, making sure that they're reskill and upskilled and that and that they don't have to be worried about A i killing their jobs. They've seen this play before on globalization and they don't want it to repeat itself. So go ahead. I was gonna, yeah, so I just want to add to a couple of points here, you know, you asked earlier, why has this gone off the rails? How can companies bring this back? Right. How can they stand up on this. So I think one big mistake um that companies have made is to focus on ESG as a strategy ESG was always just meant to be a system of metrics to measure performance against sustainability. It does not include profitability, sustainability does to your point about performance. So it's just an acronym and it doesn't actually mean anything and yet it became a performative um approach by a lot of companies to say yes, I'm reporting on ESG, here's a bunch of metrics. What you should also know is that the ESG reporting metrics are all process and output based metrics. In other words, do you have AD E I policy? Oh, good for you. You have AD E I policy. What does that actually result in? What is the outcome of that DE I policy? No idea. That's not what the reporting standard tracks. What we're hearing right now from a lot of companies is that they're saying we need to invest in all this reporting and disclosure, which they are required to do, but they're also saying, and that means we're no longer going to execute in what world can you execute? I mean, can you not execute and report on something only on a world where the reporting metrics are not real and where you're not actually driving change, right? So the reason why this is all really important and material to companies, they need to be focusing in on those issues. And let's just talk about the business case from an environmental perspective since we've heard about it from the de I perspective, operational efficiency. Holy grail of many companies, right? And manufacturing, et cetera. Think about how companies think about pollution and waste. They think of it as a compliance issue. Actually, you're buying more than you need to pay, to dispose of what's left over. That is an operational inefficiency we saw for one automotive company $235 million net annually as a result of their waste management strategies, which they did not know because they were not tracking it and because finances track avoided costs, which is a huge part of um benefits coming from sustainability. So my, my key takeaway here is that companies need to get a lot better at embedding sustainability de I social and environmental spending into their core business strategy tied to those issues that are really material and, and build out that business case so they can persuade activist investors. Um regulators, crazy people that this is all you know, makes sense, right? Because it does. And because as we've heard from both Richard Alfonso and Phil, this is where this generation is going. My daughter would not never go work for a company where there wasn't a strong de e focus and I think that that's gonna, that is really true for a lot of this younger generation. So anyway, so in, in uh our remaining time uh question uh will we see more corporations drop out or was this a little fad? Um, and, and basically deep down the way forward as, um, maybe just they'll, they will maintain and refine their ESG and D I, um, approaches because that's just where reality is going. I mean, should we expect more in the exodus or are we done? I mean, here, so my two cents on this is, these issues are not going away. So, you know, Florida can pretend there's no such thing as climate change. But in fact, there is right. Um you know, uh uh people can pretend that they don't need a diverse employee base, but in fact, they do. So this is where I think that companies will need to take on these topics and build them into their business strategy. OK, I agree. I think this is not going away and I think we will see more companies potentially take a step back. But let's remember that more than 83% of the companies based on a recent study are still supporting DN and ESG. And let's make sure that the narrative of the minority is not driving the narrative for the majority, right? And the last word for you, Richard, what do you think more to come? I think the smart company will set goals that can be achieved and be very tangible in the benefits to the corporation and to society because by not doing what they say, they're gonna do, they're all hat, no cattle. And that's exactly the worst place that companies can be in because they're so easy to pick off. Um For politicians, do your job, make it work and make it a positive for um your business. So, on that note, please join me in, thanking our three panelists and Richard for joining us from New York. Thank you.

Marissa McGowan, Chief Sustainability Officer, L’Oreal NA Paul Moinester, Founder, Executive Director, Topo Finance Ann Tracy, Chief Sustainability Officer, Colgate-Palmolive Moderator: Molly Wood, Founder and CEO, Molly Wood Media; Co-chair, Fortune Impact Initiative

Impact Initiative 2024: Solutions And Strategies For Solving Scope 3 Emissions

Marissa McGowan, Chief Sustainability Officer, L’Oreal NA Paul Moinester, Founder, Executive Director, Topo Finance Ann Tracy, Chief Sustainability Officer, Colgate-Palmolive, Molly Wood, Founder and CEO, Molly Wood Media

Marissa McGowan, L’Oreal NA, Paul Moinester, Topo Finance,Ann Tracy, Colgate-Palmolive, Molly Wood, Molly Wood Media

All right, I am super excited about this conversation because I think we're gonna go in some unexpected directions and we're gonna try to be tactical because I think there is this sense whenever we talk about Scope Three that everyone goes. Yep, it's really hard and we still haven't figured it out yet. So let's try to like make some strides toward figuring it out. Um I'm gonna jump right in with a, a conversation we have already been having with apologies about making sure that you understand fundamentally what your scope is. This is a question of nuance, focus and new strategies. So ann talk about identifying and deciding what to focus on when you're looking at Scope three. Yeah. Um Sure. Thank you and thank you for having me here. Um So Scope Three starts by breaking it down to its lowest level granular across your whole value chain and Colgate you probably know us from our, our oral care products. But also we have personal care, home care and pet care products globally around the world. We sell in 200 coun countries. So we have a pretty broad footprint. Um And, and you know, we've been measuring our reduction to greenhouse gas emissions as well as water, um energy and so forth for over 20 years. So we have a baseline and with that baseline, we've been doing a lot of work to break down scope 12 and three. So our footprint and we're, you know, we're global multinational like l'oreal. Um Our value chain is based on our products is 15% upstream. So that's largely our purchase goods and services. It's the materials, it's the packaging that we buy to make our products and then 5% our own operations. So our factories, um some of our logistics in our own operations and then 80% is when the consumer takes our product home and uses it. So every one of those 15, 5 and 80 we have broken that down to very granular level. So that took a lot of work. So that's step one is understanding your scope three at a detailed level. Um So if we wanna talk tactics um to, to we're focused right now very much on that upstream piece that 15%. And over the last several years, we have really grown and evolved our partnership with our procurement team. So their procurement team owns this, I mean, they're all over it. They, in fact, over those two years, they've formed a team within procurement called the Sustainability Procurement team. It's about five people that are focused on our commodities that are focused on our packaging um and working with suppliers on scope three on reducing their emissions. And it's really interesting because we've broken those suppliers down the top, the top, I think 200 make up 80 we, we use over 20,000 suppliers globally, but the top 200 make up 85 or 80 to 85 the 8020 rule. So tactics 8020 rule that works make up most. So we're focused on that 1st 200 suppliers. And it's very interesting because they really range in maturity in terms of where they are on their journey. So that's I'll leave it there, but that's where we're focused procurement as a partner is really critical and up focus that focus on an upstream, right? Super Yeah, interesting. And then Marissa, you, I think have some good examples about focusing on the downstream and taking some kind of again, like some unexpected strategies. Well, thank you for listening to us, talk about Scope three. Similarly, we didn't wanna repeat ourselves. So I thought I would talk a little bit about downstream but just to level set for the audience. Um I am the head of North America for sustainability. North America represents about 22% of l'oreal's footprint of that in North America. About 50% is our packaging of raw materials. And then the next 30% is actually how we bring our goods to market. So that's digital marketing point of sale and promotional materials and our owned stores. So it's, it's actually interesting. We, we had our initial S BT I in 2017 and this restated one showed us just what a huge part of our footprint actually bringing the mat, the, the products to market represents. So that's what I mean, that's more than the percent of our logistics and transportation or even the 4% of our business travel. So even just a level set, that so much of what we do is really how we bring our goods to market. So that was one of the big sort of learnings in this last iteration um of our SVT I I would say um the tactical example I was gonna give of working on our digital advertising. So even just identifying who we are as a company, yes, we sell amazing products that hopefully you're all using. Um But we also are the fourth largest advertiser in the world. So we're seeing that come through in the footprint. So we started working on digital media and the campaigns that we do with probably some of our retail tail and media partners who may be in this room. And what we saw was very quickly, there was actually low hanging fruit. So we just did a mess with Lancome tiktok campaign that if you haven't seen, please check it out. Um But we used a um a tool to let us actually decrease our emissions 41% versus a campaign of the same size and quality in the past. And that was things like shrinking file sizes, making fewer takes, transmitting fewer takes over to our partners who are actually in this case, Tik Tok putting it on. Um And we just didn't even realize that we, we could do all that. So I think scope three can be seen as a monolith. It's actually, you know, like Ann said, breaking it down and then looking at areas of opportunity to bring business transformation to new groups in this case, or CD Mo or our chief digital marketing office and also then engage new partners like Tik Tok and some of our um advertising partners. You know, before I come to Paul, actually, I wanna follow up on this question of BT I and how it changes and helps you evolve your scope three strategy and realization. So can I come back to Anne on that? And then maybe you can talk a little bit more about that? Yeah. And we, and we first we got our net, we so we have a target to be net zero carbon by 2040 to get S BT I approval for that target and your plans to get there, you if they, you work with them at science based, it requires you to have interim targets. And we first got that approval in I think it was 2022 and we were the first multinational global consumer goods company to receive that approval. And since then, you know, other companies are joining, which is great. Um It's not easy and Marissa can tell you it's, it was very difficult, a long slog of a year of back and forth with them. Um But one thing I wanted to add to what Marissa said was the importance of tools, digital tools and investing in those tools. So she mentioned, I think it was called the Impact Plus Impact Plus. So for upstream, we are in the process of implementing a tool called watershed um which will help us to better track all of that data coming from the suppliers. It's i it's immense, it's massive and we use, we have been doing this very manually and that's untenable. We can't do that, barely do it for 200 suppliers, let alone 20,000 suppliers. And then another tool we're putting in place is called M 2030 which is a different platform that helps bring uh companies and suppliers together to work jointly on things like renewable energy projects and things like that. So the tools in the platform and the digital piece are really critical. Yeah. Um And then of course, keeping with our theme of sort of evolving learnings, there are things that are hiding in your backyard that you did not know about and that is where Paul comes in. Um talk about what you're doing with Topo Finance and the like magical scope three reduction that you could literally implement almost overnight. Yeah. Um thanks. And um yeah, so uh TOBA Finance is a nonprofit organization. Um We essentially are pioneering the field of climate align Treasury management. Um So that's a very wonky term but to break that down and don't call it that. Yeah, I know, I know. Terrible framing, terrible framing. But uh so um you know, no matter if you're an individual or organization or a multinational company, everybody, you know, 95% of Americans have banks, all companies have huge banking partnerships. And essentially corporate treasury is kind of always sat outside the bounds of your climate companies, your company's climate objectives and goals. But what we sort of started looking into and what we found was that there's actually a huge emissions lever, excuse me, a huge source of emissions, but also a huge climate lever. That is the thing that's hiding right in your backyard. And so we developed some pioneering data and methodology that basically allowed us to figure out that for many companies, we spend a lot of time working in the tech sector. So companies like Microsoft Apple etc their banking and investing is actually generating more emissions than everything else they're doing combined scope 12 and three. And the reason why is because for those companies and for a lot of companies that have a lot of money sitting in the bank, that money doesn't just sit there accruing interest, banks, take your deposits and then they lend it out across the economy and the emissions generated by that is enormous. So banks, they're lending is generating 700 times more emissions than everything else they're doing combined. And about 20% of all the money that's deposited in large US banks when, when the Wall Street banks lend that out, that's flowing to the world's most carbon intensive sectors and generating massive emissions. And so what we found is that not only is this a huge source of emissions, but it's also this incredible climate lever because for companies like l'oreal and Colgate, who are working really aggressively to reduce all their emissions. So much of your work is outside of your control. But because of the invisible hand that the financial sector plays flowing money across the economy, it's actually the best tool possible that companies have is actually to reach their scope three emissions is to go and talk to their banks and get their banks and the other assets that they have under management to be flowing towards climate solutions rather towards accelerating all of the things that are happening right now in terms of where money is flowing and the impact it's having on the climate. And does it also include potentially just using different banks? I mean, there's maybe only so much conversation you can have with your bank about how to use your corporate cash, I would imagine. Yeah, I mean, so um I'm to still a term from Phil earlier, banking is boring af until you actually realize the impact that it has. And so I am a nerd. I've come into the banking world from the world of politics. But if you go and you look at a company's 10-K, what you're actually, which is their financial report. What you actually see is a road map to decarbonisation of the global economy because it's not just the money that sitting in cash, but it's everything else, it's the municipal bonds. And so how can you be using green municipal bonds that are going towards climate resilience and climate adaptation in a town like Atlanta? How do you, we need to decarbonize the housing stock companies have millions and billions of dollars at times in mortgage backed securities. How do we use those as a vehicle for decarbonizing the housing stock and you know, corporate debt securities, etc, all of these things are these potential vehicles. And so there's this really fascinating paradigm which is we spend all this, I'm thinking about, you know, climate technologies that we need to be adapting. How can we change things culturally, but really, it's actually the wiring in the financial system that needs the most innovation because we need to move over $200 trillion into climate solutions over the next 30 years. And the best way to do that is to use the money that we all have. There's over $7 trillion in corporate cash right now in this country and it's generating, you know, indirectly about what represents about 20% of all emissions in the US. And so, so if you can, if companies can step up and start engaging with their banks and start working with their banks to really drive innovation, not just in terms of where that lending is going to, but also how we're viewing all these different multiple financial products. It really is this like boring but very fascinating way to rewire the world to drive climate transformation. I mean, honestly, aren't all the best solutions like kind of the boring hardware. Um Sorry, except fusion, which is super sexy. Um This raises this question for me about, you know, as we're talking about breaking these problems into their component parts and engaging with different parts of the company, right? Like you wouldn't have necessarily thought, oh, I have to engage with my art department on smaller file sizes. Um Now I have to talk to the CFO S office more than I ever did. How do you when you hear this? Like, how does it imagine I'll start with you. Um How do you imagine reengaging with different parts of the company to have different conversations to uncover all of these levers potentially? Um Well, I I love the opportunity, I think as a practitioner and the team leader, you always have to be conscious that when you're moving into a new area so it could be engaging our finance teams, which I know in Ann's case you have a great relationship. We do too. Um, but maybe not on this conversation and it may not involve Treasury or, um, we may historically work more with the controllers than the treasurers or. Um, so just being conscious that you're gonna have to start the conversation from the beginning, uh, probably it's not the same conversation you had a few years ago when you started engaging other parts of your business, but it is starting over and I think I see it with my teams where they get frustrated that they're having the same conversations. But I say, but you're reaching broader audiences and new audiences. And as a result, we need to understand their aspect of the business, their challenges, their needs so that we can cope create solutions to do things like, you know, uh decrease emissions and file sizes and they love it too because it's actually less work for them rather than 100 and 50 renderings of something you can do maybe 75 right? So there are a lot of opportunities. I I think you mentioned earlier, Molly, this idea of actually seeing scope three as a window into something. So having set the first S BT I in 27 and then our revised S BT I being validated in 2024 I think the most interesting thing was actually seeing the shifts in the market. So if you look at our footprint it shows that digital media is significant in a way that it wasn't, you know, seven years ago, I think on the flip side, we're seeing the increased importance of brick and mortar, which we all thought after COVID. Oh, no, we're gonna be, it's just gonna be econ. So that's not the case, right? So it's also interesting to look at as a window into who we are as a business. So we're both a producer of product and a marketer of products. And wow, let's see how the business landscape has shaped or shifted which in some cases, it really hasn't. It's still brick and mortar and in other cases, it really has in terms of reaching the consumer of digital. So I know I went off, you know, a little different from, from the question, but I think it's a, it's just a neat talk about Nerd Paul. We're on a scope through pan like this clearly excites me. We're all, we're all a bunch of happy, you're with our people. So, um so similar to Marissa, I mean, I, we in order to tackle scope 12 and three, every person in the company has a role to play everyone. Um I joke that our, our strategy, I'm the master of none, keeper of all because I have to, I feel like I have to keep my arms around everyone. So every function and our, our understanding relationship, road map with different functions are at different stages for me and this is we're wrestling with how to best do this, but I think education is critical as a first step. Um but pleasingly just to focus more on the finance commu you know, our finance function and which includes the controller of the treasurer, the CFO himself, et cetera audit team who are now auditing ESG elements across our businesses. Um We, we have been really building that relationship. I would say our procurement team is the most mature, but finance is quickly following. Um we pleasingly, we are engaging our treasure. We are now, you know, looking into what I love what Paul, you know, we've already agreed to talk after this because it's amazing what he's kind of uncovering. As we said, we're looking into things like funds that directly impact our target. So things like the water equity fund that will help to help us with our target to reach people with fresh water. We have a target that so these are good funds. But what he's talking about goes much deeper and broader than that. So our, I have a treasurer who's very interested in that and who she and I have been jointly working on something called an impact investment framework to help guide us. And it's basically a decision tree on what we do want to invest in what we don't, how to use our cash. But again, this whole idea of engaging banks broader than that is something I'm sure she hasn't really thought of. We have a lot of cash. So how do we best put it to work? Yeah. And it's, it's a really common thing and I mean, it's, we go and we, we're actively engaged now with companies with over $600 billion in cash and investments, helping them align their banking and investing with their climate values. And almost to a company this is new and it's part of what makes it so exciting is it's this new powerful lever that you didn't know was there before. And so a lot of the work that we actually as a nonprofit is we provide a free advising and consulting services to these companies. And so if you're a company out there that wants to tackle this, please find me after the call at Paul atop of finance.org, you can email me, but we, we just plug it a little bit. Uh you know, on the stage, have to take a shot when you got it. But uh do your shot man. Um But a lot of the things that we do is really just having and setting up these initial conversations because this is new education. And so the sustainability team doesn't really understand how the Treasury team functions. The treasury team doesn't understand the sustainability side of this. And so so much of what we do is setting up those initial conversations and creating alignment around it. But also really understanding that the treasury function is foundational in all of this and that this isn't about divestment. This isn't going and yelling at your banks and saying we got to get out of fossil fuels. It's really about developing a supply chain partnership just like you do with all all your other supply chain partners and just taking that same lens of how do we add a climate lens. How do we add a social lens to our banking and investing on top of our core needs for liquidity services, etcetera. And I have to end it there. But I will note and Pablo will probably tell you later that future regulations are likely to address this topic. Yeah. Thank you so much. I appreciate you.

