The sixth Fortune Most Powerful Women Next Gen Summit was held December 10-11, 2019 in Laguna Niguel, CA

MPW Next Gen 2019

[ BLANK_AUDIO ] It happened when I was 22 on the cusp of my adulthood. When you are assaulted an identity is given to you. To you. It threatens to swallow up everything you plan to do, [ SOUND ] And be. [ MUSIC ] I became Emily Doe. [ MUSIC ] Assault teaches you to shrink, makes you afraid to exist. Shame Really, can kill you. Unconscious, stupid, dumpster, swimmer, Stanford, half naked, nameless, nobody. Nobody wants to be defined And by the worst thing that's happened to them. [ SOUND ] Hi. [ LAUGH ] [ APPLAUSE ] [ APPLAUSE ] That's for you. So now, thank you so much for being here with us. It's a real honor to have you. So I just wanted to start by talking a little bit about that animation, which I should be clear, that's your work. In addition to being a writer, you're also an illustrator. In the club, you talk about becoming Emily Doe. Can you tell us who is Emily doe? That's a good question. I think Emily Doehas evolved for me over the years and the beginning. She was a separate identity, who I didn't want to affiliate myself with. I think after I wrote the statement, and I started receiving letters from the public, people kept saying she's so courageous and so eloquent and she's talented and I didn't those feelings about myself yet. I had just sort of been spit out of the system, I still felt really fragile. And, you know, everybody sort of gave me a framework to grow into and I, I believed everyone when they said it and so I said, okay, I have to start to learn how to Absorb these compliments, and become these things, and really believe it for myself. And that's who Emily Doe became. It seems like in your book which we're gonna really get into, but it almost seems like you embraced this identity as almost a defense mechanism. She's someone separate from who you are. How did you kind of take on that identity? Yeah, I think you want to keep your drama in a corner. You want to keep it separate from everything else and say, this is the life that I've built. This is how I know myself and I'm not going to let some external circumstance affect Who I am and what I'm doing and what I'm planning to do. And I think, over time, you know, the little trauma crept closer and closer, and eventually like consumed my personal life and I had to learn to say okay, now that you're Here I have to confront you and learn to integrate you and incorporate you into my identity in a way that I can be proud of and I've learned a lot from trauma. I've learned that I can be outspoken. I was very quiet before. I have learnt I can speak in public spaces And I'm not as afraid of cameras as they thought. [ LAUGH ] And these are all positives they've taken away and I just feel more confident than I thought I could be before so. So for those of you who have not read the book and you should all read the book, I'm just going to give sort of a very high level, just what happened. So in January 2015, Chanel was sexually assaulted, found unconscious and half naked behind the dumpsters at Stanford University. And so in your book, most of us knew the story, who had been following in the press and your your victim statement that went viral. But we knew it is Emily Joe and in your book, Know My Name, you reveal yourself as Chanel Miller. Tell us about that process. What made you decide that you wanted to go public with your identity? I think keeping a secret can be really isolating, especially when 18 million people can discuss your secret but you can't. [ LAUGH ] So you would actually have friends who would talk about the [ UNKNOWN ] with you. Yeah, and I just be in the room nodding or and I could never even contribute my opinion It was cool. I felt like I had the power of invisibility. I got to be there when people were openly discussing the case. But it's isolating not to be able to engage. And it's also strange because I felt like I was changing. I was on this whole transformative narrative arc and then The way people perceived me felt outdated, like they were identifying with my past self. And I was like I'm secretly growing a lot. And I want you to catch up to me and to be able to have these like difficult discussions. And I also think like I did want to be able to speak openly. I think all of us want to be able to speak about what has happened, but we don't know how. And I feel like I had to spend the last almost five years figuring out how to come forward in a way that I would be Okay with in a way where I could still I feel like I would be myself, that it wouldn't just blow up everything I had done in my life. And I learned over time to take care of myself. I spent the past three years just figuring, bring out what happened, bending the trial. Reading transcripts, I continue to go to therapy. I started exercising more and doing clinks and. [ LAUGH ] I have like better upper body strength. And I basically got to a point where I was like I've done everything I could do to make myself feel better. I have you know, nourished things that were neglected like relationships during the court proceedings, so I feel ready. And then the one thing that kept me back was being scared for my safety and my privacy and I think a lot of family members and people who love me were like, why would you You know you're okay now, why would you now reveal yourself and sort of risk everything again and be exposed to attack again. And I thought because I shouldn't have to be confined to a life of hiding. I shouldn't have to feel suffocated because I'm scared someone will hurt me. That's not Away anybody should have to live. I want us to be able to like, be present and speak and like sit together face to face. I thought I deserved that after being isolated for so long and so [ APPLAUSE ] [ APPLAUSE ] Yeah. [ APPLAUSE ] So yeah, I think a lot of us wish to come forward and be open. And we just are trying to figure out how and we need to create spaces, where we do feel safe. And That our privacy can be protected and that we feel comfortable talking about these things. That's what we need to focus on. And just so everyone knows this is actually Chanel's first time speaking at a conference and she's not doing a- [ APPLAUSE ] She's not doing [ APPLAUSE ] Yeah, she's not. She's not doing a typical book tour, because she is concerned about her safety. So I think that that's really speaks to how this has impact impacted your life in some ways. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, even I just focused on writing, I focused on putting one word in front of the other that I can handle for three years in my room. When it came time to discuss, like who's gonna do first interview are comfortable with TV, I withdrew, I felt angry when people talk to me about doing interviews. I thought They're going to come at me with an angle, it's gonna be a gotcha piece. You know, in trial during cross examination, the only reason questions are asked is in order to manipulate you and to make you appear stupid, and to expose some other side of you and so I didn't trust Questions. I didn't want to be asked anything. And it took a lot of time to even be able to trust reporters, you know, and to even be willing to open myself to questions and then I thought, okay, I'll do interviews, but I won't do public events because there are many threats to my safety over the years and I'm scared to be in a room. Full of strangers, I still can't do that. And Beth was like, we'll they're really nice women. [ LAUGH ] I was like, okay. So this is my toe in the water type of thing. That's what my media team told me too. [ UNKNOWN ] try it out. [ LAUGH ] But I think it's important to also recognize like you can, you should only go as fast as you feel. You can go There's no timeline for how fast you should be doing things like I have a book out, and I'm not currently doing a book tour, and that's not conventional. But you can still do it if that's what's right for you. And so, I'm learning how to do these things step by step. I'm not pushing myself to go any faster. I think even when the statement came out, a lot of reporters were like, come do an interview will blur your face and work your voice and no one will ever know who you are. And I was like, Well, I'm not ready to do that. And they're like, Well, let me explain how news cycle works like you'd be in here in the next week. And I was like, No, I don't Ray because we're not ready and so It was really incredible to take as much time as I needed, which is three years. It's been three years since the statement came out. And to come out and be like hey look, people still care. And that urgency was made up, it was Yeah, so just go at your own pace cuz healing is really slow and it demands a lot of you. And that's cool that this is my segue until next year. Well, we were thrilled to have you here with us. And one of the things that I was really struck by in the book during the trial You are sort of a very one dimensional. We don't know who you are, right. You are described as a victim. It's very one dimensional. And therefore Brock Turner gets to kind of write the story. How important was it for you to come out with this book and reclaim who you are? I mean, you come off as a very. Multi- layered multi- dimensional person and we haven't seen that before. How did that drive your writing? Yeah, I think it was so frustrating because this all happened right after graduation and you're sort of beginning to form an identity and exploring different things and You know, build your resume. And I felt at the beginning that I did have a lot to offer that there are many things I was interested in. In overtime so much of that creativity got muted and it was really hard to counter his accolades and accomplishments. I couldn't say like, hey, I really like drawing. And I promise you that one day I'm going to make comics and draw things, I will make people happy. Because it was so, I just hadn't had time to do it yet. And I had to like keep the faith that one day I will get to a place where I can actually do the things That I love, but it was really difficult at that time to feel like I didn't know how to prove with my worth. And in the book I talk about how in court they had this big white piece of paper and there's a timeline on it, and they, I had to like write down the times when I called. Who and blah, blah, blah, and jury sitting over there and I was like, I wish the jury could just yell out animals and objects and then I would draw them and be like, look, I can do this live. I can make all these things and all that was being suppressed and it really killed me for a long time. But I think what helped coming out is is the book. You know, I felt confident that I would have something that would anchor me and you didn't decide this Until? Until I was done. You feel like you're done? I feel like earlier this year. So you wrote the book and then you decided you were gonna go public thereafter? Yeah, but I had to write it. If I knew I would have to emerge at the end, I wouldn't have written it. Because I was too scared. I signed the contract saying, I do not promise anything. I promise to you Over 90, 000 words but doesn't mean I'll show up doesn't mean I'll give you my name. So I, they let me come to it on my own, which is really, really, really important to have that sense of agency and no sense of obligation and eventually, I did So I'm going to have any questions in just a second but first, you know, the book is, is really painful to read. I'm not gonna lie for those of you haven't read it yet. But there's also a lot of joy and humor in the book and I know we've talked about how it was kind of hard for you to show that side of yourself because you also wanted There's a theme of being the perfect victim, which runs throughout the book. Tell us a little bit about that. What did that mean? how did how did that sort of keep you caged in? Yeah, I think the myth of the perfect victim is really dangerous because the perfect victim does not Exist, we all have flaws, we all have done things we may not be very proud of, or at least, I have. And you are taught in these instances to fixate on your flaws, and assign them blame for what happened to you. And in the beginning, I was so on my own I would sort of just list out all the things that I had done. At times I've had too much to drink and be like, This is why this happened to me or this is why I deserved it. You turn inward and that's really dangerous. You think if I was only more, Pure or if I was smarter or if I was less reckless then this wouldn't have happened. That's not true. It can happen to anyone at any time. And that's the reality and it's not because you're uniquely flawed that so many of us are getting assaulted or harassed is because there's greater Patterns at play of male entitlement, male sexual entitlement, like how do we not see, the root of these issues instead blame it on like, my skirt was here instead of here. How the hell did that be? The reason all of this is happening, but it took a long time to realize that. So, before we go to questions, I gotta ask you a follow up on that because you talked about male entitlement and, the night you were assaulted. You talk about how it was also the night you were saved, right who saved you? The three who I always call the sweet but they have names Carl and Peter. [ LAUGH ] Yeah, tell us about that. They're so incredible. I had never met them because we never, I couldn't be in the room when they testified and vice versa. So this summer we met for dinner in New York, and it was so wonderful and what struck me was just how Natural it was for them, to have done what they did, And can you explain what they, what they did for people who don't know. Yeah, they saw that my assailant was humping my unconscious body, that my eyes were closed that I was not moving. And so they confronted him. My [ UNKNOWN ] did up. And took off sprinting. They kneel down check that I was breathing. Made sure I was okay. Then Peter took off running after him. I asked him I was like, how did you catch up? He's like I had so much adrenaline, just so amazing and he did a leg sweep which I don't even know what that is. And tackled him and then was sitting on him and he's like, apologize to her. Do you think this is okay? And then Karl came over at once he knew is was okay, well, I wasn't but. And then they both sat on my sealant and pinned all of his limbs to the ground Until the like amulets could come, and I could be taken care of but their clarity, you know, not only like we talked about masculine and the like, and they had that but they also had such tenderness like the center was me it wasn't A violent act it was acting to help me and it came with dialogue, you know, forcing him like, do you think this is okay? Like challenging them on the spot and, you know throughout the whole case that always gave me hope. Like if I know there are people in the world like that The world can't be that bad, right? And they showed up multiple times to testify while they were in school. So I just owe them, I owe them so much. And when I said, I don't even know how to thank you, they were like, well, you're thanking us by helping Other people, that's thanks enough. So I was like, [ LAUGH ] [ LAUGH ] They're so, so sweet. But it's pretty incredible that we have models of model citizens, wonderful people. Do we have any questions for Chanel from the audience? [ BLANK_AUDIO ] So riveted, I was like I don't like questions. [ LAUGH ] And now nevermind then. Okay, all right. Wait, we have one over here. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] I just want to say thank you. I've been crying over. It's just so incredible what you're willing to share with us and share your story. And not only with us, but everyone who's going to read your book. They say that up to 27 % of college women are sexually assaulted. So the fact that you are willing to share your name, like all of those women don't feel as alone, so thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] [ APPLAUSE ] You have another one in there. Thank you very much. Also, I just wanna say you are now in the public crying club with me. [ LAUGH ] I cried so much in public and I was like, God, can someone else? So that's good. I like to see that, thank you. [ LAUGH ] Way back there. Yes. Hi, my name is Kenna and I wanted to also make a comment not ask a question. I spend my I'm a professional interviewer. I am an executive search and talent advisory and listening to you talk everyone I think was riveted because you are so profound. You can see you thinking as you're talking and it's so genuine, and it's so real and it's so refreshing despite the content, right? It's heavy, it's heavy content, but I want to tell you, you're going to be great at this and go out there. [ APPLAUSE ] [ APPLAUSE ] Do it on your terms, as you said, on your timeline, and recognize that you're impacting the world by what you're doing. Thank you Annah. [ APPLAUSE ] Let me ask you. What was the hardest thing to include in the book? In the book. Yeah. Honestly, anything personal in the beginning. [ LAUGH ] I couldn't write a sentence without hearing what the defence attorney would say, or how it could be twisted. It took a really long time to get past that. And then I thought I don't want to write a book that's very bound up. I also had to teach myself over time that I didn't have to be ashamed of my past. Life experiences. I owed it to other survivors to include everything and say look, my life is messy, I drank a few times in college, and it shouldn't have happened. I'm Not afraid to be open about all of this because you can't choose one of these past experiences and say, this is why you deserve to be hurt. So it took a long time to include any personal details. Yeah, but I do it for the people reading I also realized I'm not talking to the defense attorney, and this is not for him. Yeah. Chanel, thank you so much for being with us for letting us know your name and your story. Yeah. Thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] [ APPLAUSE ] [ SOUND ] [ LAUGH ] You can jump off the stage here. Thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Chanel Miller on New Memoir "Know My Name"

Leadership

Chanel Miller discusses her new memoir "Know My Name."