 Dr. Aparna Bole, Senior Consultant, Health and Human Services  Office of Climate Change and Health Equity Dr. Eugene Livar, Chief Heat Officer, Arizona Moderator: Phil Wahba, Fortune

Impact Initiative 2024: Warming And Well-Being - Why The Climate Crisis Is Leading To A Health Crisis

Impact Initiative 2024: Why The Climate Crisis Is Leading To A Health Crisis

Mat dos Santos, General Counsel, Managing Attorney, Our Children's Trust Grace S., Youth Plaintiff, Held v. State of Montana Moderator: Kristin Stoller, Fortune

Impact Initiative 2024: The Case For Climate Action

It's being called a landmark climate lawsuit and the first of its kind in the United States, a group of young Montanans aged 5 to 22 sued the state arguing that it put fossil fuels over their health. The court agreed ruling that the state's actions violated their constitutional right to a clean environment. One of the young plaintiffs and an attorney on the case is going to join Fortune's editorial director, Kristen Stoller in just a moment. But first, we want to hear, we want you to hear from Elizabeth Stern. She's part of the Swiss female climate elders who also won a case against their government for not doing enough about climate change. It's another example of how private citizens across generations and borders are taking climate matters into their own hands and prevailing climate change is affecting women above the age of 75 very strongly during prolonged heat wave. That is the population group that more likely dies prematurely. We are all women who had been activists all our lives. We knew how to fight for our rights in a peace movement and the environmental movement, the women's movement. So what is, what is my message for young people. First of all, a big thank you that they are putting part of their young life, which is meant for learning, for playing around that they have to work on something that should be a given for them like it was a given for me. So to these young people, I applaud you that you want, you are on the winning side and just keep going on to express the message. Oh, all right, good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us and great message from Elizabeth Stern. I'd like to welcome Matos Santos General counsel and managing attorney from our children's trust, the legal nonprofit group that brought the case on behalf of the plaintiffs and Grace s who is one of the young plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the state of Montana. Now because Grace is a minor. We're withholding her last name for her privacy. So Matt, I wanna start with you. So we just heard from Elizabeth Stern in the Swiss case. Uh Can you talk to me a little bit about how you advise the, the Swiss woman and then how that also relates to your case and give us a brief summary of, of the Montana case. Sure. Um Thanks so much for having us and for allowing us to speak to all of you. It's really a pleasure to be here. Um The, the, the, the case that you just heard about which we colloquially call the Swiss Grannies case is um really remarkable. They said uh a new press in Europe, um looking at human rights from the lens of an incredibly vulnerable population, right, older women who have huge huge um reactions to extreme heat whose bodies may not be able to tolerate um different climate consequences. And that's what we do at our children's trust by representing Children. We're representing one of the most vulnerable populations in the world. Um 2 billion lives, right? 2 billion children's lives are at stake because of climate change. And it's not just because Children born today are going to live with the consequences of our choices, right? For the next 90 years. But it's because for the 1st 26 years of their lives, we know that their brains circulatory systems, lungs are all developing and having climate pollution or extreme heat will have lasting consequences on the rest of their lives. Amazing grace. Why did you decide to get involved? So I first, you know, started thinking about environmentalism early in high school where I was working specifically on like plastics production in my hometown. And during doing research for that project, I read that the US uses fif 50 million plastic straws a day and I was like, that's a little bit more than I can handle on my own. And so I was looking for ways to have a bigger impact. Uh And around that time, I heard about this lawsuit that was happening in Montana and I was like, that's pretty cool. And I talked to my parents and they were like, well, it's probably not gonna go anywhere but it would be a great learning experience. So then I emailed the attorneys and became a plaintiff in this case. Um, and I think that the point here is that I was looking for a way to have a bigger impact. And for me at that time, that meant approaching the government and asking the government to take control to do what they are responsible for in protecting both the environment and their people. You now, do you feel like this case? And I, I guess grace, this is for you too. But do you feel like this case is already creating a, a precedent for, for others? Yeah, sure. And um so I, I think that any time you have a victory like this cases around the world will look at it, right? So even though it's in Montana and it's binding only on the Montana courts. Um Right now, I I know that there are other case cases that are moving forward that are actively citing the held v state of Montana case. And in fact, we had another big victory just this here in Hawaii and part of Hawaii's willingness to come to the settlement table and really reach this like one of its kind um settlement agreement with us where the state of Hawaii has agreed to decarbonize their entire transportation system, not net 00 emissions by 2045 I think is a product of the incredible work. Uh Grace and her co plaintiffs did in Montana and I know we have um some images to illustrate the, the fight that you're going through and, and some of you with Grace as well. But um and here we are which are are great. I love these um Grace. Why do you think it's important to center a case like this on young people? Because we saw with Elizabeth, they centered it on a as Matt calls it the Swiss grannies. What is, what is so important about the youth? Well, you know, I have mixed feelings about this. So I'll give you the full transparent answer here on one hand, I think it's super important to center youth because we are extra vulnerable. We will be around for um many more decades, hopefully. And so that gives us more time to be influenced by climate change, to see our lives changed by this. Um I think it's also I have a resistance to how much conversation we have about centering youth these days because I worry that sometimes we talk so much about giving youth a platform about putting youth, you know, in, in um you know, as part of the, the conversations that we're having that we don't actually listen to what the youth are saying. And I think the message has been very clear from youth for about a decade now, in terms of the changes we want to see, you know, we want to see a mission introductions, we want to see a livable future. And I think that's probably enough to work with for now. I totally agree and I wanna come to the audience for questions in, in just a second. So start thinking of those. Um, but not one for you in the, uh, before that, what are the rami ramifications of lawsuits like this for us energy policy? And what about corporations? How should they be thinking about this? Yeah, sure. So, I mean, in a like a what we're trying to do right through these state cases. And we also have a couple of federal cases here and in Canada and Mexico um is to create a, a clear pathway for green technologies to come in and replace what is a rather entrenched fossil fuel based energy system. So I think that by setting the standard, so we're not. So, I mean, I'm sure folks have heard of the, the cases against the fossil majors that are happening everywhere, both for fraud and other things. Um Our approach is very different. We're trying to enshrine a constitutional right in state and federal constitutions around the world, that is a value, right? That value, meaning like if we prioritize a clean and helpful environment like we did in Montana or a livable climate like we do in Hawaii, that will have consequences on the prices and the priorities that governments and then I think industry make um in developing our energy system. So while it is not a like A to B line, I think it's our, our intention is to create a pathway for any emergent technology to have a viable opportunity as opposed to fighting against just the existing fossil fuel infrastructure. Yeah, if I can jump in here for a second, I think um one of the things I've learned throughout being part of this case, right? Like I said, early high school, I was so confident that policy, that government was the way to have the biggest impact. Uh because, you know, that's what you learn about in high school government classes. But, you know, over the course of this five years that I've been a part of this lawsuit, I've understood firsthand just how slow government processes can be both, you know, bureaucracy and you know, regulation and everything. And also the court system also tends to take a bit. And so I've realized recently, like within the last year, the power of the private sector and especially in terms of your kind of dynamism, how nimble you all can be in your decision making and the the way that you can drive change in our society, whether that's, you know, through public perception of what is, what is right, or whether that's through, you know, working with the government. But I think you have a lot of power or in this, in a way that I didn't understand before. I mean, I thought I was going to go into the government my whole life and within the last six months I'm like, hm, maybe I should take a look at that private sector. So I guess I, I applaud all the work that you're doing and, and I ask that you keep it up and that you set your standards even higher. Yeah. And I can say high school government did not prepare me for, for any of the stuff you learn in the real world. So it's, it's important to get the real life experience. Any, any questions they have here in the audience. Ok. Well, I have a lot more. Um, so I'm gonna ask away. Um, now why do you think tying climate justice to civil liberties is a winning strategy? Why do you think that's so important? Yeah. So you just have to look at the history of our country to understand that, um, like Children and civil liberties and frankly the ability to see sort of what, what is truth, what is justice? Um, all go hand in hand. And a lot of so prior to being at our children's trust, I was at the ac lu where I worked on a lot of issues, um, on behalf of LGBT young people who had been discriminated against, um, immigration rights. Um, and, and one of the things that I think we're sort of seeing is this through line um of all of these various causes going back to, you know, desegregation suffrage where um you know, Children are really at the forefront and often when we are making these decisions, like as a country about our values, we are thinking about our future generations, maybe it's our niece and nephew or grandkid, our, our, our, our newly born daughter. And um and I think that ultimately these that like we should just be listening to them for some of the solutions and some of these intractable problems because folks like Grace, I think have great answers. I see we do have an audience question if you could state your name, title and company too. That'd be great. My name is uh John met with Deloitte. And uh the question I had is, can you talk a little bit about what of what actually was the decision? What, what would be the practical effect? Like what changes in Montana as a, as a result of the decision? Sure. So the district court. So in Montana, there's no middle court of appeals, there's the district court and the Supreme court, the district court in Montana essentially held that the um that their constitute right. Grace's constitutional rights had been violated that the statute that prohibited Montana from evaluating emissions or climate impacts when citing a new power plant um was unconstitutional. So, um the, the very immediate practical effect was the striking down of that statute, which prohibited them from even assessing, um, climate impact when they were doing, uh, you know, citing a new power, um, facility. Um, but they're sort of broader impacts. I think that are, we'll have to see, I think a little bit what the Supreme Court says in Montana. But, um, the broader impact is that, like the judge said, every additional ton of carbon emissions, um, is a constitutional violation at this point because we have already put the dial way past 100 so, um what does that mean for the future? I think that likely means that now every new power facility will have this much higher threshold standard to satisfy before being cited. And children's constitutional rights will be have to be part of the equation when they're making these decisions. And now I think the audience may have also heard of another big case that our children's trust worked on, which was um Giuliana versus the United States. So that was a climate case that spanned a nearly a decade and three presidential administrations. Um which I think is, is absolutely wild. What did you learn from that case that you took into the Montana one? Yeah, I mean, so Juliana is a big federal case that's looking at the, you know, substantive due process clause. Like many of us in this room myself included have rights today that did not exist when I was born, right? I can marry my um partner um who is of, you know, was born the same sex as I was, um which was emerged as a right from the federal constitution in 2015 after the obergefell decision, um Juliana seeks to enshrine this a similar um substantive due process, right? But a right to a livable future, right to a stable climate in our constitution. Um It is, it, you know, one of the things that I think we learned through Juliana was that um you like the federal courts are going to take a long time and that having an effective state by state case strategy. Um And really, we looked at the sort of same sex marriage cases when thinking about this was really something that um we needed to be investing in because in order to move, I think the federal courts, there needs to be a groundswell of movement from the States first grace, what's next week? Because eventually you're no longer going to be a youth activist. Um Where, where are you going to take this and, and your case next? And how are you gonna work to support climate change? Great question. Um Trying to graduate first. Yeah. So that's my plan. Uh my interest now um is kind of almost in reaction to our lawsuit. I've realized, uh you know, the impact that this will have on Montana that I think generally are awesome. But I think a lot of the resistance in the state comes from the fact that our state is traditionally a fossil fuel estate, we are still massive coal producers. Um And of course, I think that needs to change for the climate, but I also see the impact that that will have on our communities. Right. And so my interest now is how do we uh go about these energy transitions in coal communities and ensure that these places will still be around afterwards? Right? Because we have this mine in Montana in Butte Montana, which you may have heard of that massive copper mine and when the mine shut down, the city was just decimated. And so I want to make sure that that doesn't happen for these Montana communities. And so now I'm looking at, you know, this concept of a just transition. Um but particularly for rural, um native communities, places that are often not considered in this uh utility driven uh transition. And that for you, we're, as we all very much know, we're in the midst of a another election. Um How are you looking at, uh what could happen next month and how that could affect your, your future cases and the one that you have going on right now? Yeah. Um, the panel this morning was interesting. Um And sorry, uh I, I, you know, I look, we're gonna be one of the things that's true about our children's trust is that we've litigated no matter who's in office, right? Because governments today have basically invested in this fossil fuel infrastructure that had, you know, for the last 50 plus years, while many of them very actively knowing about the consequences. And so, um in some ways, it is uh not important to us, um who's in office because our cases are really about these, you know, like, how do we change the future of what is, um, you know, about our, like our constitutional values, how do we, how do we use our values to change our future decisions? Um But at the same time, of course, it's important, right? Like the, the person who holds the, um I think somebody said yesterday that, you know, people take their cues from the government, um which I, I think it was the mayor of Atlanta actually said that, that people can take their cues, their government. And I think it's so true. And so if you have somebody in office who's an active climate denier, um I, I think that's a problem. I think that's a setback for us and it makes it harder to have these conversations, whether we're having them around, uh you know, a conference like this or at the dinner table with our, our friends and neighbors, um or in the policy arena. And so, you know, of course, um uh you know, I, I have my, my hopes and dreams about the outcomes of the election um that I can't talk about because I run a 501 C three. and, but, uh, but yeah, that's, um, but I, but I think that, but it really does matter. It does matter quite a bit. And I would like to add that it shouldn't. Um, because I'm from a state that, you know, now is, is solidly read. But historically has been able to blend this idea of conservatism and conservation which you might notice, have the same root word there. And so I, I think it's um important to recognize that climate has been politicized. Obviously, I'm hoping you all have thought about this before. Climate has been politicized. But, but it, it does doesn't have to be right. It doesn't have to be a political issue. It's about rights, it's about economic progress. It's about how we're gonna come out of this challenge ahead of where we are now. Um And I'm, I just want to acknowledge how sad it is that it's been taken into that political arena with such um venom attached to, to that conversation. Well, very well said and thank you both so much for joining me. I appreciate it. Yes.

Beck Bailey, Global Chief Diversity Officer, Managing Director Accenture Charlotte Burrows, Chair, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Lindsay-Rae McIntyre, Chief Diversity Officer, Corporate Vice President of Talent and Learning, Microsoft  Moderator: Indrani Sen, Fortune

Impact Initiative 2024: Building An Inclusive And Future-Ready Workforce

Beck Bailey, Global Chief Diversity Officer, Managing Director Accenture Charlotte Burrows, Chair, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Lindsay-Rae McIntyre, Chief Diversity Officer, Corporate Vice President of Talent and Learning, Microsoft, Indrani Sen, Fortune

Beck Bailey, Global Chief Diversity Officer, Managing Director Accenture Charlotte Burrows, Chair, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Lindsay-Rae McIntyre, Chief Diversity Officer, Corporate Vice President of Talent and Learning, Microsoft

Beck Bailey, Accenture, Charlotte Burrows, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Lindsay-Rae McIntyre, Microsoft, Indrani Sen, Fortune

Welcome. So wonderful to be here with you all. Uh We're gonna start with some questions that I have for our esteemed guests. Um But I want to just kind of put the word out that we will be. We're hoping that you all will, will ask some questions too. So start thinking about them. We're gonna have some mic handlers coming around a bit later on. Um So we're gonna jump right in and um I'm gonna actually start with you chair burrows. Uh a recent analysis of diversity in the tech industry from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had some rather dispiriting conclusions. Uh It found that racial diversity has only slightly improved over the last two decades in, in tech and that women still make up less than a quarter of tech workers, which is basically the same as in 2005. Um That's far less than their representation in the workforce at large, which is closer to 50%. Um I wonder if I could ask you Chair Barris to kind of set us up in this conversation. You've called this like a snapshot of the industry. That's right. We had a lot of interest in the tech industry in particular because it has been growing jobs. That's great news and we had done in 2016, a snapshot of the industry and diversity there um There in so, unfortunately, what we found when we came back and did this, um you going up to 22 2022 data and the report's title kind of tells you the bottom line, high tech low inclusion. So while there was a lot of growth and a lot of hiring, what you saw was that the needle moved only a little bit since tw 2005 to 2022. So women, although they are almost half of the workforce in the United States are only about 22 to 23% of those who are working in the high tech workforce and also in the high tech sector. And by that, I mean, industries that have a fairly large concentration of um tech workers. At the same time, we did see some unfortunately very modest but some improvement for people of color, um vastly underrepresented, underrepresented for Latinos and for African Americans. Um African Americans are about 12% of the workforce, a little right around just under 7%. Um is what we found with respect to the workforce and the tech sector, um the tech workforce and uh the tech company and uh sector of the industries as well with uh Latinos, we saw some more progress over the last two decades. So, but still very underrepresented. We're talking about 9.9% of tech workers and in the tech workforce. And then, um they are, of course, something like 18.7% of the um entire US workforce. So there's still some work to do. And because we are the primary, um, you know, agency charged with looking for discrimination, we are thinking about this in a whole host of different ways. Um And to, to really understand what is going on with the industry. Um What I will say is that we're 60 years on since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and of, since our agency was created, our anniversary is next year. And so we see this as there has been progress and I mean, that very sincerely, but we have a long way to go and I'll stop there because I, I'm excited for the conversation. So I'm gonna actually turn now to, to Lindsey Ray and Beck, you guys have been both working on this issue and kind of living it for many years now. Um I wonder if you could add some nuance to these pretty stark numbers that we're hearing from chair burrows. Um Are you seeing differences across tech in different sectors? Are there any outliers or success stories that you could point to? Um And what can we learn from those? Yeah, I think if I pick up where, where troughs sort of started the conversation you know, at Microsoft, we're gonna be 50 next year, right? And if we look at sort of the example of women in tech, you know, we have uh not yet published our recent report that will come out later this month, but, you know, women representation in tech roles alone is at 27% which is above the averages that were just mentioned. And women for the company are over 31% And that's on purpose, right, that we've been able to slowly grow, you know, year over year for at least the last five years. But it's as a result of a holistic strategy and, and in partnership with many partners, customers, not for profit organizations that are in our broader ecosystem so that we can grow the workforce, not only sort of bringing people into tech, inviting folks into the technology profession who maybe wouldn't have considered tech otherwise, but then making sure that once they arrive in tech, we are growing them intentionally and investing in their careers and their mentorship and their sponsorship so they can stay and thrive in tech. And I would just add that, you know, it's part of our business, right, that having representation in the technology industry allows us to create products that people love. And so when you look at sort of Microsoft's evolution from software to hardware to cloud to now A I being able to advance representation along the way through those industry shifts, has you know, been really bolted to the fact that, you know, for Microsoft, we have this huge inclusive mission that, you know, calls on us to empower the people and organizations on the planet and we can't do that without representation inside Microsoft too. Do you want to weigh in on this one? I will um I think similarly to our friends at Microsoft, our commitment to inclusion and diversity is central to the business strategy. And I think that's a key takeaway for all of us that we have to be thinking of. How does this tie to our business results for us thinking about um just 10 years ago, really moving to a skills driven organization because we wanted to be the leading provider of digital related services that meant we would have to recruit differently and build our workforce differently in order to achieve that. So we sat alongside that ambition, the ambition to be the most inclusive and diverse company in the world. Now, a great example of that is in India where we were in hyper growth, breaking through the myth that there weren't women available for those tech driven roles. And at that time, maybe 31% women in our workforce to today, over 49%. And just this year, we reached 50 to 50 parity in our accenture technology centers for women. And that required thinking differently about recruiting, measuring the recruitment process and our performance achievement process for equity, right. Where people are experiencing an equitable outcome and then really focusing on our culture and the ways that we support people to be successful. You know, listening to them, what do they need in order to thrive if it's return ships for women, coming back into the workforce, better parental policies, better flex work policies, whatever is going to actually help them thrive in that role. Yeah, I mean, hearing both of you talk, it's, you know, this is, this is such difficult work, it's difficult work to do and it's difficult work to express to explain. Uh sometimes success can be kind of incremental. Uh And yet, you know, it's still important. Um One of the big questions swirling around today, not just on this panel in the whole country and the panel previous to us is um do these efforts work uh does being intentional about de I and ESG more broadly make any difference? Um I wonder if you could talk about some of the biggest challenges both in doing and in showing this work. And, and I, I would love for chair burrows as well to, to weigh in on this, you want me to start. So I, what I would say is um the federal government obviously uh is a national employer. We're I think the biggest employer in the United States. And uh we also believe that this is important to our mission. So what does work? And I wanna be clear even though I gave you some, um, you know, not happy news at the beginning that this does work. And one of the things that, uh, particularly, and you intuitively, you know, this, but what we have also found and what research has found is that everybody does better if they feel respected and valued in the workplace and they're given those tools to really contribute. And that's how, as an employer and I'm speaking both as someone who has been working in civil rights employment for a long time, but also as the head of a roughly 2300% organization that, that gets people able to contribute and do well. And we have seen that over and over our mission makes it easy to bring people in for, you know, a diverse group of folks really interested in our work, but to keep them there and keep them feeling like they are valued and contributing, that takes more. And so I do wanna make sure that not withstanding that. I think that there are some difficulties that if this does work and it's really important. I think in this moment, I know there's a lot of pushback to understand that and to stay the course, um whether it be a diversity equity inclusion accessibility program or whatever one is calling it to be intentional about making sure every you get the best talent in the door and make sure that they all feel included and um able to contribute I I would add that, you know, it does work but it does require strategic patience and operational urgency, right? That making sure that at least when I look at Microsoft's journey, the work that we do in partnership with schools as early as middle school up through high school and university and then reimagining those on ramps to tech for adults who want to have a career change. All of those pieces of the puzzle really matter. And, and it is the totality of the system as well as the many things that sort of you and, and beck both pointed to that allow progress to be made, right? And I think it's, at at least for us it is about really learning and listening to sort of the employee experience and the ways in which people are feeling like they do have access and opportunity or not. And then really thinking creatively and collaboratively, I mean, the beautiful thing about this work is that, you know, we all partner with so many of our peers and our colleagues across industries across, you know, small companies, large companies to try and make progress together. Um And I think it's something that's really special about sort of this work because it, it does require all of us. Absolutely. Yeah, I think, you know, I'll have just that I think it is important to be evidence based right, to have the receipts. And for us that's thinking about um the measurement of our progress. And I know that this works because I can measure it. And we think really holistically about the quantitative and qualitative data, we need to know whether what we're doing is working or not and adjust our approach accordingly. The only thing I would add is, you know, uh accenture and other companies, Microsoft, we do release our data, right? And so the transparency and accountability to point on places where we are making progress, but also to be accountable where we know we have more to do. I think it's really important, you know, as I said, we're about to publish for, you know, the sixth year or DN I report but 11 years, you know, consistently and I think that that's part of the rhythm of being able to keep the conversation moving. Right. Right. And as you say, it's the, it's the areas for improvement as well as the successes, right? And the learnings from failures sometimes too. I won, I wonder if we could uh open this up. Uh We have some mic handlers here and if anyone has a question for our esteem, panelists, we would love to uh to hear from the rest of you. Um If we don't have any questions, I also have more questions. Um You uh Lindsay Ray, you touched on the need for a kind of a collective uh or at least like collaboration across industries. I know that Beck, this is something that you've thought a lot about also um when we're facing these kind of these, these huge intractable problems, do you see potential for collaboration across industries or for sharing of some of those learnings that we've been talking about? I mean, I would say absolutely right. As a company who's been doing this work for four decades, I often look to smaller organizations to see how they're innovating with sort of less of a legacy or less history because they can do innovative creative things that big companies can't. Um And then I have the opportunity to also share, you know, decades of love learning and best practices that would benefit smaller companies or places to start around data or learning or, you know, sort of transparency, motions, engagement of senior leadership and grass roots. And so, you know, it really is that sharing of information and sort of wisdom and, and uh creativity that I think keeps the conversation well and Lindsay Ray is on the top of my text chain. So, you know, um but I would say, you know, it is that collaboration, it's a space where the natural competition of companies can be suppressed a little bit because we are invested in what is, you know, societal good as well as good for our businesses. And, you know, we look at things like uh what you've done at Microsoft Lindsay Ray with accessibility and how widely you share that so that all of us can learn, you know, that's really appreciated that leadership role and that sharing and collaboration or a project that our companies undertook together with the prince's trust. Like we have to think about NGOS and governments and how we partner together in the UK. We looked at, you know, how is generative A I going to impact the youth population. And from that, we've been able to create a project that's going to scale up 1 million folks in the UK from socio economically disadvantaged communities to use gen A I to build their skills, to have mentorship, but also to use those tools to get their jobs. And so it's that collaborative energy that allows us to do that singularly, we wouldn't be able to do that on our own. I love that you brought up skill upping. It's obviously an issue not just for the next generation, but for those of us already in, in uh you know, decades into our careers, we might need some, some retraining or upskilling. How do you think about that challenge for the, for this A I driven era? Well, for us, I think the first question we ask anybody coming to accenture is what was the last thing you learned? And we do that because learning is so critical to staying relevant in our, in our field. And we want people who have both an appetite and an ambition for learning. It doesn't matter if what you learned was Python or generative A I or how to play Chapel R on the guitar. It just really doesn't matter what, what is important is that appetite for learning. Because we know that the talent market is constrained as, as chair Burroughs research shows. But we're not constrained. We can invest, we can skill, we can grow the skills that we need to drive the business forward and keep everyone skill relevant. And at the pace of change we're in, that's just, it's hypocritical. You can't allow people to lag in their skills to add on to Beck's point. I would say like it's, it's not only important that tech workers get upskilled and res skilled on the new era of A I, but we will only be successful if everybody has access and benefits from that technology. It's part of why we need representation in the engineering of A I but also access to and so you see corporate partnerships on, you know, making sure that we continue to invest in broadband and access to devices and access to digital skilling beyond the workplace through linkedin learning and other platforms. Because I think like accenture, there are lots of companies who are deeply committed to making sure that this next era of tech really does leap frog inclusion. So more people benefit. Absolutely. And if I could just add on that, the EOC has had I launched in 2021 an initiative looking at artificial intelligence and how that is affecting employment um both in terms of recruitment, et cetera. But also this question of, you know, the entire lifeline and making sure, you know, that as A I becomes more important and to how we work, the people who get the opportunity to learn how to use these new tools in their jobs will have a um running start. So as those opportunities who gets trained in an institution and organization really matters to the future of their ability to succeed, to being, you know, able to contribute and for the organization to that talent from everybody. And so that's another thing that we're looking at and reminding people about. But we've also done um a couple of quick documents that are on our website eoc.gov on disabilities and a um I'm so glad you raised that and how to make sure that as you use A I particularly for recruitment that you don't leave people out, don't leave talent on the table unintentionally um with disability issues. And then also for race, gender, national origin religion um under title seven as well as um color, I guess. I love that note to end on that. Don't leave talent on the table. Um So I would like to thank so much our esteemed panelists and the audience for your engagement with these super important issues going forward. Thanks for having you so grateful for you.