So we were talking yesterday and you mentioned that your aunt Carla Harris pulling out of the race is still really raw for you. What's that been like? Tell us a little bit about what it's meant to the family. Yeah, I'm like, let me not start crying. [ LAUGH ] But it is still raw. I am still in a funk. I sort of thought, am I ready to talk about it? I've had the support of, my incredible family and friends but it's hard, it's hard. I think What I would start with and what I think about, and what I remind myself, every day, is just what an incredible inspiration it was and is to see her have the courage to dare to do something like that. And somebody I heard, mentioned this, just now. But some of the more emotional, both emotional moments and The moments where I really understood the impact and importance, of what we were doing and what she is doing. Were those moments that she was spending with children, and little girls right? In a way that they would look at her, and you could see in their eyes that they could see themselves, right at that is something that they could dare to do. And so, I think I cherish those Aspects of it I know that the work is not over. I was joking with you that as much as I am still emotional about it, it is [ UNKNOWN ], like just seeing her at that Senate hearing today and that amazing pink blazer, just killing it and like I'm back. I never went anywhere. Actually I'm here. I'm never going anywhere and we have a lot of work to do. That's what I needed, you know. And so, I think that's also what I carry with me both in terms of the personal experience and being able to see you know, one of my closest family members do something incredibly courageous and show Women like all of us in this room in addition to those little girls like the possibility right that that is possible and that you know, we are daring to achieve a future that we all proclaim to be true when we say that the future is female, right and that that is something that we are still working towards. So let me ask you a little bit about that, I mean, we the Democratic party started out this campaign season with the probably the most diverse slate that we've ever seen and next week, we're likely to have an all white Debate stage. Give us your expert opinion what happened here? Well, I think you know, we got to be, we have to be really honest right about sort of the dynamics that we are confronting. And as you said, we started out with one of the most diverse slate of candidates in American history right and What a profound, incredible thing to show my daughters, right? And my three year old still says, I wanna be a president, right? And to see that and that representation mattering and now with common was departure where we're gonna have I think Andrew Yang just qualified but Combo had already qualified for the December debate. Then next week we are gonna have Nearly all white panel and debate stage. And I think the sort of things we have to confront honestly are what we saw with her race and what we are seeing with other women is that women are not treated the same. They are held to a different standard and by that I mean a double standard, right? Where They are scrutinized in a different way where they are asked different questions where people, really focus on things and with much more rigor than they do other people. So that's number one. I think we really need to be honest about that. And somebody was saying this just before I came on stage, but like we did talk about this. Right? We have to acknowledge this. We have to, each of us, in our own spheres of influence, and our families, and our communities need to talk about this stuff. We need to talk to our kids about it. And then the other is a harsh reality that has been really stunning to see, which is that the decision, and the access, and the Something like among Fortune 500 CEOs are more male CEOs named James than there are female CEOs, right? This is a problem. [ LAUGH ] And so, and I think about what we have lost in that way, right, and the messages and the signals that we are sending Which are that you can use your voice matters you have access, if you have billions of dollars that's stunning. And you know with her departure I think about what we're missing out on and the obvious or that we're missing out on the only black woman to run for president the only woman of color who is pulling in the top five, who had a real shot who's no longer there because of money. And then also the issues that she was bringing to the table, right? She was bringing light to and voice to issues that we heard from New Hampshire to Iowa, South Carolina and about all across the country that regular people were saying Just sucking that out of the process. And right now the image that we have is one that really troubles me. The moments beyond sort of the personal, and That this, we went into this not thinking it was gonna be easy. Right. We knew this was not gonna be easy and, in fact, that it was gonna be very hard. But the moment that we are in, in this country, when I sit back and look at that, that is what really troubles me. So, yeah, I mean, I want to dig into this a little bit because something that has kept coming up in the campaign, over and over again, is this idea of electability. Mm- hm. Right? And I think that that's a very coded word. What does that mean exactly, and how are people using it in this context? What does it mean, who the hell knows, right? I mean- [ LAUGH ] I think for me, the message is that, and we know this, that you are unelectable until you get elected, right? And Conwell was told that. Every race that she ran right when she dared to run for district attorney of services goes the first black first woman, first black woman to do that, she was told she couldn't do it, right. Same thing for attorney general of California. No one's done this before. You're not electable. You can't do that. I think that, you know, there came a point in the campaign where she started addressing it head on. And saying let's just address this, because we know that it's an issue, and we hear coded language in the media and other places that are basically saying that. And I think it's really not complicated. The fact that she had to address it and have that conversation is, in and of itself, evidence of that double standard, right? That Other people get a presumption whereas she had to have a conversation about it. And, I think again, it kind of goes back to this entire conversation around representation and diversity where we need to create a future that shows what is possible and that I'm electable and that you're electable, that anyone in this room Is that the people who have access to that or the people who are deemed to be worthy of that cannot only be white male billionaires, right? Right, right, so we've been talking about some of the systemic issues here. Tell me a little bit about lessons learned, right? There were some missteps. What do you think kinda going forward The campaign will take away from this if someday she decides to run again. I think, you know, kind of building on what we just talked about. I think about the moments of [ UNKNOWN ], right? And, yes, every campaign makes mistakes and If any of you in this room have worked out early stage startup, it's kinda similar to that, right. Where you're building the plane while you're flying, it is complete chaos and on an actually much more accelerated timeline, right. And we know across campaigns that people have experienced those sorts of issues but I think again, the lessons learned are and I hate to sound cynical. I mean, this is still fresh, it's still raw and I'm still kind of reorienting myself, but what I saw was that we are sending message that women are not allowed to make mistakes and that you have to be perfect, right? And that any little thing that happens We're going to really scrutinize that in a way that other people are not held to that standard. So I think in terms of lessons, it's really going in understanding that that is still the landscape that we are dealing with and being real about that right. I think I see a lot of people now. Grieving and are saddened by her departure and are now saying, Well, the media is erasing so and so or this headline to acknowledge this now we really, really got to say something because we saw what happened. It's like it's too late. Right? We're the Iowa caucuses are three months from now. Right? Like, don't wait to say things like that and it matters. To reach the highest levels of office. We've never had a black female governor. What is it gonna take? What do you think is really gonna just push this forward? It takes all of us. I mean, I think that we saw that with obviously Stacey Abrams, who ran for governor of Georgia. Was up against some pretty nefarious actors, and voter suppression, and things like that. But It takes all of us. I think that we are in a moment of crisis and I don't think that any of us can afford to sit on the sidelines. And Phenomenal woman, my company mean, what we're all about [ UNKNOWN ] saying that any of us can do something and it's Whether that means, contributing money to women of color and committing to that or actually knocking on doors making calls, talking to your kids about this, it doesn't even I think the message as well for phenomenal woman is it doesn't have to be political. I personally think that there is no greater moment, no greater responsibility that we have in presidential cycles to get involved and People always asks like, what can I do? They are like concrete things that you can be doing right now. However, if you don't want to sort of be political, that's okay too, but there are other ways that you can be engaging with these issues, with these communities. And so, I think just conveying that urgency and really understanding that, it actually, I think it goes beyond politics, right? It goes Beyond this moment, we are talking about the future that we are showing to our children and whether or not we're willing to actually commit and lean into paving the way for that to happen. Right? I mean, this is about are we able to, you know, show that it actually is achievable, that these folks actually are electable and that they can reach the highest office in the most powerful position. In the world. And I just think that all of us have to take on that feeling of duty and responsibility to do anything that we can in our sort of ordinary regular lives to be engaged. So before we go to questions, if you could explain to the audience what Phenomenal Women does. Yeah, so we are a women- powered civic organization that raises awareness around social causes. We launched In a similar kind of, I think, urgent moment, coming out of the 2016 election, and it for me was just that right. I felt like I could not possibly sit by the sidelines and that I had to whatever I could, in my own little space do something. And so I actually started off with sort of different pursuit, which we launched a pantsuit. Dr. It was literally like two days after the election. I was at Javits Center in New York City on election. Tonight where everything was happening and it just felt apocalyptic and I went home and I thought, you know, I have this [ UNKNOWN ] that I bought and you know, there's pantsuit nation, all these women had come together like why don't we put this towards something good and engage people and continue that engagement. So it was it stemmed from that right? What else can I do? How can I? First day we sold 2, 500 shirts, I thought we gonna sell like 50. And I know with [ UNKNOWN ] I would still be taking about it still going. And I think the message is what I have been saying today, I kept it going because I felt that. Urgency and I saw the need for it. I saw how it is able to create community among all kinds of different women, right? And for people who again are going out of the ordinary lives, you want to go to brunch on Sundays and like do what you do like that's okay and wearing a T shirt that cost $ 35 that benefits women's organisations like that is an active Of using your voice that is an act of being engaged. And I think all of us need to carry that with us every single day until at least until November 2020. But I hope beyond that. Do we have any questions for Minoh, we have one back here. Great if you could introduce yourself to Hi, I'm Barry Williams. My son was devastated when Kamala dropped out. But his immediate reaction was, well, at least we have Elizabeth Warren and then if she doesn't win, then we have Julián Castro. And I haven't been able to break it to him yet, Julián Castro is not going to really be in contention like Elizabeth Warren. But, something that he and I kind of talked about, and he's nine, Is the lack of diversity that's going to be on the stage. I have watched every single debate with my nine year old and he is very politically student interested. And one thing he asked me is, well, if we saw Hillary lose in 2016. Is it possible to win with another monochromatic ticket? So i would then pass that question to you considering what the debate stage is going to look like. Is that possible? I mean it's possible. We've done it before, right? I mean this is historic that we have a divers slate of candidates. But I'm not gonna get into political strategy cuz I can be here all day with you guys. I would point to How much it breaks my heart that your son is seeing that and asking that question of, can we still succeed when there are people who are gonna be out there leading us that don't look like me and are not representing me, right? And I get emotional, this is like, especially when you have kids. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] It's okay, take a second. [ LAUGH ] Thanks, it's hard, and I think part of, not to give you parent advice, is that Bari? I'm like, I can't you see you very well, it is, my god. The lights are so bright. Hi, I love you You gotta have those conversations and I had moments, even my three years old and almost two years old and I think that the older one was almost two, like one and a half, and we get The New Yorker in our house and there's also a cartoon and often has Trump on it. And one day she said, who is that? And I said, that's Donald Trump and my partner was like no, no, no! Like, we're not gonna, and I was like, we're gonna talk about this, right? I don't care if you are two or three but Fact that you were having those conversations with your son and being honest about that, right, and that we have a lot of work to do, and we still need a fight. And I don't know what the future holds. I'm very concerned. And I think, you know, back to what I was saying that I think it starts with conversations in your home conversations with your children, and acknowledging that this is a problem and that that is not the future I believe in. That is not the future that I aspire to and I think we as country aspire to. And it's a problem. And it's up to each of us to engage with that and talk about it and speak those truths, right. It's what Cromwell talked about, speaking truth. And each of us has power to do that. Would you ever run for office? Hell no. [ LAUGH ] Why not? I'll phrase it in a more positive way. Since launching phenomenal woman have really come to understand sort of like what my My contributions are what my value is. and for me that's really in being an entrepreneur. And I think it goes to the point that each of us have a role to play and that for some of us, it absolutely is at the ballot box, right? But for others, it could be, you know, as an entrepreneur or as a CEO of a company or as an executive at a company that has a lot of influence, right? Each of us can be doing something from our own spaces. I think It's important to have these conversations and to urge women to run for office but I also feel like there's a lot that are missing that is missing for those conversations about how hard it is. And if you are a primary caretaker, what that means for your family, if you are a, you know, bringing in 50 % of the income to your household, how that affects your family, like they're really Real things that I think we need to talk about in terms of women deciding to do that. And the fact that it's a huge risk, right? The odds are against you. But yeah, it's not for me. I will do anything I can from the outside and I've been doing that and this journey with Phenomenal Woman has really Solidified that for me in feeling okay, that I don't have to do it that way. There are other ways that I can engage and that I can contribute and make a difference. Well, even though you're not gonna run for office- [ LAUGH ] We're looking forward to what you do next. Amena, thank you so much. Thank you, thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

One On One Interview With Uber's Meena Harries

Okay quick show of hands who here has invested in tech companies or a company not real estate, restaurants, whatever, show hands. Who here would like to invest to be an investor? Not that many. [ LAUGH ] Who here is already affiliated with operator collective. [ LAUGH ] All right, well, let's. Have you guys tell a little bit about what the new funding is? And what makes it new and different? So Malin, do you want to kick things off maybe? Sure, so maybe it helps to start as to why we put this together in the first place. Which is that, as you may be aware, the venture world tends to be very insular and exclusive. It's very hard to break into. and I thought, well, gosh, there's got to be a way to change that. And so having been an outsider for much of my life, when you're an outsider, you spend a lot of time observing. And so there was a number of things that I observed, which is the venture world revolves around VCs and founders with good reason because there would be no companies without them, but operators operating executives, the people who grow, build and scale companies Really not even on the radar. They don't know them. And when you look at VCs and founders VCs are over 90 % of them are male, and 85 % of founders are male as well. And when you look at the enterprise, which is the area that Layla and I focus on business to business, it's even higher. And so when you look at that There's a couple of other things, which is that they're largely male. They're largely VCs and founders, they don't know the operators, and you tend to know people like you. And then the second part of it is that most business to business startups want to eventually sell to the enterprise because those are the big companies and most VCs and founders I've actually never worked in the enterprise. And so when we looked at this problem, this is why the forces have kept a number of operators and a lot of diverse operators, which we'll talk about in a second, out of the picture. As I thought, gosh, if we could find a way to bring into Venture, the very people that Venture needs to be successful in a way that's natural, And when you sprinkle in there, by the way, if they can be underrepresented and represent other genders as well, then that's how we can disrupt the venture and actually make it more naturally inclusive in a way that actually reflects what our society looks like. So it's it's interesting because the sum of the numbers you now have amassed more than 100 LPs limited partners who have put money into this fund that your Launching officially today, and- [ APPLAUSE ] Hey, thanks. [ LAUGH ] And these are incredibly accomplished, mostly women, 90 % female. And I think 40 % of them people of color. And they're from the tech companies that you would all recognize and have heard of. But a very large percentage of them about three fourths have not invested in the past. And I'm not talking of course about becoming VCs but angel investing you know as a as a limited partner, whatever. Talk about why that is what's been your experience you this is your network, right? So I came at it from a slightly different angle. I was An executive vice president sales force just left there recently. And sometime back, it became really clear to me that there was, I was one of the women that went to Marc Benioff and said, you're not paying the women the same as the men. So equal pay has always been on the front of my mind. And something that became obvious to me was as we were buying companies, and the Founders would stay for a while and then they'd leave. Often they'd leave and become venture capitalist. And they'll call back the male executives and say, give me some money for my fund, invest in this, invest in that. And so a new income stream developed. For a lot of the male executives, that the women weren't being necessarily cut into. So Mellon came up with this and we started talking about this, it became a really natural extension to start to get more women, more under- represented minorities into venture, because venture is where the kings and the queens are made. Right the venture capitalists are the people who decide what companies are going to ultimately be super successful. So if we want different companies, then we need different venture capitalists sometimes [ APPLAUSE ] So you brought up Equal Pay and one of the interesting things about operator collective is that you have kind of a sliding scale of who can be involved and who can contribute into the into the fund. Can you talk about the decision to do that and sort of how this how the Equal Pay background kind of fed into how you approach this? So let me explain first, so because of venture funds, the way it works is actually not apparent to most people, if you're not in venture So, you have limited partners who are investors in the fund and then the fund decides which companies to invest in. And so for the typical venture funds, you often have institutions or large family offices who are investors in the fund. And then, but what we did is we have a large number of operating executives of which 90 % are women. 40 % are people of color. Who are investors in the fund. As so we knew when we were raising money to put together this fun, we wanted to make this accessible to a wide group of people for whom venture was not accessible before. And so, we put together a sliding scale at the lower end depending on Number of factors which Layla can explain in a second, it's actually $ 10, 000, which is almost unheard of in the venture world. Of course, at the high end, we've got, million plus contributors as well. But we intentionally wanted to have a sliding scale because if you don't do that, you end up with the same people. Maybe we're going to disrupt. Right the the existing homogenous group with a little other homogenous group of white and Asian people, right. And so we wanted to be able to say, okay, can we bring people from different backgrounds and this is what they're able to contribute. And see this guy. I mean, clearly equal pay is a big part of my life It will forever be but we had someone in particular that I really wanted to fund Malin really wanted fun. She just couldn't enter she had not been given the opportunities throughout her career. And because of that, we came up with the scale which has given us a lot of flexibility and allowed us to really diversify the fund which was the main objective Okay, the size of the fund, at least as it stands, I realize it's still open. But is that 45 million that is not a drop in the bucket for most people in the world, but in Silicon Valley it is with all these mega funds going on and money elsewhere as well of course, talk about how you plan to compete for deals in that climate Great [ LAUGH ] so much trouble competing for deals right? And I don't mean to sound sort of crass and I'm Alan can give you the more appropriate answers [ LAUGH ] but. We're different. They complement each other. We're very good complements. [ CROSSTALK ] She gets to be funny and charasmatic. And she's very detail oriented. [ INAUDIBLE ] say things all the time. It works really well, we're a good pair. But when we started thinking through this, we definitely were thinking about how we The fund is actually much different because we have this group of 100 plus operators, they are engaged in the fund. Now they all have jobs and they're doing different stuff. But they do diligence with us. They join companies on boards they advise. So what we came up with and Malin really came up with this initially was this idea that we would leverage the people that are operating the most successful companies in the world to build the next generation. And so we're operators- This is the malon version now. Yeah. [ LAUGH ] And it's looking like more pro, yeah. [ LAUGH ] So we're operators, and one of the things we do as operators, we know how to build products, we know how to build businesses, we know how to build immediate product market fit. And so we actually did that exactly here too. Which is, we looked at what the gap is in the Venture ecosystem, which is Operators, women and people of color. And so we thought, look, if we could bring together the best operators around, that actually the founders of VCs want to bring them into venture. There's just not a natural way to bring them in because forced diversity doesn't work. You have to figure out a way to bring these networks of people in that typically don't intersect and make it natural to work. So we knew that if we could do that, that we would have immediate product- market fit and that founders would want us to fund their companies. And VCs would want us to co- invest with them because you don't do it alone. Even a VC does not take an entire round by themselves. And so we did that intentionally. And we did that the way that we would build any product. In fact, the very DNA of this venture fund is not the way you would approach a typical venture fund. But literally the way you would build a company, what's the gap? What's the product market fit? How do you make it easy or attractive for founders to take in your case take your money, how do you make it easy for current Active operators now to be able to participate, and that's what we did. Okay, questions from the audience. Raise your hand and we'll bring you a microphone. Anybody who has a question or a comment? We have one over there, if you could introduce yourself, please. Hi, I'm Deirdre from TIA Can you tell us a little bit I mean, we have a sense of who your investor base is. Where can we sign up? [ LAUGH ] You can go to our website [ UNKNOWN ] tell us more about your ideal investor. So you saw how many people in this room did not raise their hand as having invested or even thinking about investing. And I don't think that necessarily means that they wouldn't be interested. So I'm curious as to how you are trying to reach that group of operators. So we'll answer that question in a second. But it is very typical. Because as busy operators and a lot of us in the fund and otherwise and maybe in this room, have small kids at home. And so, as women, we are so conditioned to be perfect at everything. And so perfect at your job, you give 150 % to your day job. You're condition to be perfect at home with your family or your friends. And so, it's not even on the radar. To even say Can I even have the capacity to start investing, especially when your circles don't intersect with the VCs and founders who don't look like you and don't run around in the same networks as you do? And so it's very typical. But once you start thinking about it, you're like, Well, why am I not doing this because you have so many skills that are valuable. You have pattern recognition as to what's going to be the next great company and then we're missing out on that. And so one example is one individual who's at Fortune MPW who I met and had the first conversation. When she first started, she's grown revenue from zero to 500 million in the enterprise. Very rare. Took her company public [ UNKNOWN ] Until we started talking about operator collective and this idea at Fortune and PW, actually, thanks for all the plug. [ LAUGH ] It was literally at the chef dinner that we had last night, but a couple years ago, and when they asked you she had never invested, she was sort of interested. But now that she's invested, she's made five other investments on her own too, and she's phenomenal. And so that's sort of the tip but the way to get involved is. Fund run is largely closed. But there will be a fun to in the future. And we hope that you become part of the community. So even if you haven't invested, we hope that every single one of you logs onto the website fills in the information so we have access to you. And so when we have events because it's about education, it's very important to us. That we educate these people who it's not even on the radar either way, and start that way. And please come to our events and be a part of this. I mean, Mia had also mentioned this, but over 70 % of the people in our fund have never invested before, and when we asked them why, they said, because no one ever asked. So we are asking you To think about investing and you can join our community and when we raise another fund, perhaps that will be it but at the very least we will help educate you on what that means cuz there's a lot of money to be made out there that we should all be getting a cut of. And that's a big part of our mission. So there's one point I also want to make because before I started venture investing, I was like you I hadn't really thought about it. And sometimes when I talk about being an outsider, sometimes when you're an outsider, and you're looking in adventure seems so like glitzy, right? It's the Midas list in this list and this list, it seems so hard to access. In fact, I helped take the company public and grew it from zero to 100 million in less than three years from founding. We eventually grew up to 300 million in revenue, all in the enterprise. But when I started to dip my toe into venture, I was actually a little surprised that I actually had skills that people thought were valuable because in some ways, it's so innate to what you do that you're like, Well, how do they not know this but then when you dip your toe in this case into enterprise investing, I'm like, Never worked in a big company. never actually built Anything and so so as I found that I was like, Okay, okay, I know a lot of people like me because you tend to know people like you. And so I said, What if we could bring in all these amazing operators, all this amazing talent and Because you tend to know people like you, they're mostly women, people of color. By the way, just to go back to some of the numbers, over 70 % have not invested of the limited partners in the fund. But nearly 50 % of these, mostly women have worked for companies that Helped start companies that have been acquired 41 % of [ UNKNOWN ] have them have worked at startups that have gone public and 44 % have scaled their respective companies to 1 billion. So it's a good group deal ownership. [ UNKNOWN ] I mean, they've managed over 150, 000 people, they've managed over $ 60 billion in revenue like it's a it's the people running the valley. You just don't know. Day to day, Yeap. Okay, so we do need to wrap up in just a few seconds here but very, very quickly. You've made five investments. What are you most excited about? I know you're focusing mostly enterprise but very, very quick. Let her first. So I am super excited about being able to bring together this great talent that wants to be a part of it, but maybe it wasn't accessible. I didn't know about it. But on the founder and VC side, they are so excited about this too, right? It was not like anyone was trying to keep everyone separate. And one other point there is that is the first time venture fund. It is very unusual to get what is called institutional money from foundations and endowments. We have universities and foundations who have invested in funding one. This the climate is changing is to a lot of work that everyone has done what what fortunate is done that has allowed us to be able to get to this point to say, okay, we're ready and we're going to do this and the people have embraced it. Okay, we do need to wrap up very quickly. Show of hands, who knows Who now wants to invest? Yay! [ APPLAUSE ] [ LAUGH ] You deserve- Thank you so much. Thank you very much. See you guys over there. [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

A New Women-Led Venture Capital Group Is Changing How The Money Is Used

Finance

Record dollars are flowing into venture capital. But how is the money being spent? And on which entrepreneurs?

How Women Will Fix The World

An open conversation with the MPW Next Gen Community in a Town Hall format.