 Sen. Sonya Halpern, Georgia State Senator and Vice Chair, Senate Democratic Caucus Bruce LeVell, Trump Senior Campaign Surrogate, Former Executive Director National Diversity Coalition for Trump Dennis Lockhart, Former CEO,  Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Moderator: Diane Brady, Executive Director, Fortune Live Media and CEO Initiative, Fortune   

Impact Initiative 2024: Election 2024 - The Future of ESG and DEI

Sen. Sonya Halpern, Senate Democratic Caucus, Bruce LeVell, Former Executive Director National Diversity Coalition for Trump, Dennis Lockhart, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Diane Brady, Fortune

You know, we were commenting backstage actually on how calm the music was. And uh and so we started talking about walk up songs. I actually wanna start with that. What would be your walk up song to come on and energize us, what would it be? I said, I'm gonna say send or so and then I'll call you. I said, Stevie Wonder Boogie on reggae woman. Hey, how about for you? Well, the first one was going to fly, you know, rock the rocky theme or another one bites the dust. It depends on how we're going to act. Oh, we have a sunny outlook or a dark outlook here. How about you, Dennis? This is a walk up song. You walk up on the, you know, like let's think of rest, walk on by. How about that? Ok, I like that. So let's now move from our walk up songs to ESG Well, let's talk about climate change because I think one good way to just level set is on a scale of 1 to 10 with one being like it's not important and 10 being it's the most urgent issue. Where do you think in terms of priority for the party. It should be. Let's start with you. Obviously, the Democrat, I mean, I think for the Democratic Party it's way up there. So I think the number would you put, I'm gonna say 778, you know, it's way up there for us. How about for you? I think it's more like for me, a two, a two which, which means that it's just not, I think, well, I've been blessed to world travel. So I think that the US, if you're, we're speaking about the US does a, a leading edge in terms of how we uh govern our emissions, etcetera based on our foreign adversaries and across the country. So um obviously, I, I would hope a lot of our uh neighboring countries would adopt some of our uh initiatives in terms to combat that issue. So that you're speaking obviously as a surrogate, you'd say if, if Trump up here, it would be a two. So that's, yeah, I think for me personally, ok. Yeah, I think there's more critical issues on the domestic side and foreign, you know, our proxy wars that are going on that? Are we talking about the former fed president over here? What would I think I won't paint it politically. I'll just say, I think climate is the defining challenge of our age. So from 1 to 10, where would you rank it as a priority? Nine or 10, 9 or 10? That's interesting. So, that the former fed president ranks higher, the downsides, which are all a matter of probabilities, the downsides are devastating, you know. Well, one of the things I, I'm from New York so it's a bit of a flyover state from an ad perspective. We haven't actually seen many because they just here, of course, I've seen a lot on TV, just in the space of, you know, coming here yesterday. And one of the things I'm curious about is the degree to which this is factoring into politics. And I know this was discussed yesterday, but here we have this situation with, you know, in a natural disaster, we tend to come together as a country. And right now we're seeing, you know, with hurricane Helene, you know, this, this disinformation campaign, I'm actually gonna, I'm gonna go to you first. You know, we've got another major storm. How do you, how is that impacting the discussions around just what's happening with whether it's climate change or otherwise the discussion? I mean, and this is a really important issue for us here, obviously Hurricane Helene devastated parts of Georgia that still don't have power. And of course, with the new one coming, I mean, ultimately, what Georgia has been able to do is work towards recovery. Um, you heard all of the disinformation really, the lies that the president and the vice president hadn't contacted our governor who very clearly articulated that that wasn't true. I mean, I think the challenge is that, you know, we're requiring courageous leadership in areas where it shouldn't require courage. Right. So the governor gets credit for saying the truth. And in fact, you've got a whole other arm of people who want you to believe something different. And when information is flying as quickly as it does, it's easy for people to be in their own echo chamber. That's really the biggest problem. People don't break out of their own echo chamber and the algorithms are made specifically. So you only hear what you wanna hear. Well, and, and let me go to you because do you think, first of all, there's been a big problem with disinformation right now with, with what's happening with, you mean the fake news? I think I'm talking specifically about, you know, the situation around the handling. Well, you know, it's, it's, you know, I, like we said in the green room, you know, obviously the social media apparatus is perpetuated and streamline information more, you know, quicker. But I still think it's, it's historically has always been a pa uh a partisan situation on who react fast or whatever. And, you know, I, I think, you know, for me, you know, respectfully, I've been through hurricane um Alicia when I lived in Houston, I've, I've seen uh uh what happened with Katrina. Our church went there and spent a month down there when Dennis actually came in a month after Katrina, didn't you? Not after but let me, yeah, let me get back. I just wanna focus on the issue at hand, which is really about, um, you know, this is a tight race, this happens to happen right now. It's all fair, sort of in love and war. I mean, because there is, when you look at sort of the politicization of this, I think it gets to really how we talk about climate, how we talk about diversity. Um We've seen, we've heard the president say things, you know, how would you address that? Do you think it's been, this is these are political issues or do you feel like it's been fair how the characterization of the disaster has been handled? I think, you know, it's, you know, this is one of these things where and guys, you know, I, I'm from the take care of your neighbor generation and you're always gonna have, especially during the election season, it's been going on. I think people have short memories, but at the end of the day, it's the resiliency of our ministries and our churches and our families and our community that prevail and they, and, and I, and that's what I mainly focused on and, and, but I will tell you this though and I didn't, I didn't get to finish this though. I long and some of the audience can identify this. I'm dating myself. I want the Monica Kaufmans, the Brenda Woods. I want the real journalists back, not the opinionated folks that just go up there and opinionate everything instead of just report the news. So a lot of it gets, you think it's been misreported then? I mean, I just, I, I don't want to focus too much on this but also, you know, I think that area where you're here as a, as a surrogate, let me go to Dennis because, you know, obviously, um, how do you think? I mean, you've seen the impact impact on the economy but the, these have become partisan issues, issues that, that to some extent really should be factual science based, come together as a nation issues. How you, how do you, what do you see from your perch? Well, I, I see um, an immense amount of noise that should not be taken seriously uh noise in the political campaigns and noise in general, uh uh around the economy, the politicization of matters that we can be relatively certain of by looking at facts and we, we just have gotten away from that. Um, and it's, it's not only the perpetrators, it's the receivers of the information who have gotten away from that and don't exercise discipline in listening to authorities, do you know? II I know it's um always tempting when we talk about diversity to immediately go to race. I think one of the areas in which business in particular has really felt the impact is actually LGBT Q plus. Now, I know there's, there's the transgender issue. But also we've seen Toyota Harley Davidson, John Deere, a lot of them go back on their de I policies, you know, say that they're overtly not gonna support pride parades, et cetera. Give me some sense from, from that, you know, with that issue in particular, how are you thinking about that? And what give us a sense of what's around the corner? I mean, I think more of that is around the court. The thing is that it's, it all depends on who wins, but either way we're gonna see more of that, right? If you have a Kamala Harris as president, whose administration is gonna be pushing to um be much more inclusive, you're gonna still feel a push back against that and loud voices saying this isn't right and this is why she shouldn't be president. If a Donald Trump becomes president, you will see from that administration, a paring back of um e equity of inclusiveness and, and funding of initiatives even at the federal government department level that would help to continue to move people forward. And then you're gonna hear from my side, push back against that. Um to some extent, I think a lot of this conversation, particularly Post George Floyd in 2020 you saw so many businesses say, ok, this is a flashpoint moment. Let me actually embrace and move forward with these initiatives that maybe I've been dabbling in. Um, and I don't think that we have seen that kind of activity since the civil rights movement. And so now operations step up along the way. George Floyd too. That's exactly right. So, but now we're seeing the counter reaction to that and there, the counter reaction aside from where you, and obviously I'm gonna ask you, you're a businessman too to, uh, so I think that it, I think that the way that it's being framed makes it very easy to think that companies took it too far. And I think that whenever you're changing culture in generally in general, right there is a process to doing that and getting people to move along with you. And I do think that the rate of change happened so quickly that a lot of people's heads kind of spun and they couldn't, they wrap their head around what was happening as quickly as the make the change was happening. How do you feel about this Bruce? So I think that is an issue where really there's a sense you wanna be quiet right now about some of these issues. If, especially if you're in the corporate realm where a lot of people in these seats here, the, there's that we've created sort of real partisan divide over it. Yeah. Well, you know, I listen, II, I know some board of trustee folks in some of our fortune 500 companies, I won't mention their names obviously because I do a lot of media. But um I think there was good intentions respectfully. And some of the, especially some of the bigger banks and some of the other, uh, bigger fortune three and 500 companies. I think the intentions were good. But you see where it ended and, you know, I've been in business 29 years in Atlanta and I came here with $35 and, and, um, it's been very good to me. Atlanta ups and downs the financial crash, 08, as well as the pandemic. We went through and I, I think that I, I did speak to a lot of my other employees or business owners about where I was coming today and the philosophy was, and I speak for myself. I, I put all my eggs in my employees and then the customer second. And so I think that the workplace is to, is to, is to afford, you know, put everything you can to help your employee be successful. But, but the social issues, I, I just like them before and after the job where they can come to work and they don't have to, they can just do their job, go home, go to their mosque, go to their temple, go to the church. Let me ask you if you don't mind because you're in this role right now. And then I want to go to Dan's Top with this. But you are, um you are, I think you're in such a unique role where you really are. The voice. President Trump? Are there moments? Have there been any moments? Let's take place where you felt a disconnect yourself out or any disappointment around his rhetoric? And I'll ask you. Yeah. I, I think for me and I said it earlier in the groom, I'm more, I'm strictly a numbers man. I'm just not, but we're emotional creatures. How do you feel when it comes to politics? I'm not. I'm really not. I'm no, because I'm, I'm a community guy. Everyone that knows me in Atlanta all the way back from our great civil rights icons here, which my family were on that side historically, that some of them are on that Montgomery bus boy congress. So how often do you talk to the president? Our former president? I should say Trump, we talk. How often was that? Like, I mean, do you feel like he represents a lot of your views on race and such? Well, II, I think he represents the, the America first agenda which is pushing back on just not, not relying on government, but pushing it where we rely on each other as a, as a country, as a community. And that's something I gravitate to. Then let me, let me, let me ask you in terms of where you sit um talk a little bit with. I mean, I know we're talking about ES CD E I, but obviously the economy is the number one issue. How much are these factors? Um going to impact the economy. It's hard to, hard for me to see that the pendulum swinging on DE I or even ESG is going to have a major impact on the macro economy, macro economy is such a, a, an enormous, uh social system that it's somewhat impervious to some of these pendulum swing kinds of issues on, uh, and the economy is in, in really good shape. I think the issues that we have to worry about are fiscal and because it just doesn't seem to be uh any appetite to address the fiscal situation. And for that matter, the, the solutions are unpalatable and probably not going to pass muster politically. You know, so we have very, with some time left, I'd like you to speak to the audience right now in terms of give us both your perspective, some advice and, and, and from where you sit, I know that you're gonna, you know, you're up, you're taught a lot of people can be up for re-election. What, um how do you think about these issues in terms of how it's both dividing people apart and where we come together, there are a lot of issues that have been politicized and, and if you are an elected, who's a democrat or an elected, who is a Republican, you often feel that pressure of conforming and retreating to your corners that are completely different corners and not actually coming together. I think the challenge is to have more people and I and I do do this. But the challenge is to have more people have the confidence to say that problem solving is more important than actually, you know, constantly fighting. At some point, compromise has become a dirty word. Much more at the federal level than I would say that it. That's not true at every state legislature, but at the federal level, compromise has become such a dirty word for you all in business. What I would tell you is that you already know that this kind of work is about future proofing your business so you can continue to do that work. At this point, there have not been any laws and policies that have been passed, that have held muster in court that would force you to stop at the end of the day, I wanna, I wanna get, I wanna, I wanna give you a chance, Bruce, I wanna give you a chance. What can we expect? You know, if Trump, if there's a next second Trump administration on these issues, especially around race, climate, et cetera, what would you say to the audience? Well, I, well, it's getting back to what is unfinished business was. I think it was more of the, you know, putting the responsibility back to we, the people. Um and not look at the government and, you know, guys, I, I come from a generation where the leadership in your community wasn't the Congress person or the statehouse it was that great preacher down the street. It was that great educator that took every dot He took a penny, do her last dollar out of her purse and bought pencils for her students. It was that, that man, uh that banker that gave you that chance on your first loan when you were 19 years old, you know, that community and in that great church. And I think that's been a part of my life for my whole life. And may I ask one question, Bruce? I'm sorry, because I know time is tight. Um You know, how do you feel, conversations about race and climate are gonna change anything specific there? II, I just, I never see it in the lens of, of, you know, we've had some historical issues granted here in Atlanta, but I think we've gotten a lot better and we're getting better. Let me give some, some last word Haiku almost for you. Just one second here. Well, I'll just, I'll just make a point to the question of what's at stake in this particular election, broadly, the election, not just the presidential election, but the election and that is that is the ability to, to appoint judges because what we've come to in our governance is the courts decide at the end of the day and their decisions are lasting. Yeah, very much. So, listen, I could talk all day. You're all fascinating. Thank you so much. Please join me in. Thanking our speakers.

Moderator: Kristin Stoller, Editorial Director, Fortune Titania Davenport, Takeoff's Mother Greg Jackson, Deputy Director,White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention Edna Maddox, Takeoff's Grandmother and Quavo's Mother  

Impact Initiative 2024: Turning Pain Into Purpose - A Conversation On Gun Violence

Moderator: Kristin Stoller, Editorial Director, Fortune Titania Davenport, Takeoff's Mother Greg Jackson, Deputy Director,White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, Edna Maddox, Takeoff's Grandmother and Quavo's Mother  

Impact Initiative 2024: Turning Pain Into Purpose: A Conversation On Gun Violence

Titania Davenport, Takeoff's Mother Greg Jackson, Deputy Director, White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention Edna Maddox, Takeoff's Grandmother and Quavo's Mother  

Welcome. And thank you so much for joining us, detain. I wanna start with you because I think tonight is really about turning pain into, to purpose for you and your family. So, before the tragedy occurred and your son unfortunately was shot, did you have a stance on gun violence? And did this tragedy change your thoughts? Well, yes, I had a stance on, on gun violence. I'm totally against gun violence, you know. Um, I'm not against people having a gun and owning a gun because guns don't kill people, people behind the gun kill people. So, um, all the tragedy and stuff that was happening like nationwide where, um, and everybody was watching, um, it just really touched my heart and in your body when the kids about elementary school, um, that really touched my heart by me having a school age child, you know, and how that came about. Um, and then now right now it has you see it on TV, and then it's in your backyard, you know, right now in Georgia, um, that high schools, Appalachia, high school trauma, that's about like maybe 30 35 minutes from Athens. So it's like, right, in our backyard. So that really taught me to revisit my trauma in reference to take and really pushed me to do more, you know, like because this is a uh ongoing problem and it's, it's just, it's growing bigger and bigger and it just needs to, we know the problem, but we need to come up with more solutions to the pro to the problem. Um And you came up with one with the, the Rocket Foundation. Can you tell me about how you came up with that and how it started? Ok. Um In my pain, um I was in the kitchen and uh a vision came up on me and it was like, I want my son's name, he to continue his legacy to continue to go. So while I was crying, I was like, I need something that can help impact other people because I know I'm one individual person and I can't change the world, but um I can do my part. And so turn your pain into um passion in my opinion is you take what you're going through and then you flip it because I like to say you grow and then you go, you, you, you, you dissect what you're going through and then you pick out what and, and the positive and make a huge, you know, impact collectively. We can do a lot, you know, one individual, but it has to be everybody taking their part to come together to work as a whole. So when you grow, you get that and then you go, you help because I found what helps me is helping other people. So if I can help, that's where I get my satisfaction from helping others. You know. So if I can prevent one mother from experiencing where I'm experienced, so I can help one father, one grandmama, one aunt, two cousins, friends, any family member not to walk in my shoes. I'm willing to do my part. Turn my pain into passion, helping someone get through. Absolutely. That's amazing. That's amazing. And Greg, you, you're doing similar work in the, in the, from the federal government angle of it. Can you tell me about what prompted you to get into gun violence prevention? Yeah, I'm uh a little emotional right now. I'm so proud, you know, because um unfortunately I met this family when they were in mourning. Uh and I saw and mama and I saw my mom, you know, and uh for me, I started in this movement because I was shot in April 2013. Uh very similar circumstances to how takeoff was killed. It was an argument that got out of control and the bullet that hit me hit two arteries, uh nearly cost me my life and I spent six months in recovery uh and got within 20 minutes of dying from blood loss. And all I could think about in that time was man, like I can't my life can't end like this. I gotta figure out how to, how to make something of this moment. And when you are, when your entire world is disrupted and you are bedridden for six months, all you can think about is how do I prevent someone else from going through the same type of tragedy. And so that's what sparked the fire in me. Um First, just telling my story, the second uh act act being an activist at the local level, uh helping to address crisis in, in DC where I lived at the time. Uh But then my, my family friend Trey was shot and killed in Greensboro, North Carolina. And I saw a big difference between how big cities were attacking this problem and how smaller towns and really the entire South was being overlooked um on the crisis of gun violence. And so that's why I started speaking up towards Congress and started pushing for change there. Simple things like investing in victim services, supporting communities, supporting families after loss, um which the federal government was not doing. Uh And all of that activism um started to take hold. And uh in 2022 Congress passed the first bill on gun violence in 30 years, the bipartisan Safer Communities Act. And I was a big part of the activism that made that possible and most importantly, made sure to include it. Yeah, please. Um But we made sure that that law included investment and resources, not just regulations, but how do you provide resources for families that are hurting for leaders who wanna take on more organizations like the Rocket Foundation that wanna get out and support others in the community? How do we uh resource that, you know, you know, uh recognizing that they're extremely effective at reducing violence. And so that's how I got involved. And then uh once the law was passed, we were celebrating, it was a big White House event and everyone was clapping and I was in the back like, oh yeah, we did it and uh we talked to a few of the staff and said, all right, who's gonna implement this? And they said, well, maybe you man. So, yeah, well, you know, yeah, I still, I still worry about it and I, I really uh I really in my mind said no, five times like I can't do this. Who am I to do this? Um But honestly, it was meeting survivors along the way, you know, me ta Tanya and uh Miss Edna here and hearing their pain and their activism and them pushing all of us to do more. Um And then thinking about Trey and thinking about my own tragedy that why not survivors, why not people who've been through it? Be the ones leading the charge to change things. And so that's what embolden me to take this position and be a part of this first ever office, the gun violence prevention. Now, I think one of the things that frustrates me and I'm sure it frustrates all of you too is that, you know, for me it's been 12 years since Sandy Hook happened almost and every year I wonder why hasn't more been done. And I'm sure you feel the same way with, with your instance as well. Why do you think progress has been so slow? What, what needs to be done that is not being done. Yeah. Well, I think a big thing that's changed because I do think we've seen a lot of progress in the last two years. So uh since 2022 we passed the first law in 30 years. Uh The federal government has invested $30 billion into public safety. Uh since the end of COVID, uh and President Biden has done 54 executive actions on the issue of gun violence. Um That's more than any other president combined just to give you some context. The previous three administrations only did four and we've done 54. Um and that's huge. That's huge. And there's two parts of that. There's the story of leadership and vision and want to do that. But I think the real historic story is so many survivors and activists that have stepped up and demanded change and said, look, we're not gonna just cry and grieve alone. We're gonna demand action and we need more than thoughts and prayers. And so if it's ok, I wanna yield to Miss Edna because she uh cornered me at an event in Atlanta. And that's kind of how we met. And I would love to kinda yield to her to talk about. This is really one of those survivors who demanded more. Uh and I would love for you to share your story. Oh Hey, how everybody doing tonight? I am so grateful that you all taking this time out to hear a little bit of our story. Although it's still devastating, we're still hurt. We're still sad. But at the same time, we know we got to keep going because if we could prevent one person from going through what we going through now, it will be a great accomplishment. A lot of people say, well, how you are going to change the world, people. We don't, I don't think we could change the world. I said, if we could change one person or one family that has to go through what we're going through because on October, the 30th would be two years. If I have not talked to my baby, I have not seen him. Although I talked to him in the spirit, I have not seen him in flesh and it really hurt us so bad. It devastated my whole family. We know that with God's help, we're going to get through, but we know it's going to take time. And that's the only thing I'm asking from God to help us get through it because one thing about it, I know and I taught them, Quavo is my son. We got to lean on God for the understanding. We don't know. But if we just trust in God and, and, and let him help us and lead the way we might, we could get through it and going back to what Greg said, he came to my sons. Um He had this thing called Honcho Day annually and I didn't know who he was. At first. I thought he was my son, coach and I was like, you, you, you, I said my son was really good and you didn't. He said, wait a minute, what are you talking about? I didn't. And instantly he said, wait a minute, you know, I'm not, I'm, I'm starting a fundraising thing for God. I said, oh, yeah, let me help, please. Thank you. I'm sorry, let me help. And that's how we met each other on that day. And since then I've been wanting to just go out there and do whatever I could. Like I say, I know I'm not superwoman, take off with my first grandson, my first grand, the consolation that I get from that. I know he knew that I loved him and, and it was vice versa. He loved me too. But like I said, I could prevent one person, one family. Yeah. Yeah. Excuse me, not to go what we're going through. My mom passed and I was devastated but she did live to be 75 almost 80. This was a young man that was out there trying to make it his thing that he used to say all the time. It's not about me, it's about my family. He said this thing is bigger than me and I never knew what that meant up until this tragedy happened. He loved us and we loved him too. One of the things he always used to tell me all the time, even the hard times that I was having, I'm pretty sure everybody went through not being able to pay their bills. And he said, mama, we're going to make it. And he said, you won't have to worry about nothing. I got you. And from that day I told him, I said, look, I don't care if you work at mcdonald's fry and fries, we are going to make it, we going to do it because we love each other and we got to stick together. But just like I say, it's hard for me to talk about it. I don't know when and how I'm going to be able to get over it. But I'm trusting in God to help me through and help my family through. And I really appreciate y'all just listening to this. I got a lot more and a lot more story, but we don't have enough time. We'll save that. We'll save that for the dinner. Thank you again so much. Thank you. I thank you for sharing your story. Truly. Really. And Craig, I, I wanna go quickly to you and Titania too. I wanna end on what is giving you hope because I feel like with, with a lot of these stories, it's hard to, to believe and feel hope and that something could change. So really quickly, I'd like to ask each of you, what do you want your legacy to be and what, what's giving you hope and Greg, we can start with you. Look, this, this gives me hope. You know, they're sharing stories but I watched them March in the Capitol Hill, sit down with 24 members of Congress, share their stories, tears in their eyes, but demand policy change, right? And that turned into them, passing a budget that included. Uh Now we've invested over $400 million into community based violence intervention program. That's this, that's their story, right? Like we all saw March for our lives when that happened, when you saw youth from all over the country, march down Pennsylvania Avenue and demand change. And there are survivors in every community across the country that are pushing and fighting for change. Uh And that's what really inspires me every single day. Um That right now we know that one in five Americans know someone who have been shot or killed. Um But we're not just being survivors, we're not just being victims. All of us are turning in, turning around and fighting for change, helping our fellow community members pushing for policy. Uh and it's starting to work and that's the big thing that's really giving me hope. Last year in 2023 we saw the steepest decrease in homicides in American history, 11.6% reduction. And this year, the first six months of this year, we've seen a 22% reduction. And just to make this real tangible in Boston, we have 13 homicides in Newark, New Jersey. 27 right? And, and uh we just left. Philly. Philly has seen a 43% reduction in one year. So the investing in community based strategies, the activism of survivors, the policy changes that are happening at Congress all the way down are starting to really turn a corner on this issue and it really gives me a lot of hope and excitement. Amazing. Thank Greg and quickly for you Titanium. Do you wanna end on, on one word that gives you hope or what, what do you hold on to? What I hold on to is uh my belief in God. You know, that's what gives me the hope that continues to sit here and be in my same mind and speak to you guys. My belief, my second, my kids, I was talking to heaven one, that's my 16 year old and I was going through it and she would say mommy, I don't know what I would do if something happened to you. And that touched my heart that gives me hope. The third thing is people hurting, people, give me hope to help and wanna extend my heart. It, it left up to me. No one would have to go through anything but it's not up to me. You know, just me particularly just want me is collectively. But that is where my hope lies in my faith in God. I know that he, she promised to never leave me north of the site and she's with me and no matter what comes in my life, we're gone, she's still there and I can hope on him when man, I can put my hope in him. So that particular, thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your stories and thank the three of you for being here. I'm sorry. G five seconds, all of you room there are rocket foundations are important organizations to invest in. Almost every community has a violence intervention organization, whether you're in San Antonio or Los Angeles or Chicago, Illinois. And I deplore you. Please invest these organizations that are turning their pain to purpose and saving lives. But thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