We often talk about the climate emergency. We kind of just talked about it being an emergency. And that's really important, but I'm hoping that this conversation kind of move us towards some more solutions. So I'm wondering We have with us. Three of our panelists are working with companies that are really at the forefront of offering different types of technology to address The climate emergency and I'm wondering if they if you guys can just give us a little pitch about what your company offers. DeVito Do you want to start? Sure. So Aquaman is I'm co founder and CEO of Aquaman. We're meeting The urgent global need to for hyper local air pollution and climate emissions data. Today, 92 % of the world's population is breathing unhealthy air. And we need data to really understand the sites of emission, the sites of exposure, to then drive action at the local, city, and community scale. Great. Good night, everyone. Our businesses are quite complimentary. I'm Lauren Penneys. I lead business development and sales for decart Labs. Our company's been out of the US Department of Energy Los Alamos National Lab. That's the nuclear and scientific lab out of New Mexico and the thesis of the business Is that the number of satellites that are going to be launched in the next five years is more than all of history. So the ability to actually bring to bear data sets that monitor the global physical world is really very much coming online. So we work with the largest businesses, most of them very large physical supply chains and energy companies like [ UNKNOWN ]. And we help them understand and monitor their climate resiliency and how to take action from there. Hi, everybody. I'm Sinye Tang, the VP of finance and strategy at Dandelion Energy. We're home geothermal company and our mission is to bring Earth powered heating and cooling to all Geothermal heat pumps have been around since the 1940s as a viable solution for efficiently making sure that folks have heating and cooling in their home. But there hasn't been a standardized accessible offering to consumers and the average homeowner up until hopefully today. Our CEO Cathy thought of really exploring this idea when she was a product manager at Google X. We spun out in 2017, and today in 2019, we're the largest installer of geothermal heat pumps in New York State, having installed more than 250 heat pumps and helping our customers reduce their heating oil consumption by more than 100, 000 gallons a year. Wonderful, so some really impressive sort of technology and solutions on stage here. How your conversation with your corporate partners has changed just in the last several months even. [ UNKNOWN ] Did you want to take that? Sure, and definitely, there has been a shift, I think we've hit a tipping point not only in terms of the public awareness and public demand for action but what I would almost stir some of the courage amongst a growing number of corporate Players, companies like Patagonia have been at the forefront of the movement for years. But we're seeing a new class of company, not just sort of going beyond just sort of the easy wins, like replacing, you know, light bulbs, and going into energy efficiency to actually taking much more broad sweeping action. In our you know, in our own partnerships. We have a multi year partnership with Google and And last year, they committed to scaling our technology across the globe by integrating our technology on Google Street View cars, and in 2020 will be driving and mapping air pollution around the planet. So really taking deep bold action and it's time. Right. Lauren, what about you? Yeah. I mean, I would say, the number one thing I think that comes up that we're exposed to is actually climate change and climate resiliency. It's a financial issue for many businesses now. So I'll give an example last year the Rhine which is the major transportation river and Europe Soybean and understanding those supply chains. It's actually a financial and reputational risk. So I think what we see a lot is I think the conversation is being a bit forced within these businesses themselves for many, many reasons and so the financial Incorporation reputational, and it really becomes front and center. Right? Continue. How is your compensation? Change me with corporations or even your, the consumer that you're reaching? Yeah, I think what's been really inspiring is that we're seeing this great partnership, at least in the geothermal space. Between state governments and city governments, homeowners, utilities and other companies that really want to figure out a solution that will work, both to help us homeowners sort of save money and also help ensure that their home equity increases and that they have an independent solution for keeping warm in the winter. That doesn't rely on someone you know driving a truck out with a bunch of heating oil to fill up their tank and having them light that on fire in order to keep warm, which is an innately absurd idea. And it's it's really promising because a lot of these state governor, government related officials are really excited to figure out how to partner With utilities and with others to figure out the right solution, so we're actually seeing a lot of partnership and problem solving across a wide group of stakeholders around this particular issue. And Hillary, I want to turn to you now you're at Patagonia and for decades Eliminating accessibility to public land. And then there was the you have a pledge to make the supply chain carbon neutral by 2025, which is soon. Yeah. Much sooner timelines and other similar initiatives. And then you have this whole initiative about buying less And that one in particular really sticks out to me because it kind of gets to the mean, you are a company that sells stuff, right? And you are saying buy less stuff. So can you just talk us through how you think about sort of that purpose of Patagonia and then what it has meant for your bottom line? Yeah. I mean, I love that my colleagues are all making solutions to the climate crisis and we're part of the problem. So which we struggle with. It's kind of a constant battle and we're making stuff, we're making stuff that takes a toll on the planet. We're making stuff we admit lots of CO2 and so. From the company's inception, Patagonia was committed to doing everything we could to counter the impact our business had on the planet itself. So, our mission statement is we're in business to save our home planet and that seems to be totally at odds with a company that's growing and that's doing Well the more we make the more our impact on the planet grows. But one other thing we have done in addition to setting goals for being carbon free by 2025 is we have also established a goal that we gonna replace all of our virgin polyester materials. With recycled materials and natural materials by 2025, and it's hard work because we find we're making a ton of progress on that. And then even as we do, our sales are growing and our overall footprint is increasing over time. So and we're going to keep working hard to minimize our impact as much as possible every day and as we do that, We see, you know, grata spurred what was, you know, has been this incredible movement, climate activists all over the world demanding action from not only their governments but businesses and every time in the course of Patagonia's history, we've made a decision that put the planet first. It's also been good for sale. So we Hope that's an example for other companies to do the same and just to incorporate how every business decision that we make has an impact on the planet and the people in it. And it's not easy, right? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And I think it was last week that Patagonia opened its first second hand pop up. Yeah, store. Yeah, it was interesting. Well, yeah, that's a huge part of our strategy, which is to keep the stuff that we make in in cycle as long as possible. So we have a one year program is that's the name of the program that we started where you can turn in your use Patagonia gear and get a credit and then By new values product from our site, so we're gonna hope that that will have a huge impact as well. I like that you acknowledge this is such a hard thing for for companies to sort of bake into their operations and I'm wondering if If all of you could sort of weigh in on if you're a younger company, or you just really haven't made this type of commitment yet, what's like one of the first things you should be thinking about? As you look for you know, what, what goal can I set for myself? Should it be, should it be a sort of a global emissions are carbon, carbon neutral stance or should it be something more local? I mean, a lot of you. With utilities and with others to figure out the right solution, so we're actually seeing a lot of partnership and problem solving across a wide group of stakeholders around this particular issue. And Hillary, I want to turn to you now you're at Patagonia and for decades Perspective but more broadly as it relates to supply chain and the communities you touch. And that's a really hard thing to do if you're starting from day one, but I think understanding where you are, what your baseline is, is a really critical first step, to then determining where you can really have the biggest ROI both in terms of Saving company resources but also in terms of really driving emissions and impact reductions. Learn. Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, I'd very much echo what diabeetus said. I think there are a couple of pretty helpful frameworks and tools in terms of metrics that have been set by broader communities. The task force on climate related financial disclosures, there are ways to think about kind of, best in class ways to quantify these things in the supply chain from kind of day one. That it encourage businesses to think about pricing those things into, you know, ROI calculations from the beginning And then I think the encouraging part in a strange way is that, as these things become more real, insurance companies, agriculture businesses, natural resources businesses, they have to look at this stuff. It's going to force the issue into being more sustainable, there is a strange kind of positive side of all of this, I think when it comes to corporate activities. Right. So I think about that as well. Do you wanna go to questions? Do we have any right now? Springing it on you a little bit. Yeah, right here. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Hi ladies, thank you for being here. I'm Dominique. I work at eBay. We love Patagonia, circular economy. So come on over and continue to sell stuff with us. But Part of the problem of climate change is the various dimensions and it is complicated for the average person to understand the very basics of what they can do while we wait on corporations to decide to care. Where can the average person go to really learn about what they are doing and the solutions that they can provide? Where can we self- educate? Do we have good resources? Yeah, I mean there are bunch of great non- profits. There's one called Rare that actually has like seven things that you can do even as an individual that would greatly impact your climate, your footprint. Like even take one less flight a year. I mean it's very straight forward stuff but I found that I kind of am always thinking it's always on the top of my mind when you kind of when you look at something like that. Patagonia has a website called Patagonia action works that features all of our grantees all around the world. So wherever you live, you could go and you could look up an environmental, nonprofit working in your community and Volunteer or donate, in fact we're matching donations right now through the end of the year. So if you go on and you make a donation [ UNKNOWN ] will match it. So there are some kind of ways to get involved in kind of effecting change on the ground through non- profits in your community and then just some good resources through [ UNKNOWN ] or as a business series is a great resource too. I don't know if you guys Work at always series and bicep but it's a collective group of companies that have committed to fighting the climate emergency and lots of good policy and advocacy related resources there too. And just to add to that, since we you know, we work with a lot of government agencies and big companies to do block by block measurement of air quality and emissions. And we're on the other side of seeing the power of local engagement and individual engagement and local policy and engaging companies. There's all the individual actions that we can take in terms of our behaviors, but actually direct engagement and asking governments and demanding action We see it it has tremendous impact in mobilizing governments and companies to act. I'll also offer that if you're living in the northeast, or your residential home spends most of its energy and most important missions relate to heating and cooling in some way, shape or form. It is interesting that as we see companies, make these individual commitments it does to some degree feel like it's happening in isolation. There was a really great wall street journal story yesterday about how it even took a year for this one group to decide what recycled meant, like that word. And I'm wondering what Business leaders can do about coming together on the issue and not just, focusing on your own corporate goals, but on the collective effort that we all need. We need to make sure I mean, one area where we've been really impressed. It just happened last week where, companies are directly engaging in asking government to act because there's things that companies can do, but As companies, we need government to set policy that defines a level playing field where we can all engage and engage in building businesses and so last week part of the COP, a coalition of United States Corporate form that requires examining your impact on the planet. You're the workers, the community, and not just maximizing your financial return. So there's a great assessment that looks at your impact on the environment. And, it's a, I think a great coalition of businesses to really working to. Fight for our planet. Right great. We'll have to leave it there but we have some extrable steps to walk away with and thank you all for being here and to sharing your experties with us on this, thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

What Science Says About The Way Forward For Climate Activism?

Environment

How can corporations change their structures and systems to affect policy, and why should they?

So much for being here for having me. Yeah. So we are going to talk business of fertility. And first up full disclosure, I am pregnant if you have not noticed, that was [ LAUGH ] not a prerequisite for moderating this session, but I'm thrilled to be doing it. So I kind of wanted to kick it off by talking about you know. Why the sector has been ignored for so long, right. Like it's hard to even put a number on the size of this market because it hasn't really existed before. I mean, what's going on? Why have we not really considered this a big market in the past? Yeah. Well, I think that there's three major things that are happening right now three trends that I would kind of speak to that Really are behind the energy and shift to the rise of fertility and even the conversation. The first is that women are waiting to have kids later in life. The average age of first birth and major metropolitan cities in the US is 31 years old and Millennials are waiting longer than any other generation in the history. Throughout the US to start our families, and as a result, we're having more trouble doing so. So today one in six couples have trouble getting pregnant. So one is just the the broader, we got things to do and we're waiting longer. Actually, I just want to throw a stat That in there, the only age group that recorded increases in fertility rates in 2018 more women in their late 30s and early 40s. So, That's right, I was totally seeing a shift there. Sorry. Go ahead. Yeah, No spot on spot on and so the second. As 20 % of millennials identify as LGBTQ. And so when you have this significant portion of millennials, where this idea of actively trying to conceive for nine to 12 months before any infertility coverage if they happen to have that as a part of their care, That just doesn't work for 20 % of millennials now and we need better solutions. And the third is just the the world that we're living in in 2019. We have personalized information about what ingredients are in our beauty products. We have mortgage calculators that tell us about saving for our homes. Yeah, fertility is just the this total black box and so what we're seeing is women saying, know that this is not okay this is not good enough. Women are demanding more information about what's going on in their their bodies more information about their biology, so that they can make the decisions that are right for them. And so I think that that momentum has allowed our companies to have customers and therefore Fuel the broader momentum in the space which is really exciting. We're gonna dive into how you guys are doing that. But first tell me your company [ UNKNOWN ] helps companies implement fertility benefits. Why have fertility benefits not been sort of considered traditionally part of the typical Benefit package and even more broadly, why is fertility not been considered part of sort of our core health care system? Almost. Yeah. So, when we look at sort of this particular moment in history, we're really excited because, for many, many decades mean IVF was invented about 40 years ago. Fertility Care and access to fertility treatments were very much considered a luxury consumer. Good. And only a certain type of person could afford access to that type of care. Because of some of the trends that Afton pointed out, when you look at millennials and employees who are coming into the workforce even younger, sort of the trends are very similar to how dental and vision became a standard part of compensation when people go to work and we believe that fertility is sort of that fourth pillar Medical dental vision and fertility care will be a standard part of company benefits Park as it is when people go to work and it's because people are having kids later and later and both women and men for the first time ever more females above the age of 30 or having children than below the age of 30 and sort of the way that LGBT people think about. Family forming and how they pursue Parenthood is changing. And so, you know, I think if you ask any of us or really anyone, whether or not they consider Fertility Care, luxury or a perk, I think the answer would be no. I think all of us really think about whether we actually do ultimately want to have children are not we think about fertility as a fundamental part of human health. And that's how we think about it, it's some some sort of very human, both men and women. So where are we in terms of that path to making the sequel benefit. I think we're making really exciting progress, I mean we are seeing a lot of interest, sort of in the economy From all different parts of the economy, so we have customers in food and beverage and transportation and retail, obviously technology, financial services, and others and I think one of the biggest myths about fertility benefits is that it is something that only large Through corporate technology companies, can afford or should frankly want, and what we're saying is that that's not true. Again, this is something that all people want access to and so all companies are feeling pressure from employees to think about this issue in a thoughtful way. So often you talk about modern fertility as a fertility company not an infertility company and that's a really interesting decision, can you talk a little bit about why you guys made that choice. Yeah, okay I actually made, so I Our name of our company is Modern Fertility. We had so many discussions when we were even naming our company of my gosh, fertility it's such this loaded and stigmatized word there's no such thing as the the word fertility and the traditional healthcare system It's only infertility. And so, part of even naming our company was a very intentional decision to say no, fertility has all of the stigma around it. We're going to have it as part of our name. And then our core customer who we're going to focus on, is educating women. before they're actively trying to conceive, have that conversation and have that dialogue with them so that they can have more information about their own bodies beforehand to continue to navigate this process. And so I think you know, when you look at the the healthcare system today, you look at the education system today we're only focused on preventing pregnancy and planning for it as a black box. Fox and I think where we see the amazing efforts of legislation which is pushing infertility into these broader coverage plans fertility in thinking about proactive Fertility Care is still a step behind that and so When we took a step back and looked at the entire fertility space and really, what do women need today, we really saw information as the biggest gap and an opportunity today. How could we give women access to information about their own bodies, their own biology. So that they could help, help them to navigate that process today, before they might have to choose to access some of these options down downstream. I think some of the some of these points around language is super important when we are looking at this category. I think a lot of the language just like the legislation, the policies at work. The products and services in the market haven't really been updated in a really, really long time. And even in the past few years when you look at the word fertility there's this evolution from infertility to this concept of fertility and sort of product of fertility, health. But if you were to look at products in the fertility market a few years ago, you would mostly find cycle or period tracking apps, and those would be called fertility apps. And I think one of the great things about this category as it grows and as it matures is that it is maturing into a more full throated Sort of idea of what this category of health means. And it's sort of innate complexity. So are we doing a disservice then when we call it femme tech by grouping it into that area. I think anything that Prompts the conversation and dialogue about women's health and fertility as positive. So when it's called Femme tech, when it's called other things, I'm excited that we're that means we're having a conversation about fertility and women's health, which is it's net net positive and wonderful. But to me, reproductive health is a core part of overall health. And the more that we can integrate Technology, the more that we can integrate fertility care into this broader healthcare conversations. So we're talking about fertility hormone testing in the same way that we're talking about getting a pap smear. We're talking about infertility as a normal part of conversation, not as something that's stigmatized. The more that we can do to normalize this conversation and have it Just be a part of our health, a part of our lives that would be true progress. So you, I'll love it if you talk a little bit about more [ UNKNOWN ] modern fertility system works, you created this company because of your own experience trying to find out more information about your fertility what happens Yeah, so I feel that I was able to have this really unique lens into fertility, fertility rates in fertility at a really early point in my my life in my career so my first job out of school was working at a healthcare private equity funded in New York. So my job was to look at sectors of healthcare that were interesting growing, had some consolidation potential. And because of my personal interest, I ended up spending a lot of time in women's health and within women's health started spending a lot of time in fertility and which is looking at these massive growth. Raise these caterers looking at these infertility clinics with these wait lists that were months and months long and so from a private equity perspective, that meant it was a great investment opportunity. [ LAUGH ] And so I spent a lot of time in this space but there was something about it that didn't sit right with me. That this model wasn't aligned completely with the best interests of women. And so, I was 22 at the time and I don't think I fully knew what that meant or how to process it. But as part of doing work in this space I understood that the business of infertility, I understood the science of infertility. But it was the emotional aspect that stuck with me the most. And so it was going into these infertility clinics And talking to these high powered women that I respected so much and hearing, no one told me that fertility defined with a jerk, no one told me that IVF wasn't going to work 100 % of the time and so, fast forward Ended up leaving finance and tried to get my own fertility hormones tested while I was leading the consumer tools division at 23. And me, because I was waiting until later in life to start my own family and I remember this Baseline testing that I have learned about back in private equity. I went to my OBGN and they said no, you're not actively trying to have a baby and failing. So therefore, no you cannot have these tests. They're not covered. So I had to go into an infertility clinic. Pay. In San Francisco, $ 700 out of pocket for that appointment. [ LAUGH ] And then when I finally got the testing done, that's a story for another time. It was complicated, I just had such an empowering conversation with my doctor, with my partner. I got a PCOS diagnosis along the way, it's a condition, leading cause of infertility affects one in ten women And I think that the aha moment for me in modern fertility was really having that conversation with my fans and friends and hearing them say, yes, I want that. How can I get that? I want that information about my body. And it was just this energy and the shift and this excitement Women just demanding more information about their bodies. And that was the start of it all. [ LAUGH ] So yeah, I mean, I think that's a super interesting way of looking at it. And Tammy on your end, I know that you're really seeing employers drive this, right? So again the coverage landscape is changing completely. What's really shifted there? Why are employers now taking a lead on this when we didn't used to see that at all? Yeah, I mean, I think employers are, first, for [ UNKNOWN ] what we believe is that in most cases access to fertility care will be gated by affordability. Not enough people who want access to fertility treatments can or are willing to pay for it. In this country, more than 150 million people get access to health care through their employer. That's more than Medicare and Medicaid combined. And so when we think about sort of expanding access, the question was, how do we do that at a fundamental level. And what we're doing is we're partnering with employers to create more dollars. For coverage that allow people to access care that starts from a fertility consultation to understand what your response will be to increasing your IVF all the way through to IVF, egg freezing, adoption or anything within three, the suite \ g of third party reproduction. And I think there's lots of motivations for employers who are thinking about this, but the main ones I think are the most motivated employers that we engage with are those who actually hear from employees. Those who sort of have heard from even a single person This is something that they care about and that the team wants all benefits. People are looking for the highest impact way to deploy that dollar and to deploy their budgets and so hearing from employees often creates a much higher level of motivation. The second is employers who sort of look around and are trying to understand within their category what is the competitive landscape look like for talent. And so talent retention is a big one, as well as overall long term matter. Medical spend and the reduction in costs through deploying what we call a managed care program that helps manage the outcomes of fertility treatments in a way that makes everyone happier and healthier and the end and ultimately save the employer a lot of money, particularly the self funded ones. Great. Let's we have any questions in the audience. Any questions? [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Okay, start thinking, We have one over there. And if you could tell us who you are. I Nela Richardson Edward Jones. I'm just curious what's covered in fertility at health care. I remember a couple years ago a lot of tech firms Facebook and such, decided to cover eggs harvesting. Yep, like recently So can you give us kind of the degree of the scope and detail when it comes to health care coverage in companies? Yeah. So about half of the companies that we work with have never had any sort of fertility or infertility coverage ever before. So we're building programs from the ground up and in that way Because of the flexibility of our product companies can sort of design it from the ground up. If you have infertility coverage at your company through an insurance or health plan. What that means is as after mentioned, there's this classic Diagnosis of infertility that's required to people of the opposite sex trying and failing to get pregnant after six to 12 months depending on your age. In those cases, you might get access to some coverage, although in many cases it's limited. There's different state mandates as well regarding that, as you sort of move up into sort of larger companies that are self funded, they have a little bit more flexibility. Facebook is a great example you mentioned. So they're able to sort of work with the health plans to design additional coverage, for example around fertility preservation, but even in those cases, there's lots of gaps that needs to be filled. So, we have a question over here if you can just wait for the mic and tell us who you are .>> Awesome. Hi. So my name is Wenzer, co founder of Her Canvas media and question is when should women start thinking about Their fertility is there. I know it declines after a certain point, but is it? I'm gonna get pregnant in my 20s and that's my plan. We're good or should every woman because of PCs get tested? I love that question. So I think it's a really personal decision to think about how you want to access information around your health and life. And our view is it's up to a woman to decide how she chooses to access that information for us the modern fertility hormone tests that's accessible to women ages 21- 30- 45. And our worldview is that this type of testing should be as routine as a pap smear. When you're starting to understand your own body, your own biology, understanding if you have PCOS as a part of fertility but it's also a part of your general health. So the treatment for PCOS which affects one in ten women is often going on birth control. And so if you go on birth control with with PCOS, you're suppressing a lot of the symptoms in a positive way. But then when you go off birth control, in many cases, you still have PCOS and might have trouble getting pregnant. And in some cases, you might even be [ UNKNOWN ] Which means you're not ovulating and if you're anovulatory, it can create this unbound estrogen in your ovaries put you at a higher risk for endometrial cancer, lots of health concerns associated with that. So just this Fundamental understanding of where's my body, where's my health and being an advocate within that with your healthcare provider. I think that's where modern fertility sits within the ecosystem. That's where we stand at the beginning of the journey of You know what's the first step. Where is my body? And how I can use that to navigate the system with my provider. When I'm in control of that information. So, women as early as they can owning this information. And being able to use it to make the decision is that right for them. Tami very quickly we have 20 seconds. Yeah. What is the area that you're most excited about? What needs the most investment, the most research stil in your mind? I think a lot of the exciting research within the fertility category is really thinking fundamentally about how to change some of the economics of fertility treatments in the lab and in the clinic. So at the sort of science level What are the things that we can do to make IVF for increasing sort of retrievals you know, hundreds of dollars, you know, versus thousands of dollars and I think those types that type of research and development and those those things will really change the fundamental economics and allow many millions more people to access the care that they need and that they want to access. Yeah. Temi [ UNKNOWN ], thank you so much Thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] Thank you. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

The Business Of Fertility And Why It Took So Long

Luxury

Silicon Valley and the broader investment community are finally starting to pay attention to a major unmet need in the market: fertility.

Ryan, thanks so much for being here with us today. And I think, just for starters, I realized that not everybody lives and breathes Silicon Valley. And so how many of you are familiar with palantir and what the company does a pretty good number actually. A good number Do you want to just quickly explain it in your words? Because this Yeah, one of the topics of our conversations is what palantir actually does and doesn't do so how do you explain it today? Yeah, so we Our mission is to help critical world institutions leverage data to solve their hardest problems. So I'm sure many people who are in the room are experiencing a really overwhelming data landscape. It's increasing in volume and velocity, and it's in many different places. And for the government, particularly the threat landscape is also dramatically changing right now. Time pressures are extreme. And resources proportionally definitely are decreasing. And so we view our role as building technology that integrates that massive disparate data into one place. So everyone from CEOs and generals Down to frontline operators who might be researching cancer drugs or in the battlefield in Afghanistan can make really good informed decisions based on all of the holistic information that their enterprise has. So the product not only brings together all these disparate data sources, but it actually helps companies, government agencies whomever To sift through it and be able to look for patterns and do all sorts of things. Yeah. So data integration is kind of the first step. And then on top of that, we have a rich suite of tooling, that enables a bunch of different types of users and a variety of workflows and contexts, to really understand and leverage that data. To collaborate with each other across that data and to share the influences that they're coming up with. Back into an ecosystem so that a knowledge asset is almost being built as opposed to disparate bits and bots all around an enterprise. And explained, you're on the product side and on the government side. Yes. So, by the way, real quick, the names of the two products. Palantir Gautham and Palantir foundry. You know about foundry wasn't always foundry was it? Foundry has an origins and in a previous product called metropolis. Okay, that's awesome out of travelers. Yeah. They're pretty cool things. Yeah. So what is your role within the organization? So I run product for Gotham, and Gotham is our main government platform. So this is the original product, it was founded in 2004. Our original funding came from In- Q- Tel, which I think there's someone here from In- Q- Tel. Yeah, we have someone. It's the CIA's venture capital arm, and the original product was counter- terrorism, it was about intelligence We wanted in the aftermath of 911 to build the intelligence community and analytical data integration platform that also adhere to really important privacy and civil liberty problems at the time. So that all of the data could be really well protected while still fostering collaboration within the counter terrorism community. So [ UNKNOWN ] 2004, still going strong today. And that's the product that I run. And My portfolio is mostly on zero to one kind of our indeed new product so I sit at the nexus between product and business and I get to be a really creative. It's my job to find innovative new ways for us to exchange that platform, new workflows that our customers really need, new modules that we need to do to kinda keep innovating and to keep achieving their missions as the threat landscapes change, So that means teams of designers and engineers and prototyping and really getting my hands dirty in the field across our portfolio. And you're doing things like meeting with the US Secret Service to talk about money laundering, when you walk into a room like that. The secret service one was, so I've been at Palangier seven years, that was when I was 22, that was my first gig at the company. I was running a meeting on a huge money laundering case with seven secret service gentlemen. So I think what's cool about it one thing I really love about palantir is that our approach has always been build from the field. Like go to the ground truth. Go to the clients, learn from them learn from those users. And we're never in the business of building software in Silicon Valley in a lab and shipping it over the fence. I've been on military bases I've been, I spent all of 2018 and Europe with a US ally, a European allies security agency because they wanted a better way in the aftermath of a terrorist attack to communicate and share data in real time with each other. So I was in the field working and prototyping and showing that the kind of users were the counter terrorism analysts, cuts of the product, getting their feedback. And we did about eight month cycle with them and that has become part of our core platform now that we really built it close to the problem and the mission. So It's taken me to some really interesting places. I know I can currently in my career. I can imagine it. So part of that part of the origin story, though, at PALLANSCH here and this mystique. You know, the funding from the see it from the CIA and the early work with the CIA. You know, there were all these rumors which you guys have never confirmed or denied that you had a hand in catching Osama bin Laden. So it seems like that was an advantage to Palantir at least earlier on. And as you kind of went more and more into the private sector, you already had that allure. And the technology had that that, there was an attraction to it. But today, fast forward to today, there's been so much controversy about, in particular Your contract with ice and another government contracts. And why? I mean, I guess as just a starting point as for a question, why do you choose to do business with an agency like ISIS has been to workplace raids and deportation, so So I mean, our values and our mission we take on clients that align with that. And that mission is democracy. It is national security. It is those things in conjunction with privacy and civil liberties. And I think we all live in a pretty polarized climate right now. Society is heavily cleavage and I think it's means that people. Rush to various sides of debates and think of them in very black and white ways as opposed to appreciating nuance. So for the [ UNKNOWN ] questions specifically, the Obama administration brought us to [ UNKNOWN ] in 2011 for something called Operation Fall and Hero Which was an ice agent was murdered across the border while sitting in his vehicle by 12 people. And the Obama Administration called us to ask if we could help them integrate that data and figure out who was responsible for it, we ultimately were able to apprehend that individual. And the contract from there was with Homeland Security Investigations, which is a distinct group. From ice, they're not directly responsible for enforcement or worksite enforcement, and they mostly do transnational crime. And so that is things like narco trafficking or human trafficking. We El Chapo Guzman cases. Child exploitation. And I've seen some pretty horrific but inspiring cases where where ISIS done things like put 3000 child sex traffickers in jail in 2018 alone. So, do you have the ability as a vendor to this agency? Do you have the ability to say cuz I think nobody would argue that that is Yeah. That's good. Right? But do you have the ability to say to them we will sell you to this technology for these applications but not for these ones? Again, we work with HSI which is a distinct group. But now, we support the American govenment. I think our CEO has said many times that Silicon Valley shouldn't be the people who are picking winners and losers. We live in a democracy. We want that democracy to be self correcting. Many people at palantir, myself included, have rigorous debate and have many discussions and disagreements about this. But we ultimately think that the impact and the mission of HSI in particular is important enough You know, 3000 child predators and 850 kids being saved because of our work that this is it's worth sticking with the government in this instance. So would it be fair to say Sum up and say that in your view, the good outweighs the bad of what the technology is doing. I think what I'm trying to say is that we don't work for political parties or administrations we work for democratic institutions and instance. institutions that impact the lives of many people. And we think that our technology is is better you those institutions are better with our technology, privacy is more protected, they are more deliberate, they're more effective than otherwise. And just real quick, I do want to open up to you guys for questions, but going back to Just explaining what [ UNKNOWN ] does in the [ UNKNOWN ] around the company early on, do you feel like you are having to sort of revisit how you brand the company, how you communicate, both externally and internally because of the recent controversies I mean, I think on the branding question like, we've never though about that cuz we're focused on the mission, I mean our like secretive mystique is really truly because we're thinking about soldiers who are telling us that we're saving their life because they're able to detect roadside bombs with our software, like that is what we've been thinking about this entire time so I think. In terms of a brand or reset or anything like that, we are still single focused on those individuals and the people on the frontline. I think internally we have a lot of conversations, we try to be incredibly thoughtful, we try to hold complexity, we try to see the nuance in Kind of today's political environment and not rush to that black and white thinking and that's always been the case it's been very steeped in our culture from the get go and certainly more so in the in the last couple of years. But I think most people who work at palantir accept that and embrace the impact of our work in the mission, being good for society and pretty important. Questions from the audience please raise your hands if you would like to ask Ryan a question. This clearly is such a light topic. [ LAUGH ] I know that's a fun one. So Okay, so talk a little bit more about some of the, you guys have been around for 15 years and some of the conversations that I hear at least recently about [ UNKNOWN ] is very forward looking if it's not about the controversy. So I feel like we've been talking about you going public for the last 10 years or so. What do the right conditions look like for Palantir to actually go public? You know, that is a great question for our CEO. [ LAUGH ] And you will probably know the second I know but again, like it's not something day to day, my teams don't think about the IPO every day. I think we're thinking about The needs of soldiers and how near peer conflict is going to change the way the military operates. We're thinking about the human trafficking investigations that we have to integrate that next data set for for the customers, they can piece all those things together. And we focus on those individuals and real people on the front lines and you know, the IPO is not top of mind. I'm sure it'll happen someday. Yes, I think so right? Plenty of investors are gonna be happy with that. We've got a question over here. Hi. Hi, Kathy Davis. I'm really curious about the impact that the work that you're having has on the children that are In cages so not saved by the other half of the work that you're doing cuz I think that number four outweight the 800, not that the 800 is not important, but where do you see the work that palenter is doing to kind of. So again the part of Ice that works on enforcement and removal operations is called EARA, it's a different agency within Ice. And our contract has never been with that agency. When agencies have different contracts they have different text acts they have, people from that organization cannot access our Ballinger Stack with HSI. In the Trump administration ->> [ INAUDIBLE ] the other, like if you're looking at one data and it's being Kind of, I, yeah, I mean I've never seen and I've never seen a substantiated claim that [ UNKNOWN ] is directly been involved in that type of work. I think with the Trump administration, over the last couple of years, it is possible that HSI and ERO have started to do some joint operations. But our work is 99 % again about transnational crime. That's the mandate of HSI and it's the work that we do and we don't have a contract with enforcement and removal. Well, I think what has come up more commonly or has been associated has been the workplace raids and deportations. Yeah. And that's that that's the jurisdiction of Euro So, yeah .>> Not to invalidate your question in a way of because I understand it's the same agency. So, okay. Let's end it on another with just another very very quick brief question. You have been kind of pulling out of Silicon Valley a bit. Is that something that's strategic? Is it happening, what's the. It seems like there is less. So theres less palentier presence in Silicon Valley? No, we haven't pulled out of Sillicon Valley at all. It's still our headquarters. We're still in Palo Alto, we're still on 100 Hamilton. We definitely have a growing presence all around the world. We have a lot of people in New York and London and Europe. But we're still committed to Sillicon Valley and it's still the center for the company. Okay, great. Well, thank you. I hope you will come back and talk to us again next year. Thanks so much Ryan, thank you all. Thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

How Palantir Continues To Innovate While Navigating Controversy

Tech

Palantir has long been one of the most secretive Silicon Valley companies. But it now finds itself increasingly having to explain what it does.

Welcome, we're so happy to have you at NextGen with us this morning. Thank you. So Dear and Co a plus size fashion stylist and e- commerce company thinks a reusuable period underwear company not neccessarily like a million things in common. Off the top of the head, but I think it is really notable that both of your companies are serving a need for female consumers that is not new. It's been around, but that the sort of established players and even like the sort of male dominated VC ecosystem Have not really addressed. And so, Notty, I'm gonna start with you because the stats about the plus size market really blew me away. Women, tell me if I get this right, women size 14 and up account for almost 70 % of the population. But in 2016 plus size clothing was only 17 % of total purchases. So this is a huge potential market. Why do you think it has been overlooked for so long? In so many ways, that's the key question of the business that we've built. I think the fact that those numbers side by side seems so ludicrous when you actually think about them is not new. It's certainly not something that we discovered. I think the big debate in our category is whether or not it's a demand problem or supply problem. And I think if you speak to most people in the industry Really anyone in the value chain what you'll hear is that it's a demand problem. There's something about this woman that's different, she doesn't wanna invest in herself, she's left interest in style. There are some less positive reason or the demands that you'll hear. And I think for us at the end of the day. That just seems ludicrous. I've been a plus size woman all of my life. I've always loved fashion, I've always loved style, and the idea that as a woman I could intrinsically change when I cross this imaginary line, and the [ UNKNOWN ] just seems absurd. And so in our view it's a supply problem and really thinking about all the ways that the supply ecosystem would need to change. To actually bring a compelling enough set of experiences to the market where this woman can re- engage, is really kind of the core that we've been focused on. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Maria I want to ask you so that the feminine care products market is $ 1. 6 billion industry you guys can tell I did some research before this panel But I think one of the more notable things you're up against is the fact that our periods are still a taboo for some reason despite being a very common experience. [ LAUGH ] But one thing that is really interesting to me is it seems like things has really embraced that. And specifically I want to ask about you did your first nationwide TV commercial? We did. And Sadly, we can't show a clip of this but if you haven't seen it, it's about what the world would be like if man got their periods. [ LAUGH ] [ LAUGH ] Imagine the mind boggles. [ LAUGH ] And there were actually networks that refuse to air the spot and tell you, removed a scene where you Saw a man's tampon string. Right. Hanging out of his underwear. Right. [ LAUGH ] Everyone's gonna wanna watch it now. Yeah. [ LAUGH ] I was gonna say, viral marketing right here. But what we trying to achieve with that ad like, we're you expecting that push back or you went away looking for it? We were in a way looking for it. And that's part of why we were founded, right? We really were put on the map for those of you who don't know, the subway campaign in late 2015 in New York City, in which the MTA rejected the ads. And the ads were. You know, women in very natural positions that happened to be in her underwear, but they were next to images that represented the female anatomy. So egg yolks, grapefruits, nothing that was overly sexualized at all, but it was rejected and we really had our community. They went to MTA. We went to the media, just to tell them how ridiculous it was right you go for those of you who arrived in New York City subway regularly, you have lots of ads with women with, you know, holding up images of lemons, grapefruits and oranges to represent the different breast augmentation surgery yet, right? That is sexualized, yet somehow our ads won't get approved. And so our whole point is not to shock and awe, that's not the point. And this goes back to the TV commercial. The point is to get people to talk and to get people to talk you have to make them think. And making them think sometimes is being out, Out in front of them with something that can be very thought provoking. Some would say shocking, we don't say shocking, some would say shocking. And so the TV ad we did was very much with that intent in mind is how do we get more people to know, one, It's ridiculous. We can talk about these things. And two, and this was pretty slight in the ad is like period underwear exists. Most people don't know that it does And so, we were very successful, we reached over 60 million people. Who have either engaged with the ad or actually come to our site. So huge numbers. And so we were successful in that regard. And now we have to figure out how to convert them into actually buying the underwear. Yeah, that's a very important part. Nadia, you mentioned that to some extent Dean & Co was based on your own experiences as a consumer. I think a lot of companies in general are founded by people that see the need themselves. But I wanted to ask you about one story you told about your personal shopping experience that really stuck with me, which was When you were in high school still, obviously long before the idea for the company had formed, but you were trying to find something to wear to prom. Can you just tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, so definitely early or very early in my life and certainly not directly attached to the founding of [ UNKNOWN ] but I think the first time that it really occurred to me that I probably saw myself differently than the world did was when I was shopping for prom 11th grade. And my mom and I went to try to find something for me to wear and I've always loved style. So I had a very clear image in my mind of exactly what I wanted the dress to look like. And there was A very very stuck and unfortunate kind of reckoning when I actually got to the store and realised that almost everything that was in my size, at that time I was size 22, was really much more suited to a grandma on a cruise than a 17 year old girl. It was heartbreaking, In that moment, what my mother and I decided to do, which I will be forever grateful to her for is to make my own dress. And I was able to wear exactly what I wanted to wear. Yeah. [ APPLAUSE ] SMy mother is extraordinary and I think really has played a big role in this but Really, the takeaway from me I'm not years later, was the fact that the world may not always agree with what we believe is right. And the last thing we can do as women is really internalize the identity and the value that you can deduce from those experiences because there was a very clear message to me and my 17 year old self That something was wrong, and that I shouldn't be able to dress the way that I wanted to, feel the way that I wanted to, and experience this milestone moment in my life in the ay that I wanted to, but I could do something about that. Yeah, and now you're giving plus size women multiple options for how to shop, correct, because When you first launched DIA, It was a styling service, similar perhaps to like a Stitch Fix or that type of model. And now very recently, you've pivoted to also offer a direct e- commerce version. Question. So can you talk about like, what were you hearing from your shoppers that said, we want this and we want that? [ LAUGH ] So one of the things that has always been unique about this is our commitment has always been to our community and to the very specific women that make up our community plus size women. And not to any single way of serving her or even a single brand. And so our compass has always been the Very clear and very engaged feedback of the woman that we serve. And what we're hearing from her over time was that she had multiple needs in her life from a shopping perspective. And she really valued being able to work with a stylist and there are these magical experiences that you can get working with a stylist that really get you outside of your comfort zone. Change. Maybe what you would pull off the shelf yourself. But there were also moments where she wanted to be able to know that she could have access to the same great merchandise. And that wasn't necessarily possible in the previous way that we had finished up with us and so there's been a slow evolution for us and really expanding. How she can be transacting with us and therefore how much more access she can get to the clothes she loves you. And Maria, you are have also pivoted the thinks model a little bit. It was originally a direct consumer brand and you've started going into retailers can you. Why is that important for the future of the company. Yes. So 98. 9 % of people still buy their feminine hygiene products in offline mediums such as target CDs, etc. So we knew that was always going to be a major channel. And then secondly, we have a huge behavior change, right? And so being able to talk to a salesperson Be able to touch and feel the underwear is a huge chunk of why somebody is going to buy. So it's not just such an easy purchase decision that they will purchase online. Those are kind of the really the early adopters, but to get the people that we call the fence sitters, being in other mediums becomes very important. So we last year in June of 2018, we launched in [ UNKNOWN ] in the UK So premium retail, which is a bit unusual, we really wanted to get our feet wet first there, and then in next yea, next January, not not 2000 but 2021 we're actually launching a lower price point product that has the same level of absorbency. We're not sacrificing and that element. But the it won't be as quite as expensive in terms of the materials and that will enable us to reach a much larger group of people and become a much more accessible brand. Yeah. I also wanna ask you about another pivot point in the company's history, which is when you took over as CEO This was in 2017. And you took over from the founder, Mickey Agarwal. She was a sort of big personality founder. I think it's fair to say. And she ultimately was accused of some inappropriate behavior. In the workplace and ended up stepping down as CEO. I should say that she denies that. But the company was in a bit of upheaval around that. So I guess two parter, what Why did you feel like yes, I wanna walk into this difficult situation. Yeah. And be like what was the number one thing when you got in the door you were like, this is the first thing I have to achieve. I started looking at this rule actually prior to that news, hitting So it was about as much of a surprise to everyone else as it was to me. And so you can imagine, I thought I do not want to touch this with a 10- foot pole. But I got convinced to continue the conversation because it's such an interesting market and I really believe in the product, I was a customer prior to becoming the CEO. I also went through years of infertility to have my first child. And in the process I learned a lot about, you know what's in tampons and pads and how it can create infertility and endometriosis. And so I really was looking to be a CEO or it really I didn't even care if as a CEO, I just wanted to work at a company where I cared so much about the product. So that combined with when closer to when I decided to join, they sent me the financials and I literally had to ask them if they had been audited because the unit economics were so so strong. So I felt, both from a business side as well as the personal side you don't run across that many opportunities and that are like that and so I just jumped at it. And I did think a lot about like, what will the first six months, nine months twelve months look like? Because I'd never gone into a situation like that. And so it was very much about how do you build trust with a team. They had gone through a lot of chaos, I think especially externally right with the media and how much had had covered this particular story. And so I spent a lot of time with them like really making them understand who I was as a leader and my personal connection to the brand and to the product as well. And then I spent a lot of time building up, we didn't have an HR department, and that's not unusual. We were only 32 people at that time. So I don't think it was bad on previous management that they didn't have that per se. But it obviously needed to change. And so we built up an HR department, we set up a bunch of new policies. We focus a lot around. Okay, what is our strategic Northstar? And how do we make sure that we have the people Both internally as well as externally in terms of advisors, board members, etc that really can get us to the next level. And the last thing, which I think it kind of happened to us earlier, but because of the focus and negative attention on us, it really made us figure out early on how to build scale. So I spent a lot of time around process and procedures and bi and data and building that into the systems which I think contributed to where we are today. Interesting. I want to see if we have any questions for Maria or Nadia Sorry, I should have given you guys a heads up about that. But I see a hand over here, get the paddle, she's coming. [ LAUGH ] Please introduce yourself. Hi, Mr. Patel from Accenture, [ UNKNOWN ] my question is for you and the industry that you're in is a billion dollar industry with some incumbents in there that I'm sure Had a hard time with you coming in as a disrupting firm. I would like to understand how you trying to find your market also dealt with the with those incumbents that were feeling challenged with what you were trying to do and achieve. Yeah, that is a good question. So I will say that early on in our company's lifecycle, I was not there. So this is back in 2014. We could not raise money, and we cannot raise money because a lot of things you just mentioned, the incumbents, there's two of them PNG and Kimberly Clark that play a huge role. They're really a duopoly that owned the market. And typically venture capital doesn't invest in that type of stuff for all you venture capital country, people out there, and it's. It's hard and it's hard to change behavior. In a market that's very, very cold. There's a lot of cultural stigma as we talked about. And so we were forced early on, to really focus on how to be as profitable as possible. And so we raised $ 1. 4 million in early 2015 from our manufacturer who had a big focus on feminine Hygiene and that was kind of the only reason we really made it and last year we reached 50 million in revenue. And we did that on a million dollars, a little over a million dollars. And so I think that, [ APPLAUSE ] thank you. And I look at that like, and this is what goes to your question. And we've proven out that there are people out there that want a new solution, right? It's ridiculous, there's been lack of innovation almost 100 years. And in September, we actually took money from, we raise $ 25 primary and a hefty secondary as well from Kimberly- Clark. And so they obviously saw that this is becoming a market that's very interesting and we're playing a role in that. And I hope it's the first of a much bigger company to come .>> Unfortunately, we'll have to leave it there but I do think that's an interesting trend. I mean, we're seeing a lot of Companies like that invest in the more disruptive startup companies like the two of yours. So thank you so much. Thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