Jason Buechel, Chief Executive Officer, Whole Foods Market Calvin Butler, Chief Executive Officer, Exelon Moderator: Indrani Sen, Senior Features Editor, Fortune; Co-chair, Fortune Impact Initiative  

Impact Initiative 2024: The Price Tag Of Sustainability

We're going to start out with some questions that I have for Jason and Calvin. But we also would love to hear some questions from the audience. So I hope you can all start thinking of questions for our esteemed guests. Um We'll be sending uh mics around a little bit later on. Uh I'd love to start Jason. Um You've talked about democratizing healthy grocery shopping in this era of high inflation about price reductions that whole foods has carried out kind of across the board. Calvin. I know that affordability is also very important to you. Given that 22% of exelon's customers are economically disadvantaged. How do you balance your sustainability goals with addressing the needs of financially stretched customers or put another way? How do you resist the temptation to compromise on your sustainability goals in order to offer your customers lower prices? Maybe we could start with you, Jason. Yeah. Yeah. Happy to and, and thanks for having me here today uh for us, you know, balancing and finding those win, win win solutions has been a really important part of whole foods market since we opened our very first store 44 years. Ago and practicing things like climate friendly agriculture have been an integral part of our company's offering, whether it was organic back when we first started to supporting things like regenerative today as well. And for us, it's finding the balance of how do we make sure that we can support value and quality for our customers. So I've been really proud of the work that we've been doing in reducing over 25% of prices across items within our stores, doubling the number of promotions from 2020 3 to 2024. And for us doing all of that without sacrificing quality. So ultimately, holding to our high quality standards and our goal is to find those win, win wins where we can balance impacts to the environment, do great things for customers, suppliers and the environment alike. Thank you, Calvin. Do you want to dive in on that one? Sure. First off, let me begin by saying good afternoon and thank you for having me. Thank you so much for being here. And I love the way you frame the question because it's not a either or it's definitely an and you started off with a statistic that was 22% of my customer base is from under resource communities. So as a utility, if I'm going to serve my customer base and recognizing the 22% and then I also have some of the highest income zip codes in the country as well. And my number one job as the CEO of a utility company is to serve all of my customers. So for me, it's definitely an and, and I have to do this in an equitable manner. And what I mean by that is that as we begin this energy transformation and I'm investing capital, I can't leave any neighborhood behind. We have the privilege of serving the nation's capital and I'll use them as an example for those of you who go to DC. The second ward is one of the most affluent wards in the nation's capital. The eighth ward is one of the most under-resourced. Their needs are very different, but I have to serve both of them and that's why afford affordability must be at the top of that list of everything I do. But this is what I also know. And we talked a little bit about this, all the things that I get to do and all the things that I'm being asked to do, if I don't keep the lights on and the gas flowing, it doesn't matter. So that reliability and resiliency also must be at the list. So when you talk about priorities, it's a one in one a and depending on who I talk to, it's what their priority is and how I need to show up. Right. Right. We talked about storytelling quite a lot. Um Calvin, some of Exelon's initiatives like rec conductor or investing in battery technology are kind of backend changes. Um, they're certainly hugely important but they're not necessarily that visible or easy to explain to customers. Um, and I'd say the same Jason, um, of initiatives at Whole Foods, like your approach to food waste. Um How do you think about telling customers those stories? And I guess as a part of that, like how much appetite and curiosity do your customers have for, for hearing these stories? Depends on the customer. Some of you want to hear about it each and every day and you want to start with, hey, what are you doing to help me get a battery charger at my home to charge my car? Some of you are saying, what can I do to get my solar panels put on my house quick enough. But once again, different customers have different priorities and I love the way you framed is that so much of what we do? You don't even know, but it's setting it up for the future of that grid, the resiliency of that grid. You think about what's happening right now and I heard one of the panels a couple of panels ago, talk about Hurricane Helene and now Milton coming through, that's when you talk about the grid and it's at the forefront, you're feeling it right now in real time. And you're saying, why wasn't that utility ready for this? Because that's the question that everyone's gonna ask when they get to the third or fourth day without power. And by the way, you're all very impatient right about now and you, you know that hurricanes coming and after about 48 hours, you lose all patience, but that's ok. We know that. So having said that, what are our investments that we're making today to make that grid more resilient? And I look at resiliency as the ability to get back online sooner rather than later. And that's what we're trying to do. And I think for us, you know, we're fortunate, we have probably some of the most passionate consumers as it relates to sustainability, uh you know, sustainable seafood sourcing animal welfare standards. And so in many cases, we've got a set of customers who are coming to us because we do the homework for them in this space. There's a lot of customers who are, you know, coming because we have great deals because we have high quality food. And so being able to tell the story of the why, why we're doing the work that we are, I think becomes really, really important. And I think whether it's whole foods and other brands, our responsibility is to help tell that story and bring the transparency to customers. So they understand the impact that they have based upon their decisions and whether it relates to, you know how we're reducing food waste to reducing our carbon emissions to ultimately helping support sustainable waterways and oceans, that impact is really important to understand as we make those buying decisions. And so I think it's our job to help tell the story, work with brands and producers and farmers and understanding why we're doing the work that we are. Right? I guess, I think sometimes customers can become a little cynical about this. We, we talk about these things so much. You hear terms like greenwashing thrown around. How do you, how do you kind of factor that in to these conversations? How do you, how do you make it, you know, make people feel this is important without necessarily kind of making them feel that they're lectured to or uh are kind of being uh being told off in some way. Well, I think that's a really important uh balance that we have to strike. And, you know, one of the things that we put into place is we require, you know, third party certification. So take, for example, Regen, if we're the only national retailer right now that we have to ensure that all of our products that have regenerative on our labels are third party certified. And so we've got a series of certifiers that we work with in this space. And so what we believe we need to do is make sure that there's integrity that stands behind it. Um And so customers don't have that distrust. And as I was saying earlier, we want to do the homework for our customers, so they don't have to is the ultimate goal. And so our goal is to help build that trust. And I think one of the other ways we can do is start to talk about the impacts of us not supporting this. You know, one of the things that is the true reality here is, you know, our food systems are under jeopardy right now. Uh If we don't do something different in the next to 100 years, the products that we know and love today, we're not going to be able to grow all of them. And at the same time, we're losing the nutrient density in these products. So every single year, we're losing that nutrient density from our soil. And so we have to bring different practices in place. And so I think a big part of it is at the same time not being alarmist, but also also like pointing out if we don't do something different, this is a situation we're going to be in. And I would just say for Exelon, our goal is to lead with transparency. Every year we issue our sustainability report, we just did it and you can go online and pull it up. And in that sustainability report, you will see that we've reduced our business driven emissions significantly since 2015. And we focus on that. We were also one of the last companies we were slow out the gate in announcing our path to clean our uh emissions driven goals. And we did that for a very uh very real reason, is that anything that we said we wanted it to be measurable and attainable. So when I tell you that we're going to be net zero business driven emissions by 2050 the first reaction I got when I came out the gate was that's kind of late. But I said I got a line of sight to 80% of that. By 2035 the last 20% is going to be technology dependent. So I didn't want to state a goal that I didn't have a clear line of how I would achieve it. And then I also challenge people that once we say we're at someplace, ask us and we can show you the data to back it up and that's what's important for us as a utility company because we're never going to tell you something that we cannot do or have a line of sight to achieving. So a boa our chief sustainability Officer is here and we take very, we're very diligent about what we put out in the public space because we never want that credibility to be eroded. So it's very important for us. Absolutely. I'm gonna now say if there's anyone who has any questions, I, I see a question over here. Um I'd ask that we have some mic handlers who are gonna come over. I just ask that you stand and, and please state your name and the, and the company that you're representing here. Sheikh uh fascinating panel. Uh We are an era where the businesses and the government should work together for the value creation. Now, in the context of uh the, the electric industry, Exelon or in the food industry and in the, the things that are going on under the Department of Justice, the Trust Arena. Um What are the one or two strategies that uh you are looking into to make sure we work with the government to drive value because we alone cannot do it together. Because at the end of the day, the customers, communities, education institutions, every stakeholder matters. If you don't mind, I'll, I'll start, you go ahead. Let me just capture to your point. Public private partnerships are critical to any level of success we're going to achieve. And I give this administration a lot of credit for the passing of the Infrastructure Investment Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act because that is those were critical elements to spearheading everything that we did and how we partnered with our communities directly. I don't benefit from that. But what it has done is accelerated, the adoption of electric buses, it's accelerated buildings going all electric, it's accelerated um decarbonization in urban areas and rural areas that would not have happened because of the expense of getting it done. And what I've shared with Secretary Granholm and others is that not only are those billions being put to work, we're partnering and putting our own capital on top of that. And it's a true example of one plus one equaling three. And that's the benefit of that partnership. And we talk regularly with not only Secretary Granholm at doe, but Secretary Romano at Department of Commerce. I noticed you had Ali Z up here earlier. Those are conversations on a weekly basis that we're doing and we're having because this administration is all into it. Um Now I wish it was happening quicker and the challenge for it happening quicker is that there's not always an alignment between federal legislation and what's happening at the state level in terms of the regulatory policies. So the utilities may be looking to run and put that money to work, but state policies are slowing it down and we're working to get that done. And I love this question. I would love to just throw in. Also. How are you thinking about November? I'll jump in on the food side. I'm gonna jump in on the food side. So for us to be able to protect the future of our food system, we have to change our farming practices and it's going to require the public and private sectors to work together, you know, today that we have so many different incentives and subsidies that are actually incenting the wrong behaviors of where we need to go. And so it has to be a collective set of work. And I think what's more important than November is we need bipartisan collaboration to support this. You know, I oftentimes share, you know, we have red and blue states that are some of the largest producers of produce and goods that we have in this country from our farms and we have to work together to find solutions so we can help bring these changes and put them into place. Um Just picking up on that. One of the things that you've said, Jason is uh that there's a danger of a kind of whack a mole approach across industries where efforts to solve one problem in one industry can end up causing problems in the other. In another industry. A classic example is uh corn ethanol, the biofuel uh leading to uh they were impacting food production, um government uh you know, working with the government as a part of that. Do you see any kind of path of working across industries as the Kia Car Johnson talked about a little bit earlier also? Yeah, I think we have to, you know, and some of the examples that you just mentioned, you know, we're in a situation right now where across this country, only 1% of our family farmlands are certified organic and the pressure in many cases of farmers to, you know, move to producing corn for the purposes of energy is increasing and the demand is going to get higher. If you look as an example, the airline industry has got a number of solutions where corn is going to be a major dependency in helping support some of their sustainability goals. And it's great on things that they're able to do. But we have to say, what is that going to be doing in our food systems? And so we need support both across industry, but we also need help from some of our government partners here to make sure that we've got the right incentives in place so we can protect our food systems and continue to support other industries in meeting their goals as well. Do you want to weigh in on that one? Kelvin? I'm teasing. So I think it applies to, is there a part of that from the energy perspective, you'd like me to dig in on? Well, I mean, I think that the the collaboration across industries in particular, do you see, I mean, is that real or is that kind of pie in the sky? No, it's definitely realistic. I mean, you look at we're at the forefront for at least the last 40 to 50 years where we're seeing load growth in the electric sector and you talk about uh data centers, the load growth, depending on who you talk to and doing that in a sustainable way in a clean way is critical because depending on once again who you talk to could be 3 to 5 X over the next decade. And data centers for our National Security for information flow based here in the US is going to be critical and how we do that and still manage to provide adequate clean energy to those uh data centers is important. So that's where the collaboration and partnership really shows and the security of the system. And fortunately, most of you don't have to think about protecting the grid, but the grid is critical infrastructure. When you look at any major disturbance across the world, the first thing they go after is the grid. And so that's also something that we put at the forefront. So not only with the data center developers, but also with the national gov federal government in terms of making sure those assets are protected, that collaboration and partnership is critical. Absolutely. So with our, our last couple of minutes, um I'd love to just end on a note of, you know, what are your biggest concerns about the future? But also what makes you feel optimistic? Yeah, I'm happy to, to jump in. I kind of mentioned, you know, a little bit earlier, we have to protect the future of our food systems for future generations. And that's going to require us to implement more climate friendly agricultural practices overall. And I'm hopeful that we're actually going to be able to achieve that because as I look at some of our future generations and specifically Gen Z, this is something they really care about. 70% of Gen Zers support climate friendly agriculture practices. 55% of them even will pay more for those products. And they really want to make sure that there's authenticity behind it. And so I'm very hopeful that we'll be able to help address this in the future. I love that. So I will tell you my, my biggest concerns and it wouldn't surprise you is the reliability and resiliency of this system, affordability and resource adequacy, meaning that having enough power to supply all the things that you as our customers want. And depending on the audience, it could be 11 A and one B because at different points, different customers. But those are the three issues that I think about on a regular basis. Why am I optimistic? Because here in the United States, we operate one of the most reliable and resilient grids across the world. Sometimes it may, may feel that way, but we have to get better because you as customers, your expectations are very different for us today than they were a year ago. And we're being asked to do different things with the grid today and tomorrow than we ever had to do so, we have to get better. So I'm optimistic because I think we, I know we'll be able to step up. And the last thing I would say I'm optimistic is the workforce of the future picking up what Jason just said, I started my opening a stem center in an elementary school in Prince George's County and to see those young elementary kids just really go to those stem packages with the teachers, not read the instructions and go right in where the rest of us my age were looking like, OK, what do we do here? They're excited about science, technology, engineering and math. All we need to do is empower them and give them the resources and they will be our future scientists and mathematicians in the future. So that gets me excited. Love that. Well, thank you so much for the panelists and thank you so much to our audience for your.