How Companies Are Finding New Customers In Under Seen Markets

Companies are finding new markets by looking beyond what’s already popular, to what should be.

Hey, ladies, thank you so much for being here, excited to kick off this afternoon. I wanted to start with a little bit of data that speaks to the intro that Kristen gave us. This is an Accenture study. Most recent global survey of 30, 000 consumers found that 62 % want companies to stake take a stand on current and broadly relevant topics like sustainability, transparency, fair employment practices and the study, Imean it has that data point but it says the real opportunity lies in that In building authentic relationships with customers, and that's what I really wanna talk about. Before we get to the how of doing that, I'm wondering if we could talk a little bit about the why. I feel like this is a relatively new phenomenon. where consumers are looking to brands to stand for more than just a product on a shelf. And I'm wondering if if if you guys, I mean, you're tapped into these folks like, where do you see that coming from Andrew, do you want to start? Yeah, I think I think the consumer is changing and their expectations of What good looks like in the future is not just a transactional relationship between you have a good I'm going to purchase it from you. They have an expectation of those companies and at Wal- Mart, one of the big things we've focused on is around sustainability. That's huge. Our customers told us that's really important to them. And not only is it important to them, it's also great business for us. And so one of the big projects we've been working on is project Gigaton. And we've publicly committed to take a billion metric tonnes of greenhouse gases out of the value chain by 2030. And that's with working with our suppliers thinking about how we do business and the future, how we re engineer our stores to meet that expectation. And so I think the customer has higher expectations and they want something Less transactional and more meaningful in the relationship. Right, Yeah. Hillary do you have anything to add about that? What do you see? Yeah, I think it's a really interesting time for consumers right now. I think consumers have never been more empowered. And I think that's for a couple of reasons. So we're direct to consumer digital healthcare company. And what that means is there's no one in between our relationship. With the end consumer so we hear from customers loudly if we're doing a good job or if we're doing a bad job. And I think that's true for a lot of companies and it's not just that in previously you'd go to a department store or you would end you would never really your feedback would never really get back to the brand and if it did get back to the brand it would be done in aggregate. Now, with all of these channels, it's individualistic. There's a chance that I'm a cofounder. I hear very specific details every single day it gets tracked back up to me. And then I can respond, and our teams can respond and make way better choices. And then the other thing is, I think the market is really, really saturated right now. I think the four of us could leave after this panel and make a company and launch it on Instagram today. So we've had to learn to do it. Yeah, what do we think? I think the world needs another face mask. Yeah. So I think we've all had to be really discerning because you're told all of these things. And very few of them are true. And it's up to you to be be the arbiter of that for yourself. And for us that stakes are super high because it's healthcare. Right. And I'm wondering So we're that's sort of the why but I'm curious about I mean, everyone in this room is asking that how how do you establish that authentic relationship with a country Consumer in communicated or conceive a branding that really communicates it and resonates. Jasmine, what do you think about that? I mean, where what are some one or two things that you know out of the industry you can think about when you're wanting to build that authentic connection? For asset Uber in it I think this is the case for many companies. It starts with talking to your customers and listening to them. And not just like in, you know, your typical NPS scoring and all those things, but actually opening up channels where you can hear the authentic. Feedback on what's happening. It's been a meaningful aspect of the work that are that Uber has done on safety this year and really taking a more active position on what are the things we are doing to make ridesharing safer for riders and drivers. As well as really being open about what's happening in the industry and taking a step forward there. That is actively from the feedback we've gotten from customers around their concerns about what it means to ride chairs. So I think it's really and kinda getting in to What are the real things that are happening and how can we help solve those. Right. Of course, a big piece of that was last week when you release this report about the instances of sexual assaults. Yeah. That happened during rides, 3, 000 last year. And that's on 1. 3 billion rise it should be said in the US and I think obviously there was a lot of headlines around that as being a real negative. But I'm wondering how that fit and obviously we don't want to see that no one does but how do you see that fitting into your the the narrative that Uber is trying to Why to its consumers? Yeah, and I think our leadership team said it best endora said it best where even one incident is too many. Right? And so the the reaction that it was a lot, I think is still a very valid one. Despite the trip number, it's agains And so I think I wouldn't say it's something we're trying to say or accomplish. it's more of what are we doing to help solve the problem and part of that is is being open and transparent about these about this reality and then also sharing here the things we're doing to do to take every active step we can to make it as safe as possible, right? Yeah. And it was a voluntary disclosure. Yeah, right. Definitely. I wanted to switch gears a bit to you Hillary. Obviously hymns in hers has made its name in part because of the provocative branding that you sort of put out into the world. One of the examples is of some of your ads feature and direct cactus. And to be clear, you are not selling plans. No. Right, okay. Not hard to follow. So a lot of some of your products include pills to treat erectile dysfunction and hair loss and you've recently gotten into Those sorts of products but for women in terms of birth control and prenatal vitamins, but these are really provocative as I'm wondering what we do about consumers demand for authenticity. Why was that the direction that you wanted to go? Yeah. So we Fundamentally started Hims and Her because it was really really hard to take care of yourself. In this country the average wait time to see a doctor is 24 days, average cost is $ 117. And people just aren't talking about what's embarrassing to them and I think there's this really modern Human experience of that googling and diving into reddits on like, what's going on with my body like something is out of control and I don't know who to turn to. And it's not like a cute little like, like a burden myself. That's like it's not like a cute little burden. It's like something weird and I don't know if my girlfriend's have had this before or what my next step is. And so we fundamentally believe Everyone deserves easy access to be able to take care of themselves and the way that we chose to do that is to speak directly to customers because for too long men's health was relegated to this idea of old wealthy white guy on the beach in running pants cuz he can afford $ 500 Viagra, Or, and on the women's side you're inundated with all of these wastes, you should be taking care of yourself. But when it comes to, if you have a UTI, good luck, you can't do that easily. When it comes to getting your birth control, 19 million people, more than the whole State of New York. And these are women of childbearing age so can't get access to birth control in their county. These are real barriers. And in order to get people's trust of a system that has systematically excluded them, and only gets worse for women only gets worse for marginalized communities. We had to take this like really direct, transparent Approach and for us a key piece of that was humor. Right? They are funny, definitely. [ LAUGH ] And I want to go to questions in a second. But Andrew, I wanted to ask you this, this this notion of creating authenticity. Walmart is so huge and has such a history and a legacy. I mean how do you think about that? across sort of stakeholders across consumer bases and across the products that you oversee? Yeah. What sort of brings you back to the the authentic message of Walmart? Yeah, I think when you think about authenticity at Walmart, it really goes back to what's our core mission. Save money, live better. And what are the values that we go after and supportive that and the customers incredibly smart. They know when you're being authentic to your brand and they know when you're being inauthentic. So it's really easy for us to use our core mission as a filter for what we focus on. And so how I translate that to product. For those of you who haven't met I have the best job at Wal- Mart. I am responsible for snacks, beverage and impulse, which include includes wine, chocolate, candy, chips, soda, so anything that's bad for you and tastes absolutely delicious. And so you think about when you're innovating on product and you're thinking about what the customer wants. It's really tapping into a ton of different sources on data. And o an example I used yesterday wa around kit kat. That customer's incredibly loyal, we get a lot of data from the supplier, we get a lot of data internal and then we get inspiration from other locations so social media we clued in on this massive fan following on flavoured kit kats and so in source now you've got kit kat duo and they've been teasing some new releases that I can't talk about on. On Twitter, but look for something innovative in that space in the future but really figuring out at a different level. Okay, here's what our customer is telling us they want us to stand for. And then how do we translate that down to a buyer level on products and innovation and making sure it's done in a Walmart way. Do we have any audience questions. Building authenticity. I'm wondering about I mean the data from Accenture sort of mentions consumers wanting brand Brands just take a stand and we haven't seen that quite a bit lately with you think about Nike and Colin Kaepernick and you think about Gillette and they're out about toxic masculinity and these are really provocative conversation starters. Do we think that every brand can do that or is there sort of a subset that So has that space depending on what it is they're selling or their relationship, I'm just wondering how we should think about, should I weigh out on that? Shouldn't I and what's the best way to do it? Give me thoughts of. I think it's clear when brands haven't done the work to understand what customers are coming to them for. And those are the examples you see that feel kind of icky and opportunistic where this like an old brand or new brand is like sliding into something and you're like, this is not where I want you. Thank you very much and they haven't done the work. I haven't done the active listening. For us as a new brand, two years old, we kind of tested into it. So when the heartbeat bands were a hot topic of interest, unfortunately in the spring, Andrew and I, who's the co- founder, woke up and we were just so mad and felt very hopeless. Because our whole mission is that we should be for everyone and everyone should have equal access. And so we did a really like 0 $ planned Instagram campaign where we just launched. We posted we said, If you agree, like this thing be anticipated, we get 10, 000 likes Within 24 hours, we got 150, 000 likes, which we of course raised and matched the dollars to, but that was a really clear activation point that we that that is what people are valuing about us. That ladders back up to our ultimate goal. And I think that cohesiveness was not was what made that a successful campaign forever. Right, yeah. Jasmine, do you have any thoughts on that? In terms of it. I hundred percent agree. I think that they're definitely topics where like, it just doesn't make sense for a brand to participate. It's like why are you here? This is not about you. And it, yeah, it can just get icky and awkward. I do think that there are times though where brands should be part of the conversation and Oftentimes can lead that conversation, but you have to earn the right to do that, right. And so the way we think about that at Uber is before showing up at the table, like we got to do some work first, right? And we're a brand that needs to do some work first. And in doing that work, then you get that extended invitation to lead and guide a conversation. Great. One question I have is sort of, I'm so curious about the influencer culture and I feel like a lot of people in the room might be as well. And I'm, I'm wondering just this is kind of a big question but where do you see it going? I mean, it's sort of I feel like we at peak influencer like People selling me secretively on Instagram is that something we're gonna see more of or less of? What do you think about that? Somebody [ INAUDIBLE ] I mean for us it was a key start to our business, but we actually didn't organize it if you can believe it because men have been so undersreved, we launched with men. For hymns two years ago, and we had all these people all these men sending videos of themselves unboxing hair kits for hair growth, which like, was not some not planned behavior or sending us videos of themselves in the shower singing into hair loss shampoo, like very great empowered things. But it was very different when we turned to the women's space which is very saturated in the influencer market and I think you touched on a really good point. You don't know despite all the measures that are in place on various social media channels you don't really know as a consumer what you are getting influenced by any more. And I think they're starting to be a high level of skepticism All right There. And I know for us we don't do anything transactional. We don't do anything. Do this for one post because it just doesn't. People are too smart for that yet now. [ LAUGH ] AlI right, all right, all right I think the authentic voice of the customer will continue to actually. Continue to grow, and I think that'll accelerate. I think the differentiator within [ UNKNOWN ] is often to say, is this a real opinion I can trust? Is this a real perspective? Have they actually used the product? But I think that the heart of it, that voice of the customer will only accelerate. Right, and I feel like This room is full of entrepreneurs and folks from legacy companies. I'm wondering if you don't feel like excuse me, if you don't feel like your purpose. And that purpose is driving an authenticity is clearly defined as a company, maybe you're thinking of starting a company and trying to figure out how to define that. Well, what's one thing that you think everyone should be thinking about? What's the first step? Yeah, I think if you're an entrepreneur and you're thinking about starting a company or a legacy company that's thinking about starting a business, I think, or arm of your business, I think, what's the mission? What's the problem you're trying to solve and what differentiates you from everyone else and I think that's the core. Of everything that you do, is my mission differentiated? Am I going to bring a different customer value proposition to the table? And then that can start to inform your strategy, and where you're going in the market, and what you wanna solve. But I think if you don't have a mission statement and you don't have a problem you clearly wanna solve, it's really hard to be successful. Right, it's amazing how often Hearing that come up the mission statement, the purpose throughout our conversations today. We're gonna have to leave it there. But thank you so much to all of our panelists for joining us. [ APPLAUSE ] Thank you. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Capturing The Attention Of The Ever Distracted Consumer

Capturing the attention and wallet of a more discerning—and distracted—consumer is harder than ever. We hear from leaders who’ve tapped into the zeitgeist to build businesses and buzz from obsessed fans.

Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. I'm gonna give you a great introduction, but so you are on Fortune's 40 under 40 list this year. You're just named to Bloomberg's list of 50 people who defined 2019 Because of this company that you started, there's so much buzz about Zilingo. Can you just tell us its origin story? How did it come to be? Okay, yes, absolutely. Thank you for having me. So you know how fashion and textiles there are 5 % of global GDP, everybody wears clothes, all of us are wearing clothes. Naturally it's a big market. Yet somehow this $ 3. 8 trillion industry is the most undigitized one of the most polluting, horrible, awful industries in the world. Everything that they say about fashion is true, right. It's filling up landfills, fast fashion is killing the world, killing the planet. People are consuming too much we're at peak apparel, every single thing that they say about fashion is is true. It's unsustainable. There are you know, sometimes there are little children and factories in Vietnam that are making the clothes that you and I are wearing in this room. We don't even know it. If I ask any of you. Do you really know how your clothes were made? Actually, we don't know. So, that's where we come in. That's where the lingo comes in. And while it started as a company that was providing tools to merchants, it's now evolved into much more the We try and provide transparency across the whole supply chain. We provide tools to fabric producers, mills, factories, and brands to transact with one another, and also software to run their businesses with full transparency. So that's human resource management software, ERP software, quality control software, line efficiency, and so on and so forth. And then we use all of those services and the data we collect to provide financial services to them. So it's now evolved into much more than just a set of software tools to help merchants sell to consumers. It's actually become much more about the entire supply chain and making it, Fair and transparent. Right, and you came up with this idea with your co founder when you were on holiday, right? Can you walk us through that. So it's actually a fun story, I was not with Michalel Venra at the time, I was in Bangkok and there is this market and for those of you who've been to Bangkok. There's this market called [ UNKNOWN ] which has just a lot of small buttons, and all these guys are getting left behind in the digital economy. Or at least they were. So all the big brands were selling online. These guys, they're 25, 000 of these [ UNKNOWN ] about one weakened market. All making their interesting products and then, you know, the number of people that were coming to buy them every weekend. It was dwindling. So the idea came about from okay, you know, these are some fantastic products but what if these merchants had tools just to enable them to compete in the online world So, that's what happened on that holiday in 2014. Right? So yeah. 2014 so you're really young company still. And she started as a platform for these merchants. But you did shift two years in to really focusing on the supply chain technology. And that's, I mean, that's pretty early to make such a pivot. Can you describe what that was like? As a leader to make that decision, and if you had any insecurities about it? Definitely. [ LAUGH ] I think. I'm insecure everyday and that is a challenge about, I think it's really, can I get pass this? And can I own it? Do I have enogh confidence in the data that we have? Is it, it's never perfect, and the cause of perfection is too high. So you still have to make decisions when this so called pivot which we call evolution. Sure call it an evolution of the business happened, it was actually much before everybody started thinking of b2b startups as sexy again, right. It was still very much the time of. Start of spending a lot of money, getting a lot of GMV and big valuations. So we were still in the middle of that kind of a market where we said, hey, you know what, this is not making a lot of sense. How will this company ever make money? How will this company ever be very valuable to the customers that it serves? And some of those first principle questions. We get to asking ourselves and we said, Hey we should be really solving the problem of what happens to the product before it gets to the merchant. Instead of trying to be one more app, or just one more app that's helps the consumer discover it because literally at this point in Asia, and 2016. Everybody is spending millions and 10s of millions of dollars trying to tell you to download an app. And I'm sure that happened here [ UNKNOWN ] just download this app, download this app, download this app. And everybody was doing that. But nobody was fix Anything that happened to the product before it got into that app that people were trying to get you to download? So that's where we thought, Okay, what this makes sense. nobody's doing it, but it's a little bit of a brave decision. Let's do it. So our investor base was really really supportive which was helpful. But [ LAUGH ] just as it happens, this was also the time where we found that financial services was gonna be an important hook in the entire process of doing this business, and that people weren't so confident about. Mm- hm. So our theme was confident, our investors were confident but banks and financial institutions didn't want to just as yet. Lend on our platform data just because we said it. So I think the crazy thing that sort of we went out on a limb and did there was we started lending from the balance sheet. So we said we have so much data on our platform. We know exactly which manufacturer is buying what from which supplier and selling to which brand and this is what's going to Brand X and country why If we believe in our data, let's lend and today we have lent over 100 million dollars with less than 1 % of non performing assets. And now all the banks want to work with us. Wow. So I'm glad it worked out. Wow, that's quite an evolution. [ LAUGH ] I'm wondering too about you said that you sensed a real change in how, Investors saw you in terms of raising money when you made this shift. Can you talk about that? Yes, definitely. I think two things happened about two years ago. One was the business, just the economics of the business improved significantly, as we moved away from just being another download the app To a much more holistic platform that was using the data for helping much ensure a lot of other things, SAS financial services and so on. The Economics improved dramatically. Obviously, I think that had a lot to do with investors sharing a lot of interest, because we were not just another money losing e- commerce startup. So that was one. Second was I think, that was around the time both in the journey of the company as well as just the scale of the business where people stop thinking of this as Some little girl is building a fashion startup to Okay, wait a second. This is a big supply chain company. It's truly disruptive. This is not just about one or two markets, it can be global. And I think just that was an interesting shift to see how people were perceiving both the founding team which is 50 % female, which is rare in tech in Asia. And, and the business itself. So it is traumatic. So you are in a year, it was dramatic, dramatic, dramatic or traumatic? [ LAUGH ] So you are in a stage of hyper growth you have outgrown and four offices and four years. You're looking for your fit. You're looking for your iPhone .>> Yeah just in Singapore ,>> just in Singapore. Yeah. and you've been open about the impact of that on you personally on your team, you said that you have a fear that that sort of growth will create Standard tech unicorn ****. [ LAUGH ] And I'm wondering where that fear we all have like a picture in our mind. [ LAUGH ] I'm wondering where that fear comes from and what you're doing to combat that fear? I'll by ourself. Start yourself falling into that, and your team falling into that. So I think, there's a lot of women in the room so we all drew up a picture in our minds what that looks like because we've all come across that sort of person. And I think it happens because I actually think that women tend to do it less, because we are always very, we question ourselves a little bit more and we tried to always be sure of our achievements before we claim them. So I think just as a woman let company, the risk is a little lower. But having seen that happen a lot What we try to do is we make sure that internally inside the company, we don't glamorize valuation. We don't glamorize fundraising. We don't glamorize metrics that are not related to margins or profitability or retention or things that will matter in the long run. It's not to say that we don't celebrate wins. There is definitely a culture of celebrating wins but there's always the sense of but you know what in the long run, we have to make it and to make it we need to do X Y & Z. So I think it helps to be realistic about achievements and then things like. Valuation, private market valuations and fundraisers, they don't really mean anything unless you can take it to a sensible conclusion. So as long as the leadership knows that it's useful, so we just try to make sure that's drilled in all the time I'm gonna go to questions in a moment. So if you start thinking about what you wanna ask them PD, so here, how many countries are you present in at the moment? 13. 13 and one of those is the US. That you just recently announced to investing $ 100 million in. Can you talk about the opportunity that you see here now for [ UNKNOWN ]? For sure. So the US is our fastest growing demand market which means that brands and businesss and ant a transparent and sustainable supply chain, more visibility are starting to work with us. The US is the largest or I would say it's comparable to Western Europe but Western Europe is part of a continent. So it's the largest country that consumes fashion in the world and a large proportion of the exports that come into the US actually come from Asia. So when we started thinking about the opportunity in the U. S, we actually came at it from the perspective of let us make the Asia sourcing that comes into the U. S. Anyway, let us make it transparent. Let us make. Make it sustainable. Let's make it responsible. And that in itself was a huge use case. But as we went along, we realized that there were a lot of factories in the US. And there's obviously, a whole new I wouldn't call it an issue whole segment in the market, which wants locally produced locally sourced And we wanted to help that become more digitized and responsible as well. So now as we're growing in the US we're seeing that we're not just working with brands that want transparency but also factories that wanna source better and provide a transparent supply chain to their buyers no matter where they are. Right. So the US is emerging as our fastest growing market now. And what about the trade war between, well, there's a lot at the moment. But I'm referring to the one between the US and China, and how do you see that impacting this sort of demand that [ UNKNOWN ] was receiving? See, I think the trade tensions are Are more of a fear creating sort of volatility creating. I would say every time there is something on the trade tension that triggers this response from brands, whether or not they are Whether or not the brand owner is it doesn't matter whether they lean left or right. They're all saying Can I have less volatility in my business, please because I don't know what is about to happen. So most of the brands are not coming to us and saying he moved my sourcing away from China. Of course, if they're sitting with 90 % sourcing in China, then some of them are starting to say that but It's on move away from China. Can you help me build a diversified portfolio of sourcing options so that I don't have a massive concentration risk on any one country, whether it's Mexico or China or the United States? And can you give me a set of options where I can optimize for, somewhere I'm optimizing for speed, somewhere I'm optimizing for margin, somewhere. Its quality. But can you help me transparently understand what I'm signing up for? Because in any case, even before the present government, there was already a shift happening towards sustainable sourcing, more transparency. A move away from China because of the changes in the labour arbitrage inside China is not that cheap to make in China anymore. There is definitely a big focus on sourcing locally. So some of these themes were already, at play, and now it's just it's happening all very fast and all at the same time. Right, well, are there any questions for in Chitti? We have one up here, in front and one over there [ BLANK_AUDIO ] And a third over here, get to as many as we can. Yes. Morning, Stacy Tank. Thanks for being here. I have a question about the social and environmental impact, the positive impact that you will be catalyzing amongst others over the long term. And there are a lot of things as a Kind of a big startup at this point, but still young, you have to focus on for the short term. But a lot of these positive social and environmental impacts will come more in the mid and long term, cuz they're glaciers, they move slowly. But what are the key measures of success that you all are looking at as a yardstick for that kind of success? Thank you, great question. You're absolutely right Today the reason that most brands and brand owners are moving towards a more socially responsible and sustainable supply chain is mainly because consumers are demanding it right. So, if you have a very bad quality highly polluting polyester or or not a socially responsible viscose and the product. The end consumer knows, especially in the developed markets, and that's putting an immense amount of pressure on brands to move to somebody like us as as opposed to a lot of the old school old economy competitors, which don't have tech and no transparency. And, I think, a big, the way to measure success right now is for us is just the percentage of sourcing that we do. On the whole of the business that we run, which is sustainable and responsible, however, a few months ago, this is an interesting anecdote. We ran into a problem because brands were just, they were more interested in appearing socially responsible than actually being that So we started doing R & D around around sustainable fabrics and we developed there are some brands that do it successfully. We developed a few products including, you know, shoes made out of bed bottle caps and. You know, banana peels, fabrics out of banana peels and things like that. And we presented them to brands and said do you wanna buy this and we didn't actually tell them that, you know the carbon footprint was so and so or that this was made out of recycled fabrics and they love the product so much We said look, you can make money and be socially responsible. So there's a little bit of a push. But the most helpful strategy is to have consumers ask for a reliable stamp of sustainability and responsible manufacturing. So I think if we can keep the pressure up on brands, it will help We have one another question over here. Hi Michelle Chenery director of international sales at Altria. I wanted to first say You are such an inspiring woman and I'm privileged to be sitting in the room right now. The other thing that I just wanted to ask is, you know, you've transformed your company a few times. Now and And have made it into something that is really aspirational for many. What were some of the triggers or pivot points that gave you the confidence to activate against some of those insights that you were seeing? Fantastic question. Well, I think we were just chatting about this backstage sometime back, and I think what I said was that There was a strong intuitive feeling that we were going in the wrong direction when we were just spending a lot of cash to grow fast but not, you know, not generating enough value for the merchant. That's how I felt. I went ahead and trusted my intuition at the point without enough, I wouldn't say the data was 95 %. There, I think it was 65 % there, and the cost of perfection would be too high. Like I said before, so we just went ahead and changed course. And we did it in a way we know, we were very small company, very few people just two years old. So it was easy to experiment. And as we started seeing results we said okay, this has to be a wider experiment and then that became the whole company. Today that experiment is 95 % of the company. And I think what helped was I was so young and I was so naive and I didn't know enough that I just thought that [ LAUGH ] It just doesn't make sense what we're doing, and what we wanna do makes more sense. We just went right ahead and shifted course and I think sometimes when there's too much of an experience baggage, sometimes it's a bad thing. But sometimes I forced myself to make brave decisions like we used to couple of years ago But I think it helps to have that sort of very forced principle thinking, if this makes sense and this doesn't make sense and this is why this will work and this won't, and just going ahead and experimenting. Amazing, and we should say, how old are you? 28. 28 [ LAUGH ] Fancy. Well, we'll have to leave it there. Thank you Ankidi so much for joining us. [ APPLAUSE ] Thank you. Thank you so much. Here. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Zilingo Is Making Fashion Fair, Connected And Transparent For All

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An interview with Zilingo CEO Ankiti Bose

Hi, everybody! So, Lara, you was a mentee on Fortune's global mentoring program in 2010. She came from Jordan and she had three mentors, Carol Bartz who was the CEO of Yahoo, Judy Olian who was the dean at UCLA, and [ UNKNOWN ] who was a partner at [ UNKNOWN ]. Lara, what were you doing then in your career and what are you doing now? Well I joined the, I was fortunate enough to be selected in 2010 to attend the mentoring programme and at the time I was working, I was running a digital news room of Duodents first independent news paper and when I was selected, I decided to. Development to this experience, and when I came back, there was a lot of new beginnings for me mainly I started an NGO to focus on women empowerment to increase, to remove the structural barriers that were holding women back from entering the workforce and staying there. And I also went into television. I pursued video journalism which I was very keen on and so I came into it was more of a like going from inwards all about me and when I came back from the mentoring program it was about outwards, looking at everything around me and all the women around me and Paying attention to needs other than myself. Great. Laura, what did a typical day look like with your mentors? It was fascinating. I had three mentors. They had a lot of things in common, but they had a lot of things that were different. So the common thing about my mentors with that they were. They would act and not react. So they would see something in my personality and they would change my program to fit it. They were connectors they expanded my network just like Michael voices did. They connected me immediately with 33 women from around the world that fascinated me, and they were mentees emerging leaders. And so there was an experience there. And there was also they would like, look into our weaknesses or challenges and they were connectors. So we would go out for dinner. And I would find myself sitting next to, at least let's say, and then I would realize why am I sitting there? Why is my name next release? And then when I was talking with the least I would realize that haha I had shared this challenge with my mentor this morning. So she put me next to this lady because she thought that this lady could help me. Of course six in the morning I would be running to the gym with one of them. The other one would take me around Pasadena on a bike, and she was like 20 years older than me and I couldn't keep up with her. And I would like to be so embarrassed like this is part of her lifestyle. And one of my mentors was, so I was about to get married that year, so, I would ask her about how she connected with her kids with such a busy work life balance. And she said, you see that tree top, tree house over there in my back yard? I built it with them. I was like but you're a lawyer, I was like how did you do that? She said, I read, I studied And I figured it out and I made it happen. I connected with my kids using our hand, using the soil. Of course Carol Bartz was, she was an amazing woman. She had a she had a treadmill in her office, and she spoke with all Yahoo members this one day over the Skype And whatever they use them, and she showed me how she can speak to thousands of people and get what she wanted. And one of the most important things you taught me was, if you go into a meeting and you find five people leave, nothing is gonna come out of that meeting. [ LAUGH ] Run. So and she was serious. The one common denominator of their resilience was that they were all cancer survivors. And they made it a point that it was insignificant in pursuing their career. They made me feel that they literally described their [ UNKNOWN ] sessions. They like one of them would walk me up to a picture and say, you see this picture here? I had just come back from a chemo session. And then I had this group picture and I was standing upright and nobody knew my situation. And other one told me, I would go into my chemo session, go back to my meeting, and sorry, if I needed to vomit I'd go back to the bathroom Wipe it away and go back into my meeting. And this is someone that has never been exposed to this. And I looked at them and I said, they are so resilient, they're fit. They're focused, they're authentic, they're real. They're committed and they're consistent. And they really don't wanna thank you for me. They didn't even expect me to thank them. They just wanted what was best for me. And they were able to share all their knowledge with me without any hesitation. Yeah. Wow. I'd love to hear from Cathy a little bit about your experience as a mentor. What made you initially want to be a mentor? And how did you manage that commitment? So how many in this audience are here for the first time by show of hands? Wow. So in 2008, I was sitting in your seats. And I heard from a number of priormentees like Laura about their experiences, and I was shocked and amazed at what a short period of time mentoring could do to change people's lives not only their lives but the way they paid it back in their countries. So it's like the adjusted justice Stewart 1964 tests for obscenity You know what, when you see it, and that's what drove me to mentoring. Great. And can you tell us a little bit about how you split that up? So I first thought it might be pretty daunting so of course when I heard people like Laura speak, I thought, well, this is something I'd really like to do. I'd like to use whatever power and influence I have to make more of a difference in the world. But I thought, I'm busy. It's 2008. I'm leading a global law firm, that's when the economy was starting to exit the the legal market and And I thought who's gonna be excited to be stuck with a lawyer through this program? And so I was here with Susan Wojcicki and this is preCEO of YouTube days and Megan Smith and this is before she became the Chief Technology Officer of the United States. And we were all taking the same thing. We've loved to do this, but we can't do it alone. So the three of us actually teamed and co mentored that first year. And then even then, due to your point, Laura about not reacting but acting. Even then I thought, if I just have this person watch me in the legal environment or in the law firm leadership environment, they're not gonna get out of this program what they want to get out of this program. So what I did was I connected into the women in Silicon Valley, some of whom were in this room like melon yen, and we came up with group mentoring and we would host dinners we would bring in and Winblad, Heidi Roizen Kelly McElhaney people to come in and help depending on whatever issue or challenge the mentee had. We would have strategy sessions we would my first mentee was Susan Rebecca from South Africa. And remember Susan, Susan gave up her pension to start an orphanage. And she ended up having 250 children in her in her orphanage. But she wasn't sustainable. So we had a session and we talked about how we could connect her into the Oprah net work and how she could have her orphanage. The women who work there. Make clothing and how They could make items and become sustainable so they didn't have to rely on donations. So that's the kind of work that we did. And it wasn't just me it was, with the fortune name and the State Department and Vital Voices. You can get a lot of people together and really make it a rich and rewarding experience, not only for the mentee, but for yourselves as well. Alyse, what are some other memorable ways that mentors have brought mentees into their lives whether at work or at home? Well, I can tell you, it is never what you expected to be. I mean you hear from Lara and from Kathy, it's nothing short of transformational. And I think one of the most powerful things about this program is that it shows these rising entrepreneurs and business leaders that Leadership is not what you thought it was. It is not the person maybe that you see leading a country. It is about seeking power using power platform voice to empower and that's why I think they always go back and do extraordinary things and thinking of Maria Hodge, Maria Gabriella Hodge from Argentina. She was mentored and went back. One of the earliest mentees went back and has trained and mentored 11, 000 women in the 12 years since she was mentored. Maria Pacheco in Guatemala actually started working with her mentor. Kathy Calvin who was the head of the UN Foundation. So mentors also come from many different sectors. I will actually tell all of you, it is like the bad **** women's club. [ LAUGH ] So you don't have to be the CEO of a company. But it's women who understand this idea, that we lead differently. And we lead wanting to have that legacy because for the 338 women who have been mentored over the last 14 years of this program, it has impact the lives of millions. And I can tell you that full stop because of all the follow on programs and initiatives that have been launched because these women go back and change. And they realize, yeah, I've got to empower others. Right. Do we have any questions in the room? No. Okay, we can keep going. We gotta give pad [ UNKNOWN ] sellers. [ LAUGH ] He has Patty. [ APPLAUSE ] Patty is a founder of this program. I think it's so powerful because it is a public private partnership between- Cofounder. Okay, cofounder. Cofounder, yes. Dina Pal. Dina Pal. When she was at the state apartment and then we quickly [ UNKNOWN ] Invited you in on the day two [ INAUDIBLE ] yes. Great. If I can, I've got a great story about Patty, so [ LAUGH ] I told her I would call her out in the audience today. So So, my first year I had mentored Susan Rumac, is I mentioned you had an orphanage in South Africa, and later that year I did not know Patty, but I was at All Things Digital, and I had a file and was stuck in my room. And Patty said, well, let's just meet for lunch after the conference. And we met, and Patty said, I really want you to go to the Global Forum, the Fortune Global Forum that's in South Africa. And I looked at my schedule and I said, I've got speaking engagements. I can't make this work. And then I thought, Patty, if you come with me to Johannesburg and go to the orphanage and write about the orphanage and then we drive this bus, that Megan Smith and Susan Wojcicki and I fundraise for Susan, if you drive that to the global forum, that all go to the global forum. Three weeks later. Three weeks later, [ LAUGH ] Three weeks later [ LAUGH ] and so we did that and we brought Susan to the global forum. We actually, we brought this bus that we had purchased with the help of a lot of people in Silicon Valley. We plastered it with pictures of the mentorship program of the orphanage. And parked it right in front of where Bill Clinton, Desmond Tutu, all of these people [ LAUGH ] were coming in. We were literally on the road 23 hours from Johannesburg to Cape Town, and We called and Mulcahy remember that or Ursula Burns. Ursula Burns from Xerox to get these signs [ CROSSTALK ] CEO of Xerox at the time because we wanted to get a big sign for the side of the bus. Chill and they ended up helping us. They did. And then Google Maps was really just this was. They were tracking it. Megan Smith had Google Maps was tracking our boy. Google was helping us like tracking us on Google Maps and it makes the entrepreneurial. And we ended up putting Susan front center at the global forum and spreading the word about this wonderful program. Yeah, so [ UNKNOWN ]. Cathy. [ APPLAUSE ] Cathy. I think, we've been [ UNKNOWN ] so important about this program is that you as a mentor are just as transformed as the mentee's I have right here, you all wondered; Why does she come on stage with her purse. [ LAUGH ] This is the Kathy Clutch, named after this woman because it was made by her mentee. She was so impacted by that, and we all bought a Kathy Clutch. [ LAUGH ] And I'll just say, there's even a bigger story here that So Menaul quit her job where she was serving other people and decided that the way in Morocco to empower women and to give them power, even within their personal relationships in their household was to give them jobs. If they had money, they had power. So she started a seal of luxury and started a high end purse company. You can go online. A high end purse company and all of these purses are made by rural women in Morocco and it was just phenomenal what she's doing to transform the world into a country. [ UNKNOWN ] loves this. Lara, what did you get out of the program? [ LAUGH ] Not the purse. I wanna buy- Not the purse, yeah. Yeah. Maybe I'll have a larpers The first thing I got out of the program was a sense of purpose. Where I was going so I was like a loose cannon. I had so much energy I would like a bullet. I didn't know I have any definition to my energy I, wanted something but I didn't find anyone to guide me and the program from the minute you land in The US until you finish you I think Michael voices like it puts it in a way that you will meet different experiences just fight before you meet your mentors like we had a weekend in Washington and every single person played a role in shaping this mentoring experience. For example, There was Han Valerie who had just survived, she was a mentee. She had just survived the Haiti earthquake and she literally survived because she left a meeting that she was in to meet her husband. And everyone in the meeting had died because she just crossed out and then everyone, that earthquake took place and she survived. So she was on the bus, we're going to this gala dinner in DC And I was like, You look amazing. Look, you look fantastic. How do you do it? And she looked at me, she said, this is not a rehearsal. This is it. You either live and enjoy every moment because you might lose it in a second. And then we went to the gala dinner and there was Beth Brooke, who was at the time working for Ernst and Young. She was also a mentor. And I had we all came with vulnerabilities. And we were very transparent. So I asked her, listen, I'm really bad at delegating. So how can I overcome that? I'm always worried that no one will give me the quality that I am used to giving. So she said I was the same thing. She acknowledged my weakness and she said But someone trusted you one time, someone trusted what you were doing so you need to trust 80 % of anyone that gives you work and work with them without imposing yourself to improve them. And then there was Amiri slaughters, who I'm sure all of you know You're at the State Department because I was part of the program and she said, I was about to think of, you know, getting married and worried about my career and the work life balance. And that's why I started my NGO. And I told her and she asked, she said, asked her, What about work life balance, and she said something, all these things that I'm telling you are things that I practice every day and she said Family comes first, what comes together? Not second. And so when I came back there was sense of purpose. It was, I removed it from my life and it became about the we, the you, the, the other people. For me, the most rewarding thing about leadership was that My mentors, they showed me, did not tell me, did not impose and I decided that this should be my leadership way. And I keep improving and just last year [ UNKNOWN ] hooked me with another mentor from Johnson & Johnson. Great, I think Laura that's all the time we have. Yeah. Input. Thank you all so much for talking about this program, [ LAUGH ] And you can talk forever. [ APPLAUSE ] If you have if you have any questions about how to sign up, come ask Elise or Fortam. Thank you [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