Andrea Barrack, Senior Vice President, Sustainability and Impact, Royal Bank of Canada Amelia DeLuca, Chief Sustainability Officer, Delta Air Lines Gayle Schueller, Senior Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer, 3M Moderator: Molly Wood, Founder and CEO, Molly Wood Media; Co-chair Fortune Impact Initiative  

Impact Initiative 2024: Sustainability Goals - Are Market Movers On Track

Impact Initiative 2024: Sustainability Goals: Are Market Movers On Track

Andrea Barrack, Royal Bank of Canada, Amelia DeLuca, Delta Air Lines, Gayle Schueller, 3M Moderator: Molly Wood, Molly Wood Media

Thanks for joining us. Welcome to my lovely panel. Um I am going to dive right in with the, the key question, the, the title of our session right now and I'll just sort of go down the row here. Are you market movers on track? Andrea? Ish your honesty as always is appreciated in this room. I'm glad I didn't have to go first. So now, you know what to say? That's all. Ok. I wanna say it wasn't a closed session when we're on the panel. I have my legal team is not here to tell me if I can disclose this or not. Listen, you have to be an optimist to be in this space. I'm sure all of you are here today because you're optimist. So I'm always gonna be optimistic unless I'm talking to my board and then I'm gonna have a little bit more of a realist viewpoint, but in general, I will say yes, it's very hard or we're gonna hit our targets. Exactly. Spot on. Probably not, but we're gonna make a heck of a lot of progress. And that to me is wonderful. I would say it depends on who we are because I would say three M, we've been ambitious with our goals. We really hold ourselves to a high standard in terms of developing the math path and plan. So three M is on target. In fact, a little bit ahead of what we said is our public goals. We as a planet and a society, I think we have some things to work on and we can only do it by being together. So it's great that everyone's here together to work on that flew in on Delta obviously. So also great partnership. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Well, and I, I the reason that we put together this panel and it, it is interesting because the reason we put this panel together was to say we would love for these companies, these market movers to come here and say, you know, this is the progress that we're making here are the benchmarks that we're setting here are the standards we're creating for the industry. And also I can safely say in this room, a lot of people dropped off of this panel as we were programming it. And so I think this question of where you are in your goals is stressful for company. So Andrea not to, to make you the avatar for the entire financial sector, you no longer answer. But no, no, you know, we're just gonna keep going here. Ish is a really good answer. Um I also recently learned the phrase no, is a complete sentence. So I think that's, you know, also an acceptable answer to many questions. Um the financial sector has come under a lot of pressure. I was just reading a financial Times story today about how none of the major banks and financial institutions are at attending cop 29 in Baku. Um How do how are you thinking about balancing sustainability goals with the reality of achieving them and, and sort of the evolving role of banks in these goals? Yeah. And I love that you led with the evolving role of banks because I think that's really something that, you know, like, I don't know, sort of 2016, 2017, we were all just like, let's do the Moonshot and we're gonna be net zero by 2050 we're just gonna rely on human ingenuity to get there because we don't really know the path yet, but we believe in and we believe in innovation and that's gonna get us there fast forward to. Now we're in this exceptionally volatile and dynamic external environment. And you know, R BC has uh you know, our core markets are the US Canada and the Eu and they have vastly different landscapes when it comes to ESGDE I standard setting. And so trying to sort of thread that needle has been extraordinarily difficult. And I think the one way that we've sort of approach that is to say we have to be so tightly aligned to the business goals and to the values of our organization that is the way through, that's how we're gonna get there. And then sort of dealing, I think, then back to the reality, sort of to say, what are the societal issues that impact the success of our business today, but also in the future and that we also feel like we could have a positive influence on. So those of you who follow CS RD, it's kind of that idea of double materiality and starting to bring that in. And then what are our ambitions and then what are our contributions that we can make to get there? And we use the term contributions really deliberately because actually banks didn't cause the societal issues were challenged with, with climate change or with inequities. Um And so we have a contribution to make, but it's not the whole thing. So how do we kind of look at that and then try to balance it, needing to be ambitious, set the bar, but we have a legislative environment and a litigation environment that really punishes any sniff of greenwashing. And so we need to be careful there. And so it's trying to sort of say, be realistic, but something that allows you to stretch at the same time to because we want to spur action at the end of the day. Um A reminder that we are gonna come to you with questions. I have a couple more for the panel but start thinking of your questions and we've, you've been through a couple of sessions now, raise your hand and a Mike Renner will come to you. Um But before that, Amelia, I wanna ask you about the airline industry. Uh Delta is of course more sensitive than most to this question of greenwashing for reasons you probably can't talk about on stage today, but it does raise this sort of the idea of evolution, right? Like the idea of e the, the evolution of the, the backs on the ground when goals were set and how you work toward meeting them. Yeah, I think, and I think just to step back for a second, um, you know, aviation is a hard to decarbonize sector. And so while we're doing everything that we can today, if you flew in on dealt with some things that I'll point out that you may have seen or the sustainable packaging, many of our products are in, um, things that you did not see is how we're taking weight off the airplane, through both our catering products as well as through the structural items. How potentially we landed you with a slightly different vector to reduce fuel usage, how we maybe change the speed we flew you out for 30 seconds, all of which saves millions of gallons of fuel every year, but we burned 4 billion gallons of fuel every year and you can't take off with anything besides liquid based carbon fuel today, essentially. You know, it can't be a battery electric. And so we got a long ways to go sustainable aviation fuel is our North Star. It has been our North Star and will continue to be our North Star as an industry. I think where the evolution comes in is an understanding about the need to accelerate what we can do today and talk a lot more to our consumers, to educate them, to let them know that we're not just waiting for this moon shot, but we are getting all the fuel out of our system that we can today in really ingenious ways. While we scale sustainable aviation fuel and sustainable aviation fuel has been a really interesting product to watch evolve. It competes with the same feedstocks that on road vehicles use, whether that's in our liquid fuels today or in the future, synthetic fuels, either of those are competing feedstock resources, we're a completely new value chain. So if you think about what these fuels of the future are going to look like, I never thought as an aviation leader and this is the only career I've ever had that I would be spending my days on a farm, for example, and that I would be lobbying in the Midwest more than I'm actually home in my home base in Atlanta. And so to me, I think the evolution is building these partnerships that you may not need today. But then in 5 to 10 years from now when that breakthrough starts to come or that technological advance and is finally here that we have those relationships and those partnerships and that trust. And so to me, the evolution is that, and it's data backed and I think it's the fact that data is changing to say that, you know, a lot of money needs to go into this. Let's make sure that the money goes into the right places. And so part of that is through both our policy as well as how we spend our money just being agile and also transparent about what we're doing with that money. And when we find a better solution than we've seen in the past, we will be transparent and tell you about that switch. Yeah. And then gale three M is such an interesting case because it, it is so broad. There are so many things in scope, which is one of the conversations that we have had. How do you even determine which parts of the business to tackle and talk about what a challenge that is? Yeah. Well, we have on the order of 55,000 products, banning post it notes and command strips and scouring sponges that you might be familiar with, but also adhesives that go into aircraft and solutions that go into your electronics devices and helping batteries be safer, helping fuel economy and vehicles be more efficient and helping workers work safely every day. I mean, we became, we used to be known for Poster Notes, then it was a 95 respiration. So it's really been an evolution. We, we have, like I mentioned, we're very science based and we have this maths path and plan approach. We have systematically analyzed every one of our facilities around the world. And we're just now at a point where we're looking at every product portfolio which is a big effort. And um we've needed that at least at the facility level to look at that math path and plan. And by going systematically through the approach, whether it's the manufacturing processes, the portfolios themselves or how we source and how, how we deliver the products that's allowed us to reduce our scope one and two emissions by more than 80% since 2002. And that includes more than 43% since 2019. And so we, we just, it's taken us maybe longer than we might have liked, but we just had F BT I validation for our near term target um relatively recently and we're committed to continuing down that path. It is a lot of hard work though. Um because it means that every different business needs to be engaged in the own way that we're their most relevant, right? Um Are there questions from the audience just yet? I see a hand right in front of me. Look, look at you. Yeah, this is Khwaja Shekh uh fascinating panel. Um It is very important to, to integrate sustainability with the business strategy. And there comes the balancing both short term and long term. And if you apply the VC mindset on the venture capitalist, they are, they are very much high risk takers where they invest a lot for the long term, where they are literally creating new business models. So from the financial services industry standpoint or from the travel and transportation industry standpoint, what are your views on how do we make sure we apply the VC mindset to fundamentally create a new business models instead of just looking at the short term, only from the regulatory reporting needs trying to do minimum versus looking for the long term, any ideas you would like to offer? Interesting. Yeah, I mean, and do you want to apply a VC mindset? Yeah, so banks in North America are highly regulated um entities but, but I think you're absolutely right. If you look at what is the number one driver that banks have to try to make a positive impact in the world, it's the allocation of capital. And so we do think about how are we driving more green and even more sort of greenish brown to try to help the transition to accelerate. And you know, people set uh sustainable finance goals and you know, we've got a new one that we're putting out there. But the fact of the matter is is there's not that many things that meet our risk return profile that we can invest in that are green at this point in time. So it really does beg the question. And I think it's not just R BC, I think it's all financial institutions to say, would we consider modifying our business model a little bit looking at that risk return profile, what would that mean to be able to incent more additive kind of activity um that we could then sort of really say that we're, you know, being a market mover, I think in those kinds of things. So I don't think we're there yet, but I think financial institutions have a huge role to play in getting there. And I think maybe I'll just take it with very short, which is, you know, I think business today, it's very easy for me to argue why, what we're doing is good and we save jet fuel. That's our largest cost driver. That's easy. I don't think that it's the role of the airline to be financing these kind of risky bets when it comes to sustainable aviation fuel producers, as mentioned, that just doesn't fit in our business model nor our margins. But I just want to give an, for example, we have um a sustainable aviation fuel hub in Minnesota and it is public private partnership. It is the state. It's all the major Corporates. You've got major oil and gas, you've got a, you've got the energy company all trying to figure this out because that's the answer. Right. You're right. Everyone needs to up their risk a little bit but not one single industry or party can take that risk. I will Bill. Please go ahead. I love your question. Um In part because it gets to a core value that we have as a company. We're really focused on innovation and we've put forward a requirement since 2019. So it's five years old now that every new product we develop must have a sustainability value commitment. Now, some of these and I will tell you especially the first year, um some of them I was much more excited about than others, you know, but, but each year, so the first year we allowed, ok, if you're not packaged and recycle recyclable packaging, that can be your commitment. But the next new product has to be built on that and has to be above and beyond. And that's really led to a lot of things and in terms of venture engagement, um yeah, I could go on for a long time but I won't. Um But it's led to a lot of really interesting breakthroughs, but in terms of venture engagement, it has us leaning in stronger than ever to climate tech and so new ways. How can we bring things forward? You know, whether it's carbon capture or whether it's a hydrogen economy, all of these things because collectively, we're all trying to find solutions and increasing. I think there's a really important role for materials. And there's a material science company that's an important opportunity for us as a business that I was only going to add to that, that corporate venture capital has actually emerged as a really interesting source of some of that catalytic capital. And so you have this market mover advantage in terms of procurement, sometimes CV C certainly financing mechanisms. I know where there's a question over here uh of my lien Buckley, I represent striker Med tech company um Gail, I believe you were referencing the progress on carbon goals. And I imagine three M is it has many businesses as do probably many of our companies. So do each of your businesses have goals around carbon reduction or can you speak a little bit to how you tackle that as a major enterprise? Yeah, so we, we have goals at the prioritized portfolios. Ok. So we go through and we know where our heavy carbon footprint is. And so we challenge those businesses in particular. We don't have an internal carbon tax right now, but we make sure those businesses are very aware of what an external carbon tax might be and try to help them with that incentive and progress. And we give them special love and attention if there are higher carbon footprint areas. Great. Thanks. What have you seen? I think we're probably, we're probably out of time to take more audience questions because we will all get too excited. But um but one of the things we talked a lot about in our prep call for this panel and in the round table that preceded the main stage sessions is this idea of again the evolving landscape, right? That there are things maybe we didn't see coming such as a pandemic, if you maybe set 2025 or 2030 goals in 2018. Um New technologies, innovations, things like that. What have some of those innovations uh evolutions been? What are some of the conditions that have changed the most on the ground in the time that you may set your goals or that are making you think we're on Trek ish? Yeah, I think two things and I'll try to be brief. One is just that we're seeing far more um interest sections between ES and G. Um And so this idea that we would treat them in pillars is no longer really sufficient if we want to get there. But the second thing is that there's been a huge proliferation of regulation and disclosure standards and while some of that can be good, uh in fact, the first panel on uh de I and A that was earlier talked about, never mind the letters. Can we just do the work? And one of the things that I wonder is that companies are so busy hiring up to have people do disclosures and make sure that we're in line with regulations that we actually are pulling away people from doing the work to actually decarbonize or to increase their diversity or to have a positive impact. And so I think in this environment, particularly where it's global and regulations in Europe are far more stringent than they are in the U SI would say. And so we're seeing already companies thinking about listing rather than in Europe listing in the United States that doesn't help global emissions, right? And so if we can't be consistent in that kind of innovation and that regulation, we're not going to get anywhere either. Yeah, I think for us, there's two things. So I think the first in the short term is that it's good for business. And we've proven that out over the last couple of years, which means we actually have more money flowing into our team to spend towards fuel saving initiatives than we ever thought was possible because we proved it's good for business. We will find innovative technologies, we will use the goodness that is sustainability to just get everyone rallied around us. Whether you meet our media from a cost savings perspective or from a purpose driven perspective, everyone can get on board with what we're doing. I think the second is at least for us, our industry is bipartisan, but the concept of sustainability is often not sustainable. Aviation fuel is actually incredibly bipartisan because a lot of the fuel will come out of the Midwest. And so I think for us, the real evolving evolution is realizing we have this once in a lifetime kind of opportunity to truly shore up support on both sides so that no matter what happens in November, it will not significantly impact. And to really tell the story again about how this industry which has always done so much. Good for so many people is now gonna have new connections into agriculture and rural America which again just provides decades worth of kind of new partnerships, new opportunities and new ways to uplift communities that we didn't have before. Wonderful. Wow, great answers. I thought I had 31 was about regulations getting tougher and more reporting. One was about how the politic politicization, I don't know, becoming more political in this space when it really shouldn't be. Um But the third I would say is technologies are really advancing, you know, so you see those like there's a technology s curve concept, you know, as you come up the s curve, things start moving really fast. And so we're seeing that with renewable energy, you know, that that's becoming more and more affordable. We're seeing that with electrification, maybe not of airplanes but of other types of ground um transport. You know, we're seeing those things move, we're seeing more and more different ways of things advancing. And I think it's a matter of getting on with it. And you know, some of those first movers that you were talking about, we're going to geek out a bunch about climate tech at dinner. But that's where I have to leave this panel. Andrea Gill and Amelia. Thank you so much for the time. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Andre Dickens, Mayor, Atlanta Ali Zaidi, White House National Climate Advisor Moderator: Sheryl Estrada, Senior Writer, Finance, Fortune 