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[ MUSIC ] Thank you, my love. That was incredible. Yeah, I don't know what to do after that. [ LAUGH ] We were just watching backstage. Are we just gonna public- cry the whole time? Yeah, we'll do our best to keep it together, no promises. So as you all just heard, Grace's has just released an album. And it just comes out such an interesting point in your career. You've been releasing music sort of non stop since You were not long out of your teens. Yes actually 19 I think okay, so I'm gonna go through it so you your original band formed and you're still in college. This is Grayson the nocturnals you guys released four albums .>> Yes You were doing these collaborations. You heard the mention of the with the work with Kenny Chesney Yes. And you put out a solo record midnight in 2015 and then nothing. Everything stopped. For almost five years and you said that during that period you actually thought that maybe your career as a professional musician had kind of run its course. Yeah. So take us back to to that, that and tell us what changed your mind and gave us this new album. I, I was mad at music. I didn't know who to blame so I thought wouldn't it be easy to just say. This is something I have done my whole life. It's something that I learnt to do. I didn't learned I just had it. And, do I need a microphone, okay. All right. Can you here me now? Hey, I had growing up knowing how to make music and knowing to remote But I wasn't at peace with why music had chosen me. And then as a teenager I got swept up in it and my band and there's all these people that wanted to come see me and I was a very confused kind of outlier in the music industry. And I just though For all the success, there's also a lot of pain that comes with fame, and even just a little bit cuz I'm really not that famous, nobody here knows who I am. [ LAUGH ] Couple of people maybe, but Show hands. It's the people who asked me to come here. [ APPLAUSE ] And I think- Maybe more peopel than you think. [ LAUGH ] The important thing to realize is that as a young person you don't know Who you want to be and I have so much more of an understanding of who I am now. And I think the more I got to know myself the more I wondered if music was actually my calling or if it was just something that I was really good at that got me attention. So this time off was really important for me to understand because so many people have been hurt. I fell in love with my record producer making a record that was supposed to be a record with my band. And it was all all males except myself and I found myself in this position of wanting to have my like, Cindy Lauper, Annie Lennox, Pointer Sisters, Donna Summer dance record and I was like right guys. This is gonna be great. And they were just like no that's It's not what we're doing here. So that's why that record became a solo record. And through the process, my producer was someone who I wasn't looking to fall in love with but I did. So it felt like a good time to take a break. The band had broken up. My marriage had fallen apart. I was married to my drummer. I met him when I was in my teens and, so there was a lot of growth that happened in that process. And what made you think you'd gone through this process you had gone solo, you had gotten divorced. You've gotten remarried, you had a baby. What made you think okay, now we've been through that. It's It's time for a new album. I didn't I was just broke. That is a great answer. No, I mean, there's a lot more. But, but there is a reality. I wanted to explore the possibility that I could take another career and I took, House painting very seriously when I was a young kid, cuz it paid for my first two records. So before I was a signed artist, I paid for all my albums making houses look beautiful. So I thought I could do that again and make the same amount of money. And it turns out that's not how it works. Yeah, no, that does not sound like how it work. [ LAUGH ] You have also said that this, you've compared this new album to a journal and said it's your most personal, and you're writing songs about these things, about some joyful times in your life but also some painful times. So what it's like to take those like most intimate moments and put them out there where all of us can listen to them and pick over them? I still kinda can't believe that I've done that. And it's hard to express ideas that you have inside your head. I think if anyone's ever written down that idea that you think is so brilliant on a napkin at a restaurant or whatever it is And then suddenly someone has taken that sketch or that thing that you wrote in there, like taking it super seriously like there's a board of people that they're like, Okay, so we're going with the blue shoes on. [ LAUGH ] And you like, no, no, no, no that was just initial thought. And from me the journal entry. Aspect of this was that these weren't songs I was putting on a napkin and sharing with anybody, they were my napkins that were staying in my drawers in a time when I didn't really know how or if music was gonna become a component of my life again. But what happen was, I needed to heal and I needed to process When we were talking about this before you mentioned among the you've talked about the divorce and the falling in love and and the baby but that there was another very personal experience that you had that kind of opened you up to making this record and that you just hadn't really felt like you've been in the right Environment, to talk about that. Do you wanna talk about it? This is the only place I think I've had the thought that it would be the right time to share it and that is that I went through a miscarriage and so many of us have. And I know that that's something that's completely normal but I only know that now Because no one told me that it was normal. And so going through the process of it. Having met someone and falling head over heels and really experienced this tidal wave of love. Based on the fact that like on a biological level I've met my person that I'm supposed to have kids with And then finding out that maybe I couldn't and facing the reality that was something real and then the excitement that we were pregnant and then losing that was sad and hard. I think a lot of people understand what that feels like but then. And I watched the most incredible transformation of all these strangers then turning into angels. And not just angels that were coming from me to help me, but they felt helped by me, that I gave them the permission to talk about it. And everyone started telling me their experiences and more than half the women in the room and had miscarriages. Wow. And I couldn't believe it and I thought to myself, wow, maybe this isn't just about that experience, maybe miscarriages. Happens all the time. But maybe miscarriages are a metaphor for everything else that happens all the time that we don't talk about. So, falling in love with someone when you're married to someone else is a **** thing to have happen. It's not fun. And it's not fun for anyone. But when you're not inviting it, and then it happens to you, and then you you talk about it a little bit. It's amazing how many stories have come back to me. It's amazing how many people felt like they finally, I was inviting the truth for myself and that made it possible for other people to come to me and feel connected to me in a way that I had never invited in before. I think that's why so many of us turn to music is in those times when you're looking for that. Common experience. And I think this is actually a weirdly good transition. I did not plan this, but one of the reasons I was so interested and excited to interview Grace is that she grew up in Vermont and I grew up in Vermont, and it's just not a place- Where's Vermont? I think in my experience at least if you grow up in a more world place, a place where maybe you don't have many people that you know who go on to careers like Grammy nominated And I think in Vermont, there were such, such a small collection of musicians that it made it possible for me to kind of find my footing as a big fish in a small pond, no pun intended because fish is the only other [ UNKNOWN ] that came out of Vermont [ CROSSTALK ] Yeah. [ LAUGH ] [ LAUGH ] But I think the person there was a few people but my mother said to me, Grace, famous occurs. Find a way to be famous in small circles and matter to a few people and have your gravity hold its place. Trying to cover the world with your icing isn't gonna work because there's just too much there. Yeah. And so I'm exploring those layers now and I'm grateful to my mother for reminding me of that. That's wonderful. Do we have any questions for grace in the audience? I'm looking for the paddle. Okay. Yes, we do have one back here. If you could just wait for the yellow paddle to make it to you. Not a question. Just a comment. I've seen you performance Seattle, Washington and my huge, huge fan. So if you haven't listened to Chris Potter, you're amazing. thank you for sharing. Thank you. Well, you're about to get to [ APPLAUSE ] That's so sweet. Okay, I just okay, no let's do a question wrap up over here. I was just gonna say again to Allie, I worked at Viacom if each one when you are, artists, so it's great to kind of be reacquainted for your sleater. Thank you. Thank you so much. I've also seen you in a [ INAUDIBLE ] [ LAUGH ] Okay, so some people have seen me, it's very cool. This is a different setting than I'm used to so I just assumed that everybody here is a CEO or like have started some start up company and I'm like, I can play with guitar. [ LAUGH ] Well, you're all are about to hear it for yourselves if you have not, I just have to literally ask you one very quick question, which is, you describe yourself as a space nerd. Yeah. And your name is Sagan. Sagan. And very briefly, like, where did that come from? Well, I fell in love with a man who was as much in love with space as me and Having come through high school being discouraged from stem like all science technology, you know, engineering and math was not my forte and when I tested poorly, I found myself in a position where. I was like okay, well I just going to do the music thing, which is I think that's kind of where we started. But I was approached by NASA to be an outreach representative and to be someone who could be a spokesperson for NASA, especially women in STEM. So I made a music video with one of my songs called look what we've become which is a song about Thank you so much Grace. [ APPLAUSE ] We are now going to get a special performance from Grace Potter. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

One On One with Grace Potter

Grace Potter discusses her career, marriage, and growth as an artist.

So we're gonna stick with the sports theme just for a second if you bear with me. I can't run very fast. [ LAUGH ] Well, this isn't ab muscles ripping, but I was doing all this research on you, as one does to prepare for an interview. And there were commencement speech videos of you and then there was this video of you doing this scooter race with the head coach from the Seahawks, NFL team. So what what was going on there? I'm starting to think that my mom was right. The things live forever on the internet. So do- That's right. So It's kind of hard to explain where that came from. But the notion of play, I think, is a really important cultural transformation. And at one time a couple years ago, I rode a scooter out onto the stage for a kickoff. By the way, the person following me rode out in a Maserati, so it was little A bit of a message there to say like let's not take ourselves so seriously. And when I met with Pete Carroll he was giving me some coaching on how to coach and he saw the scooters on the wall. He said, do you want to raise and I was like Hell yeah. And so we, This is in front of your employees? This was this a spur of the moment thing we raced down the hallway and they collected very quickly and then a lot of videos kinda popped up [ LAUGH ] in some interesting places and in the OSHA complaints were really stunning. [ LAUGH ] So I'm, It's a good segue though, into the culture piece and Pete Carroll, the the Seahawks head coach actually has this program and it's some kind of mind training. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but tell us about how you've approached that internally and what this has to do with culture and transformation. Yeah, so culture in my opinion, It's really about how people come together. It's the character of a company. And when you're trying to transform a company, you've got to have culture as a piece of it. But that's not the only thing. I think it's one of the most important things, but its mission, mindset and culture, I think are the three levers that you pull To accelerate any change of any kind, and the culture piece the people piece of it is probably the most important and appealing to everybody sense of authenticity who they really are not the persona that they build, to try and you know, come to work and be the thing that they think the company wants to be. But rather showing up as the person that they really are. And I try and use whatever techniques possible to allow that to happen, to enable them to come and be their authentic self. Because I think that's when you start getting to the real conversation. So an example of a techique would be. Riding a scooter with somebody. It's pretty quick. When you're in heals and you're like you want me to ride a scooter, well, I also have a trampoline in my office, but that's different story. [ LAUGH ] We'll talk about that some other time. It's interesting because that's not like brining your authentic self to work and Some of the other lingo we hear out of Microsoft now and obviously a big emphasis on empathy, scaling empathy. That is not the association that any of us would have had with the company just a few years back. So, what has, That happen, yeah, so [ UNKNOWN ] and [ UNKNOWN ] lays it out really well in this book Hit Refresh but basically when he took over almost six years ago, He saw the company is on the brink of obsolescence. We were sort of stagnating growth was hard to find and our technical capabilities weren't really resonating with the market. And he saw that not only did we need to play in this cloud market, but that we were going to have to very quickly change so much more than just our technical capabilities He redefined the mission so empower every person in an organization on the planet to achieve more. If you're gonna do that, you're gonna probably need to understand what those people and organizations need. Which means you're gonna have to have this [ UNKNOWN ] muscle. I don't think empathy was at the core of our old culture, we're sort of the know it alls. And we wanted to become the learn at all so that we could become more empathic. So you mentioned the cloud infrastructure and you've made a lot of headway there and a lot of headway in general very impressive. When Sachin Nadella became CEO in 2014, the company's market cap was at 315 billion and now it's A bit over one trillion, with a T. So I wonder, though. Can you talk some more about how got anyway goes hand in hand with the empathy piece? Sure. And the culture piece, because Cloud infrastructures seems. Like a little bit separate from from all of them that. All right, well, I think it's a couple things. The first is we're not thinking about our share price because as soon as we start thinking about our share prices when you when you get complacent we're thinking about our customers business outcomes, their goals and what they're trying to achieve. In this digital world, I mean, the world is becoming a computer. Everything is getting connected. We're awash in data and it's a race to figure out who can get insights from their data quick as they can transform their business model. And if you think about your own products, or you think about your stock price You're not spending nearly enough time thinking about your customer outcomes. And that shift that Microsoft made, wow, instead of thinking about our own capabilities and telling our customers what we think they should do, maybe we ought to think about what they wanna do. Because the truth is, Cloud infrastructure is just one of the many enablers. There's a lot of layers of technology in there Is the process of change and bringing people together to innovate on top of a technology platform. That's the hard stuff. Cloud infrastructure. That's I mean, the technologists would argue with me, but that's table stakes. It's that piece on top that actually differentiates Microsoft new from Microsoft, old. So what are you seeing with your customers? Because obviously you do a fair bit both internal and external to the company. So are you. Are you seeing them applying some of the same shifts that you've made on the culture side, not just the technology side? Yeah, well, the ones that are successful with digital transformation, that's exactly what we're seeing. Because again. Tech, not great technology is table stakes. It's how the people come together to drive innovation that really matters. And the customers that focus on innovation are winning and they're asking us something different. I think in the old days, they used to sort of expect us to come with our technology game. Now they're sort of saying, Hey, we noticed that you've changed By the way, we've made mistakes and we've learned a lot and we've gotten some things right. And what we're learning, what I'm trying to drive through the U. S. business is to actually bring that story board, that learning, to our customers because it's valuable. You know, Kate, how do you actually get the entire sales force to think about business outcomes instead of products? Growing what the total pie could possibly be for the company. Please be thinking of questions for Kate because I'll turn to you guys in just a minute here. But I wanna ask you also about some of the employee backlash because this is something that Microsoft is not the only one dealing with that, obviously. Salesforce and Google and several others, we have parents here on stage here tomorrow, are having to grapple with a lot of the same issues and that backlash and protest against some of the government contracts, especially DoD contracts that have been awarded to tech companies recently. So you just Very recently won the bid for a hotly contested $ 10 billion Pentagon cloud computing contract. This is at a time when you just recently had employee protest. Now some employees are protesting this latest contract. What is the key to communicating the decision from the top leadership? With the understanding, of course, and the appreciation for the fact that not everybody will be along with you? Agree? Yeah, and will agree. Yeah, so what I've seen and what I love about Microsoft [ UNKNOWN ], and I've been there two and a half years now. Is we have a process for it. It starts by being grounded with our purpose. I talked about our mission of empowering the world to achieve more that's about driving productivity. But we quickly go to a place of listening to the concern and you know, for Our employees that are concerned about us providing technology to war fighters. It's about listening and understanding how does that conflict with our purpose, our mission, if it does, and we harness the power of thought leaders inside and outside the company to really sort of reflect And then the senior leadership team at Microsoft, makes a call and this call is if we're really gonna be a company that uses a technology platform to enable the world to achieve more. Then we need to provide that technology to our government, that we elected to protect our freedoms. Mm. And that's the answer. And, you know, we make provisions for employees to move to other parts of the business where they don't have to work on services that directly impact that contracting And Sachin Nadella has said that there is this understanding and it's okay if not all employees agree. Right. Do all of the senior does the senior leadership team have to agree and be united on that and where they without decision? I don't know the answer to that because what I see is kind of like this thorough analysis and the logic to get there and I think that that's what's important. As well as the very, very thorough communication with the entire company about how we got to that decision. And that's I think the part to reflect on is that there is a process for assessing and communicating and we also make decisions to pivot away from opportunities I've seen A number of times where employees have put concerns on the board about selling technology to entities where we think there's something nefarious going on, we're extremely quick to assess it and to actually not pursue an opportunity when that happens. So there's lots of stuff on both sides. I think the tech laughs You get one side of the story for sure. Okay, questions for Kate, question back there. Hi, I'm Jackie, I'm with the Gate's Foundations, sp we're neighbors. Question for you we talk a lot about designing for women. And when you design for all, you often design for men. So could you share a little bit about how you think about design whether that's product or services and gearing that specifically towards women Yeah, I think it's a great question. So it's about representation. And that's why we're working so hard to build a more diverse population inside of Microsoft across every function. And I'm the first female president of Microsoft US. [ APPLAUSE ] Thanks. I'm excited about that. You know, since I've come to the company, we've transformed the leadership team. It's more than half female, the people who report to me. And we have three African American women on the team reporting to me. Yeah. Which is only just the beginning. Our CFO is Hispanic And our general council is Indian. So we're working very hard to create diversity because I think you need diversity inside in order to be able to design for all of the under represented populations. Other questeions? Back \ g a couple over here. Hi, Kate Stacey Tank. Good to see you. We came to visit you about a year ago and talked about the transformation work that was happening and I have more of an anecdote and a little bit of a question. But about six months ago, my son was playing hockey and shot a hockey puck into his iPad. Just knocked the time clock over it's such a dramatic. As he was thinking about his replacement device, he said something really interesting to me. He said Mom, I really want a Surface. And it stopped me in my tracks. This is a kid from age three who said he was dying to work for Apple when he was a grown up. And I remember when we ever give Me call you, I am telling you Is this a plan to lure the audience? [ LAUGH ] I also use a surface. It's really interesting. He loves to draw. Yeah, I remember when we were in the conference room with you and I looked around the table there are a bunch of people that were using Apple devices And you said hey, we're device- agnostic. Right. But what I was wondering is, in your quest for humility and being in this quest for learning, maybe it made you better at making products too because you want people to choose the Surface. When I walked into that room and saw the Apple devices, it made me uncomfortable. I was at Microsoft. I wanted to see Surfaces around the table. But maybe somehow through the humility came connection to customer and better products. I think it's a really good point. And I think one of the keys to the success of Sati's vision has been to completely open the Microsoft ecosystem. So it used to be narrow and proprietary and focused only on our products and that's not what the opportunity is in the world. We wanna meet our customers where they are, when whatever device or form factor they want on whatever operating system they want in whatever experience they envision and the reason why we created the service actually, this is more opinion than fact, one of the my beliefs is that the reason that we created the Surface devices Is to help the world imagine what it could be like to really push the forefront of design in the context of what is thought of as a commodity device. And I thought, at the point where we launched service, we were losing a little bit of that innovation in the marketplace. And I think it's back in spades and that's a great thing and yes, I want lots of surface share in the US market and as a whole globally for Microsoft but I think the world is a better place with competitive devices because that's what our customers want. We we do unfortunately need to wrap in just a few seconds here but I thought it would be a good time to mention this quote from from Satya Which was something along the lines of you don't join Microsoft to be cool. You joined Microsoft to help others be cool. Would you say that that kind of sums up what Microsoft is today and are you okay with that? Totally okay with that, I was never the cool kid, [ LAUGH ] So I feel like I'm finally at home. You know, and I think it really speaks to this notion of making other people cool is about abdicating all of your self interest to try and provide what they want. It's about focusing on their outcomes and That's what I'm trying to train the Salesforce to do, and I think we're on a good path to do it, but we got lots more work ahead. Well, thank you so much. I'm sorry we didn't get to all of your questions, but you can catch Cape scootering down the beach later, so Thank you Kate. Thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Embracing the Digital Era

Microsoft grew up with the digital revolution, both driving the change and evolving with it. How does the company look toward the next stages of the tech era as ethical issues become more complex and its workforce becomes more vocal and opinionated?

This year has been such an amazing year for women's sports and the two of you have played a big role in that. So thank you so much for being here. Alysia we just saw a clip from a video op ad that you did with the New York Times. This was in May, Running on an extremely high level. So, clearly that's something you struggled with for years privately. Why did you decide that it was time to come forward? Well, ultimately, you know, we keep talking about the NDA and what was technically broke within terms of the contract and what you're not supposed to say what is in it or Omitted it within the contract and in this case, the omission of any sort of protections within maternity leave or pregnancy did not exist for women athletes. And I ultimately decided to speak up, because there's no examples for women before me. And I needed to be the example for women after me I think one thing that we didn't see on that clip that was really amazing to me is that is wasn't just about your pregnancy. It was also essentially you weren't going to be paid until you were to running again, so Alicia is well known as the pregnant runner. You raced while you were eight months pregnant. And then you came back six months postpartum, 10 months postpartum. You won championships. But you were you had a very young child, you were still breastfeeding. You actually had had a situation where your abdominal muscles had split in your pregnancy and you are running with them taped together. Can you tell us what that was like? [ LAUGH ] A little hardcore. To me it was a space of silence to be completely honest because I was the only one that was by myself and I'm in this Old Boys Club where if we have any, women's rights that we are fighting for nobody is at the head of the table that's fighting with us or for us. And, ultimately, you know, when you see your contract laying in front of you, that's, that's part of your livelihood. It's who's going to be, I'm the one that's going to be feeding my family and the family that I've started and all of a sudden. Now that I've become that pregnant runner, you find out that actually this livelihood that you thought you were gonna be able to sustain is not gonna be possible just because you decided that you also wanted to be a mom and have a career. And so when [ LAUGH ] we talk about what was that like? It was a space of loneliness, it was space of darkness, and just trying to express Hey, here's what we would actually need. Here's what would be helpful. Luckily, I did have great PTs and, physical therapists that were women that were behind me saying, you know what, the worst thing that you could do is rush this, I would just take your natural course of action, and I gave myself the peace of mind to just take my natural course of action. The only part that wasn't completely natural was taping my abs together and I got to be completely honest relatively lucky that I was able to win Nationals 6 months postpartum and get my first quarter payback and this is actually after I left Nike and went with A6 and it was the same way. You know, just a bunch of men at the side of the table that not understanding what. Women face and you know, coming back into that winning, breaking an American record winning a gold medal. You know winning another Championship at 10 months postpartum with my daughter, you know on by my side. asking to nurse like right after winning a championship was something that wasn't an example for anybody because we silenced and we thrown all of our other women away. So. Yes, unreal, so Jessy, I wanna talk about surfing also, and the big news this year in surfing is the surf league has Achieved equal pay. And I wanna make sure I'm getting this right. It's the first US- based global sports league to provide equal pay. Yes. For men and women. Yes. [ APPLAUSE ] Pretty cool. Yeah, it's a huge deal. Obviously many sports are struggling to get there. And I wanna talk about how you did it. But I also wanna talk a little bit first about your experiences as a pro surfer. You, I believe got your first contract at 15? Yes .>> You went on to be number four in the world? Before retiring. And I'm curious about what experiences you had as a woman surfing that informed what you want to do now that you are running the actual league. For sure. So I was pro surfer for a long time. It sarted when I was really young. You know a few things very young to be getting paid to serve and I always had great sponsors and I was always super competitive and you know, like competitive athletes we love to win, and it's a very interesting kind of space for you and your winning prize money And that prize money is not the same as the man that standing next to you on the podium. I only have won one championship tour event in Mali. That's our version of the top tier of the sport. And I won $ 10, 000, I won a tenth of what the men were making. A tenth? A tenth, and it's We saying to young kids, 15 year olds who are signing their contracts and, even people who'd come before me. I was talking to one of our world champions in the 90s from 1990 and she said, It feels like the women belong, it's a big thing for you to feel valued like that. Really worked hard to stabilize the platform and to elevate us as athletes. So we've had this multi strategy which culminated with more events, more prize money. And then last year, we just kind of felt like it was the right time and also the right thing to do. There's so many women in the world now, that a Fighting for those things and we really wanted to be like a leader in the space and I mean for me as an ex pro surfer to be here and be telling you that surfing of all the sports is a leader in gender equality is like I would have laughed at you if you told me it was like when I was a young kid. Yeah .>> I have another question for Lisa but I'm going to come to you guys for questions in a minute. So start thinking about whether you have them for our athletes. You came forward, we saw a number of other female runners speaking out. Some women saying they'd experienced what you'd experienced. And then very recently, Mary Cain coming forward to talk about, essentially sort of psychological abuse that she she'd suffered. While training with Nike and while training with a prominent coach then just this week I don't know if you guys saw this bunch of Nike employees were marching to protest how the companies treated women. So you unleashed something. What do you think we're going to see like, is this a see change for women? Yes. Absolutely. I think. Most of us, I feel like, in here, [ LAUGH ] are women. We enact change. This is why we need seats at the table because when we have our voices heard, we ultimately band together and we make those voices amplified and louder. And we allow for people to recognize why this is a problem. And I think one of the greatest things is what I'd seen yesterday was The employees at Nike, they have their paychecks on the line. This is their job. This is what exactly what I was fighting for, our livelihood and we have many women athletes that are still sponsored by Nike that ultimately people are wondering why they're not saying anything. And I'm like, they sign these contracts that could be up to four years long. Some of them six and if they say anything now all of a sudden, they're worried about If they are gonna have an opportunity earning a living and fighting for their dreams. And so, yes, the sea of change is exactly what we're looking for, it's exactly why we need to speak up, why we need to band together, because ultimately if my voice was just one that was out there by itself, I ultimately would under being To be honest, dead in the water alone. Okay, let's see if we have any questions out there. Okay, I see a yellow paddle over here. If you could introduce yourself also. Sure. Claire [ UNKNOWN ] Hi Alicia. Hey, go Bears. Yeah, go Stanford, former competitor [ LAUGH ] [ LAUGH ] [ LAUGH ] [ INAUDIBLE ] I have had many laps together on the truck. But a question to the point you just made which is that change really started when you spoke up and then others felt more comfortable coming to the table. And so, now there are other athlits. Yeah. Speaking out But you made a great statement saying when it comes to the seats at the table, it's largely men. And so at a corporate level, with a bunch of corporate badass ladies here in the In the room. What do you think we can be doing to address some of the issues in tract and field, in surfing, and all of the sports from the business side? Is that what really makes a difference to them at the end of the day? Yeah, I think, what we're talking about is largely systemic. It's not just within sport. I think when we look at ourselves as leaders, we, when we have an opportunity to be in the room, and we're fighting for a seat at the table to make a seat for ourselves, you know, you might see a seat off to the side and just slowly start inching your way in there and I think don't be afraid. To say you know, when you see a space where someone's putting out some marketing campaign that seems very very male dominated to have an opportunity to say you know, how do you thought about this sort of marketing strategy, had you thought about her worth in this marketing strategy I think that's a lot of what we see with missing. You know you're watching all these marketing campaigns in particular in sports and you're seeing them relate to. Men and we have all these amazing women who were not seeing the relatability and how it pertains to you because ultimately, like you've talked about, our stories are devalued. They're paying us a 10th of what they're paying the men because we don't see any value of that the people that care about sports are men. And that's clearly not the fact obviously, then there wouldn't be any women within sports. So I think from on a corporate level When you guys have these discussions about, influencers or from a marketing perspective, and you have a space of insertion, I really would try to tell the stories for women as best as possible. And I know it's difficult. I've been there obviously, but don't be afraid to and I think one of the things that we saw happen at Nike two years ago Was when one woman was afraid to speak up but had a few conversations around the lunch table with other women. Instead they put together an anonymous packet that express their concerns and their feelings then they ultimately [ UNKNOWN ] on the desk of the CEO. I think Finding these ways to band together, and unify cuz I understand the fear of losing a paycheck and understand the fear of not having an opportunity to climb the ladder. But if we never ever speak up, we're never ever gonna be able to climb those ladders anywhere. Do we have other questions? Now Okay, I have another one. Wait. Sorry I missed that. There's a hand over here. And the paddle is coming. Hi there. This is a slightly different topic, but it's certainly been a story also in sports in a very much involved sponsorships and I'm curious about How the influence of global culture is also impacting how you all think about your work specifically. And so for example, China and the NBA and how that refracted across so many sports figures individually but also the league, and then many brands and so I'm curious We're in Tokyo 2020. Last week we just qualified the first ever American women's surfing team. For us to be on that kind of, yeah it's sick. [ LAUGH ] [ APPLAUSE ] Yeah and it's amazing, it's an amazing moment for our sport, to be on that global scale and have so many All the young women in different places in the world be able to see surfing as a real sport. We're actually starting the year next year in the women's tour in China. We have our first, the first big international events going to be in China. So is that a new market for you? We only have one minute left, and I just wanna end by acknowledging something that happened for Alicia in September, is that right? At the IAAF World Athletic Championships. Yes, mm- hm. She was awarded two bronze medals for races that she won in 2011 and 2013. Yeah, thank you. > [ APPLAUSE ] [ UNKNOWN ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Athletes, Achievement & Fight for Equal Pay

Sports

We’ve heard from star athletes from team sports about the fight for equal pay. But in the case of the individual athlete, the fight is on another level– as it impacts branding, representation and their own identity.

Maven and something like Uber and Lyft is that you as a consumer are actually driving. But so how does that how does that fit into the overall landscape with Uber with Lyft? with other ride hailing as opposed to car sharing services? What what part of the market are you trying to fill So it's interesting. So Maven is the car- sharing business at General Motors. And our mission is really to help reshape car ownership by connecting communities to cars through technology. And the easiest way to think about Maven is to think of it as a digital platform that comes to life as an app. Service that people want to use it for business but need a car and don't have or they can be used for personal use, which is the car sharing side of it, and if they want to run a longer errand, or the field if they wanna go on vacation, And so we're really not. I would say we're part of the ecosystem of ride- sharing but providing cars to people who want to participate in that gig economy. And so that's how we're part of the, of the ecosystem. So they're actually a lot of them are the people that are delivering, Absolutely. Okay. okay. We have I would say we have two main offerings. One is for what we call it and it's actually called Maven [ UNKNOWN ]. It is for the people who are trying to participate in the economy and one to drive again for all these services. Then we have another offering that's called Maven car sharing, which is more for personal use. Mm hmm. And is that I mean, is that for the same type of consumer who would take who would use Zipcar who would do something else or what kind of what part of the market are you targeting? On the personal side it is and and on the on the business side The cars need to be certified by Uber and lift and they have to be in certain conditions and the drivers need to have a certain insurance policy to drive them. So it's a little bit different and another one A big difference between the services is usually on the ride sharing side. A lot of the people are driving them on a weekly basis, or even monthly because that's their living on the car sharing side. A lot of people are actually driving them either by the hour or by the day because it's just for short for short term, use. Honestly, Jen, I think the biggest and what makes it all fascinating is that the world is changing, right? The world of mobility is changing the options that we have available to us are changing. And what it looked like five years ago was very different and what it's gonna look like for five years from now it's very different and so Think it's all about options people having more options. We are experimenting with this car sharing world but you have micro mobility which is another major, in this face with what we call the transportation in that last mile, right. So for short distances How can you get there quicker? So bikes, scooters, so the options are just proliferating in a good way. Mm- hm, yeah. So all of the above in terms of what you're looking at. Everyone's talking about autonomy, autonomous vehicles How is that going to play a role in Maven's business, in GM's business? How is it already, sort of where are we in the timeline of that technology from your perspective? At GM we really believe in a world that's going to be all electric and autonomous. And it's really part of the vision that was mentioned of a world with zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion. And autonomous vehicles are gonna be a major driver of that. And so it's a journey towards this vision it we're not gonna get there tomorrow, but it is what drives all of our business and what guides us and so elect both electric vehicles so adoption of electric vehicles is picking up Autonomous vehicles are under development as we speak, and making great progress. And then in the meantime, we have things that we put on the road today that are really stepping stones to that. So for example, we have, we call them active safety features. Like Forward Collision braking where the car can detect that you're going to you're about to crash on another vehicle in front of you and actually automatically breaks or supercruise, which is Is our hands free driving technology. These are all things that when we are ready to put them into the market, we put them in the market but it's all towards getting us to again an all electric and all autonomous future. And I think if you stop to think about it, it the power of what the world can look like when we get there, I think [ UNKNOWN ] does From when we talk about zero crashes, when you stop to think about it. Every year you have over 1 million people who get killed in traffic accidents around the world and about 90 % of those are by human error. Right so if you are at if you're at a point where you have technology that actually prevents these crashes imagine how much safer the world can be right? On the emission side with electric vehicles. Today in the US cars and SUVs that are on the road today they account for about a fifth of us carbon emissions. Think of a world with will that will have only electric vehicles and how much cleaner that will be. Our CEO Mary Barra is is always talking about how we're going to see in the next five years, more transformation that we've seen in the last 50 And that is so true certainly for our industry but around the world and it's it's all being fueled by technology. And so it's it's just very exciting times. Yeah. So I mean, do you see in the next five years will we be will we reach that fully at The autonomous vision or is it further away than that? There will be stages of autonomous development. And it will start with pilots, right? And it will start with deployment in certain areas. And so, it's gonna take us awhile to get to an all- electric and all- autonomous world. But certainly, we're making great, great progress towards getting there. I wanted to read you something that at our Fortune Global Forum last month in Paris, the acting CEO of Renault Clotilde Delbos said, she said, with regard to the way that autonomous vehicles and the way that people will share them since you don't actually need a driver. Said you're gonna be using this car so much that the lifespan is going to be two to three years, not seven. You're going to need fewer cars, but you will need them more often. Do you agree? Are we gonna, cars wear out faster because people aren't driving them and what does that mean for for GM? It's, when you think of electric vehicles one thing that people don't really know, Or on familiar with is that electric vehicles require a lot less maintenance, right? You don't have to, you don't have you don't need oil changes, for example, right? And so the life of the vehicle can really be extended because of that, right? So what it's gonna mean is that people will be able to just use them a lot more often. And it's also because the Used to think about how it's gonna increase accessibility to people who today can't drive right. So be it because of physical disabilities or because of age and suddenly you don't need to be the driver right, there is a technology that is gonna take you where you need to go. And the thing that's really powerful Yeah, I want to come to the audience for questions in just a minute. So raise your hands, they'll bring you a paddle. There's someone over there Someone over there. Okay. So they'll bring you a paddle, please over here. And in the meantime though, I just wanted to ask you something because We're always talking about electric cars, and the assumption is, I guess you knew that gas is expensive and consumers are concerned about the environment and so everyone wants to move to electric, and then here on the other side of that you have this trend. People are buying pickup trucks, which seems to me kind of like the opposite of, all these environmental concerns and from maybe people are buying them cuz they actually like to drive them. How do you I mean, how do you balance working towards what's good for the environment with giving consumers what they actually want? So, I think the core here is to get to a point where people can choose any vehicle that they want that is electric, right? And we are clearly on that path and so it's not gonna be an issue because you are gonna have electric pick- ups. Right, and evil cyber truck and it BGM there's, you know, we'll have our own version of it. But I think this is really important to understand people have preferences and be it because of how they use it. So they need a pickup right because of the utility or because that's just what they like to drive. And people should not be limited because it's electric. And so, again, if you think about a future that is all electric, we're not gonna have these kinds of things. In the mean time, we're working really, really hard to get best fuel economy that we can in the vehicles that are Do you also consider what the infrastructure is necessary to support this? So how do you deal with cities, municipalities, from private entities to support charging to support rideshare? Like what are those services look like end to end. Is that something you do and how Yeah, so a couple of things. One is The beauty of being an independent mobility unit within a bigger organization that has General Motors is that we have access to a lot of resources from again, the bigger organization and one of them is public policy, right? And so we have a very. Good team, that we partner with a GM to help us with regulations right. And when his apologies to understand how we can work together which is really, really important in our space as as you know. And I will also say that from an easy perspective, there's no doubt that there are things that need to be addressed for adoption to really become a Predominant and infrastructure is a huge challenge that there is because that's the thing that is preventing a lot of people from buying NEV because they don't know where they're gonna be able to charge the car. And so we are working very, very hard at GM to build out this infrastructure. We have recently announce partnership with [ INAUDIBLE ] on our intent to create a partnership that will actually allow us to build this infrastructure. Because we understand that is really critical On the ridesharing side I will add to that, that we have our own fleet of Chevrolet Bolt EVs that are for gig drivers on the Maven Platform. And it's really, really interesting that the rideshare drivers love to drive EV vehicles. They absolutely love it. They know that they've tell us the passengers love it, so it's something that's differentiated for them when they go and pick up someone. The hesitation of how I charge and where do I charge goes away once they understand where they can go. And so, they map out their routes and they know where to go. We have seen, as you know from ride sharing, the mileage on the vehicles that these guys is tremendous, right? They're driving all day long, and doing several trips a day. And so with the Uber and Lyft drivers that are driving our EV vehicles, They've created so much demand that we have, [ UNKNOWN ] even have actually created with, built together with EVgo, so we have a partnership with EVgo, and we've built five dedicated stations, Maven stations between LA and San Francisco for a total of 34 dedicated chargers, Just for Maven, Ivy right chair drivers to utilize it. So I really believe that once the infrastructure is build, people are really going, the hesitation will go away. Cuz it's very very powerful. Yeah, we only have a little bit of time left. But I wanted to ask you, cuz Maven announced in the spring that it was going to exit. Eight of the 17 cities that it was in have you found you know, this is some that only works in certain cities or what are you learning through the process that about the markets that you want to be in? You know, it's, it really is. And Maven, we're all about testing, learning, pivoting, right? Which is really part of the cultural mindset that we've created for what I call this mini startup within the big jam [ UNKNOWN ] Organization. And we've learned that, you know, with the limited resources that we have, the growth potential isn't there in every market, right? And so we really needed to focus make sure that we focused where it made sense and where we saw

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