Impact Initiative 2024: Building Climate-Ready Cities

Hey, hi there. Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us and may I thank you for hosting us in your great city. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you all for being here. Welcome to Atlanta. Enjoy our great city, spend lots of money and uh ok, thank you. Um Ali, I'd like to start the conversation off with you. Um Some of the same areas hit hard by Helene to see flooding again by hurricane Milton. So I'm expected to make landfall as early as Thursday. What steps has the administration taken to bolster climate resilience? Well, first of all, um grateful to be with you and this storm is just catastrophic uh overnight, essentially charging up to a category five. and you see more and more storms draw their fury from a Gulf of Mexico that is warmer and that's directly related to climate change. Um You know, we have pre positioned assets uh throughout the whole federal government, uh shoulder to shoulder with state and local officials to take on what the impacts will be from this storm and the next one. But to your point, uh it's really important for us to be in the long game of adapting our cities and our rural areas to this new reality. So when I think about climate resilience, especially in the face of flood, you know, in the previous administration, they had rolled back these things called flood risk standards. Uh basic minimum guidelines that when you build infrastructure using taxpayer dollars, how high do you build it? Uh In this administration, not only did we uh go and undo that reversal, we actually integrated climate informed science into a new set of flood risk standards. So thing number one is when you spend federal bucks, uh make sure you build it in a way that uh responds to what we know about the risk in front of us, but that's for things going forward. How do you improve the things that are already built all around us? And there in the form of the bipartisan infrastructure law, we made the biggest investment and resilience in the country and very specifically what that means is money to raise roads and bridges. So they don't wash away during a storm. Uh with a particular mind to things like evacuation routes that we have funded in the State of Florida, for example, through the infrastructure law. Well, before a storm showed up so that those evacuation routes are available, hardening our grid is a second strategy that I think is absolutely essential to the success of future um uh cities going forward because uh we have whether it's a hospital or a uh uh senior center or it's the command center or it's frankly, the water treatment plant, all of it plugs into our grid. So if the grid gets washed out, you have a very big problem. Uh And that's why we're investing in increased transmission capacity, strengthening the substation assets. Um So those don't flood when a storm or storm surge passes through and then also getting after the opportunity that distributed energy represents, so I could go on and on. But I think it's about codes. It's about standard. It's about building new things smarter and upgrading older built environments uh to meet the test of the climate crisis. Thank you, Ali. Um I wanted to ask you Mayor Dickens uh hurricane, he made landfall September 26th in Florida, eventually moving into parts of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee Metro Atlanta was spared most of the storm. Can you tell us the approach of your office of emergency preparedness during this time? Yeah, absolutely. We didn't know what was going to happen. So we prepared for the worst, right. So we of course, seeing this big storm Helene coming through uh the Gulf of Mexico, a lot of attention was on Florida, the Tallahassee area and thinking that southern Georgia would get it, but it never stopped. It just kept going all the way up to Appalachia, to North Carolina, South Carolina. And um but it made a turn uh just as it was coming towards metro Atlanta and it went eastern easterly and up, uh just literally circled around Atlanta. So we got a lot of flooding, a lot of wind but not as much as we would have received. Had we've been on that direct path, but we prepared. Um, the, the day we knew it was coming. Two days earlier, we started to prepare as heavy rains were in Atlanta and the heavy rains persisted for days. And so we knew that if the hurricane did come, if heavy winds came, the ground was going to be so soft that the trees would start to fall. And we have a lot of power lines here that if the trees fall, then that means that the power grid is now affected in people's ability, uh whether they're uh medical devices that are in their homes, of course, their cell phones and other things. So we began to prepare um these type of events, you have to be coordinate, you have to have a lot of collaboration and then communications is key. And I think that in order to get it right, you have to really, really uh have a good communications network with your television, but also with social media, with the devices on people's phones and the pres conversations. Atlanta is very hilly as you may as you may know, we have with the city of 1000 hills has been said. Um and so low lying areas, collect water in normal heavy rain events, uh then a thunderstorm, but something that's the magnitude of a hurricane we had to prepare ahead of time. So communication was telling people to move their cars to higher ground. Some houses have hills and we want you to put your car at the highest point. We want you to put your uh don't have your birth certificate, social security number and your uh life insurance in that little Nike shoe box in the basement that sometimes floods, right? So you have to tell people these things. And then the other coordinations was key to make sure we went and cleaned out all of the storm drains every day is particularly in areas that we know are low lying areas in the city, like where our college students are at. Clark, Atlanta, Atlanta University Center, some other low lying areas that flooded in 2008, flooded in 2002. So we looked at history as a guide to say these areas flood in certain conditions. So we need to get ahead of it. Luckily, those areas didn't flood uh as bad. We did have some areas that did the creeks and the um and the river did get a really high level. So the other part of our plan, the collaboration working with Georgia Power and having all of our agency relationships in order F ma Jima, et cetera. Um I'd like to say that we came through that storm pretty well. We lost 6% power, uh 6% of the residents lost power for some period of time due to down power lines. About 220 trees fell down. And we had our emergency crews on standby. Atlanta Fire Rescue Department um had to get them boats to get some people in some apartments that were very low lying and they had to be rescued. They were trying to drive in the, in the vehicles and the floodwaters just came over them. And so no one lost life, but we were able to coordinate in a way to take a, take boats onto this property to be able to get people. So, um you know, we learned a lot in this exercise as we are now experiencing what's in the Gulf. Uh Right now, unfortunately, while it looks like it's going to go across Florida, we don't take any chances. We're collaborating right now. Um And, and the last thing I'll say is part of our collaboration is a whole of government approach. Every single department head that may have thought they weren't directly into the flood mitigation, public safety. Everybody, we had uh routine calls every three hours and we stood up our joint operation center. We have a room about this size with TV S and monitors and communication devices that the first the seconds, the thirds and the department all rotate every eight hour shift. Um And we treat it as though it's um uh you know, uh operation if you will for um everybody, 311911 parks and recreation. Having to say, when are we going to close? Um After after school programs, are we gonna make sure they're closed today? Um And uh even mayor's office of special events, I'm doing ribbon cuttings and all those things. You have to give advance notice that these things are canceled and you should cancel yours too. People take their cues from the government. So we were making sure that we sent messaging out to our Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and our school system and others saying we're not working in person to, you know, the next uh tomorrow, what have you, we're gonna work remotely but you know, emergency personnel will be on standby and that helped clear the roads as well. Oh, this is amazing. Uh The information you're sharing with us. Um I was wondering as you were speaking, are there any learnings or best practices from this experience that you plan to take into a potential other catastrophes? Yeah, it don't take any storm for granted. It's um you know, when they start talking about it on the weather channel, on the news, if it's in the Gulf, our office of emergency preparedness starts to have weather forecasts. We start having screens available for us to watch this storm because they shift. They, they can make, you know, uh rapid shifts or even shifts that are undetermined how uh how large they're going to be. Um, and so don't take any storm for granted, make sure that you stay ready. So you don't have to get ready in some kind of, you know, uh, some kind of format that's not planned. You want to be ahead of it, but it's also to make sure that people have some self resiliency. Government has a tremendous role and local government, people come to local government for everything, right? Um And you have to know that people are going to ask me about postal service, right? People are going to ask me about their food stamp, their snap their whatever and that's not a local function, but I have to be aware of it. People are gonna ask me, you know about um a number of things, right? So it's being prepared, being collaborative is so important. I have to know in government, the local government, the ones that they see in the grocery store every day, the ones that they um hang out with, they, they come to us first. And so we have to know everything uh have a good feel for what weather patterns are, be able to communicate with the power companies with the uh various entities that help us. But everybody has to have some self resiliency. We think about our critical infrastructure, which are our hospitals, our airport, our rail system, um the various uh water systems. But we also think about our uh our you know, challenged communities, those that are experiencing homelessness, our seniors and knows how do we get, make sure they have provisions. Is there water in this senior center? Do we have the ability to get them water? Is there a battery backup at the senior center? We have to bring all of the people experiencing homelessness in, into our shelters, making sure there's enough shelter beds, et cetera. So we did all of that. Um And luckily most of it wasn't as necessary because the storm changed. But then a few days later, there was a uh a biolab that had this chemical uh this, this chemical fire. So it put chlorine in the air. So we had to protect people a week later, it wasn't in the city of Atlanta. It was, you know, 50 miles away, but we share the same air, we share the same water. We are in 11 community. Now what affects one directly affects another indirectly as Doctor King will say. So having self resiliency. So we have now these packages that we're sharing people with people to say in your home, we should at least have these things because we might, can't get to you in five minutes like we can on a sunny day, we might, can't get to you in 10 minutes or 20 minutes. Have these things prepare these things. So that's part of our initial communication and particularly to our vulnerable population like our senior citizens. And those that are in our homeless shelters. Thank you for sharing that mayor. Um Ali, I wanted to ask you as the mayor has explained uh a lot of the measures that he's taking on a local level. How does the federal uh government partner with uh local government for some of these initiatives like educating uh citizens on, on, on best practices for their homes to endure uh climate events and things of that sort. Well, the, the mayor just walked through, I think the master class of what leadership looks like on the climate crisis. Um And you know, tell me for you. That's awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Um Look, you know, we're hearing about what he's done in just the last week or two. But let me say the reason he's able, I think to pass the ball around to play that point guard function on the ground is because right out of the gate, he established an office of sustainability and resilience in his city hall. So one of the things we've been trying to do with mayors and local leaders around the country is to have them establish that capability, that capacity. Sure, everybody in local government uh or federal government for that matter is now for better or worse in the climate business. We are all uh enveloped in the crisis, but you need a capacity, a central clearing house uh that gets information out uh even to the government. Uh so that folks are doing what they need to. So that's thing number one that we've been trying to do is work with local governments to build their capacity to coordinate themselves. The second is, you know, again, he talked about uh in this very colloquial way uh about going and clearing out the, the storms, uh the storm gutters, uh making sure that the absorption capability uh for these new precipitation patterns that are potentially deadly, um that they got out in front of it. How do you do that? The way you do it is by harnessing the data we now have available that helps us try to pinpoint what those risk spots are. So we launched this new tool called camera uh two years ago using uh new satellite data and new climate projections through our uh weather agency through NOA. And it's designed specifically so that local leaders can actually take that information and then use it to deploy their resources more effectively. So the second thing we've been trying to do is workshop these data tools that we have available with local leaders so that they can do exactly the use case. Uh The mayor laid out, take the data from uh our scientists and then translate it into resource deployment that's smarter and more effective. The third thing is trying to integrate the use of uh more technology to this adaptation challenge. Uh I think for a really long time, we've looked at the root cause part of climate change, right, the solar panels, uh the electric rivian that the mayor drives, um getting the pollution out of the sky that causes the climate change. Um But we've got to apply that same technology innovation to the resilience challenge, which is why we're actually bringing together innovators who are deploying drones to figure out where those power lines are, maybe the most vulnerable issues spot that early. Uh figure out how uh the mayor talked about vegetation management that is a massive issue around the country. Um But we now have folks actually using satellite data and artificial intelligence to spot where that vegetation mismanagement is most likely to cause um a down uh in the grid go and search solutions to that place. So I think what we uh have been trying to do is really to get all of these tools in the hands of local leaders. And of course, recognize that a big part of it all is investment um in Georgia, we've invested 2 million bucks for culverts in those uh types of geographies that uh the mayor is talking about so that the water can flow more effectively and not uh pull up and cause a big problem. Um You've got to invest in the raising of the roads and the hardening of the infrastructure. So it's uh helping them build the capacity, helping get the data and tools and the best practices and then helping out with the resources. Thank you. I think that's a good ending point. You need the technology, you need the resources and the investment. Um I want to thank you both for being here with us today. Thank you for sharing your insight. Thank you so much.

Debbie Dyson, Chief Executive Officer, OneTen Zakiya Carr Johnson, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, US State Department Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP, President and CEO, SHRM Moderator: Phil Wahba, Senior Writer, FORTUNE; Co-chair, Fortune Impact Initiative

Impact Initiative 2024: DEIA's Next Act

Debbie Dyson, OneTen, Zakiya Carr Johnson, US State Department, Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP, SHRM, Phil Wahba, FORTUNE

Impact Initiative 2024

Recognizing Companies Shaping a Better Future at Fortune Impact Initiative 2024

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The Impact Innovator Awards were introduced this year at the Fortune Impact Initiative 2024 conference. These awards honor standout companies from our Change the World list with under $1 billion in revenue but immense potential to create a transformative global impact.

Videos (19 videos)

Recognizing Companies Shaping a Better Future at Fortune Impact Initiative 2024

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Impact Initiative 2024: DEIA's Next Act